The Ben Mulroney Show - Legault resigns, Saab jets and navigating cancer treatments in Canada

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

Guest: Andy Gibbons, Principal at Walgate Advisory, former VP WestJet Guest: Regan Watts, Founder Fratton Park Inc., former senior aide to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty Dr. Rachelle Grossman/ GP in Toronto Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Thank you so much for joining us on this 14th of January, 2026. We made it to Wednesday, which means midweek political panel with Andy Gibbons, principal at Wallgate Advisory, former VP at WestJet, and Regan Watts, the founder of Fratton Park, Inc., former senior aide to finance minister, Jim Flaherty. Gentlemen, welcome to the show. Good afternoon, Ben. Guys, okay, let's, but before we go, I want to ask you, Andy, as someone formerly of WestJet, you know, last week, the press was that, you know, a regular-sized person can no longer fit into those seats and they don't recline. What would you tell your former colleagues at WestJet if you had their ear right now about that rollout? Look, I think there's two sides to this.

One side is, you know, Ben, a lot of people complain, you know, why don't we have the things they have in Europe? Cheap flights, small seats, right? And so here's Westchette, actually bringing that to the market. Like it or not, I know you have your issues. It's the last 10 rows of the cabin. It's designed to be cheap and accessible. That's what the product is.

And if you don't want that product, you buy the other product. I mean, so there's part of me wearing my old hat, which is like, this is what consumers have actually wanted out of Canadian Airlines is those no frills, cheapest chips, no room fares, which they talk about having in the United States and Europe. And here we have it, and it's a national preoccupation about how bad it is. So I think there's there's always a tension, bend between the media coverage of airlines and the reality of what consumers buy and want. And if you go to the student dorms across Canada, they will say, we love the cheap fares, we just want a cheap ticket to go home to see mom and dad,

and I slide my backpack under the table. It feels like what we're learning here is you can take Andy Gibbons out of Westchette, but you can't take West Jet out of Andy Gibbons. We're going to move on because this news hit this morning like a ton of bricks that Francois Lego, the Premier of Quebec, who said he was going to prosecute the next election

as the leader of the CACC, the Coalition Avenir Quebec, has decided to step down. He's awaiting a successor, and he's stepping down. And let's go to Regan. Regan, what do you make of this? Pretty big news. Ben, it is big news, and I think people outside of Quebec don't fully appreciate just how dominant Mr. Ligo's personality has been on that province and in its politics over the years that he's been the CAC leader. I mean, he founded the party that he now leads

and stormed to, you know, successive electoral wins. That's not nothing. He's the kind of politician that many of us aspire to have in office, which is somebody from the private sector who's built a business, who's met a payroll, who understands what it takes to run a large organization. And he did it on his own terms.

I think it was, you know, Frank Sinatra, who said he did it my way. And Premier Legault absolutely did. had some major achievements in office. He's leaving certainly ahead of an election campaign that he was going to have a hard time winning. But when he's leaving at the start of the year, it certainly gives his party and a new leader

a little bit of time to find their feet before the next campaign. But he's not the only leader in Quebec who has stepped down. We also had Pablo Rodriguez, whose leadership was an absolute car wreck. But for those of us who know Pablo know that that was not a surprise. Nope.

And so now we're going into a Quebec election in the province where the PQ are currently leading, but I'm not sure how solid that lead is and the two other major parties, the CAC and the liberals are without leaders. So it'll be an interesting few months in the province of Quebec, but we thank Mr. Lago for his service

and for the accomplishments he's had, and he's not without controversy, but he's certainly left a mark. And I admire, and we have to admire any politician who leads and leaves a mark and then knows when to access the stage. Yeah, all well said. And I think what's lost in is he worked very well, by all accounts with his provincial analogs

across the country. And that's saying something, right? What I find interesting is the Liberal Party of Quebec is 10 points behind the PQ and they don't have a leader. And that leadership was disastrous. So it feels to me like this is a real, it's a real opportunity for both parties.

But some would say because Francois Lego was for so many people, the cac. Because it was his idea, It was his baby, and the success was under his leadership. A lot of people are wondering whether it may be a spent force without him. I don't know. They have had a lot of accomplishments as a, you know, they won back-to-back, I believe, majority since 2018. So a lot of success there.

But the Liberal Party has that baked in traditional support. And with only sitting 10 points behind the Paxi Quebecois. I don't know what's going to happen. Andy, what do you think? I echo what Regan said. I mean, this is a formidable political figure in Canadian history. He ended 50 years of BQ liberal reign. That's unbelievable and not heard of in Quebec.

I think the other thing, Ben, is just the volatility of the electorate. Can any of us say the Liberal Party of Quebec can't win the next election or a cat can't win? People are fickle. It's volatile. And if you're not connecting, I mean, you are out. There's no, these allegiances are very fragile. So I think, you know, just the volatility again of Canadian voters of Quebec voters. And what surprises me also about Quebec right now is all these big name federal liberals,

none of them want to be potentially be premier. You know, right? If you think of back in the day, your dad's day in other eras, there'd be half a dozen of them angling the media for it, thinking about it, exploratory committees. And no one's doing that right now. So I find that notable. Yeah, I'll say one last thing that one of the things that we should be thankful for, for Francois Le Go, is he broke up the binary choice that Quebecers had been offered for a couple of generations, which was, are you a separatist or not? It doesn't matter what any of your other views are.

You might be socially conservative. You might be fiscally conservative. None of that matters. This is where you go if you want to separate. And this is where you go if you want to stay in Canada. At one point, you had two progressive conservatives who sat around the same federal cabinet table in opposite camps, representing. two completely different parties provincially with Lucien Bouchard and Jean Charray.

Why? Because they both had different visions for the country. That is not a mature political discussion. And the fact that he was able to come in and break up that binary, I think was a great service to political discourse in the province of Quebec. Let's move on to stats can. You don't often hear this.

A federal bureaucracy is trimming jobs, Regan. Yeah, well, look, I think it's consistent with where the prime minister announced in his budget where he wanted the federal public service to go. This is but the first of, I'm sure, a series of departments that will announce reductions. The government of Canada has more than doubled in size over the last 10, 15 years. And I think your listeners and viewers, if they were to ask themselves, are they getting two times the rate of services or services two times faster,

given the doubling the size of the government? The answer would be almost unequivocally no. So good on stats can for leading the way. They're a quirky bunch, economists and statisticians and the like, but they're leading from the front, and they should be applauded. And look, the government of Canada will survive with less people. That's a good thing. And there will be a transition for those who are leaving stats can, but there are going to be generous provisions for many federal public workers who are choosing and electing to leave the government of Canada and their employment. And so I don't feel too badly for them because they're going to be getting many of them full pensions without any,

early retirement penalty. And so we shouldn't feel too bad. 60 seconds to you, Andy. This is, this happens. This is not a tragedy. It's not, it's sad for that individual, but macro at 60,000 feet, it's what happens. Yeah, I couldn't help but think

that if Pierre Paulyev was Prime Minister today and it was announced that 850 jobs would be shed at Stats, Canada, that there'd be a rally. Oh, of course. And a vigil on Parliament Hill. the end of data, the end of fact-based policy, the end of all of these things. Yeah, that's right. So, you know, it's like liberals just have such an advantage when they want to do things like this.

So I think we just need to say that for what it is. But also credit to the liberals for the business-like approach and the way they're handling this. Yeah. There's no big we're slashing and making politics out of it. They send their letters. They have their process. Yeah. So I kind of like the business-like approach that we're seeing out of this, out of

cuts and I think that speaks to the prime minister's leadership. Well, when we come back from the break, we're going to talk about that leadership because there's a story in the CBC. If it holds true and if the numbers in it in terms of jobs is true, you'd be hard pressed to find a single Canadian who would not stand up and give that man a round of applause. So we'll discuss that next. Don't go anywhere. The Ben Mulroney show marches on. That's right. It is a Ben Mulroney show and we can't do this without you. Our listeners and our viewers on YouTube, we say thank you. We say thanks for engaging. Thanks for helping us grow our audience. Thanks for helping us grow our footprint on social media and all the

platforms where you find us. And we will continue each and every day to try to earn your time because we know you can do whatever you want with it and you choose to spend it with us and we say thank you. Before we get to what I think could be a huge story, which would be a home run for this liberal government and rightly deserved if we, if that comes to pass, is it's Wednesday, which means it's time for our political play of the week. It's time for Play of the Week. All right, Regan Watts, you're up first. I'll be quick. My political play of the week goes to

Premier Scott Moe, Premier of Saskatchewan, who got on a plane and is in China with the Prime Minister this week as part of the government visit to that country. You know, Premier Moe is putting his country first and his province first, and by showing up and being present for discussions with the Prime Minister, they are he and the Prime Minister are presenting a truly team Canada approach. Canola and agriculture is Saskatchewan's most important export.

And the Premier is going where the puck is. And he's trying to put some shots on net, to use a hockey metaphor. And I think he deserves credit for doing the right thing and being there beside the Prime Minister when he meets the Chinese. All right, I like that very much. And here's hoping that something comes of that without having to give away, the entire Canadian automotive industry, fingers crossed that that does not.

Doug Ford is paying attention that very, very closely right now. Andy, your turn. Who gets the play of the week? Mine's a misplay to the Premier next door, to Premier of Manitoba Wob Canoe, who's an excellent politician, has huge favorability ratings.

Just to set the contacts, Ben, he came out on this Crown Royal issue and said, we need to stand together as Team Canada against the United States. And then he went on to say that Jesse Ventura's comments, the former governor of Minnesota, where he said United States is becoming a third world country, Premier Canoe said, well, he's not wrong, and we just hope everything gets better there.

And I call it a misplay because, you know, are we really against the United States or are we against what the president is doing? And if you look at Winnipeg, Winnipeg has problems, you know. If you go to the Rexall downtown, there's an armed guard. there. It's not exactly, you know what I mean? So I just think this mentality, we've talked about it on the show before, this instinct to be smug Canadian, anti-American, oh, we hope they get better, those ghettoized, awful cities. I just think that's the wrong instinct for Canada. And in Manitoba, what does the business community there want? I know this from my previous career. Access to U.S. markets, flight access to American cities. It is their bread and butter. It's where they sell their goods. So I just think, I just feel

that a premier saying things like that is not helpful. And also it's his obligation to rebuild the biggest market for his province. And that is the United States. And I just don't, I just, I think those comments are almost inappropriate and not helpful at all. Yeah. And I don't like anti-Americanism we're seeing around the country. A rare, a rare misstep miscommunication for a guy who has at least in public acquitted himself very well.

And, you know, we give him credit when he gets, he does. deserves it and we'll criticize him when we think he deserves that as well. All right. But moving forward, what we hope to do is manifest the country that we want. And if this story comes true, this is a big deal. And I want to start with you, Regan. Saab wants Canada to buy 72 Grippins and six globalized to fulfill a promise of 12,600 jobs. That's a big, big, big, big, big, big deal.

Well, Ben, I don't know if it's my AirPods or what, but it sounds like you're purring. And it sounds like you're purring to what the prime minister. and has government been able to accomplish with the Swedes? You know, the fact is... I give credit when stuff happens. There was a commercial that aired right before this about how we're going to... Oh, we're building...

We're going to be building homes. I was like, haven't built any homes yet. We built a Lego ship. Haven't built any homes yet. When that happens, I will purr. Yeah. Look, well, but it sounds like you're warming up then. And for you're those who are listening

in their live drive on the way home, he is smiling, as I say this. You'll have to check it in on YouTube. What I'll say is this? The Swedes when they came here, and Andy and I talked about this on the show, the Swedish government visit, including members of the royal family, was absolutely 100% exceptional diplomacy and economic development for a country and for a company like Saab when they came to Canada.

They knew their numbers, they had their messages, they clearly hit a home run. This is the next phase of their PR campaign. I have no idea who the Swedish government and who Saab are using for their PR, but they should be paying them double, because there's yet another series of articles with clear messages that the Swedes, for those who are listening, have said that something like 12,000 jobs will be created if Canada buys these planes. And so, you know, the prime minister has got a very difficult job.

He's in China this week talking about auto and canola and other things. He's got the Americans in the background talking about F-35s and other defense security investments. And meanwhile, he's got the Europeans and in this case the Swedes committing to create something like 12,000 jobs in Canada. So, you know, good on the prime minister and the government for continuing to pull that thread. good on the Swedes and sob for their exceptional diplomacy in Canada. And long may it continue and long may Canadians benefit from this job creation. Of course, we have to wait and see what happens. But this is moving in the right direction as a net benefit for the country.

Look, it will be a break from the past 10 years if an announcement translates into some good news. I think that's what I'm saying. Of course I'm going to wait and see because how many times did we hear an announcement that petered out and didn't end up doing what it was supposed to do. In fact, all it ended up doing was costing us money. I'm not suggesting that that's happening here. But I think we as a country have been burnt enough with big headlines and big photo ops

and then to turn around and just realize we just wasted time and money. That's why I'm skeptical. But Ben, remember, the last 10 years, let's refer to it properly. Yeah, yeah, the long national nightmare they're known as Justin Trudeau. But the other thing is,

how great is it that we have a prime minister now that people around the world respect and light up when he walks in the room? I'm sure I'm going to get hammered in the comments on, You're saying these kinds of things. Lighting up. This is a reflection of having a serious prime minister who's a serious global businessman.

And this is, this is a net benefit. It's, okay. He's also benefiting from having an incredible comparison. Like the low expectations of who he was, he's succeeding. That's beneficial too. Like, Andy, I'm going to pass a mic to you because we're monopolizing it. Yeah, I can't, what I can't tell Ben is, you know, is Canada just flirting with Saab or do they actually want to date them, right? Yeah.

I can't figure that piece out. Is it a strategy to, like the other things like China, that Canada has options and you should really, really want me and look how much I'm wanted, or is this a real legitimate choice? And I just, I can't help but going back, and I'm not some American shill. I know I sound like it, but the United States is our continental defense partner, and they have paid for our security for a long, long time. And I just think we need to be very careful about these flirtations, the dates were going on with others.

It's a fragile situation. And, you know, I want our country to succeed. Everyone does. But I just don't know if the sob thing is a, is flirtation or if this, you know, could be a real relationship. And I don't know if how deliberate Canada is in that strategy. But if that were to occur, yeah, it's great for Canada. Of course it is. And so with the other bidder.

Yeah. Right. All right. We don't have a lot of time left. So I want to ask you just really quick. You know, the Winter Olympics are coming up. And, of course, the question is, should Russia be allowed with their war of aggression on Ukraine, be allowed to compete?

I don't have a problem with the idea of Russian athletes. I have a problem with the idea of the Russian Olympic team and its tradition of doping at the Olympics. Andy, let's start with you. And you got about, give you 30 seconds. Yeah, I thought the solution they found was pretty good, which was if you, you've never supported the war, you can compete in the Olympics, you know, under a neutral flag or whatever formula they've come up with. I actually didn't know that until today. I think that's a reasonable position. I mean, I look, I'm a hockey fan. I'd love to see the Russian team

compete in the Olympics. I wonder why just as a hockey nut. Yeah. But the war of aggression is just a bridge too far for me. I'm, I support Russia being banned. I know it's not fair to the athletes, but that's the world we live in. And the Olympics has always been political. And And that's important too. Regan, you get two sentences. I completely agree with Andy for a change. But I'll also say that I look forward to Canada bringing home any gold, silver, and bronze and Cortina in February. And another successful Olympics for the country.

Absolutely. All right. Don't go anywhere. We got more up right after the break on the Ben Mulroney show. This is the Ben Mulroney show. And before the break, we were going back and forth on the success, the perceived success, eventual success of our prime minister and his liberal government. I kind of want to see some results before I start throwing ticker tape parades.

I think we were burnt for 10 years by this liberal party. Yes, under different management, same party. I'm not one who is going to call it a successor or this a changed party until I see change. And this next story is not change. This next story is the same liberal party. Okay. The Ottawa gun buyback pilot. Okay.

Our public safety minister, Gary Ananda Sangri, was talking about that there's a national buyback program budgeted at over $700 million, destined to get all the bad guns off the street. They did a pilot in Nova Scotia. And there are about 2,000 guns that they say were available for this buyback. And after the pilot was run, 25 guns were bought back. Let me repeat that. This is a $700 million project,

and in this first phase of it, of 2,000 possible guns, 25 were returned and bought back. Would you consider that a success? Would you, listening to this show, consider that 1.5% of all the guns that you could be bringing in, came in for a $700 million project?

Would you consider that as success? Well, let's check with our public safety minister, Gary and Onda Sangri. Those 25 guns and a $700 million project constitute a success. You know, we saw just 25 firearms from 16 people. Do you consider that a failure? What I wanted to just outline is the issue of gun violence

is an issue that's shaken this community. community, Malvern in particular, but also throughout Scarborough, is an issue that impacts Canadians across the board. As an overall pilot, I believe it is successful. When we roll out the program in its full form in the upcoming weeks, we do anticipate much greater uptake. All right, that's nonsense. That's fiction. That's crazy misdirection. That's, that's crazy. Misdirection. gaslighting. The violence of the area that he was describing is

an area that has been struck by gun violence of the illegal firearm type. In Nova Scotia, where this buyback happened, a lot of the guns that were, of the few guns that were bought back, were like a kid

or a young man has his grandfather's antique gun and he doesn't care for it. And he's like, oh, if the government wants to pay me for it, I'll give him the gun. That is not the type of gun that we're talking about here. So this is nonsense. This is nonsense. And if this is what we can expect over the next three years, I'm having none of it.

I hope it's not. I hope that they course correct. Now, since May 2020, Otto has banned over 2,500 types of firearms, arguing that they are military-grade and unsuitable for civilian life. So how many of those 25 guns were military-grade? I don't know. They're not telling us. Now, the pilot also revealed technical issues with the online portal and other processes.

Shocker. Shocker! That you budgeted hundreds of millions of dollars and you built a portal and it doesn't work. Shocker. Yeah, because the government's so good at building online tools. We saw that with the Arrived Can app. Thank you so much. Isn't this a lesson we should have learned years ago?

I didn't need to learn it. The Liberal Party of Canada needed to learn it. But shouldn't they have learned this lesson years ago that this program was not going to work? I don't understand that. The numbers are there for the liberal parties to win a majority for the next decade. They got a majority when one of the top issues for Canadians

is safety and crime. The safety in our streets and increasingly in our homes and crime. And they seated that ground completely to the conservatives. And then they do this performative nonsense where what happens is when there is an anniversary of a gun like a shooting, they raise that specter. They politicize those deaths. And they say, we're going to keep you safe by banning all these guns. And it convinces enough people?

It convinces enough people. Except I think people are getting wise to that part now instead of doing what they should do because they would get the conservatives on side you have to be on your side. They want to be the party of law and order and they don't want to miss that boat with voters so they would vote lockstep with the liberals

if the liberals actually put some teeth and some logic behind their legislation which is we're going after the illegal guns. We're going to leave the farmer behind. We're going to leave the hunter alone. We're going to leave people and rural communities alone. We're going to leave somebody alone who's got a 50-year-old gun that they just have because

their dad had it and their grandfather had it. That's all nonsense. You're going after the wrong thing. That's not the problem. I know it's not the problem because we report on what the problem is on this show. Illegal guns that are coming from the United States. That's the problem. Solve that problem.

But the new problem, though, is because you've made all these guns illegal, people have them. Yeah. And then who is now actually a criminal? Technically the people who are holding on those guns. And why are they still holding onto their guns? Because you made them illegal, but you've allowed no pathway for them to get rid of them. And you know what? You've also made those things uninsurable.

So people are sitting at home with these guns. They are uninsured. They can't do anything with them. And they're sitting in a safe because legal gun owners know how to keep their guns protected. How do they know? Because for them to be legal gun owners, they've got to go through a raft, a barrage, a battery of tests, where they have to be able to tell you how to responsibly own a gun

or they don't get one. And you're going after them and criminalizing them. Enough of this nonsense. $700 million with technical issues for the online portal and other processes and you get 25 out of a potential 2,000 guns in the area. That's a failure by any metric and for the public safety minister

to get on in front of a microphone and say this was a success. That is the definition of gas lighting. Nobody wants our streets to be on. unsafe. Nobody who shouldn't own a gun should own a gun. But you're going after the wrong people. And when you do stuff like this, you remind me of the liberals of old. And I cannot get behind that. For 10 years, I saw performative policy over practical solutions. And I'm done. And when you're messing with people's safety in the streets, that is serious. Antonio, welcome the show.

How are you, sir? I'm well, thank you. Well, I'm a union member, right? And I was on a campaign to go work in the States under some training program, on organizing, and whatnot. And I was paired off from an American worker who's a union member in the States as well. So he would knock on the door, right? He goes, let me knock on the door. Okay, we go in, you know, to give our spiel to the guy about the union and all that stuff, right? I walked into the place with this guy

Right behind the door This guy's got a loaded AR-15 I was in shock Yeah I was like really Like this weapon's out in the open It's a go yeah that's our constitution The problem is the problem is

Okay All the guns that the police have been confiscating For the longest time as I can remember Are coming from across the border Yep So you think maybe we should be addressing that? Of course 100%. Trump is harping on us about fentanyl going from the board,

from our Canadian border into his country. Well, you know what? If you want to be a responsible gun owner, no one's saying that you don't have the right to bear arms, but be responsible, have it locked up. Anybody who's a legal gun owner in this country can't have a gun unless they pass those tests unless they commit to those things. Absolutely.

I have a friend of mine who's an avid hunter. Yeah. He has a safe. They're all trigger-locked. The ammo is in a different safe, separate from the safe. The gun laws here are so strict, it's incredible. But in a lot of cases, those guys who have followed all those rules, who bought their guns legally, who store them safely,

they are now being told that the gun you own is now illegal. And that doesn't make a single person in this country safer, not one. Absolutely not. And you know, another thing I'm going to say, last and foremost, to put in people's minds, when you have a mother laying in bed with a child, and that child gets killed, and nobody wants to change the law.

That speaks volumes to the people that we have in power. Antonio, I got to run. Thank you so much. You are listening to the Ben Mulroney show, and there's an old saying that doctors make the worst patients, I would suggest, humbly suggest, that new to that list, or probably even just above that now

are people who check their symptoms on chat, GPT, before going to the doctor. They've got to be the worst. But no, I say that as a joke to jump into a more serious conversation. I'm joined now by Rochelle, Dr. Rochelle Grossman, who's a GP in Toronto, but Rochelle a few years ago was diagnosed with cancer. I found out she had stage four breast cancer. And stage three, stage three, typo, stage three. Don't make me sicker. Rochelle is joining us now, and we've known each other for years. It's great to see you, Rochelle, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me.

So talk to me about, if we can, talk to me about, how's your health? Good. Good. Good. I'm feeling great. Yeah. Thanks. But as when that happened, it must have hit like a ton of bricks.

For sure. Single mom, like everything must have. It must come at once, all the emotions. What was your treatment like? So my treatment was aggressive. It had already spread to multiple lymph nodes. So it was actually shocking because I was a woman's health specialist. Like, that's what I did.

I felt breast for a living. So the treatments were, it was a very eye-opening to be on the other side because I knew that there were problems with the system, but to actually like witness it firsthand and be that person that's waiting and emerge with a wig on midway through chemo because I need migraine treatment and I'm being told I need to wait half an hour and I'm immunocompromise. All of that stuff was really tricky. Yeah. So it was very difficult, both emotionally and physically.

There's got to be, there must be like two ways to look at it. You must have, you know, when you're in the middle of your treatment, that's one thing. But when you're on the other side of it and you are a medical expert, I'm sure you assessed it after the fact. Like, how was my treatment? How was my experience as a patient within the healthcare system? Which some people hold up on a pedestal and say, this is the model for the world and others are more critical. Where do you land? I land somewhere in the middle.

I think we talk a lot about the healthcare system being so accessible in Canada. Accessibility, accessibility. I think it's actually becoming inaccessible. And I think, you know, especially there's certain niches that are just being mistreated. I think, you know, pregnant women and immunocompromised patients shouldn't be an emerge. I think people are misusing emerged systems. I think misusing the system in general. But I also think that, you know, what happened with my experience is,

being a doctor, I wanted to fix it to. And I was like, oh, this is going to be now my new thing. I'm going to fix the system. I'm going to get a hold of the hospital. I'm going to talk to this person. And then when I return back to medicine, I'm going to make sure that no other person who has breast cancer is going to go through what I went through and be missed for a year.

So I was actually misdiagnosed for a year. Wait, wait. Okay. So hold on. So you go in for a diagnosis. What was the original diagnosis? So here's, you know, funny, your opening line was, you know, we're the worst patients. but actually in my case, it was the opposite.

So I never even needed a physician, right? I was like, oh, well, I'm just going to use a colleague here. I'm going to do this here. And my friend's going to do this for me and write this. And actually, it was after my separation that I was like, I'm a single mom by myself. I knew I had this lump. I'm going to do it the right way.

I'm going to get a family doctor, and then she's going to, you know, assess it. So that's exactly what happened. She assessed it, wrote for a mammogram and an ultrasound given I was 36 at the time. Okay. the radiologist said, nope, this is benign. Yeah, the finding was there, but it was benign. And with that, we're not going to do a mammogram.

And even though I knew the difference between like a weird lump and a normal feeling lump, I didn't push it because I was like, you know what, this is the first time that I'm just not going to be a squeaky wheel, and I'm going to trust the system. Yeah. So a year later, it's all in my lymph nodes. I feel a lump here. Anyway, the moral of the story is, you know, maybe I should have just jumped.

I've gotten my own. Listen, I'm not trying to be petty here, but did you ever go to the person who said you don't need a mammogram? I think she's aware. Yeah. I don't think I had to go, but I think it was, you know, it was a system error as well because no one flagged that this should be reassessed in a short amount of time. So is your message, if there is a message to women like advocate for yourselves and go with your gut, go with your instinct and demand that thing and don't stay quiet? I think I have a message. As a physician, I know how annoying those patients are.

You know, I'm very aware. When you come in with your chat, GBT, and you're advocating for yourself, those are the patients that I want to run away from and be like, you're taking up all my time. I don't have time. But I do have a new outlook to those patients. I say, you know what? You're the CEO of your body. You do what you've got to do.

But with reasons. So know which resources you're going to use and know which ones are and trust the doctor you're seeing, because if you don't trust that doctor, you shouldn't be seeing that doctor. But yes, yes. I do think advocacy is important. Yeah, you must have gone through every emotion. Yeah, it was scary. But there was the scariness.

There must have been the anger with the misdiagnosis. There must have been fear and panic over what are you going to do as a mom for your daughter. Were there mental health resources available to you? There were. Did you take, did you avail yourself up? Absolutely. I used every resource that was given to me. And I also did it for the reason of like, I want to learn what.

out there for my own patient. And, you know, I used everything. I was a young mom with a stage three breast cancer. At one point, they thought it was in my back. I was newly separated. So already those emotions coming with a divorce and having to do all that, that was really tricky. So, yeah, it was tough, but they had great resources. They have social workers. And sometimes you don't know that. So please ask. Yeah. How should we be, how should women be tested for breast cancer today? Are we, Are we close to the bullseye in Canada or are there best practices elsewhere in the world that we should be adopting or looking? Are there new technologies that exist that aren't even on our radar yet?

I think we're doing a better job, first of all. I think Canada's guidelines from changing from 50 to 40 for mammograms are important because they were being lost. My sister was diagnosed two weeks after me, you know, and she was three years old. Throw that on the pile of emotions. I know, let's just add that to the plate of things that I was going to. That was really fun. Sorry, I don't need to sidetrack you, but how was her cancer journey, if I can call it that? They found DCIS, which is basically, you know, it's, it's cancer, but it's contained.

And she needed a mastectomy, but that's it. It stopped the buck stopped there. So, but she would never have been screened otherwise. She wasn't 50 yet. Yeah. And so. Did she go in because you went in? Yes.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we're doing better in terms of we recognize now that the more aggressive cancers are actually pre-menopausal women. Okay. So women before menopause have more aggressive cancers.

Those are the people. So we're starting at 40. That's better. And I think now, radio, like we depend as family doctors on radiological terms and radiologists saying to us, we think this might be suspicious,

we don't think this is suspicious, or we're not sure, do this, this, this. And now there's more protocols associated with that, which I think are very helpful. Yeah. Yeah. So now... An AI.

AI is going to be, I think, very helpful. In what way? I'm not an expert. But I do think if you, but you kind of are. With AI, yeah. No, but you're an expert in your journey, right? No one's going to take that away from you. So how would it have been helpful in your experience? I think it's helpful because right now we're using a medley. We're using mammograms because they're better at looking at microcalcifications. We're looking at ultrasounds for dense breasts and they're better for lumps. You know, and then MRIs in some situations, I think AI would. will help kind of amalgamate everything.

I think in my situation, that little possible benign fiber adenoma would have looked differently. And in the AI situation, and none of this would have happened. So it's more of those like borderline people that it will be very helpful. Yeah, I saw a video. It was over a year ago where I think at UCLA Medical Center, they were doing a test with this AI program that was trained on x-rays, on mammograms, on all sorts of stuff to identify if something was benign or if it was cancerous.

And the rate of success that it was having a year ago was astronomical, right? And it took the guess workout. And if it's going to continue improving, then you're just going to put this in that AI engine. It's going to come out and say, yeah, more testing. Yeah, we've got to get in the hospital. Yeah, we got it. Or, no, it's benign. And you'll be able to trust eventually that that's the case.

We only have about a minute left in this conversation. I do want to keep you around for a little bit if you don't mind. I'd love to. We'll reset the conversation for our Toronto audience. But in about 30 seconds, if you can tell me, is there a charity that you think is doing great work on this front? And how can people get in touch? Absolutely. Like, I'm glad you asked.

Rethink is a smaller charity. Not everyone knows about Rethink. And it's targeted more towards younger women, more aggressive cancers, more metastatic population, which they have been so helpful for me navigating. So I do a lot of my charity work with them. All right. We'll talk about that again after the break. But just a reminder, if you want more BMS, we put out a podcast every day. And you can find even more content on X, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

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