The Ben Mulroney Show - How technology will solve the problem of lost people

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

Guests and Topics: -How technology will solve the problem of lost people Guest: Francis Syms, Associate Dean in the Faculty of Applied Sciences & Technology at Humber Polytechnic -Halifax restaurant that doesn’t accept tips offers fair wages, profit sharing with employees with Guest: Vincent Morley, Co-Owner of The Bonfire, a restaurant in Halifax 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

This is indeed the Ben Moriss show, the Thursday edition. We are coming up on what I think is, what I know is the most important federal election that I can remember probably since 1984. And a lot of you are responding to that, which means the conversations that we have on this show have become all the more important. The more issues that we can raise, the more conversations that we can raise, the more conversations that we can have, the more questions that we can ask and answer. I think the better off we all are,

and I thank all of you for joining us and building the Ben Mulroney Show community together. Jasmine Lane is a formidable force in new media. She's a podcaster who's been, I believe, doing some really great work. I hope to have her on this show at some point. And she scored a sit down interview for her podcast with Pierre and Anna Poliev. And she asked him a question that when I heard the question, I was like, my goodness, what an interesting new question that could offer some real insights into how Pierre Poliev, the man who wants to be our next prime minister, thinks.

She asked him what he would do if he was starting a new political party from scratch. If I were starting a political party from scratch, I would call it the Mind Your Own Damn Business Party. My goal is to basically let people make their own decisions, whether it's about their love lives or about their wallets or their speech or what food they eat or car they drive I don't want to be involved in any of those things. I'm not in this to run your life I want to run a government. Government that protects the borders, provides services people can't provide for themselves, and a military that keeps us safe and strong, an economy that grows so people have jobs. That's my job, and I'm not interested

in running people's lives. That's ironically, it's the party that does want to run people's lives is the Liberal Party. They want like a gigantic octopus party, a government that just has hands everywhere running in your wallet, in your household, in the raising of your kids, in your internet feed. And that to me is quite telling. And that is fundamentally one of the reasons that I have said many times and will continue to say that the conservatives have earned my vote. Because they want to get out of the way and allow me to live the fullest expression

of the life that I wanna live. And they want that for each and every one of us. So when I hear Mark Carney and the liberals say where the government is gonna get back into the business of building homes. Well, we have an entire industry here devoted to that. The home builders of Canada, they have made careers out of it

that have been made harder over the past few years. So instead of competing with them and setting up a bureaucracy that is simply going to eat away at tax dollars that we don't have, how about you create the environment so that they can build homes? Simple as that.

I remember months ago, one of the final nails in the coffin, so related to Justin Trudeau, when he came out and proudly announced that he was creating a $1 billion fund to feed school children across the country, to give them breakfast every day. That angered me so fundamentally.

I got in front of this microphone and I said, with all due respect, Mr. Prime Minister, how about you give me my money back that you have taken from me so I can feed my own damn kids? Now, I was making a point, I can feed my kids. It's harder today. But I was speaking on behalf of people who are being told that, who have to make choices about whether they heat their home or feed their kids. How about you stop taking the pound of flesh that you are not due for programs that we do not need so I can feed my own kids.

And so it's that worldview of getting out of the way and creating the environment that will spur investment, private investment in the private sector that will help everyone. That's why they have my vote. I'm not carrying anybody's water that will spur investment, private investment in the private sector that will help everyone. That's why they have my vote. I'm not carrying anybody's water and nobody pays me to say these things with the exception of my employer and they don't tell me what to say. But the Pierre Poliev's world vision and his vision for a freer Canada, free of a government that feels that we

need them in every aspect of our lives. I don't want to live in a nanny state. I don't want to live in a nanny state. Anyway, so that I found to be very insightful. Here's some more insight, this time from a party that has drifted so close to political irrelevance that I'm questioning whether they can survive for much longer after this election. Jagmeet Singh, here's what he had to say about for much longer after this election. Jagmeet Singh, here's what he had to say about why you need to vote NDP to prevent a liberal majority. You want Canadians across this country, here in Edmonton, across this province, wherever you live,

if you do not want Mark Carney and the liberals to have all the power, vote for New Democrat. You know, Mark Carney is asking for a majority. The liberals are asking for a majority. The liberals are asking for a majority because they don't want to have to listen to folks who are going to fight back and say, wait a second, don't let corporate landlords rip off people. They don't want us to be there and say, hey, wait a second, corporate grocery stores are ripping off consumers, let's stop that. They don't want us there to fight back against his cuts. He wants to

have unfettered power to be able to cut health care, to cut the services you need. He's asking for a majority. Don't give him a majority. You have the power to stop that. Dude, you had the power to stop this. This is on you. You could have pulled the plug on that minority government at any point. You could have pulled the plug on the Trudeau liberals when they were at 25%. You know what would have happened? We would have gone into an election with Trudeau as the leader, not with Mark Carney and Donald Trump on the horizon.

There was no Donald Trump on the horizon six months earlier. You caused this. You caused this. This is on you, man. Look yourself in the mirror. You are the reason that Mark Carney is knocking on the door of a majority. And not only that, he's knocking on the door of majority because he's taken all your votes away. And I don't

know. And just just a few weeks ago, you were saying you got a vote. You got to vote NDP to keep the Tories away. You were more than happy when the Tories were sinking in the polls. And listen, this is the bed that you made, sir. It's this is all on you and you're, and you've watched your support go from a height of 25% of the vote under Jack Layton to what is it? 9% 8% now, if the polls are to be believed. And you saw how hard it was for the NDP to prosecute this election on the shoestring budget that they had to start this.

How much money are these guys going to be able to raise if they're not even recognized as an official party in the House of Commons? I do not know that the NDP have the infrastructure and the donors to be able to last as a party for four years if Mark Carney forms a government. I mean, they might just get completely subsumed into the liberal party. I have no idea what's gonna happen, but they're gonna have to ask themselves some very serious questions after this election, regardless of who forms government,

because one thing is sure as, sure as shh, it ain't gonna be the NDP. I wanna play a little bit of Elizabeth Warren. I don't like calling her Pocahontas, It ain't going to be the NDP. I want to play a little bit of Elizabeth Warren. I don't like calling her Pocahontas, but some people say Elizabeth Warren, and then you say Pocahontas, and they know who you're talking about. That's not my words,

but Elizabeth Warren was one of the most staunch supporters of Joe Biden and his cognitive supremacy up until the point that he left the ticket. She was beating that drum. He is fine. He is strong. He is on point.

He's the man we need. He's the man who will meet the moment. Well, she found herself in a podcast situation where her words came back to Bidder. Do you regret saying that President Biden had a mental acuity? He had a sharpness to him. You said that up until July of last year. I said what I believe to be true. You think he was as sharp as you?

I said I had not seen decline. And I hadn't at that point. You did not see any decline from 2024 Joe Biden to 2021 Joe Biden? Not when I said that. You know, the thing is, he, look, he was sharp. He was on his feet. I saw him live event. I had meetings with him a couple of times. Senator, on his feet is not praise. He can speak in sentences is not praise. Fair enough. Yeah, I mean, and she was a, I don't wanna put it all on Elizabeth Warren. She was a cog in a machine.

There was an entire cabal of people protecting him and making sure that his days were short and they knew when he was at his sharpest and they only put And they knew when he was at his sharpest. And they only put him out there when he was at his sharpest. And the rest of the time, they kept him behind closed doors. But she was certainly one of the most public facing people. And it happened for way too long. I don't think we'll ever get the truth about who knew what and when, but it certainly did not help with the trust in media or the trust in institutions or the trust in government or bureaucracies. The cover-up of Joe Biden's cognitive decline was insidious and toxic and

corrosive. And it's going to take a long, long time for Americans and by extension, a lot of people in the Western world to trust in those that we should be trusting in. of people in the Western world to trust in those that we should be trusting in. I've just been to Specsavers and upgraded my lenses to extra thin and light with 50% off. Now, what else can I upgrade? My cat? Wow, my scooter? Oh, yeah, get 50% off lens upgrades in the Specsavers Spring Sale. Hey, I can upgrade my kids! You chill, Mom. I'll load the dishwasher.

Awesome! Exclusions apply. See Specsavers.ca for details. Offer ends soon. Hi, I'm Donna Friesen from Global National. Life moves fast these days and we want to make it even easier for you to get the news you need. That's why you can now get Global National every day as a podcast.

The biggest stories of the day with analysis from award-winning global news journalists. New episodes drop every day so take this as your personal invitation to join us on the Global National podcast. You can find it on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney Show and we've got a lot of online stories to discuss. We're living in an online virtual world and we've got to arm ourselves with the information because the world keeps getting increasingly complex and we in our simple ways think that the rules of the everyday world apply to the online world. That's not necessarily the case. And so we're joined now by Francis Sims, Associate Dean in the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technology at Humber Polytechnic.

Francis, welcome to the show. Hi, Ben. Happy to be here with you. So it's very concerning when I read that the cyber scam industry is spreading globally according to the UN. Give me a sense of what this industry looks like, who they're targeting, what the scams are. So no longer are the scams being done,

as Donald Trump would call it, by some guys sitting in his basement watching an attack. These are now large-scale data centers. And often what's happening is that people are being tricked into working in those data centers. The UN said that it's like a cancer. People are being human trafficked and forced to make these calls that many of us have received day in and day out that's associated with fraud. Right? It might start with like a text to your phone. Somebody said they accidentally texted you and then they tried to hook you in and then

get you to buy crypto. Or it might be the grandparent scam where somebody's calling and pretending to be the grandson in jail and needs money transferred. What we're hearing is that this thing is now a huge business. It's making billions and billions of dollars a year globally. It used to be that these organizations were operating mostly out of Southeast Asia, but now we've heard that they've expanded to warehouses

in Latin America, in Europe. It's like the drug industry now, it's all over the place. And what's interesting is that the people, we used to think of the people being scanned as victims and they absolutely are, but now the people calling you actually might be a victim as well. That's scary. Forced into this labor, which is really sad. Yeah. Oh, that's awful. That's awful. Well, let's move on to another story. There's a story on CTV news that suggests that countries are shoring

up their digital defenses as cyber warfare becomes increasingly complex and increasingly regular occurrence. Yeah, like what happened, I would say around COVID, when everybody started to work from home, we put everything on the internet, right. And so what that meant is if you were working at like a water treatment facility, right, that switch, which would maybe change the chlorination level, now you could do from home, which is great when you needed to do it. What that also meant is that anybody that could hack into that system can do that from

home. What happened in Texas recently was that water started spilling all over the place. There was a case in Florida where somebody started to change the chemical level in the plant and almost killed lots of people. And what's crazy is that in our need to make everything accessible from home, we inadvertently put all this stuff that we never thought would be on the internet available for hackers. And places like Russia, China, or those threat organizations, they don't need to send an army in to turn the water off now. They just need to basically enter a line on a piece of code and that can happen.

That's what countries around the world are starting to get worried about. We saw it happen in Ukraine with the war, those kinds of attacks launching. I think increasingly we're worried that that's going to happen more frequently in Canada. We call that sort of our critical infrastructure. Everything is on the internet and how do we protect it? Is that does that even make sense? Francis Sims, I'm going to throw a curveball at you and I really hope you don't mind if you can't answer this.

No problem. We're going to move on. But we were having a conversation yesterday on the Ben Mulroney show about a promise that Pierre Poliev has made in this campaign that before he raises taxes moving forward, a conservative government will put any tax increase on a referendum question to Canadians. And I'm still forming my own opinion about this, but I thought what an insane amount of work would be going into and cost would be going into mounting a national referendum campaign anytime when you want to raise taxes. Somebody called into the show and said,

well, we could do the whole thing online. Now I have to assume that there are certain countries in this, in the world that are well ahead of the curve when it comes to sort of moving voting to the digital space. Is that something that based on whatever knowledge you have, is that something that we could do? Could we see referendums in this country become more commonplace if we adopt best practices from other countries and use software and use apps and use sort of mobile technology?

Yeah, I think 100%. But it all comes down to, you know, in my expertise is trust, right? And you trust the platform. We see, you know, you know, we see our friends south of the border, you know, you know, saying that they can't trust elections, especially when it's mail-in ballots, right? We're going to have the same kind of thing with the referendum. If we can build that trust, I think it's a fantastic idea. And there are platforms that do that. We put our health care data online. Maybe we don't feel comfortable. But when you walk into a hospital, you know, in Toronto, you might be using MyChart or anywhere else in the country. All that data is accessible online to all the doctors and nurses that need it. So it's there. And so it's a secure system and we have policies around it. So I think for sure we can we can put that online. It's just, you know, it's just building that that public confidence. Yeah, that that it's safe and you can trust the result. That's what it really all comes down to, I think.

trust the result. That's what it really all comes down to, I think. We've got, you know, this next story is an example of technology being used as a shield as opposed to a weapon. You know, we hear about drone technology and how it's used in warfare and how terrible it can be and how destructive it can be. Well, now we're hearing that AI and thermal drones could help finding people lost in British Columbia's mountains or following an avalanche. We know that every second counts following an avalanche and sometimes people only have minutes before they are going to expire. And this technology that exists today

could help identify and find these people and save their lives. It's unbelievable. And I think this is a perfect example of what AI can do. In January, when I was on the show, we talked about Transport Canada changed the rule. So now drones can, you can operate them with non-visual line of sight, which means you can operate them when you, where you can't see them. This, in this situation, a rescue drone, we had, with software developed in Squamish,

BC. So Canadian innovation, great example, found a hiker within 30 seconds of the battery life of the drone. Wow. Right? And it's just phenomenal. Every time North Shore Rescue sends, I think they say they get like 100 calls a year or something, it costs them upwards of $30,000 to send a helicopter up to do that.

Now a drone can cover the amount of distance that takes a helicopter two hours to do, probably in a half hour. And with this thermal technology, it's just, it has the opportunity to save so many lives at a lower cost. And in fact, they're using it on Mount Everest, right? Because they're having that issue on Mount Everest now

where people go up the mountain and they need oxygen. It takes a sherpa, you know, these sherpas are amazing, two, three hours to get up, it can take 10 minutes. Yeah, it's only a kilometer and a half. Yeah. So I think this is exactly the kind of stuff that we need with AI. But Francis, I get the thermal, I get the thermal technology, I'm trying to understand what does what's AI bringing to the table? Is it the AI that that's able to navigate and negotiate and fly it independent of having a human being do so?

That's absolutely what it is. So in this particular situation, what's happening is the camera has a whole bunch of pixels on it, just like when you watch, you know, you hear about the number of pixels on your screen on TV, and it's looking at every single pixel and basically looking to see if it's white or green or some other color, bright orange.

And then if it is, then it's going to a place where it can communicate back. Maybe satellite connectivity. It might not. It might have to fly back to somewhere closer to the base where it can send a signal because these things are operating on their own. There's not necessarily a controller, a person piloting at the other end, just because they're in some remote region. Yeah.

Francis, real quick, could this technology apply to amber alerts if all of a sudden at a big giant, at the CNE, if a kid goes missing, or at the PNE out east, if a kid goes missing, could 20 drones be fired up having seen a picture of that kid, identify that kid, and let the authorities know where that kid is? that kid, identify that kid, and let the authorities know where that kid is. Absolutely. And in fact, at the Boston Marathon this year, they used AI to pick out the number that was on everybody's shirt. So if you had a friend that was in the Boston Marathon, my brother in law was there, there's about 300 pictures of him all over the place because they used AI to find him in that crowd as they ran. In real time. In real time. In real time, and that's exactly what they could do.

That's a great idea. Yeah, and that's the shortening of the workflow, right? So that when AI hands it over to the human authorities, they are armed with far more information in a shorter period of time than they otherwise would. And like we said, every second counts in the life of a climber and in the life of an abducted or missing child. And so this is a technology whose time has come. Francis Sims, thank you

so much for joining us. Yeah, always a pleasure. Thank you, Ben. Wow, I get excited about technology stories like that, because if used properly, they can change the world for the better. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. 24 days ago today, I sat in front of this microphone and I brought you the story of a restaurant in Toronto that was changing the paradigm on tipping by forcing people that the staff could pick how much you were going to pay in tip based on how nice you were and how well you were dressed. And I went down that rabbit hole for I guess about nine minutes

until the end of the segment where finally my producer who highlighted this story for me I might add found out that it was an April Fool's joke. Now I speak French, the name of the restaurant I believe was Regarde Le Calendrier which in French means go look at the calendar. So I'm an idiot. I think that's been clearly established. But it did remind me that every now and then when we see a story about tipping in restaurants and people doing things differently, it's worth a look. That was a terrible idea. But now we find out that in Halifax, there is a new restaurant called The Bonfire that

doesn't accept tips and offers fair wages and profit sharing for employees. Could this be the way of the future? Let's welcome the co-owner of The Bonfire, Vincent Morley, to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thanks so much for being here, Vincent. Oh, thanks for having us, Ben. We're excited about this. Okay. Talk to me about this business model.

Give me your elevator pitch on how you, how you make it work at the bonfire. Yeah. So we're Halifax's only tip free establishment. We believe that our customers shouldn't subsidize the wages of our employees. So all of our employees, front of house and back of house, start at $20 an hour. And then 50% of profits are shared evenly

amongst the employees based on the number of hours they put in. And we really believe that a business built on collaboration is a better foundation for a better restaurant experience. How long you've been open? Since Wednesday. Okay, so you haven't yet proven this theory out, correct? Oh, we're still working on it. You're still working on it. So are you like, what happens? And correct me if I'm wrong. You're also a sober restaurant. Just as of right now, we're still working on our liquor license. Okay, what we were doing was we, we didn't tell anybody we were opening, we just called it a super secret sober opening. Okay,

so that we could kind of like, go through our processes, get the kitchen up to speed. Gotcha. By the time we were ready for a grand opening, we'd be like, ready. Okay, cause that was gonna be my next question that you're giving up on the biggest profit margins of any restaurant in the sale of alcohol. So, but- No, no, we're working towards that.

Okay, okay, good. Now, just so everyone's clear, can this is what I do before I go to any restaurant, is I pick my meal well in advance. Like if I were gonna go to the bonfire tonight, I would have checked this out yesterday. So that way I would have known what to have for breakfast and lunch today because based on what I'm seeing here,

look, it starts with corn ribs, of course, obviously, jalapeno bacon poppers. I mean, you've even found a way to make Brussels sprouts sound good with maple chili butter and pesto aioli. So like you're hitting all the right spots. I mean, you got some salads there, which I would, I would poo poo. I might have the the ribeye steak along with the ribs, maybe some blackened salmon to make myself feel like I'm eating healthy, but my mouth is salivating right now. So I very much want

you to succeed A because of the menu, but B because you know you're trying to you're trying to do something differently. What's success gonna look like for you? I mean, success has looked already like community support. We are just really feeling the love and the people that have come in here have been just so above and beyond supportive. And you know what, we're prepping to be busy. We're gonna be a busy restaurant as of this weekend

and we're really excited for it and we just feel really grateful. So when I see like the works burger, which is old cheddar lettuce, tomato, red onion, pickle mayo, by the way, if I were there, you could keep all those vegetables because I just want the meat and the cheese and that. But if it says here 16 bucks,

so I'm paying 16 bucks plus tax. Yeah, so everything on our menu is a la carte. We've set it up to be more of a kind of side sharing family style restaurant. So like we want people to each get their own burger, but then we want the table to like get a salad and macaroni, cheese and jalapeno poppers and fries and all that good stuff. But the price I see once you add a tax, that's what I'm paying. That's what I'm paying. That's what you're paying. We do not accept tips. And when you get the machine at the end, there is not an option for it.

Oh, that's real. And what's been the response thus far? Overwhelmingly positive. We have had people like just sharing our stories. Resumes are flowing in like crazy, like too many resumes to even look at at this point. We've had people who, there's like a weird culture shock where even though people are coming here knowing it's tip free and we explain the tip free option, when they get their bill they're like wait so there's no option to pay you more and we're like no that's not what we do here and then people have found their kind of own ways to make it up to us, not that we're ever asking, but we had our neighbor bringing fresh baked cookies. We had another person who does nature photography is like brought us in a couple of prints. We've had businesses reaching out and just

being like, Hey, we want to do free HR training. Wow. We want to do free website design for you. Stuff like that. We have this like weird, almost like community bartering system that we weren't planning on, but it's been like really rewarding. But Vincent, I guess a lot of people listening to this are saying already in good times, going into the restaurant business is tough. We are not living in good times.

The cost of food, the cost of rent, the cost of everything is more expensive than it was just a few years ago. So it seems to me just such a big gamble to try and essentially an untested business model at a time where the stakes couldn't be higher. What makes you so confident? Yeah, no, I actually think it's the timing of this that makes it possible. During Covid, we had all those supply chain disruptions and prices skyrocketed.

And then when the supply chain disruptions fix themselves or somebody fix them, I don't know how that works, but when they got better, the prices never came back down. So now we're in a world where a burger and fries, when you go to a tipping establishment, if it's a specialty burger and fries, it's $22. And so our prices are competitive with a good profit margin. And we've done the math on this. And now we're able to see our sales coming in. And this is a viable business model. And it is only because of the community support that we are able to make it a viable business model.

But yeah, we just feel really grateful for all the support we've seen and all the people coming in and all the people sharing our posts and all the people putting us on the news and their shows and getting the word out there. Vincent, none of it matters. The business model doesn't matter. Whether you tip or not doesn't matter unless the food is good. And you're biased, but this is the type of food that I put in my belly, like big time.

So where did you find a love for this sort of food? Yeah, so our whole guiding light on the food philosophy is we want it to be comfortable. So we're doing food that you want, food that feels familiar. We're trying to do it the best that we can. So if we're putting out nachos, yeah, they're just nachos, but we want the world's best nachos going out. If it's a burger, yes, it's a burger,

but our bonfire burger comes with Favardi and Brothers Bacon that's just from just across the street and Chipotle aioli and and it's been extremely well received. Talk to me about the baby back ribs how are they prepared and what kind of sauce are we working with here? Yeah so it's a house made barbecue sauce. Is it sweeter is it smokier is it tangier what is that? Yeah it's a molasses based sauce so it so it does have that sweetness, but it's almost like an earthy sweetness. And then the actual ribs themselves, we brine overnight so that they're seasoned well throughout and then they fall off the bone. And like I was saying, if we're doing ribs, we've got to do good ribs and we've had really good feedback on them.

Well, I've been talking to Vincent Morley. He's the co-owner of the Bonfire Restaurant in Halifax. This is a restaurant first of its kind in Atlantic Canada. Doesn't offer, doesn't accept tips, offers fair wages and profit sharing for employees. If this thing goes, I mean, could you see yourself opening one or two or three more? What's the plan? I'm trying not to get ahead of myself right now.

That's kind of the plan. And we've just been overwhelmed by the support that we've received. And we're just trying to make enough food to get through today at this point. Well, Vincent, I wish you the very best of luck, not only because I want to see a business like yours succeed, but I want you to be around long enough

so that by the time I come out there, I can come and enjoy a meal at your restaurant. I appreciate you and I wish you the very best. Oh, thanks so much, Ben. I really look forward to seeing you. All right, and thank you again to each and every one of you for joining us today on the Thursday edition of The Ben Mulroney Show. If you want to keep the conversation going, you know what to do. Just follow me on Twitter or X at Ben Mulroney and of course, I will post the... I'm hungry, God. I'm still thinking about that food. Should I do it? Yeah- I'm hungry god I'm still thinking about that food should I do it yeah I'm gonna go to Halifax I'm going to Halifax right now

I'm gonna be back maybe maybe not I want some ribs from the bonfire Want to transform your space and your Sundays? Well, Home Network is giving you the chance to love your home with $15,000. There can only be one winner. Tune in to Renovation Resort every Sunday and look for the code word during the show. Then enter at homenetwork.ca slash watch and win for your chance to win big.

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