The Ben Mulroney Show - Government secretly opening heroin injection sites near children and the elderly

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Heroin injection site secretly opened in Downtown Toronto with Guest: Dana McKiel, Media Relations for the Downtown Concerned Citizens Organization 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

Happy Monday, everybody. Thank you so much for starting your week with us. We hope you remain with us all week long, and we hope you stay with us for as long as we do the Ben Mulroney Show. And wanna thank you for joining us on CFPL in London. Wanna thank you for joining us on 640 Toronto. And of course, wherever you might find us,

be it podcast form or on a streaming app, we really appreciate it. And let's jump right in. So I was away at the end of last week, I was in Washington, DC, as part of an organization that my father was a member of. And a lot of the members are highly successful self made successes. And so I was able to speak with politicians and business leaders, luminaries from all walks of life.

And I tried to get a sense from a lot of them as to what they could make of Donald Trump and Liberation Day and the sell-off that has ensued in the stock market, the loss of trillions of dollars of value in the stock market, the loss of people's value in their 401Ks in the United States and so on. And almost to a person, even those who may have been inclined

to support him and possibly still do today, the general consensus was that Donald Trump is placing a very big bet, very big bet. And if it pays off, then he will be viewed as a visionary. And a lot of them said, don't ever bet against Donald Trump. Look at what he's done. Look at look at what he's overcome. Look at how the deck was stacked against him and look how he came back. And all of that I take as a valid point, I suppose. But I don't know if he's going to have the runway to see this bet through. And I just don't. I think that things could get worse before they get worse, as I've heard someone say before. And he's already losing support in the Senate, which is vital to him getting his agenda through and to become law.

And so I just I genuinely don't know, obviously, one one thing that I love about doing the Ben Mulroney show is I can have those questions answered by experts in specific fields. And we will get to that in the day, hours, days and weeks to come. Something else that someone said that I found very interesting is that Donald Trump views the world in binary terms for every, and it's a zero sum game, everything is a zero sum game for him. There's winners and there are losers. And if you win, somebody else has to, has to lose.

And he very much wants America to win, which means there will be losers in this worldview. And I don't subscribe to that view. I heard once actually was my producer who said it to me. He said, true leaders frame the question as it's not me versus you, it's us versus the problem. And I believe my dad subscribed to that view. He believed that when Canada and the United States, for example, work together, then you see an explosion of wealth and creativity and growth, which then translates into stability and justice and moral clarity around the world. I don't believe anybody has to lose. If you play as an honest broker, if you respect the rules of engagement,

and if you are true to your word, and you have a vision that you want to enact, then everyone can win. And so this is gonna be a very interesting dichotomy as we move forward. And while I was in Washington, Alex Ovechkin tied Wayne Gretzky's seemingly unbeatable lifetime goals record.

And he beat that record yesterday. And over the course of the last few weeks, I have been in discussion with Wayne in the hopes of having him on the show. I didn't know that the record was gonna get broken this year. But something happened. Ovechkin, he found another gear and he made sure he was able to do that. So later on in the show, in our 11 o'clock hour at about 1115 1117, we're gonna be speaking with the great one himself, someone I believe

to be one of the great living Canadians who has done more for this country than most, if not all. We're gonna talk to him about this record. We're gonna talk to him about the state of hockey. We're also gonna ask him, you know, about where he fits into this ever-changing Canada-Americ America dynamic. So look out for that conversation at about 11 17 today

on the Ben Mulroney show. Back to Donald Trump and his tariffs. As I said, look, a lot of people were not anticipating this. People who voted for him were not anticipating this. They were promised unicorns and rainbows and money, more money and more growth and more jobs as soon as he was elected. And now that his tune is changing a little bit,

now Donald Trump is saying that, essentially that America has been suffering through an illness. He's been suffering through an illness. And we gotta take our medicine. America has to take her medicine. And sometimes the medicine doesn't go down very well. So even though trillions have been wiped out,

eventually it will be better. I find it very rich, very rich that Donald Trump and his acolytes have been pointing to the stock market for years. Scoreboard, scoreboard he would say, look at the scoreboard. This is how successful we are. Look at what I'm doing for business. Look at how people are optimistic about the future by putting their money in the stock

market. And now all of a sudden, oh, it's not about that. Now all of a sudden, it's not about that. And I don't think you get to do that. You can't, you can't be situational about those things. It's either an indicator of the health of your economy or it's not. Again, I don't pretend to know enough about the stock market

and whether or not it is a true predictor, an indicator of the health of an economy, but it is one of them. It is one of them. And so, we're gonna see that markets going to open in about 15 minutes. I suspect it will be in the red the moment the bell goes off. Somebody who's probably not overly concerned about the health of his own portfolio right now is Vladimir Guerrero Jr. You'll remember that he wanted to sign a long-term deal with the Toronto Blue Jays in the off season and said that if he doesn't come to a deal that he was going to wait until the off season to jump into the free agent market.

Well, I guess the Blue Jays pulled a rabbit out of their hat because no one really saw it coming. They agreed to a $500 million million 14-year extension, which should probably keep him as a Blue J more or less till the end of his career. This is, look, did they blow their wad on one guy? Probably. But the Blue Js have been on the receiving end of being used as leverage for other players to get something else out of other teams far too many times. And I think for the morale of the city and for the team

and for the front office to be able to say, we're serious about this, we want to compete. I think they had to do something like this. But 500 million Fort- God, it's so much of it is guaranteed. I say good on Vladimir Guerrero. Anytime a player of his caliber says he wants to stay in Toronto, we should do everything we can to keep him. Because it indicates to other players that they're serious and it indicates to the team and the fans of the team that the Blue Jays are serious about competing. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. This is the portion of the show where I lose my mind and I'm sure you will too.

If you have spent any time in downtown Toronto over the past few years and you compare it to a life 10 years ago, then you know that there has been a downturn in the quality of life, the quality of community life that we have. Our streets are less safe, they are less clean, They are less clean, and a lot of that can be traced to what I think is an irresponsible drug policy that has been adopted by multiple levels of government, but there are certain people within our municipal government that are so cavalier with our streets and our safety and our children and our communities and our elderly that they have been running roughshod over people's rights, and they have been advocating for open consumption of drugs and policies that fly in the face

of responsible community living. And at the very least, most of these people had the courage of their convictions to have these debates out loud and in public. And therefore we could debate them as civilized people and as members of this community. So when I wake up and I read that the city of Toronto quietly and secretly opened a heroin injection site downtown without any consultation, without any heads up, without any stakeholder engagement. First of all, I think that that is the most Toronto thing that we could be doing, but it infuriates me.

It infuriates me as a taxpayer. It infuriates me as a father. It infuriates me as a taxpayer. It infuriates me as a father, it infuriates me as a Torontonian. And but I don't live or work necessarily in that area. So I wanted to bring somebody on who has an absolute right to have an opinion on this because he works in the area, and he lives in the area. And to get more clarity on this and more details. We're talking to Dana McKeel, Media Relations for the Downtown Concerned Citizens Organization. Dana, thank you for

joining us on the Ben Mulroney Show. And great to be on the show with you. Okay, so I just gave a very high level, broad strokes sort of lay of the land. Why don't you give us the details that you think our listeners need to have? Okay, so here's what's gone down since last Monday, March 31st. The city decided that they're going to clandestinely drop a heroin injection site at the corner of Market Street and the Esplanade. 115 the Esplanade is the official address. And with that, no one knew about this.

Not the senior women that live in the building. It's all a seniors complex there, not the daycare next door, not the, the administrative officer for St. Lawrence market, for all the businesses. They had no knowledge of this because we checked with them. What transpired was a number of emails that went back and forth over the course of the week after a tenant meeting that was held at 115 Esplanade on Tuesday, April 1st.

And that no time was it said, announced that there was going to be a heroin injection site. What there was, a document that was released by the city councilor for the area, Osma Malik, stating that they're going to have some kind of cleanup team for needles and various other things. It's all buzzwords and word salads. Like it doesn't actually say anything. Exactly. There's no official announcement or presentation.

Yes, we're going to have a safe quote unquote, safe consumption site. And so that's what they did. And by the time it came around the Friday or Saturday, it came to the attention of the downtown Concerned Citizens Organization. And then that's when you see the vibration. Okay, so just give us some context for those who don't know the area. How you gave us the address of it. How far is it from a school or a daycare center or a really important sort of community hub like the St.

Lawrence Market? It's 20 feet from a daycare. It's about 50 feet from two playgrounds and it's about 100 feet, 150 feet from two schools, two elementary schools. There's also three senior complexes in the area including the Performing Arts Lodge directly across the street. They're all senior citizens. So I've always believed, and I don't think I'm saying this is not a hot take, that the municipal level of government is the one that impacts citizens most

in their day-to-day life. And we're seeing a negative impact right here. But I've always been surprised by how few citizens mobilize en masse to show their displeasure. I don't see a lot of protest in front of City Hall. Sometimes, you know, the Uber protest, the taxi protest years ago I saw,

but that was an organization that was doing it. What are your plans as an organization to voice your displeasure and show the people who made this decision secretly that you're not having it? Well, Ben, the Downtown Concerned Citizens Organization was formed in 2020. It's now at 58,000 people. It was initially 20, 20 people that organized everything and that includes two Ontario Supreme Court judges that are on our committee. Since that time we've mobilized 258,000 to battle against the heroin injection sites, the encampments, the bike

lanes and all the other insanities that seem to be coming from city hall, and more specifically, these various departments that required audits. With that, you can feel the demand to go to city hall and to rally big time, and that comes from all different areas. 81 Elizabeth Street with all the residents around there.

They are completely fed up with the encampment that or the homeless shelter that was just dropped on them there. Same thing with 629 Adelaide Street West, the people from Etobicoke Lakeshore with that proposed deal on 3rd Street and the people in Gerrard Street East. It looks like we're going to see one massive rally and it looks like the demand for Osma Malik, Chris Moyes, Olivia Chow, and anybody else peddling this ideology are going down. I'm speaking with Dana McKeel. He is with the Downtown Concerned Citizens Organization.

The city dropped secretly and surreptitiously, and I think in bad faith, because of those things, it's in bad faith, a heroin injection site right in the middle of their neighborhood without any public consultation. So what are your plans for a because of those things, it's in bad faith, a heroin injection site right in the middle of their neighborhood without any public consultation. So what are your plans for Olivia Chow, for Chris Moyes, for Osmumalik? Well, short term, we want them removed because they are shown to be irresponsible, especially

with this latest incident with dropping a heroin injection site next to a daycare and schools and playgrounds. Have you contacted her office? No, no, no. You know what, whenever there's contact, they won't take my calls, they won't take my emails. You've got an organization with over 50,000 members strong and that doesn't warrant communication with your group? No, the communication is very selective. Even down to the budget meeting that was held in late January, where several members of the DCCO were in attendance, but the questions were filtered

and they wouldn't take any questions until the end of the budget process. What are you hearing from your members? What are you hearing from people on the street? And like, look, we've just seen, I've been driving by it for years, this massive reconstruction of one of the one of the St. Lawrence Market buildings, it's taken years and at a cost of 10s, if not more than that millions of dollars to put that in peril. I mean, this is where people congregate. And then once they are

there, they go off to all points to spend money and spend time and create that connective tissue that makes a city like Toronto great. If you throw a heroin injection site in there without checking with people you could you run the risk of dampening the impact the positive impact of that investment. You know people won't show there's a lot of people that visit the area and it was quite visible yesterday with all the people visiting St. Lawrence Market area and the day before with the opening of the new North Market. With that said removal of these three, Olivia Chow, Chris Moyes, Osma Malik and you can throw Amber Morley in there as well, that they're peddling this ideology that residents and business operators will oppose and that'll come up to the municipal election which is scheduled for October 26, 2026.

But I have never heard, I mean I've been following politics in this city since I moved here, I've never heard of something like this being done in secret. This is anti-democratic to the nth degree. Well you have to know the background of the city councilor Osma Malik and you have to know the background of Olivia Jow. I've known her since she was in high school at Jarvis Collegiate and she was an activist at that time and for Osma Malik you could go down the list of all the insanities that she's peddled over the years since she was a student

activist at University of Toronto. It's quite well chronicled. And but with this group, and I like to see municipal organizations mobilize and get organized and have their voices heard. Is this the biggest issue that you've faced since 2020? No, the biggest issue up to this point it is, but the biggest issue was a Novatel, the insanity is a Novatel at the time where we saw stolen dogs, stolen mopeds, firearms, AK, uh, eight 10 assault rifles, uh, the whole nine yards, uh, arson, um, smash windows, property damage, you name it. Yeah.

We saw that, uh, in a 258 bed homeless hotel that, uh, was peddled by the silver hotel group in a sole source contract with the city for $264 million. Well, I'm talking to Dana McKeel from the downtown concerned citizens organization. This is a story that I hope doesn't go away. I hope you keep it on the front page and top of mind for everyone in this city. This is a miscarriage of democracy if I've ever seen one. And so if I hope

you come back and give us regular updates and I wish you well in your fight. Oh, we're ready for war. Welcome back to The Ben Mulroney Show and if you're just joining us in our previous segment, we were speaking with a member of the Downtown Concerned Citizens Organization in Toronto town concerned citizens organization in Toronto about how upset this group that is as 50,000 members is with the City Council specifically City Councilor Osama Malik and Mayor Olivia Chow for secretly opening up a heroin injection site right in their neighborhood surrounded by kids and daycares and the elderly and businesses. And this to me is an absolute travesty. There's already a consensus by rational level-headed people

that we as a city, we as a country have not gotten our drug policy right. There is something that needs to be done. I think everybody is open to options and suggestions, but what we've been doing has not worked. And the evidence is as plain as the streets in our city. They are not safe. They are riddled with needles. They make the neighborhoods less attractive to tourism and customers and investment. And that's just a fact.

But at the very least, we were having these debates in public. No debate here, no debate secretly under the cover of whatever you want to call it, darkness, night. This was opened without any consultation of the stakeholders and the people who call that neighborhood home. So I want to hear from you.

416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. How can anyone still not understand that drug injection sites this close to schools and daycares is absurd? What is it going to take? Do you have any of these sites near your neighborhood or your work or your children's school? What is it like around them? Give us a sense of what it's like to live in an area

where ideology is forcing you to interact with some very dangerous elements of society. And before anybody comes at me and says, I do not have any compassion for people who are fighting addiction Of course, I do. Of course I do. These are members of our community. These are people Who I want to see live the healthiest most productive lives possible. I want them Contributing I want them waking up every day believing that tomorrow is going to be better than today

But that is not the case. That is not the case. And if these city councilors and if this city council thought that this was such a good idea, why didn't they bring it forth through the appropriate channels? Explain that. Why did you do this secretly? Why did you not consult with an organization like Downtown Concerned Citizens who represent the lifeblood of that community. Why didn't you check with them? You didn't because you knew, you knew the pushback you would get.

You knew it was wrong, but your ideology trumps their rights and you should be ashamed of yourselves. Maria, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Hi, good morning. How are you? Good morning. Good, good morning. So tell me where you live. Tell me when you hear this story, what do you think? Hi, good morning. How are you? Good morning. Good. Good morning.

Tell me where you live. Tell me when you hear this story, what do you think? Well, I think it's a disgrace to be honest. I live in the area. I live at Girard and Jarvis and I'm surrounded by basically injection sites, particularly the one on Dundas Square, which I really just don't understand. I don't comprehend the rationale behind putting a safe injection site in most, uh, we'll say iconic area in the city downtown. Everybody's there. I've had tourists ask me why

there's so many crackheads in Toronto. I walked by, I had crack, smoked, uh, basically blown in my face. I'm a, I'm a nurse that works downtown and I have to deal with these people all the time. I understand the ideology of having them, you know, be safe, be healthy, help promotion, but allowing them to have a place that puts everybody else and exposes children to all these things. People are passing by, you pass by and it's 2 p.m. and they're smoking crack or injecting heroin right in front of you.

There's absolutely no decorum. And it could be 1 a.m., it could be 12 in the afternoon. It does not matter. It doesn't matter if a lot of people are a little bit it doesn't matter it's you're exposed to it continuously and it's not helping them because you're continuously giving them the means to which they continue to be addicted yeah and and and Marie if I can jump in I mean listen I understand the notion of harm reduction but unless you pair that with the appropriate means for them to get

the help they need, unless you create an arena where they can get the mental health supports and the addiction supports and you can direct them to those places, sometimes with incentives, sometimes either with a carrot or a stick to say, look, we caught you with drugs. We want to help you get off drugs. If you do not go into this new lane that we have created to help you get clean, then you're going to be put into the criminal justice system. I don't understand why we haven't closed the loop. Because we don't have the resources. A lot of these people that are addicted on the streets

are actually mental health cases So these are people with schizophrenia with a severe depression They put part in depression anything they put part of it in basically a stress induced depression. They're there They have mental health issues The system does not have any will say network in place to help these people to begin with The majority of those people that you see talking to themselves bent over on crack or on meth are actually schizophrenic. We basically put them in these places, we give them their stuff through which they can actually inject, but then we, like you say, we don't have that other piece which is let me help you with your mental health. We don't have that. The system is

broken. Hey Maria, I want to thank you so much. One last question for you Maria. Would you know, in this city we typically typically, you know, go along to get along and if something bad happens, we complain on shows like this, maybe write a letter to the editor. But I don't necessarily see the mass mobilization of people taking to protest in front of City Hall. Is this the type of thing that would get you off the couch

to protest, to show people that this is not something that you want to stand for and we as a city should not stand for? 100%. The thing is that when you voice an opinion like yours, like my own, then you are basically labeled as a bigot or a racist or a... Yeah, I'm done with that, Marie. As my dad used to say, that dog don't hunt.

Right. You know what? You want to call me whatever you want to call me, that doesn't change the fact that people are dying in the streets. And that doesn't make the streets any less unsafe. And so call me whatever you want, but all you're doing is not addressing the problem

that in a lot of cases, a lot of these city councilors have had a hand in creating or making worse. Maria, thank you very much for your call. Give us a call 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. These are our streets. These are our communities. I already had a problem when we were having these debates in public because it felt like the people making the decisions didn't care that citizens were coming to them with real problems, with real concerns,

and they were denigrating them and name calling them. Now they've given up on that altogether and they're dropping these things in the middle of the night without any consultation with the people who live in the neighborhoods. It is disgusting behavior and the people who are doing it need to be held to account. Sue, welcome to the show.

I hear you've been on the front lines of this issue. Yes, my child is an addict. I tried to get my child help before he turned 16. They have rights. They can check themselves out of a facility when they're 16 years old. So this is the problem. I totally agree with you and Maria.

We need to do something to change the law, to change the legislation so that these people don't have rights and we can get help for our children. Yeah, I think what you have to recognize is when people are dealing with the worst aspects of addiction, that they're not thinking rationally. when people are dealing with the worst aspects of addiction, that they're not thinking rationally. And this nonsense that we are supporting their charter rights

to do these things as if that's a right, as if they were in the right frame of mind, would they be behaving this way? Of course not. All they are thinking is about continuing with the cycle of addiction. And in order to break it, you've got to break the circuit. Thank you very much for your call, Sue.

I appreciate it. I think we've got time for one more. Hey, Blair, welcome to the show. Hey, Ben. You know, many, many years ago, we took away cigarette advertising and the ability for the cigarette companies to sponsor things like tennis and and the way anyway so now we've got people fighting against a different form I mean it's almost advertising you got kids people whatever on the street corner smoking crack and

you've got young kids coming out of school walking past them and they go wow you know look what they're doing. Yeah, but listen, just another form. Well, Blair, listen, I don't know that that is a that's painting drug addiction in the best possible light. I don't know that kids walking past it are thinking to themselves, oh, I kind of want to be part of that crowd. But that doesn't change the fact that they're being exposed to it. And they shouldn't be. I do find it quite rich that somebody can get a $100 fine for vaping too close to the front door of a business. But this stuff is allowed with impunity

within an arm's length of our kids. To me, that is dereliction of duty. I think this city is failing the people who need them the most and just giving them access to a heroin injection site doesn't make you a better person, doesn't make you a more caring person. All it does is demonstrate that for you, it's ideology over anything and you gotta go.

Ned, welcome to the show. Yeah, hey, buddy. Listen, I'm calling from Hamilton. I'm a landlord and I see the problems firsthand here, but Hamilton had on the ridge here, on Hamilton Mountain, right on the edge, overlooking the city, they had huge, huge acres where there used to be psychiatric facilities,

housed between six and 8,000 people for decades and decades and decades. They closed it down many, many years ago, so it's empty now, and they built a hospital there across from Mohawk College. Still a huge line that's empty. There's no patients there for the psychiatric, apart from criminal patients, there's about a hundred patients there. But it's

still used to hold between six and eight thousand people. Now they're all within the city and this has been going on for decades. The bottom line is the social services, what you're talking about addiction and mental illness, it's at the bottom rung of the totem pole. The police, the firefighters, the teachers, all the other government employees, they're higher up in the chain. So this isn't of the totem pole. The police, the firefighters, the teachers, all the other government employees, they're higher up in the chain, so this isn't given much attention. It is when people see it on the street, but it's not in our backyard type of thing. So as long as it's over there. Yeah. Hamilton is surrounded by beautiful

communities, Ancaster, Flambrough, Bimbrook, Stony Creek, everything else. And as long as you send it to Hamilton, it's okay. okay. But they're bitching about their snow removal. They're bitching about their garbage pickup. They're bitching about everything. But this picks up, this covers everybody and everyone pays. The bottom line is nobody cares enough. There's not enough effort going towards this. Well, Ned, hopefully this story about the city

secretly opening a heroin injection site without any community impact assessment or communication with the stakeholders. Hopefully, that will be enough to get people off the couch to show this city that this is the type of thing that we won't stand for. Thank you all for your calls. There's no limit to how far criminals will go to cover their tracks. But investigators will go even further to uncover the truth. I'm Nancy Hicks, a senior crime reporter for Global News.

This season on Crime Beat, I'll take you from the crime scene to the courtroom and inside some of Canada's most high-profile cases, and some you've likely never heard of before. Search for and listen to Crime Beat on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.