The Ben Mulroney Show - Food affordability -- what's in play to lower grocery costs

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

GUEST:   Michelle Rempel Garner/  MP Calgary Nose Hill. Guest: Carmi Levy / Tech journalist 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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Cooperators, investing in your future together. Mutual funds are offered through Cooperators Financial Investment Services Inc. to Canadian residents except those in Quebec in the territories. Segregated funds are administered by Cooperators' Life Insurance Company. Life Insurance is underwritten by Cooperators Life Insurance Company. I choose, choose you on this Tuesday. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

I did not have this news story on my bingo card. My name in a certain way appears in the Epstein files. Let me explain. So apparently a letter was uncovered by a gentleman by the name of Peter Corsell who wrote to Jeffrey Epstein about some work that he was doing on a, and this is 2015, on a, a new social media platform that Bell Media was a major investor in. And I was hired by Bell to go around, do the rounds on all their shows to help promote this platform, which went, it went belly up. There was no, no, no buy in.

And he is laying out the potential for this thing in this email to Jeffrey Epstein. And he lists me as, quote, one of the most wide. admired celebrities in Canada. So take that for all it's worth. I'm in the Epstein files. There you go. Okay. Let's make it clear.

You did never wear it an Epstein island or anywhere near. No. Yeah. Do I have to make that clear? Apparently so. No, I don't think I do. People want to assume that based on what I just said. That's on them.

You can't fix stupid. and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not engaging in a conversation down to the lowest common denominator. It's not happening. Well, our next guest tries to fix stupid all the time. Yes, please welcome to the show. MP for Calgary Nose Hill. Michelle Remplegarner, welcome, Michelle. Thanks for having me.

I don't know if you want to be here because I'm, I'm so closely linked to Jeffrey Epstein, but, you know, you can hang up if you like that. Well, you were in my hometown and you were in Calgary. Oh, that was fun. I heard you got white-hatted, which is a bit. big Calgary honor. It was an honor. It really was. But can I tell you, Michelle, they, they guessed my head size. It's unheard of. My head is, I tell you what your producer told me to say on the air. He said he was surprised that they found a hat big enough to fit your head. Well, yes. I mean, there's the metaphorical giantness of it, given the ego. And it's a thick

skull, not a very big brain on the inside. But I'm glad to have you because we've got lots to talk about. Firstly, right before this conversation, I spoke with a young lady as well as somebody from an advocacy group for children saying it's time for our parliamentarians to stop studying the online harms that our kids are subjected to and put together a child safety piece of legislation that can actually protect our kids online. Do you feel that that's an accurate representation that that child safety should have been something that should have been dealt with a long time ago? Well, yes, and to the point where I actually have a private members bill that's in front of parliament right now that does everything from include artificial intelligence generated intimate images from being distributed without consent

to create a legislative duty of care for online operators. But the key here, though, is where the liberals have missed the vote on this is that they keep saying that in order to keep people safe online, that Canadians have to give up their right to free speech. And I don't buy that. So, you know, we've been trying to work to make sure that people are safe online. We also don't need to curtail speech to get there. No, I mean, listen, based on what they would want, you know, my mistake of believing that a rumor that Hillary Clinton was. going to speak at the Liberal Party convention, that would have contravened some law that the liberals want to put on the books. So I'm glad I, I'm glad I apologized, although for some people

it wasn't enough. And so we move on. But today is a day that the food affordability is being debated in the House of Commons. I saw a little bit of an interaction between the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. Talk to me about the competing visions for food affordability, because on one side, you've got the GST rebate, that the liberals are It's going to cost, what, $12 billion? And on the other side, you've got the conservative vision. So talk to me about those two visions. Well, I mean, the program you talked about isn't a fix.

I mean, I was at not a fancy grocery store by any stretch last week, and I went to go get a can of coffee, and it was $33. What? That's a lot. Wait, wait, no. It had to, no. Like a basic coffee. What, it had to be.

$33 for a can of coffee. Like, like, I'm not going to say which brand. because I don't want to violate your advertising rules, but it was not a fancy brand of coffee. And, you know, so the reality is that Canadians, like, we have the highest food prices and food inflation in the G7. Like, and it keeps increasing. So, you know, what you talked about there,

this program that the liberals have put forward, it's a rehashed announcement from, you know, several years ago under the liberal government. So, you know, you talk about competing vision. And what we're doing today is saying, like, look, any relief is good. We're going to work with the liberal government on that. But what the liberals haven't done is the – but now what? And so we're proposing a series of measures that would reduce that continued food inflation.

So, you know, everything from removing some things that are adding to the cost of food, like policies related to fertilizer, other hidden taxes. Yeah, the industrial carbon tax, right? the liberals should be doing. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, like some people might think, like, okay, well, how does this affect, you know,

my can of coffee? But the reality is, it's like all of these tariffs that Mark Carney promised to get a deal on. He didn't address that. These hidden taxes that get multiplied from everybody from food growers to food producers to food being transported, they add up. And the people who pay that are the people who are reaching down for that $33 can of coffee. And it's got to stop. Right?

Yeah. Well, you know, it seems to me, and I'm going to finish this thought, but it's going to lead us into our next segment. It seems to me that, you know, the conservatives are being painted as obstructionist, right? You guys put forth the bail not jail act. Well, but let me just let me lay out the case for you. You put out the bail not jail act, and that didn't pass, but we were promised that the conservatives are going to very much like what's coming down the pipe from the liberals. And I got to say, I read both of them. And yours had more teeth than theirs, than their proposed changes to the legislation.

And so they said you'd be happy with it. But clearly, it's not everything that the conservatives wanted. They're constantly saying that you guys are being obstructionist on the budget, on this, on crime. And I wonder whether they're trying to build the narrative and build the case that parliament isn't working. For an unnecessary election. Yeah. But also, don't forget, like, today it was announced. Bill Blair is resigning.

Christia Freeland, we're waiting for her to resign. We've got Naderzkin Smith just said he's resigning to run for the Ontario Liberal Party leadership. So they will at least temporarily be three seats farther away from any majority that they've been trying to cobble together. So the argument could be made that that's what they're set in the table for. Well, I actually wrote about this at the beginning of January. and, you know, I kind of feel like I predicted the future and nobody listened to me. But hey, no, like, let's talk about, like, how Parliament is actually functioning right now. I'm going to say something.

I'm going to choke a little bit when I say this. Prime ministers in recent history have figured out how to make minority parliament work. Like Justin Trudeau did. Justin Trudeau made a minority parliament work. If Justin Trudeau can figure out how to make a minority parliament work, surely, Mark Carney, who I think would like to think that he is a better prime minister than Justin Trudeau was, could make a minority parliament work.

Stephen Harper made a minority parliament work. And, you know, I can give you one example. I'm on the immigration committee. We worked really hard with members from all parties, including the liberals, to get a bill that had some reforms on border security and immigration through the House of Commons. Now we negotiated on amendments.

I got a lot of amendments on that bill, which made the bill stronger, but it allowed me to support the bill at the end. And guess what, Ben? That's how Parliament's supposed to work. You know that, right? Yeah. I think what they're trying to say with this is that, you know,

I saw their House leader Steve McKinnon out, and he's saying like, oh, this, that, it's, you know, no party has a right to just ram legislation through the House of Commons. That's why there's debate. Well, we're going to hold on to that thought, because we're going to continue that after the break. A lot's more to talk about, including the rise in Alberta separatism and how today is Harper Palooza.

Big, big day for the former prime minister on Parliament Hill. Don't go anywhere more on my conversation with Michelle Remple Garner when we come back after the break. You are, but things get a lot more interesting when I continue my conversation with Michelle Garner, Remple from the Conservative Party. We're talking about making a minority government work, a minority parliament work. And Michelle, I want to take issue with one thing that you said,

which is that our former prime minister, Justin Trudeau, found a way to make a parliament work. I disagree with you. He was working in a minority parliament, but he saw a polling that suggested that even though we were in the middle of a pandemic, if he sent us back to the polls, he'd get his majority. That's a great point. And he didn't get his majority. And so what did he do? He partnered up with the NDP so that he could govern in effect as having a majority.

And I believe that that was an affront to the voters who twice, told him we trust you, but not with the keys to the kingdom. We trust you just enough to work with everybody else in one of these ways we have to compromise. You've got to give and take, and he didn't do that. And that, I believe, led to some of the toxicity that voters felt towards him and his party. Yeah, I mean, we can look in the past, and you're right. But, like, looking to the future, Parliament, like, I mean, there's bills going through the House of Commons. I mean, today we worked with the liberals to pass some GST measures.

I helped amend bills to strengthen them. That's fine. But, like, at the end of the day, what we're trying to do as conservatives is to get results for Canadians. And, you know, we're not going to apologize for holding the government to account. That's our job is the official opposition to say, hey, you know, you've promised all these things. You've said all of these things, but where are the results? I mean, that's reasonable. And I think it's wrong for the liberals to frame that that's not how Parliament should work.

I mean, if we want to have a united country, parliament has to work that way, right? Yeah, and typically, just give me some context. You've been in a number of minority parliaments. When a government is putting together a budget, I always assumed that in a minority setting, they go to the other parties, all of them, and say, what do you need from us? so that you can support this budget. And so the first step is, the first give is of the government. And it feels like this time it was our way or the highway.

Is that a fair assessment? Yeah. And I mean, it was odd. I mean, first of all, the federal liberals didn't deliver a budget for, what, two and a half years, about that, two years? That's a long time. And, I mean, the budget that they did deliver was one of the highest deficits in Canadian. in history, which, you know, we're talking about inflation and food prices, that has a big impact on that, too. It's Canadians who are paying for that at the grocery store. And yeah,

so, I mean, like, look, we're we're not a country, we're a democracy. We're not a country where the government just gets to run roughshod through, with legislation and directives without having impact or input from across the country. And that's what Parliament is supposed. supposed to do. So I'm not going to apologize for being constructive and offering constructive improvements to legislation or saying, hey, this is not in the best interest of the country and forcing, you know, the government to rethink or improve their legislation. That's actually why people pay my salary, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's, I think it's a weird spin on their part. And I, you know, I don't think Canadians want that right now. They want parliament to

function. And that means having a strong opposition, too. But they do, they do want it to function, but I'm witnessing a honeymoon phase for this prime minister and this government that defies logic to me. I mean, I think of course there's going to be goodwill for a new guy, of course. And he presents so much better than his predecessor. I mean, he's benefiting from some of the lowest expectations. And every time Justin Trudeau is caught on a red carpet, it makes Mark Carney look more prime ministerial. And so it's, and every time Donald Trump gets mad, he benefits as well. And I got to wonder, if if that sort of feeling is going to emboldened these guys to take that risk and to claim with no evidence to support it that you guys are obstructionist.

And therefore, he's got to go to the polls. Yeah, like, I mean, like, look, I have to focus on the 120,000 people that I represent. And then you magnify that or multiply that across our caucus. And there are a lot of things that Canadians are counting on us for. And by us, I mean all parliamentaries and the federal liberal government, which is crime, you know, the disorder and dysfunction we see in Canada's immigration system under the liberal government. Getting trade deals done, removing tariffs, the grocery prices that we were talking about today. So, you know, there's a lot of speculation. You know how backroom Ottawa works. You know that very well. I think what your listeners probably want to hear is that there's adults in the room who are saying,

look, we've got to get some results done in this parliament. And I'm sitting here at my desk in Ottawa with a giant stacks of messy papers everywhere trying to make that happen and through committee in the House, through negotiation with other parties. And that's what we're going to continue to do. So if I could just summarize it, we're opposing the bad stuff we see come out of the government, but we're also proposing some really common sense policy. that we hope the government takes. Yeah.

Right. Well, you also are highlighting sort of the iceberg on the horizon that is the Alberta separatist referendum, which we could see as early as the fall. And you pointed out in your recent substack that it, you know, you've been warning against this thing that was growing. He said, we need policies that are going to reflect the value that of Alberta and its contribution to Confederation. And without that, this specter is going to grow. And here it is growing in front of us. And you weren't advocating for it. You were warning against it.

Yeah. And I actually wrote a pretty spicy document actually six years ago this month that said exactly all of those things. And look, I think that rather than denigrating or, you know, making fun of people in Alberta who feel like Confederation isn't working for them to the point where they're going to go and sign a separatist referendum petition, the more sober and productive conversation is to say, hey, let's take stock of valid concerns that exist and try to rectify them. Let's try to modernize parliament, modernize our institutions that reflect a growing Canada,

a more populous Alberta, and recognize the importance that the province brings to Confederation and provide things that speak to unity. So, you know, I would just, you know, like I wrote yesterday, I really caution anybody who's commenting on this topic from using it as a political wedge. I'm not going to play that game. I think it's really serious. And my job is to listen to certainly people who want to remain in Canada and Alberta and those that don't and try to knit a vision that works. Yeah.

But like anybody who thinks this isn't serious, I think is underestimating the concerns that I've heard for years. Yeah. Well, I mean, the numbers are 28% right now. And Quebec's at 31. If we take Quebec seriously, I don't know why we wouldn't take Albertans seriously. And I've heard certain pundits sort of almost lionize the independence movement in Quebec saying, well, it comes from an emotional place, a place of identity. And the Albertan one comes from a place of anger and resentment over the economy.

And I was like, why do you care where it comes from? The end result is going to be, if the end result say yes, on either camps, it's the country's in trouble. Well, it does come from a place of anger around the economy that started, you know, it predates this, but the big flashpoint, of course, was the National Energy Program. I mean, you remember this. That devastated the economy. That was also exacerbated and furthered by Pierre Elliott Trudeau's son, Justin Trudeau,

with a decade of punitive policies like what we refer to Bill C-69, the No More Pipelines Bill that devastated our economy, created enormous amounts of instability for what? I mean, frankly, I think that that undermined Canadian sovereignty. But it's not just, like, you have to understand for people who are listening who maybe have never been to Alberta. It's not just energy. That's part of it.

But it's also things like if anyone ever walks through, you know, the National Art Gallery in Ottawa, it's like, where's the Western Heritage display? it's the sense that, you know, the rest of country doesn't see Alberta as an equal or a respected partner in Confederation. I'm not saying, you know, that's always the case, but there are relevant concerns there. So, you know, I would urge Prime Minister Carney to take that seriously. All right. We've got to leave it there, Michelle. Thank you for sticking around for two segments.

We went to a lot of stuff. Real quick, I don't have a lot of time, but did you see Prime Minister Stephen Harper's portrait yet, which was unveiled, I believe, at four? I'm actually running across the street and sneaking in the back right now to see it. Okay. I'm running across the street to go through that. Take a picture and put it on your socials. I want to take a look at it. I'll send you a text.

Okay, thank you. I sent it. That was Michelle Rumpel Garner giving us the lay of the land in Ottawa. Yes, indeed. You're listening to the Ben Mulroney show, and there are so many crazy stories in tech today that we had to bring on our favorite tech journalist, Carmi Levy, to break it all down for us. Carmi, welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney show. Oh, so great to be with you, Ben. Always a joy.

All right. So we're hearing about driverless cars, driverless Uber's in the city of Toronto. Talk to me about how we're going to get from where we are to where they want to be. This is really cool because it's a made-in-Canada solution. And you know me. I love me a good sort of Canadian tech success story. And there's this company. It's based in Toronto. It's called Wabi. It's two A's. And essentially, they specialize. in autonomous vehicle technology, specifically for trucks. So they've already been partnering with one of Uber's subsidiary companies, Uber Freight, and they've been driving autonomous delivery trucks between Dallas and Houston since 2023.

So there's a human safety driver on board, but, you know, this technology has been proven. It works. And now they signed a deal with Uber to provide at least 25,000 driverless cars for their ride sharing service. In Toronto? Well, Toronto, it's interesting because over the past year or so, Uber's been in negotiations with the city of Toronto to bring autonomous vehicles to the city. There are a bunch of other companies that are also trying to do the same. So Tesla, even Loblox and Magna. So they're all kind of working on it.

And so conceivably, Toronto would be included in this, especially because the technology comes from here. And it comes as the company has raised just over $1.3 billion in venture capital. It is one of the biggest such raises in Canadian corporate history. So they raise a huge amount of money because their technology is world leading. And now they partner with obviously the biggest gig economy, ride share company on the planet to be their biggest supplier of this technology. They're out-Tesla and Tesla. But you sort of hit the nail right on the head. This is a gig economy company, and they're going to gut the gig economy.

Yeah, that's sort of the dirty little secret of Uber is that their original business plan when they were first founded was not to have drivers at all. They were hoping that when they launched, autonomous technology would be further advanced than it was because, and we've seen this how many times before, Uber doesn't really like dealing with human drivers. It's treated them as contractors.

It's been in and out of port for years. They're trying to be treated like employees and Uber keeps pushing back. it's really not a very happy work experience. And Uber's sort of philosophy is, well, if we can get autonomous technology developed and we don't have to deal with humans at all. So that really is the goal. And it's taken longer than they wanted to.

But now it looks like the solution could be Canadian because, you know, we... But I've got to ask, because it's a Canadian company, has this Wabi company solved for the issues of how their cameras or whatever they use is going to deal with, you know, the experience of what the streets of Toronto have been like for the past week since Mother Nature dumped 60 centimeters of snow on us in one day. The streets are crowded. There are, there's just, there's obstructions everywhere. It's uneven terrain.

It doesn't look today like it looked a week and a half ago. Do they have that technology in place? Yeah, there's clearly a world of difference between an 18-wheeler on an open Texas highway where the weather is awesome versus a car in the middle of. downtown Toronto in the middle of winter. And so, you know, their solution is rather than training these vehicles only on the road, which is what Uber has been doing, Tesla has been doing, all of the other autonomous vehicle companies, General Motors Cruise, Google's Waymo, when they train or sort of build the technology, they put these cars on the road with a safety

driver and they collect data from them. What Wabi does is it does this in software simulation, So they can get a lot more iterations, a lot more training, collect a lot more data, just from doing this virtually instead of in reality. They also have on the road testing, but they're saying their version allows it to learn better, faster, and avoid the kind of pitfalls that we've seen in other autonomous vehicles, like, for example, Tesla's for the longest time, kind of had a problem running into emergency vehicles and 18 wheelers. We haven't seen that with Wabi yet, and conceivably, winter testing is part of that protocol. Yeah, it would have to be.

all these things out in Canada. I mean, if all of a sudden their entire fleet of automated vehicles is unable to navigate the streets because of a snowstorm, then I don't know what you do. Let's move on because we only have a few minutes left. I want to spend some time on this story that SpaceX is seeking federal approval to launch one million solar-powered satellite data centers. Now, that seems like a lot. We have talked in the past about AI data centers being in orbit for a number of reasons.

One, you can sink it so it's always in the sun. So you get 24 hours sun. It's super cold up there. So you cool those things that run very, very hot. And I guess because of the technology with Starlink, these guys can, the data transfer down to Earth is instantaneous. Exactly. I mean, these are, you know, again, this hasn't been tested in the real world.

So who really knows? But according to SpaceX, specifically Elon Musk has really been hammering. this home recently, you can have a better data center in space than you can on Earth. And then, of course, you don't have to deal with building on huge tracts of land next to towns where people don't even want them, consuming water, energy, all that stuff. So they've asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to launch a constellation of up to one million of these solar-powered data center satellites to run AI infrastructure. Would they be...

So a million is sounds huge. Would they all be... First of all, how big would these things be? And would they all be clustered together in one area? Or is this a jungle gym that astronauts and other satellites are going to have to navigate through? I mean, it just feels like space is getting crowded. Yeah.

I mean, just to put it in perspective, right now, there are about 15,000 working satellites in orbit around the Earth. Two-thirds of them are Starlink satellites, the rest of other sources. And so this would be just like on orders of baggage, beyond what we've seen so far. They haven't shared a lot of details. What we do know, though, is that the orbital height would be around 2,000 kilometers,

which is much higher than right now. They're in different sort of clusters around 300 and 500 kilometers up. So this is a much higher orbit. You know, based on just the sheer numbers, astronomers would literally not be able to make observations from Earth because there would be so many of them. SpaceX says, don't worry, space is a really big place,

but a million, it's hard to ignore that from Earth. So I think it would. We're already having huge problems with conflict in low Earth orbit. We've already had issues. Space Station always has the International Space Station has had many times where it has to change its orbit to avoid a possible impact with debris. So that's only with 15,000 satellites. Imagine if you crank it up to a thousand to a million, the numbers are beyond belief and the potential for there to be issues. I think it's a negotiation tactic.

I think they're sort of throwing out a big number to the FCC. they're probably going to negotiate it down, but it's still, man, Elon Musk being Elon Musk. And do we have a timeline for this? Like, when do they want to start launching these things? They haven't even developed the technology. Oh, I see. They don't have a working prototype. Like, they're manufacturing hundreds of Starlings a week now, but we haven't seen, you know, there's no factory that's making these now. We haven't seen a reference design.

So all of this is conceptual at this point. But, you know, given SpaceX history, I would likely assume that if they get, some kind of approval. We could probably see some of these birds flying fairly soon when one starship becomes operation. Well, I also got to wonder, Karmie, how much of this is preparing the market for what people believe is the IPO of SpaceX. Yeah, big time. They want that company is rumored to be going public finally this year. And letting people know what's around the bend could get people really excited about buying up that stock when it finally becomes available.

It's certainly part of the hype cycle leading up to an IPO, and they just announced, for example, that they have merged XAI, which is the AI company that Elon Musk founded. They've merged that into SpaceX in advance of the IPO. So we're seeing a lot of sort of financial deck chair rearranging in advance of this company going public, and it all speaks to, you know, we've got big plans, invest in us. You know, we are the company of the future. And again, it's Elon. Musk, you sort of have to take some of what he says with a grain of salt, but at the same time,

hard to disagree with the success that he's had thus far. SpaceX changed the name of the game in rocketry. Tesla changed the name of the game in EVs. And like his politics or not, these companies have had a significant impact on their respective markets. It would be naive to think SpaceX won't be the same post-IPO. All right, Carmie, thank you. Thanks so much for being our technology Sherpa today. Thanks so much, Ben.

All right, don't go anywhere. We come back much more on the Ben Mulroney show. Yes, you are. And let me tell you, I'm so excited for the eventual launch of Artemis II, the NASA shuttle, NASA rocket program that is going to eventually take astronauts to land on the moon, and that's going to be the launching pad to take us to Mars. On February 8th, Artemis 2 was scheduled to launch on what was going to take four hours. astronauts farther into space than any humans have ever gone.

They were going to go around the moon. They weren't going to land. We're going to go around the moon and come back. But the window has been closed and the earliest launch now has shifted to early March. So it was called a wet dress rehearsal yesterday. And they successfully filled the rockets with propellant. But engineers faced delays because of a leak, a hydrogen leak. And that similarly postponed Artemis,

one in 2022. You got to get this stuff right. You know, I think everything's got to be perfect. And this is going to be... They've had too many big accidents in the past, too. Well, I mean, it was just a few... What was it? Last week was the anniversary, the 40th anniversary of the Challenger exploding?

I remember watching that at school. It was freaking traumatizing. And the hope that everybody had was on that day. And the tragedy that befell him, And people didn't go to, that slowed everything down the space program for years. But it does feel like people, they are enthusiastic again about the prospect of being explorers again. And what could come from, what discoveries could come from this Artemis program. It is, it is going to be great.

I've told you, I've been, I lived in a world for so long. There's one season coming, one final season coming of for all mankind, which is my favorite TV show of all time. And it's an app. It's a good show. favorite show. It asks a very simple question, what would have happened to the space program, the space race, and Earth in general, the people of Earth, had the Russians landed on the moon first. The space race would have continued, and all sorts of things would have changed. Some remain the same. But it's such an exciting show. And so there's a final season happening,

I mean, at any point. Oh, I didn't know that they were. And then they're also going to do a spinoff called Star City of the Russian program, the Soviet Union's rocket program. Yeah. But like, for example, on that show, there was a, did you ever hear about the Russian shuttle program? Yes, yes.

So it was called the Busan. Okay, and it looked so similar to the, because they stole a lot of the drawings. They stole a lot of it, but it never flew because they had a valve issue, right? They could never resolve this valve issue. So in this new version, for all mankind, the head of NASA tells them, saves the Busan. And it was just this wonderful little moment.

I love counterfactual history. It's another way of saying fiction. But counterfactual history says what would have happened if X had happened instead of Y? And that show just runs with it. And so all that to say, I've always been excited by. by explorers and space. I would go to Mars. I watch the Martian once a year.

That's a great show. It's a movie. Yeah. Awesome movie. Fantastic. Yeah. And there's a new one coming out by the same writer with,

what's his name? Ryan Gosling. That's coming out soon. Oh, yes, yes, yes. And that looks tremendous. He's got to save the Earth or save humanity or something. But anyway, all I say,

this is a real version of that. And they're going to be live streaming every aspect of it. You know that you're going to be able to watch this 24-7. Very, very excited about that. So that's the good stuff that we want to talk to you about. But it's speaking about stuff that you wish that sounds counterfactual. Well, I was going to say from moon rocks to crack rocks. Oh, yeah.

Here is a great story. And like, stop me if you heard a version of this before. But the National Post is reporting that a judge granted leading. to a Toronto crack dealer because he's got nine kids and because of his race. We've heard this so many times. So this is a repeat drug trafficking offenders. He was arrested three times in 10 months for cocaine trafficking in Toronto. He pled guilty for all of his crimes as well as breaching the release conditions that he was under.

And then the judge took the ball and ran with it. he acknowledged that William's nine children, nine children, nine children, great. And his mixed black micma identity, his history of poverty and trauma, and the potential harm to his family, um,

led to, or factors that led to a partially reduced sentence. As a matter of fact, he was not able to prove his first nation's lineage, uh, but he still gave it to him. But they still gave it to him. And of course,

they, they mentioned all the things, that you hear all the time, the trauma of colonialism, the intergenerational trauma. All of those things are real, but they are being weaponized against good and productive members of society.

This is so patronizing. I'm not trying to speak for First Nations. But my God, you're saying that we have to treat people differently if that had been a white guy, they would have thrown the book at him. Ben, I did tell you before that, my sister did the whole thing.

Ancestry.ca thing, and she found that we do have indigenous heritage. It goes back, I don't know, six to eight generations, something like that. So I think I need some- You can start slinging the rock. You better start treating me differently here in the office. Yeah. By the way, Williams has past domestic assault convictions. He ultimately received a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence with the judge stressing the seriousness of repeated trafficking, harmed to vulnerable communities, and his disregard for release orders. But, but he does come. come from a community that increasingly is being told the rules shouldn't apply to you because because society was so bad to you. And I don't know, I don't know how we function as a society.

I don't know how we, we find common cause when judges keep telling us that we are so wildly different from each other that if two people commit the same crime, but they happen to be from different communities, they will have completely different outcomes in our judicial system. You haven't proven. You have not proven that colonialism led this guy to sling rock. So tell me, but does this story enrage you more than the next one? Yeah. Which one?

Yeah. This is the one that is automatic. But Greg Brady highlighted this one. Who is a 640? Yeah, a 640 morning show guy at Toronto Today with Greg Brady. Gwealth police released and then re-arrested a high-risk offender within minutes. So last night, Greg Brady tweeted out about this saying after they had sent out a warning because Guelph police had said, this guy's being released from custody and beware because he's likely to reoffend.

And he did. And Brady, but Brady was saying highly approve of police departments across Canada doing this. When an activist judge lets a no debate high risk offender out on our streets tell us, warn us. They note he's a particular threat to women in particular. So his point was that they should be doing this. And then right after that tweet was sent out, he got re-arrested. Rearrested. Like these things are foregone conclusions.

But maybe this guy had a tough life too, you know? Maybe his mom didn't hug him enough. Maybe he's left-handed. Maybe he's secretly closeted. I don't know. But none of that stuff explains the behavior. And these judges, I don't know where the directives are coming from. But this is the bananas crazy town stuff

that makes us not trust the people who are supposed to be learned and well thought out and measured and understanding the law. And my God, why aren't they thinking about the victims in this? Why aren't they thinking about the victims? Repeat offender drug dealers and a guy who is so high risk that he actually turned around and got arrested four minutes later? This is crazy town. This is crazy town.

I don't even know what to do with this. I kind of want to get on a rocket and go to Mars and start over. And by the way, there'd be a lot of buy-in from people on Twitter. They'd buy my ticket. Yeah, but then again, you know, what? The judges would probably say that you have to bring some of these guys with you because they were disadvantaged. And technically, I would be on stolen land.

But no one's illegal on stolen land. But then again, if you acknowledged it. Yeah, we could do a land acknowledgement every time we... The land acknowledgement on Mars. Yeah, my God. It's just, this is... This is bananas. Like, this is not the seriousness that is required to lead a serious country.

Figure it out. And just a reminder, if you want more BMS, we put out a podcast every day, and find even more content on X, on Instagram, and on YouTube. Our intel chain is compromised. New on Showcase. You were hacked. You're telling me it's real. Someone's been watching and listening through you.

Simulio. We can either attempt to remove what's in your brain, or we keep the hack. Melissa Barrera. We need to use you to find them and destroy them. Tell me why you chose me. We either save the mission or save his life. The Copenhagen Test.

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