The Ben Mulroney Show - How genuine is Mark Zuckerberg's break from wokeness?

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Guests and Topics on Today's Show -The Mark Zuckerberg and Meta Re-Brand with Guest: Tony Chapman, Host of the award winning podcast Chatter that Matters, Founder of Chatter AI -What is medical gaslighting? with Guest: Dr. Nadia Alam, Family Doctor and Past-President of The Ontario Medical Association -No, Trudeau did not make Canada richer with Guest: Adam Zivo, National Post columnist and Executive Director for the Centre For Responsible Drug Policy -Ontario mother pleads for return of child, allegedly taken to India by estranged husband with Guest: Andrew Feldstein, Founder of Feldstein Family Law Group -The Fall-out of those living in L.A with Guest: Steve Rohr, L.A. Resident -AI and robotic arms flex new tech muscles to boost lagging home construction in Canada with Guest: Ramtin Attar, CEO of Promise Robotics  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

And Metta, aka Facebook, one of the biggest companies on the planet. And recently we've noticed a rebrand of sorts afoot at Metta, where Mark Zuckerberg seems to be pivoting the company away from sort of the woke strategy of the past few years into a more well, into a completely different space with a completely different outlook. And he spent some time with Donald Trump. And he has spent time on Joe Rogan explaining the shift. Stephen A Smith, who's a straight talker as you can find in the United States was on with Chris Cuomo, and he is not buying Mark Zuckerberg's change.

I think it's absolutely appalling to watch him shift so dramatically the way that he has, but here's the thing, it's also very understandable because this is a guy that was all about the people, all about free speech, all about free expression and what have you, but then you went about the business of literally limiting conservative voices of vac skeptics along with other people.

And so you did that and some people accused you of affluent to the election in 2020. Why? Because the Zuckerberg initiative, you know, led by his wife donated about $420 million to causes that they believe helped the democratic cause. So if you're Trump, you're saying, I remember all of this. I remember how you came at me. I remember how you tried to backdoor me and you helped to facilitate

booting me out of office. Well, now I'm back in power. And not only am I back in power, I got my man Elon Musk with me, your competition over at X. Yeah, it's okay. Let's assume though, let's live in a world for a moment where this change of heart is genuine. And let's talk about it with Tony Chapman, host of the award winning podcast chatter that matters and founder of chatter AI Tony, welcome back to the show. And always a pleasure to be with you. So this is quite, it really is quite the about face. This this this change of heart is almost like saying everything we've done in the past on a great many files was wrong Without question, I mean, I think his move is very much trying to be in step with what Trump and Musk are saying That it should be free speech get back to the values of the United States. But I mean How far he swung the pendulum? Yeah to me is unbelievable

And not only I'm we're gonna also if we have time talk about what? He's doing with bots, but just alone on his fast fact-checking thing I mean he could for example you can call now people with LGBTQ and people that are mentally ill That's okay now. I mean, how's that possible? He says no more bias fact-checkers instead He's gonna do what essentially Elon Musk did to replace it with community notes Yeah, which we know doesn't work No more bias fact checkers. Instead, he's going to do what essentially Elon Musk did, replace it with community notes. Yeah, which we know doesn't work.

And then, so I question, like, are advertisers going to be happy putting their Procter & Gamble diaper ad up against a comment on Facebook, which is what programmatic media does. It just kind of push, it just showers, almost like an unspaded male cat showers your ads out there. What's, how is he going to deal with the fact that there's there's commentary on Facebook that is so off putting for what a brand's after.

And that's to me is going to be the interesting thing. How are brands going to accept that and how loud that even though it's good business to be on Facebook, knowing that their shareholders are going to say, we don't want to be attached to any business attached to that kind of commentary. Yeah. But can we I mean, when I listened to what he said on Joe Rogan, sort of justifying why he had this change of heart, especially as it related to the story that he said, where he said that the Biden officials would scream and curse when trying to get him to remove certain Facebook comments and content.

You know, he said, basically, these people from the Biden administration will call up our team and scream at them and curse at them. He said, it just got to the point where we were like, no, we're not gonna take down things that are true. That's ridiculous. And so, you know, can we believe that he went in with the best of intentions and then he saw that those best of intentions were co-opted

by one side of the political spectrum? I think he went in saying, I better get on Trump's side quick because the momentum in America has shifted and I want to be in business and I don't want to be throttled because again, the big problem for me with Facebook is it's not 19 and over. There's no filter that's that sort of justifies who comes on and who comes off Facebook. So, you know, in fact, it is free media and free press. But at the same time, I would argue the New York Times is something that's read by adults, where Facebook is something that grandkids and grandparents are on. I think it needs some, I think you need boundaries.

And the second thing is, I think that just allowing this momentum, I think the other thing that he's dealing with is the fact that Facebook is not growing the way it used to. The business is moving over to things like Instagram and TikTok. And so he's doing everything he can to get that silver ball pinball bouncing back in favor of Facebook over the other platforms, even though he owns Instagram. Inside there's very competitive in terms of who's winning and who's not in terms of eyeballs and clicks. You know, it's one thing, Mark, Tony went when, when a new CEO

comes in and says, All right, we're going to take this company in a different direction. It's a it's a really weird thing, where the CEO responsible for an entire culture and outlook comes out and says, Yeah, we're not doing that anymore. And listen, this is January 13. Right. So and outlook comes out and says, Yeah, we're not doing that anymore. And listen, this is January 13. Right. So he's come out and he said within the first even before Trump gets crowned, he's come

out and basically said everything you believe in versus the other administration believed in. I'm now shifting gears on for an organization to do that. It's almost like it's a private company. I would see a private company, a CEO, a hundred percent shareholders say, you can do whatever you want to your business. You're risking your capital. But when you've got institutional shareholders, some of the biggest institutional shareholders

behind you, it surprises me that he could make that kind of move, be that vocal about it, knowing the blowback he's going to get because it's not just his dollars at stake. There's a lot of pensions and a lot of individuals who bet on Facebook or better that you know, I keep trying to go back to his motivation, right? And I want part of me really does think that like whether you agree with him or not his motivations are Are of good faith meaning, you know a few years ago, he started getting into MMA. He started getting more into fitness.

He's a bigger kid, like he does not look like the same bookish nerd who launched Facebook so many years ago. He put Dana White on his board. You put these things into a blender, and what comes out is a guy with a different outlook. I mean, he was on Joe Rogan talking about the benefits of promoting sort of that classic sense of masculinity

and aggression. To me, there's a logical, I don't wanna say evolution because that presupposes sort of an enlightened change, but it's, it's, it's, it's a migration towards a logical conclusion based on the lifestyle that he's been leading. Without question. And you're making some very valid points. And even this masculinity, we know the woke pendulum had to come back. It was, it swung so far to the other side that, you know,

a lot of the major corporations saying I can't run a business based on these new pillars. So it's coming back. But for him to take it all the way back so quickly, again, I make this point for the listeners, if you own a company 100% and it's your capital at risk, you've put your house on the line, you can do whatever you want with that business. But when he's got institutional shareholders and for him to suddenly come back and say, now one of the things he'll say to his shareholders, by the way, I'm going to save billions of dollars because those fact checkers cost us a lot of money. We had human beings checking

facts where nowadays with this community thing, but if you want to, you think about what's happening with cyber threats and, and the whole digitization of the world, how easy it's going to be to gamify Facebook's algorithms by just simply realizing that there's nobody out there putting up boundaries, there's no dams anymore. Yeah but maybe, listen maybe he just you know what did Wayne Gretzky say is that you go where the puck's gonna be right and he he identified he created the need for Facebook, he identified Instagram before it became the behemoth it did. He noticed

the pendulum was swinging back. So maybe he's just positioning himself to where that pendulum is going to end up in terms of where people's perspectives are. Like if he doesn't change with the times, then all the users that he thinks are out there are just not going to are not going to adopt his platforms because they don't subscribe to his values. Brian, another brilliant insight in your part and why sometimes I think you should be a better commentator than host because it is absolutely on point that we're the world of media is now at what I call the hairpin turn in the racetrack. We want to see the car crash. We're not interested in mainstream news.

We want to see disaster. We're wired that way. Humans are wired for negative news. And so he's realizing that by putting more of that on Facebook, it's going to be a stickier site. So I could absolutely he's skating where the puck is. That's where the world's going. It's, you know, it's CNN versus Fox. I mean, that's even mainstream news has got to pick sides nowadays. But what I argue with Facebook is Facebook has manifested into this sort of what I call your, what used to be your phone book. You have all your contacts there. It'll never be another Facebook where you have 5,000 best friends or 15,000 best friends.

But the other thing is... No, Tony, we're going to have to leave it there, but I hope to talk to you again soon. All right. Every now and then there is a story that pops up on my feed that I say, okay, this is a very important story. But I don't have the domain expertise to be able to tell you why. I just feel it is. The good news is I have access to people who can explain it to all of us. And I'm joined now by Dr. Nadia Allam, family doctor and past president of the Ontario Medical Association. Doctor, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show.

Hi Ben, hope you're doing well. and past president of the Ontario Medical Association. Doctor, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Hi Ben, hope you're doing well. I am, I am. So I see this headline that says, Ottawa says non-physician health professionals can build the public system. And I read that nurse practitioners and other non-physician health professionals

can build the public health care system when providing primary care. This is according to sort of a new direction based on the interpretation of the Canada Health Act from the federal health minister. So I know that that is important, but I need you to tell us why it is. Okay, so first of all, the Canada Health Act is, is the basis of Medicare of Canadian Medicare, it is how we are able

to have a medical system where necessary services, so medically necessary services from physicians and hospitals, and then some services from allied health providers like physiotherapists are covered by the provincial health insurance plans. Right? And so this means that even if you don't have the money, it doesn't mean that you're not going to get health care. You are going to be able to get health care, regardless of your financial status. Interestingly, nurse practitioners were never included in the Canada Health Act. So what we started noticing over the last few years were these private nurse practitioner clinics. Now, this isn't the ones that the government sets up and funds, right? This is very separate from the nurse practitioners. You'll find working in family health teams,

that sort of thing. These are private nurse practitioners who set up shop, have set up a business specializing in healthcare. Their services were not covered by the Canada Health Act. And so they were not covered by the public health insurance program. So they would set prices for tests that I could do, for example, like a PAP test, right? That became kind of infamous because there was an Ottawa patient who went to

a nurse practitioner clinic, a private one, got her PAP test because that's part of cervical cancer screening programs across Ontario. Definitely must be done. And as you got charged $110 for essentially a two minute procedure. Wow. And the government wouldn't cover it because again, nurse practitioners do not fall under the Canada Health Act. So this is where this ruling from Ontario comes from

saying, you know what? We're not gonna have private nurse practitioner clinics. They are going to build a provincial health plan so that patients don't have to pay for cancer screening tests privately and be charged variable rates. Like if I do this test, I get paid anywhere between five and twenty four dollars depending on what kind of payment model I'm in with the government. To charge a hundred and $110 for this test, it's a big difference. It's really hard for patients to pay.

So based on your experience, especially as a past president of the Ontario Medical Association, this is a good thing? It is. It is, because then, again, it's this idea that if we want to have truly publicly paid health care for patients, then we should have publicly paid health care for patients. It makes no sense to have someone else provide a service that I provide, but mine's covered by the government and theirs is not. Right.

And there's a huge price difference, right? There's a big price difference between 110,120 and $5 and $20. But it could there not be a fear of abuse of this of this new procedure? I think it will do me like in the public system. They would be allowed to cover well, I would cover any of the primary care services that they provide, right or other sometimes nurse practitioners are specialized in certain,

in certain fields. I think it'll actually provide transparency because the government will be able to track, right? This produces data. This is how the government tracks what physicians do, whether you're a family doctor or a cardiologist or a radiologist. This is how the government tracks what hospitals do, right? What services they provide, where the money goes. This will, I think, shed some transparency on what nurse practitioners do. All right. Well, I only have a little bit of time left and there's two stories I want to get to. Let's get to the one. This is an expression I've never heard before, but I guess it's a real thing. Medical gaslighting. People are talking about it more and more and its effects on Canadians. people are talking about it more and more and its effects on Canadians. Absolutely. I 100% agree with the article that talked about the need for research into this idea of medical gaslighting. Medical gaslighting is when patients go to their doctors or their healthcare providers, right?

It's not just doctors, it's the healthcare system as a whole. And the symptoms they're describing, the issues that they're describing that they want to discuss and are concerned about, they're not believed, right? They're accused of, or they're made to feel whether they're accused in a malicious way, or if there are suggestions that they're making it up. The patient's making it up, the patient is somehow confused,

the patient doesn't really get it, Basically saying that it's all in their head. Okay, where does that stem? What is it? Where does that stem from? Is that just is that just like, where does that bad faith come from? If someone goes to a doctor, you would think that they're going there. They're taking time out of their day because they're concerned about their health. I mean, that's that that's an odd thing. It's an odd bad faith mistake to make.

I think part of it is communication, right? As a doctor, a lot of things come down to communication and communication, I mean, they say 75% of what you communicate occurs through body language. If I'm having a bad day, my tone may change towards the patient and have nothing to do with the patient. My body language may change towards the patient and have nothing to do with the patient. Right? I may look exhausted. I may put my head in my hands or I might lean my elbow on the desk and put my head in my hand. Not because I'm bored with the patient but because I'm just wiped out from

working overnight. Right? So things like that, we have to be cognizant of. Right. We have to take the extra time and effort to make sure that the patients don't take it personally. Right? That they realize we care about them. We see them. We hear them. The other part of it, I think, is that the medical system as a whole, and this is nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, healthcare administrators, hospital administrators.

I mean, we have a really hard time with what we don't know. So if we can't figure something out, we struggle with that because we want an answer and we wanna give an answer so that we can find a solution or a cure or a treatment. So when we can't find an answer, we start questioning the facts. And that feels to a patient like we're questioning them and their truthfulness.

Okay, I want to gaslighting comes from that. Well, we'll continue that conversation at a later date. But I got to get to this one because Mel Gibson said something that I'm pretty sure made your head explode. when he told Joe Rogan about his friends with cancer. I have three friends. All three of them at stage four cancer. All three of them don't have cancer right now at all. And they had some serious stuff going on. And what did they take? on. What did they take? They took some, what you've heard they've taken. Ivermectin, phenibendazole. Yeah, I'm hearing that a lot. They drank hydrochloride, something or other. There's studies on that now where people have proven that they've been drinking methylene blue and stuff like that. Yeah, methyylene blue, which was a fabric dye.

Yeah. Yeah, it was a textile dye. And then they find it has profound effects on your mitochondria. Yep. Yeah, this stuff works, man. All right, two actors talking about curing cancer. Doctor, you got about a minute to tell me what you think.

Oh my god. There's so much that's wrong with this. All right. So first of all, stage four cancer is when cancer, it's like the, the worst stage of cancer. It's spread throughout the body. It doesn't mean that you're going to necessarily die from the cancer. It means that the treatment has to change. It's not just local treatment. It's widespread treatment. Ivermectin is a medication that's used to treat parasites in humans and animals.

Primarily in animals, but sometimes in humans. Humans don't usually get parasites. It can have some profound consequences. It became famous during the pandemic because people thought it would help with COVID-19. There were lots of evidence to show no, it did not. But the bad thing about it is that it can also cause brain inflammation. It can cause tumors, it can cause seizures, it can cause comas in humans, if you take it the wrong way. So there's risks to that. So the moral is that was probably a great interview, but not great medical advice. No, no, they're researching all of this for its anti cancer properties. We got it. We're gonna have to leave it there,

doc. Very preliminary. Thank you so much. You take care. Thanks, man. You take care. Bye bye. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And every now and then you read an article that is so untethered from reality that you feel like Mugatu in in what's that movie with the male models? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. So untethered from reality, gaslighting to the highest order. Hours after Justin Trudeau had resigned, the Toronto Star had an article

that claimed that Trudeau's successors will be hard pressed to improve on his economic track record. And there's no arguing Canadians became wealthier while he was in power. And I just I didn't want to read it, but I read it. And it was so I don't I don't know. I don't know what world this person who wrote it was living in. But I'm so glad that Adam Zivow read it as well, because Adam Zivow of the National Post wrote, no, comma, Trudeau did not make Canada richer, and he's here to drill down and break down

where the disconnect is. Adam, welcome to the show. Good morning, thanks for having me here. I feel exactly the same way. This article is crazy. Yeah, so, okay, so I read it, but you took it one step further, so okay, so I read it. But but you you took it one step further and what chapter and verse demolishing it. So tell me

what are the most egregious fallacies, misinterpretations? I mean, what do you call them? Okay, so it's basically the Toronto Star used misleading economic data that didn't adjust for inflation or population growth, to essentially claim that our GDP grew by 41% during Trudeau's time in office between 2015 and now. And then they compare it to Stephen Harper, where that number, nominal total GDP only grew by 18%.

So they say that Trudeau grew the economy at twice the rate as its predecessor. But that's completely, completely misleading because it doesn't actually adjust. Oh, adjust a second. Oh, sorry, okay. So it doesn't adjust for inflation. And when you actually look at real GDP data, which is tethered to Canadian dollars in 2017,

what you see is that the GDP increase under Trudeau was actually only 21.4% versus 24.4% under Harper. So obviously, Harper was the better economic steward here. And then, of course, you know, there's different ways to grow an economy. One way is to bring in more people, because when you have more workers, that's more economic activity. But that doesn't mean that everyone is necessarily richer. And so, at the end, over the past few years, our total GDP has been growing because we have high immigration.

But when you subtract out that immigration, under TRUO, our per capita real GDP has only grown by basically, let me see, 0.8%. How, I mean, but this guy's smart. The guy who wrote this is a business writer. He's a business journalist. You could forgive a first year university student

from not accounting for what you've just described. How do you explain somebody with with domain expertise, making writing something like this and going on the record with it? I find it baffling. And I think that it suggests that these figures were intentionally misconstrued or misrepresented. But at the same time, we don't know what was going on inside this writer's head. So we can't be sure. If he did,

in fact, not simply understand the impact of inflation and the impact of population growth, even though this has been written about extensively over the past few years, I think that this would raise some concerns about the editorial standards of the Toronto Star. It's crazy where living standards have essentially only increased by 0.8% and now they're claiming that we're 41% richer. It's insane. And I just want to add another piece of data here. So under Harper, our real GDP per capita went up by 4.4%. So Toronto Star is claiming that under Trudeau, we saw twice as much growth. But when you look at the more realistic numbers compared to Harper, we only saw less than 20% of the growth

that we saw in the previous prime ministership. Yeah, and the Toronto Star would be the first to write an article condemning misinformation from the right, and this is the height of misinformation from the left. Exactly. And there's another stat that they also cited, which I think is also egregious. So they said that, you know, Canadians median that were soared by 66% between 2016 and 2023. And first of all, so I went to the relevant Statistics Canada data set, which only covers 1999, 2012, 2016, 2019, and 2023.

Don't ask me why. I don't know why they chose those dates or rather those years. First of all, their math is incorrect. So median net worth only grew by 44% between 2016 and 2023. And I don't think the Toronto Star has corrected this number. They didn't the last time I looked, which I think was a day or two ago. But more importantly, when you look at 2016 and 2019, growth was only 5.6%. So an average of 1.8% per year,

which is half the rate that we saw under Harper. But then between 2019 and 2023, our growth in net worth jumped to 36.4%, where like basically 9% a year. So what happened between 2019 and 2023? COVID-19. Yeah, during the pandemic, the net worth of American households,

all across Canada and United States surged because housing prices went up, we had massive government stimulus, and we had decreased consumer spending because people couldn't do stuff. So for a writer to argue that increased net worth over the pandemic, which was caused by soaring housing prices and temporary jumps in savings and debt field stimulus, to argue that that is a sign of admirable fiscal governorship on the part of Trudeau is misleading. And then

once again, this is something that's fairly basic that I think that any business writer should understand. Well, I want to thank you for highlighting it because it is I mean, it's not it's not when I read it, it wasn't a question of, you know, someone interpreting facts on the ground differently than somebody else might, it's a complete misread and almost a misuse of the facts to serve what looks like to me, uh, political purposes. And it's, they get it so wrong that I think it's fair to ask those questions. I would agree. And the thing, here's the thing. I have no problem with people having different political ideologies and

disagreeing on the meaning of some of our economic data. You know, there's all sorts of rooms for disagreements. But I think that when you misrepresent key economic data and gaslight the public on its own well-being, that's concerning. Not only is it dishonest, it is disrespectful to the Canadian families who are struggling all across this nation, who now feel as if they've been rendered invisible. And we have top liberal leaders now sharing this article, including the immigration minister. Yeah, somehow doesn't understand how immigration impacts GDP figures, which suggests that senior party members don't seem to have a

strong grasp of basic economics. Adam Zivow, national post columnist and executive director for the Center for Responsible Drug Policy, as always doing yeoman's work and we appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Welcome back to the show. In 1991, Sally Field and Alfred Molina starred in a gripping, brutal, and emotional drama called Not Without My Daughter, where Sally Field plays an American who's married to an Iranian American, played by Alfred Molina.

They have a child, and he wants to go spend some time as a family in Iran. Sally Field is apprehensive, but exceeds to her husband's wishes. Once they get to Iran, where a woman has far fewer rights than she does in North America, he says, we're staying here. And there's nothing you can do about it. And desperate to save her daughter from a life of subjugation in Iran, she works to bring her home. It's a harrowing tale of a mother's love for her child in the face of a power imbalance and the fear of losing her child forever. A version of that story is playing out in real time here in Canada, where, well, Sean O'Shea from Global News reports that Viles Boas, there's an Ontario mother who is desperate for her child to return to Canada

after her husband allegedly took the child to India by her estranged husband. And well, let's listen to Sean O'Shea from Global News. I don't leave my phone for a second. I go to the bathroom with my phone. I sleep with my phone. A mother's anguish desperate for information. Desperate to see her son again. Camila Villas-Boas says she hasn't seen three year old Valentino since last summer. She has only

memories. This is the last thing that he gives to me. Home, where is, where mom is. Valentino's father, 48-year-old Kapil Sunak, took the boy to India during a child custody dispute, police confirm. Sunak is a Canadian citizen born here, but he has family ties to India. In spite of the marital dispute,

Viles Boas had previously authorized Sunak to take Valentino on vacations. He went to the US, he went to Cuba, he went to Mexico. But when Sunak said he wanted to take the boy to India, she said no. I didn't authorize the trip. I was like, I'm not comfortable. At the time, last year, Sunak had temporary custody of Valentino. He and his lawyer went to court and a judge in New Market signed off on the trip.

The respondent may travel with the child against her wishes. The judge say, um, yes, I am authorized the trip between June, July and August. She says she hasn't seen her son since. Yeah. In a lot of ways, this is worse than not without my daughter because this poor woman hasn't seen her son in six months and has no idea where he is in the world. To drill down into this, we're joined now by Andrew Feldstein, founder of Feldstein Family Law Group.

Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. So at this point, so a judge said the father could travel with the son even though the mom was against it. And now, Ed, I mean, this is blown up in the judges face. Is there any sort of accountability that this judge will be facing? No, there'll be no accountability. I mean, the judge has to deal with what's

happened, but they can only deal with the evidence they have in the courtroom and the case law that's been developed in the area of whether someone should be able to take a child. And from what I just heard, the mother said he's taken the child and other vacations and returned with the child. But at this point, there's been no communication is based on what you know of this case. Have any laws been broken? Well, if there's a parenting schedule, or a court order that provided him that the child was supposed to be with the mother

on a certain date that he would be in contempt of a court order that provided him that the child was supposed to be with the mother on a certain date that he would be in contempt of a court order. But there's a practical reality. There is an international treaty on the return of abducted children, but India is not a signatory to it. So you can't rely on that treaty. And the only thing that can really be done is retaining a lawyer in India to try and get a court order there. But that's assuming that's assuming they're still in India.

That's right. You have to try and figure out where the child is. The only other option you would have is does the father have assets here that could be frozen on some sort of grounds, whether it be for division of property, security for assets. There are things that you can try, but it only works if there's enough money in the jurisdiction that's going to make this person want to come back and deal with you. Andrew, have you seen cases like this before? Yes. And what do you tell the, the, the parent who is without the child? Well, you have to sit down and assess where they're at. So sometimes you know exactly

where the child is. So then you do what I said, which is you have to hire a local lawyer, where the child is and try to get the child returned there. And the other way is trying to assess whether there's assets here that you can get your hands on to freeze. Because if somebody has a house here, bank account here, and if they haven't moved that money, and their significant assets here, that may move the needle for the person to want to deal with you. And so even though you said there's an international treaty that helps with situations like this, but that India is not a signatory, are there other levers, international levers

that can be pulled that could get law enforcement in India to help solve this problem? No, you're not you're not really going to get any enforcement in India to help solve this problem? No, you're not you're not really going to get any help in India. The only other question I have is where is he a citizen of because if he's a citizen only of Canada because he was born here, and if there was even spuzzle support owing to the mother, then the Family Responsibility Office can also suspend his Canadian passport. And that may be something that would have meaning to the father. So it's trying to find different ways to, in essence, force the father to deal with

you and force the father to come back. The problem is after he's done that, he knows a court here is not going to be very sympathetic to him going forward. If he's got a Canadian passport, is there anything that can be done to, I don't know, turn off his passport so he can't travel anymore, forcing him to go into a Canadian embassy to get a new one? And once he's there, dealing with the authorities? Well, I don't know what it's going to do to get him in the embassy, but it's trying to get his passport suspended. And then what you've done is you've locked him into India. But the problem then

is, is he a dual citizen with India? I heard that he has family in India. Is it easy for him to get a citizenship in India? It really depends on what his appetite is to come back here or not come back here. Because sometimes people leave and say they're never going to come back and then they have a health issue that brings them back or they have a family member with a health issue. So that's why when someone walks in in that situation, I have to try and analyze what's going to motivate

them to want to come back here at some point. And most of the time you're saying it's financial, financial or family, financial and family. If I have three kids from a prior marriage that I have a good relationship with or three kids I left behind, there's a better chance I'm going to want to come back. Well, I want to thank you, Andrew Feldstein, founder of

Feldstein Family Law Group for laying this out for us just a regardless of all the circumstances that my heart goes out to this woman that the sadness in her voice, the fact that she doesn't know where he is the fact she hasn't heard his voice in six months. If you're a if you're a parent that that should resonate with you. Well, I think it does to any parent and when someone is in my office dealing with that you can feel their pain we heard it over the radio it's it's horrible when you see the person's face

and what they're experiencing. Well, thank you very much, sir. Have a great day. You too. This is just a this is this is the most heartbreaking story I can possibly imagine I mean when I when I'm without my kids for a day, even when I know where they are it hurts my heart I called my daughter this morning because I didn't say good night to her last night I and I talked to her this morning as soon as she woke up just so I could hear her voice

This poor woman hasn't seen hair nor hide of her son. She hasn't spoken to him She hasn't heard his voice in six months when he left. He was three the amount of change that a child goes through over the course of their these are the most formative times and wondering what the father what what lies the father is feeding to the the child about their mother. Because this is by the way, I don't believe that there's a good faith explanations to why he just up and left and didn't get in touch with the mom.

So he's definitely up to something bad. I just my heart goes out to her. Everyone's hearts are going out to the citizens of Los Angeles who are enduring some of the worst wildfires, I think I've ever seen anywhere on the globe and sometimes you can get lost in the images that you see on the news and forget about the human toll and the human element of it all. You see houses burning, you see wildfires ravaging through communities,

and you see fire bombers and firemen, and you don't think about the people, and you don't put yourself in their shoes. You don't ask yourself what would I what would my life be like if I lost everything. So let's put ourselves in the shoes of a resident by welcoming an LA resident to the show Steve roar Steve thank you so much for joining us on the Ben Mulroney show. Hey Ben how are you doing man? Well you, I think that that's a better question to ask you. How are you? Yeah, it's pretty surreal here. It's you've been here many times, Ben. Yes, I have. I know you've been out here for the Oscars, you know, just, you know, lively, beautiful, creative place,

a lot of energy, very diverse. We're a bit like the zombie town right now. I have to be honest with you. It's, we're bracing for something that's coming. We're mourning for what we've lost. And everybody's impacted. People have lost everything. Then they've lost their home, they've lost their childhood memories. This is a real, real thing. Now I've got to ask Steve,

how close are you to any of the fires? Well, I wasn't exactly close to fires at the beginning. And then I was on the phone with my mom who was very concerned about me and thank you, mom. And I said, the only way this is going to get to me is if the Pacific Palisades fire you know on the west jumps to 405 or somehow it's gonna get into Hollywood Hills and man it got in the Hollywood Hills I don't know if you've ever hiked Runyon Canyon that's a pretty iconic spot you know a lot of people go there and you know I got a text saying Runyon

Canyon on fire and I text my buddy who lives over there and he's texting me at the exactly same time. And he said, dude, I'm getting my family out right now. And that was, that's pretty scary. And I was in the warning zone. So there's a warning zone and then there's a mandatory evacuation zone. And I didn't even know what they were.

I didn't know what yellow meant. And yellow meant is, you know, warning, pack your stuff, get ready to go. And while I'm getting this alert, my buddy is texting me. He's driving down from the San Francisco Bay Area and say, hey, can I crash with you? I thought, what is going on? Well, he couldn't find a hotel room. And all the hotel rooms were filling up. And he's showing up at my door,

I'm supposed to be evacuating. Turns out it was the best thing for my buddy, Matt, to come down here because he had lost everything in the 2017 Sonoma fires. He and his wife lost everything. So he was, turned out to be the best guy to show up at my door. I've got to ask, are people at this point blaming anyone for what looks like from the outside,

a breakdown of public services? Or are you still in emergency mode just trying to survive? Both. Yeah. You know, it's, this is the time when people start pointing fingers, but I think it's too early to do that at the moment. Yeah, you look back and say, well, what could have happened differently? The fact is, this is a natural disaster. The Santa Ana winds were 100 miles an hour, and all the burning embers just jumped from home to home,

place to place. We had a couple of years of really great rain and then two years of complete drought. So I was just waiting to blow up. You know, again, we're looking backwards. We're looking current. We're looking forward. I think there are a lot of questions. I think, I think there are a lot of questions for people and I have some too. What could we have done if anything to prevent this? But more importantly, what are we gonna do to rebuild?

But are people looking towards rebuilding yet? Because as I understand it, while the winds have subsided, not all the fires are contained yet and there are stories that the winds will pick up again tomorrow. That's right. So we're just supposed to pick up today through possibly Thursday, fires are still burning. You know, the air is still smoky. And people are, you know, who have asthma or the rest, you know, they're, they're suffering too. I, I think it's too soon to really even start about rebuilding because we're still

bracing. We're bracing for what's next. That's what we feel like. We feel like we're in a holding balance. Like what is coming next? Yeah. And I remember in the early days of the fires, the question was, why aren't you just taking water out of the ocean? They said, well, if you salt water, then nothing can regrow. Now we see Canadian water bombers have shown up to aid in the, in the effort and they are going right into the ocean, which tells me we were past the point, past the point of, of, of hoping to regrow. We just don't want everything to burn. That's right, man. Just get it out. Get it out. And thank God for the Canadian water bombers. They're extraordinary. Thank God for the Canadian firefighters who are coming in to help. You know,

this is, it's truly a godsend because we were so, you know, we didn't have enough people. We just do not have enough people to fight these fires and, you know, really blessed these firefighters and these first responders. I'm telling you, they saved my home. Yeah. They saved lives, they saved animals. They're out there 24 seven, they're out there now,

putting their lives on the line for us. And we are so grateful. And that is one thing I wanna be really clear about. I didn't have to fight a fire. I just had to get ready to go. And they're incredible, absolute heroes out here. Well, you know what? What a lot of people don't know about LA is it's really, it's a congregation of neighborhoods, right?

It doesn't feel like one unified city necessarily. So I wonder whether are there certain parts of LA where it has been life as as usual business as usual that haven't been affected at all? Or is everybody feeling this? You know, I can only speak for myself, but it does feel like everybody is impacted in one way or another. You know, everybody knows somebody who's lost something. Everybody knows somebody who had to evacuate.

Everybody knows somebody who was under warning. And everybody is in this together. Like you said, LA is a patchwork of neighborhoods. We're all connected. I think the other thing to be aware of, we see a lot of celebrities, they've lost their really, their multimillion dollar homes are just horrible. But 150,000 people are still under evacuation orders. You know, there are a lot of celebrities in LA, as you

know, they're not 150,000 celebrities. No, we're talking about real people, like working people who have, you know, their lives are absolutely torn up right now. Well, Steve Rohr, I wanna thank you for taking time out of your day to share your experience with us. We hope that you get through this safely. We hope that everyone you love and everyone you know gets through this safely and our hearts are with you and with everyone in the Los Angeles area.

Thank you so much. Thanks so much, man. And as we hear of these stories of devastation, much. And you know, as we hear of these stories of devastation, it's the human thing is to reach out for those small pockets of joy. And I think a lot of us on social media over the weekend, felt our hearts leap just a little bit. When fire victim Casey Colvin, whose house burned down in the Palisades fire, found and was reunited with his dog Oreo, who spent five nights Casey Colvin whose house burned down in the Palisades fire found

and was reunited with his dog Oreo who spent five nights surviving amidst the rubble. It's Tika Tika. It's Tika Tika. Hi, boo boo. How's the fire? Oh, honey. Oh, honey. Oh my God, you're alive. You're alive. Oh, honey. Oh, honey. Oh, my God, you're alive. You're alive. Oh, honey. Oh, thank you, Jesus. Oh, thank you, God. Yeah, yeah. I mean, first time I heard it, I was sort of laughing at the guy's voice. And then I put myself in his shoes and thought, if I lost absolutely everything and then saw my dog whom I assumed had died, and there's no way that that dog doesn't bring him the joy

that my dog brings me. There's no way that that dog is not the ray of sunshine in his life that my dog is in mine. I would have behaved exactly like that man, exactly like that man. And I'm so happy for Casey Colvin. He's going to have a lot to rebuild, but he's got the love of that puppy back in his life. I'm so, I'm getting chills just thinking about it.

We got to take the joy where we can find it because it is a sad story indeed. You know, there are a few things that we hear constantly about AI that it is going to get involved in every single industry, every single sector, it's only a matter of time. And when that happens, you can expect certain almost universal truths that they will AI will be used to speed up workflow and drive down cost. Now, there's also some negatives as well. but let's focus on those two. And typically we hear about those AI being involved in information technology, the sciences, medical care, medical technology, and on and on. But it's really interesting when I hear AI flexing its strength in the construction industry.

And we are joined now by Ramten Attar, the CEO of a company called Promise Robotics that is using robotics and AI to speed up home construction. Ramten, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. So a lot of people are gonna wonder how the heck can you use AI

in such a labor intensive industry as such as home home building? When we think about robotics, I mean, the first image typically comes to people's head is automotive plants, right? Everybody has seen, you know, the robots working really hard, you know, doing these tasks and, you know, in an advanced automotive automotive plant a car chassis is pushed out in less than a minute. An army of robots are deployed while these robots are becoming more and more of a commodity anybody can go buy these robots. So what we're doing at Promise Robotic, we're using the same robots but what we do instead we wrap around the construction tool belts around them and we give

them a different brain to allow them to do construction tasks that were traditionally really were the domain of human. They were very complicated. They required agility, dexterity, a lot of skill, the knowledge to be able to do. So in a way, you know, we begin to now deploy robotics outside of the manufacturing to really help with a labor shortage and sort of a lack of productivity that for several decades, construction industry. So I've seen the I've seen the visuals in the in an article in a piece that popped up online. So yeah, it's like a factory line where instead of building a car, you're building off of the

walls that will eventually become a home. Absolutely. And so yeah. So but where where where does the AI component come in? Because, you know, how is how is AI being used when I like, like, I just assumed that that these these robots are just doing predictable tasks. Exactly. So that's, you know, that's exactly the difference between automotive manufacturing and building a home. because in automotive manufacturing, you essentially do predictable tasks. So the robots operate in a very sort of a small set of tasks

because you're building the same chassis over and over. But even if you're building a home, you would never build the same thing twice. And I think for me, I'll provide you a little bit more sort of what AI really means because it really goes into a lot of different parts of this. If you think of the last few hundred years, the way we build our homes,

we produce a blueprint of that home, and we rely on a skilled knowledge of a lot of people, your plumber, electrician, the framer, and all those to interpret that data, that blueprint with a set of specifications and put the homes together. And there's a lot of expertise that goes into this. Now, if you have a machine that can actually

is trained to do a lot of those tasks, now you have a path to get that machine to interpret the same blueprint and perform those tasks. And that's really the job of AI because you're essentially creating cognitive qualities for a machine that can interpret the blueprint that we often just pass to human and say, okay, I know how to put this wall together. Gotcha. Now we take a lot for granted. Now, if I give you a piece of lumber and you have some

knowledge, you know more or less how to adjust, put those lumbars together, where to put the nail, how to make the wall a square. But you cannot possibly pre program the robot to build, you know, all kinds of homes and walls and floors. This is just impossible. And that's really where AI shine in because you begin to really generalize that form of knowledge that has been around for, you know, obviously a good hundred years. Yeah. And teach the system to be able to perform the same thing. So as I said, off the top of this segment, we were gonna focus on AI helping to drive down costs and to speed up production. So talk to me about those benefits

by using AI and robotics in the case of home building. How much faster can you build a home and how much cheaper can you get it done? Yeah, I mean, sort of if you look at a simple home, like a two-story typical home that we build in Canada, with a basement. We basically arrive at the site at around 7, 8 a.m. It's just a foundation.

By 1 p.m. that house is fully capped on the second floor with all the stairs fully framed, windows and doors locked up. And you walk away. That's six hours. In six hours. And how long would that have typically taken? About four weeks. So four weeks, six hours from four weeks. And that's, I mean, that's incredible. So,

but but but there is a human element, right? Like the robots build it indoors, and then a team comes and assembles it on site. Yeah, I mean, sort of a human element is present all the way throughout, you know, sort of what's essentially happening here is that, you know, the robots essentially doing the heavy labor, right, the part that is labor, labor intensive. So human is not picking up 20 foot piece of lumber anymore. You're not putting a strain on your back, you're not sort of lifting all

these things is really the robots jobs do that. But instead, it shifts the job. Now the human is focusing on the higher level of tasks, like how the information really flowing to the production line and how we install the building at the site. The installation and direction of the site is still happens by humans, but everything is fit like a Lego.

So the job is easier. You're not putting yourself at the risk to walk over the roof. Or you're swinging a hammer in fundamentally changes the nature of the job. But ultimately, you know, because you're also producing more homes, you also need more people not to participate, but in a very different way. I'm speaking with Ramten Attar, the CEO of Promise Robotics. And

Ramten, if there's one thing I know about this country from being involved in a number of startups, we from a perspective of investment, we're quite risk averse. We don't like being the tip of the sword. We don't like being the country that invests in a moonshot. Where are you in sort of your growth strategy? How are you well funded? Are you well capitalized? What do you need to take the step to scale this thing? Really good question. I mean, we have been lucky in the sense that when we started the company, four years ago, we had a slide deck. But what we had was two decades of being one of the largest manufacturers, home manufacturers in Canada. So that gave us a leg up where we had some of the most credible investors to come on board and say, okay, we're going to sort of invest in this company.

And, you know, we're at this stage now where we're growing. So I think we have been able to do a really good job bringing new investors into the fold. But it's quite interesting, right? I think we are at that stage now where, you know, we're thinking not Canada, but also beyond Canada, you know, when we think about housing shortage, for example, this is a common global problem. And we're positioning ourselves, hey, this is not just to solve our own domestic problem.

This is a global solution that we have been developing with that sort of massive opportunity. And I think my belief is if you've got the right vision, I think money is typically is not an issue. If you've got a persistent problem with the founder that you're approaching in a very foundational way, I think you find the right investor is not easy. You know, like when we did the last round of investments a couple of years ago, I met with 60 investors. But when you meet the right investor, it's like the first day you immediately know, right? The question I got from the

investor who did the last round, it wasn't, hey, what's your valuation? What are you looking for? He asked, can we eventually use this to build housing in the moon? And I knew immediately, this is a long term investment. They are thinking big. And lastly, and we only have a little bit of time left, but does your technology fly in the face of sort of the regulatory red tape that we hear that builders are always dealing with

in a city say like Toronto or Vancouver? I mean, yeah, I mean, regulatory, I mean, we basically not changing the nature of, you know, the type of home. We just integrate right directly into how home builders are building their homes today. So whatever they are facing, essentially we inherit. But there are additional regulatory stuff,

like, you know, an example to give you, like we have right now designed, you know, the most agile factory that can be set up under a tent in a master community in a week. Oh, good for you. To be able to pump up. But when we go to municipality, municipality says, well, this is a zoning for residential.

You cannot have a live manufacturing. Well, yeah, but we are actually building the homes. Yeah. Sometimes you get to these bottlenecks, but I think at the end of the day, when you show possibility, we hope that there would be sort of a more reception on the regulatory side as well. Rumpton, we hope that there would be sort of a more reception on the regulatory as well.

Rumpton, we're going to leave it there, but I want to congratulate you on this moonshot. Very impressed. Thank you so much. She has partial retrograde amnesia. She can't remember the last eight years. Tuesdays. What are the odds I get my memories back? It's the brain.

Nobody knows. A new series coming to global and streaming on Stack TV. I don't know who I am now. Inspired by the unforgettable true story. But I will be a doctor again. Emmy nominee Molly Parker. I will do everything I can to get my life back. DOC, new series Tuesdays on global.

Stream on Stack TV.