The Ben Mulroney Show - Liberal border security bill poses serious risk to rights and liberties

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Liberal border security bill poses serious risk to rights and liberties with Guest: Tim McSorley, National Coordinator for the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group -Canada’s go-to guy for PGA-level golf course renovations with Guest: Ian Andrew, For nearly four decades, has been one of the leading thinkers and architects in the golf design business -Geoff Russ: Dear Liberals, fire the bureaucrats with Guest: Geoff Russ, Columnist for The National Post and The Spectator Australia 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

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Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Time to drive away from the grind and unwind in your new 2025 Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross. No phones, no signal, no meetings. Just the smell of adventure. Lease the Eclipse Cross today for the equivalent of $89 weekly at 3.99% for 36 months. Plus, get a no charge two year maintenance package. Visit your local Mitsubishi dealer today or see mitsubishimotors.ca for details. Conditions apply. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for spending a part of your Friday with us. We appreciate that you can do whatever

you want with your time. And a lot of you are choosing to help us build the community around the Ben Mulroney Show. And that means that you might be listening in podcast form, you might be listening on a streaming app, or on the Chorus Radio Network. Or now you can find us on YouTube, just search up the Ben Mulroney Show and we post content over the course of the day. The irony is not lost on me that the only two times in Canadian history that legislation was passed that radically circumscribed our charter rights were under were put forth by the party of the charter. And, and now as we get to know this new liberal party,

because that Mark Carney wanted us to know, it's a new party, it's a new government with a new leader. A lot of us didn't really know what that meant, but we are getting starting to get an image as to how he's going to govern based on the ideas he's putting forth in the form of legislation. There's a new border security bill. And there is there's there is a reason and a need to beef up how serious we are about the border. But could this be a threat and a risk to our rights and to our liberties? Here to talk about it is Tim McSorley, the national

coordinator for the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. Tim, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Ben. So I'm going to guess that you would answer. Yes. Our rights are at risk with this legislation. Definitely. We're, we're really disappointed to see that the first bill that this government has brought forward is one that, you know, it was an omnibus piece of legislation at more than 120 pages that just brings in a slew of new laws,

some relate to the border, but some that go much, much further and that really plays at risk. Both of our civil liberties, our human rights, and our whole writing joys, yeah. So I want to operate in good faith and I really do want to give this government a lot of room to succeed on behalf of all of us.

So let's start with the good. What is good in this bill according to you? Well, I think that there are some targeted measures around the illegal substances laws. So to be able to target drug smuggling, some others that would allow CBSA access to areas in order to ensure that, for example, they can crack down on car thefts and other issues like that. And some others around sex offender laws. But beyond that,

there's a whole slew of other changes to surveillance, to access to our information for law enforcement, even the Coast Guard laws, and to our immigration laws that really raise a lot of concerns. Tim, is it true that under this law, Canada Post could open my mail? Under this law, based on regulations, Canada Post would be able to open your mail. We still don't know what those regulations will be. And so there is that caveat. And this is the problem with governments, both liberal and conservative, pointed to the idea that we'll bring in these very broad laws, and then the details will be

in the regulations. But regulations are passed, you know, they're shared publicly, but it doesn't go through parliament and doesn't go through the same kind of scrutiny as the actual legislation. but it doesn't go through parliament and doesn't go through the same kind of scrutiny as the actual legislation. Tim, I want our border to be as secure as possible. I want us to know who's coming in, what's coming in, and I want us to be able to... I want those who are entrusted with keeping the border secure, I want them to have the tools necessary to do their job. And I don't remember anybody saying that the legislation around CBSA, for example, was woefully toothless in the past. What I did hear on this show and in conversations

with people in the know was that it was woefully underfunded and understaffed. And to me, before we start going down the path of beefing up what these organizations can do, maybe we should take the first kick at the can, should be like, let's make sure that we have the right number of people funded at an adequate level to do the job that they're entrusted to do. And then let's see if the laws need to be tweaked. Well, clearly the resources need to be there.

One of the questions that we have is that, you know, a lot of this is in response to the US government saying that there's a problem with, you know, illegal immigration and irregular immigration, there's a problem with drug trafficking that even our law enforcement and CBSA have said it's grossly exaggerated, isn't based on facts. So I think what we need to do is take a step back

to even evaluate whether or not the new resources being provided are needed. And then there's a really important thing is that the MPs voted last year to set up an oversight body for the CBSA and the oversight body would be able to take complaints from individuals, but also ensure that CBSA is working efficiently and is doing their job.

And we haven't seen a single move on the establishment of that oversight body throughout all this. And that could be a really key solution to ensuring that we know what needs to be done if there is even an issue, but we haven't seen that happen yet. So Tim, we talked about the good and that was a very short part of our conversation.

I suspect this longer part of the conversation will be about where you see the failures in this bill. Yeah, well I think there's a lot of areas where we see failures. An important part is around issues regarding privacy and and surveillance and access to our personal information. So there's sections of this bill that give police and national security intelligence agencies new powers that they've been trying to get for years now in order to more easily access our basic information. So being able to find out whether or not we have accounts

with internet service providers, you know providers and anyone else providing a service online. And then based on that, you know, to request our information at a lower threshold than they can currently do. And so our worry is that this will allow for fishing expeditions, but this isn't just limited to the border, but that it can be applied to under any act of parliament. It can be applied to under any act of Parliament. And it also allows Canadian police and intelligence agencies to more easily request information from foreign agencies about Canadians. But also there's reciprocal powers that would allow foreign agencies easier access to request

information about Canadians and people in Canada. And there will be restrictions and we've made it clear that any request has to obey the charter, but we're very concerned about how that will actually play out in reality. And it's certainly not something that we would expect to be in a border security bill. We would expect it to be in a standalone bill

that would discuss whether, you know, how and whether national security agencies and law enforcement can access our private information. I mean, Tim, I don't know how this is gonna play out. I've been trying to game it out in my head. Now you just said yourself that, you know, that our government has said that the threats at the border, the crisis at the border has been overblown. So we don't even have like, they can't say with a straight face that these extraordinary powers need to be doled out because we're in a crisis. Like they've said, it's not the crisis that we've been told it is. So, I mean,

I've seen charter challenges be successful over a heck of a lot less than this. Does it, I, I, I can't imagine that in its current form, this piece of legislation is going to become law. I think that we'll have a lot of debates and discussions at committee, I expect a lot of amendments to be proposed. We ourselves and others we work with are going to be working on crafting amendments to try to address this bill that goes forward. But what we're actually calling for us and other digital rights groups, other

human rights organizations, immigration rights organizations are asking for the bill to simply be withdrawn. As it stands, it can't be fixed. There should be a targeted specific bill for border security. And if they want to change everything else, they need to come back with specific legislation, do consultation on it, and actually justify why why it needs to be passed. Well, yeah, I'm impressed that they were able to put this entire piece of legislation together so quickly. I mean, we're told the government hasn't had enough time to look at the books and put a

budget together, but this is quite a complex piece of legislation. I don't know where they found the time to do this. Well, certainly, there's parts of it that I think, um, the government, you know, previous governments have been working on some aspects of this legislation and that it's being added to, to this bill. So as I said, you know, issues around lawful access to our information, this isn't new. We've seen in the proposed by, uh, you know, over the past 15, 20 years, we've seen multiple versions of these kinds of laws being proposed.

And some of the integration changes, this idea of cutting off of silent claims if somebody is being in Canada for one year, regardless of whether or not there's a coup in their country and it's not safe for them to go back. These are the kinds of things that we know that the US has been putting pressure on Canada to do and that Canada has been mulling over for the last few years.

And that just isn't a border bill. And it's completely, whatever you say people think about immigration, it's an issue of human rights. Yeah. It's an issue that people will be persecuted if they're sent back to their country. Tim, I want to thank you so much for highlighting this. Important to get your voice heard on this. We appreciate it.

We'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much, Tim. Now that the warm weather is here, is it time to get rid of your old car? Oh, sure, it's served you well. But it'd be kind of nice to have something new, maybe a convertible, maybe something with a sunroof. I know, I know, car shopping can be an overwhelming experience. Is this a good price for the vehicle? Am I even looking at a vehicle that's right for me? This is a big purchase and you need to get it

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that over deliver. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show and this weekend is the Canadian Open, the biggest golf tournament in the country. And because of that, I wanted to talk to our next guest. I want to file this conversation under, I didn't even know that was a job. Because I just, I don't know enough about golf. I like watching golf on TV. I hate playing golf.

Or I like playing it for like five holes. And then it just becomes tiresome. But I appreciate the beauty of the golf courses. Some of the most beautiful places in the world that I've ever seen are golf courses. And there are people who have to build them and they conceive of them and then eventually refurbish them to make them harder or prepare them for a tournament. And Ian Andrew is our next guest and for nearly four decades he's been one of the leading thinkers and architects in the golf design business. Ian, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it very much. So one of my favorite lines in an article about about your work that says course designers are part landscaper part engineer and part Riddler. Is that accurate? Yes it is. The what you're trying to do is make the golf course interesting. You're not really trying to make it hard or easy. What you're trying to do is make people make decisions. And so whether it's with bunkering, with the use of trees or with creeks or ponds,

you're trying to have people sort of determine what they wanna take on as a challenge and what they wanna try to avoid. And then that's sort of determine what they want to take on as a challenge and what they want to try to avoid. And then that's sort of the basis of the game. So go ahead. Ian, I'm going to take you at your word that you're not trying to make them harder. But come on, you see the final scores after a tournament and every single player on the leaderboard had one of their worst days ever because it was so hard. You must arrive. So you must smirk when you see that.

I'm not not you think you think we do, but we don't. The funny part is you're trying to make it. You're trying to identify. So you're talking about the Canadian Open. You're trying to identify the best player. And what you try to do is you try to put in some opportunities for them to score to show that they're super talented. And some opportunities where it's very difficult for them to play the holes where making a par sometimes is the perfect number because that may beat the field. So what you're trying to do is do both at the same time. And so they need to score because it's way more

fun to watch them make birdies than it is to watch them make bogeys. But you need to test their skills and that's how you identify the best player. So when you're setting up for a Canadian Open, you're trying to balance that off of having both. So how much prep work goes into it? Meaning, do you sit there and watch last year's open, and, but you're probably not watching the golfers so much as the golfers interaction with the terrain? So I've worked on the last three of the last four. And so you do get the data from that. And it tells you about how they make their decisions.

And what you do is you start off by looking at the golf course and seeing the pros are so good that what you need to do is give them a level of challenge, sort of appropriate for them, they're still going to score great. And, and no matter what you put in front of them, they're still going to overcome it because they're that good. Um, we're watching Thursday, they, they shot some really low numbers and what it is, it just shows how much skill they've got. And I have no problem. You're not trying to play defense. You're just trying to make, you're just trying to make it interesting. As you said at the beginning, you're trying to make it pretty. You're trying to make it interesting for them to make decisions on where to go.

And then hopefully you, you create some excitement both in, um, the shots that work out or even sometimes the shots that don't. We don't want every shot not to work out because that's not actually entertaining, but we do like to have a hole like the 18th that this week's open where they can easily make an eagle three or they can make six just by whether they carry the pond in front of the green on the par five right and that really what you want more than anything else when you're doing this is to create a level of excitement the people watching. Ian, how do you get the reputation?

What do you do in your career that you are the go-to guy to get a course PGA ready? I wouldn't say I'm the go-to guy, but I really appreciate that the article did say that. And I have a microphone, so I'm saying it, which now it must be true. I appreciate that so much. I think it's just doing some good work, some very important golf courses. And for me, the good fortune is working at courses that were selected for the Canadian

Open. So those three courses were selected by people to host the open. And then we either made bigger changes as we did for this week, or we made really minor changes like we did for St. George's. And what was so talk to me about that? Talk to me about how big how big of an enterprise it can be in terms of an overhaul of a course, and how, and how maybe sometimes all of an overhaul of a course and how and how maybe sometimes all a course needs is just a little tweak.

So I'll go to St. George's first St. George's has an incredibly rich important history to the game. And so you don't want to change it for professional play. What you try to do is put some tees in places to make it a little bit tougher for them, but you accept the scores that they shoot because the history and the importance of the golf course is really important to the game. And so, you know, if they shoot a low score, that's fine. The golf course is so spectacularly brilliantly done by the original architect Stanley Thompson that you really try to maintain that and not damage it for an event.

At Osprey Valley, Osprey is more recent. I worked on the golf course with Doug Carrick originally. And because it's more recent, you have a little bit more comfort with it. And because I had original involvement, you have more comfort. And so there, what we were trying to do is narrow up the landing areas for the tee shots and move the bunkers into the current distances

players play to. And what we're trying to do is just give them a challenge. We're not trying to make it hard. Like we're trying to make it harder than it was. But we're not trying to make it so hard that they were telling them what to do. What we're trying to do is give them choices. Go ahead. I remember years ago, this just popped in my head, I remember years ago when Tiger Woods was at the peak of his ability and he was smoking almost everybody.

When I would tune in to watch, because everybody tuned in to watch him, I would hear the announcers reference the fact that the course had been tiger-proofed. So the fact is that... So does that happen when they will, does that happen where in order to make a field more competitive, if one guy's running away with it, they'll focus on that one guy and make it harder for him more so than others?

So one of the funny parts that worked with that is, so the idea was either trying to narrow it out at those longer distances or add length, but the interesting thing is it actually just played into his hand. The more that they tried to work it to make it harder, you needed to be a little bit more accurate, which he was incredibly accurate at his prime. You needed to be a little bit more accurate, you needed to be long, and he was obviously one of the longest players. So tiger-proofing, as it was known as, actually helped.

And it's like you could say, today's day and age, it would be Rory-proofing. The same thing, if you add excessive length and you narrow it up, you actually, the players that are longer and more accurate off the tee in particular, you just actually give them the benefit. And so what you're trying to do is you're trying to make it a little bit more difficult for them at times, but at other times, there's three holes at Osprey Valley that are short whores where the shorter players

have as much advantage as the longer players because the holes don't benefit having excessive length, short whores where the shorter players have as much advantage as the longer players because the holes don't benefit having excessive length. Accuracy is actually paramount on those holes. And that way it sort of supports the whole field rather than trying to work off individuals. Ian, my last question for you is when does your work end? Are you paying attention over the course of the tournament or once the the golfers hit the first tee, your job is done? So my initial job is done. Yes, when they start

playing the event, it actually stops well in advance because they need some time for it to grow in and mature. But I'm sure there's probably going to be a walk or a conversation a few weeks out where we talk about, do we need to do anything or is everything just fine? And the funny part is, we can't react to the first day. We need to sort of let the whole play out and really what we've got it, if it was windier and a little more sunny and a little bit more bouncy, we'd get better feedback on what we're actually trying to achieve. So if we get a day like that, that's the day we'll pay attention to. Ian, Andrew, thank you so much for joining me. A really fascinating

chat. Congratulations on all your success. Thank you for having me on. This is an honor. I really appreciate that. Thank you, my friend. Take care and have a great weekend. Thank you. It won't take long to tell you Neutrals ingredients. Vodka, soda, natural flavors. So what should we talk about? No sugar added? Neutral. Refreshingly simple. Welcome to the Ben Mulrooney Show.

I don't think you're going to get a lot of pushback in certain circles that the federal bureaucracy is too big. Just earlier on the show, Sharon Carr, who is a very proud and active member of the Liberal Party, said it's way too big. And so our next guest, Jeff Russ, has a humble and modest proposal for the Carney liberals. Fire the bureaucrats. That's the title of his article in the National Post. And we're going to see if there's maybe a little more nuance to that. Jeff, welcome to the show. Hey, Ben, thanks for having me once again. Oh, so tell me a level set for us. How big is our bureaucracy and maybe

give us give us some context comparing it to other countries. So essentially about 22% of our workforce works for the government. And we like to stereotype Europe as being a big bureaucratic behemoth. Italy has 13% of the workforce in the public service. So think about that we have nearly double that of Italy. And exactly. But it wasn't always like that. Right. There was a I mean, that when Justin Trudeau took over that began the ramp up to where we are today. Yeah, absolutely. They turned it into

a white collar, you know, welfare program for graduates and managers. I mean, I remember when I was a kid living in Ottawa, we talked about talk with my parents about the, you know, working for the government. I said, I remember asking my dad, like, what's it like? Well, why would someone work for the government? Well, he said, it's two paths in life, you can either go work for the government where you're not gonna make as much money, but you'll probably have a job for a very, very long time. Or you can go into the private sector where you will make more money,

but you don't necessarily have the job security. And now we're living in a time where if you want to make more money than your analog on the private on the other side of the fence, you go into the public sector and you probably have a job for life. So you get the best of both worlds from the government. Yes, well, thankfully, Mark Carney has canned about 10 grand. I don't want to go to appeal losing their jobs, but even just to cut away a little bit at this bureaucratic state is a good move.

Yeah. Yeah. But but your what is what is the contention that you put forth in your article? I would say that it is a it is a rival. I don't know what the word I'm looking for. But anyway, it is not good that the public service has grown at twice the level of the private sector. And that's nationwide. And it's terrible that in BC, we have 0.5% private sector job growth and 22% public sector. Think about that for a second.

How bad is this economy that the public sector produces more jobs in BC per capita? Well, let me play devil's advocate for a moment. Like if you are of the liberal mindset as to what a government is supposed to do, then you probably believe that there is always more a government can do. There's always another program. There's always another hill to climb. There's always another project to build.

And therefore you can't do that in a vacuum. You need bureaucrats to staff those offices and to get the, so do the behind the scenes work so that those programs can get can get off off the ground. And so in in a liberal government, doesn't it make sense to have a bigger bureaucracy? Maybe in a liberal government, but not for the country, which programs I'm still waiting to see how the government functions better or how this country is in a better place since all these public sector hirings took off.

But there is one major problem though. We have 7% unemployment in this country and that number is even higher in Ontario. If we get rid of those jobs, what's that gonna do to the 7%? It's gonna go even higher. Well, I think you're seeing much more of those job losses happening from the A, the trade

war, B, the fact that we can't, that projects are shutting down out west due to regulations on the resource industry. So I would put government regulations to blame for the loss of jobs more than government hirings. I remember on the campaign trail, Pierre Poliev had to temper his vision for a right sized bureaucracy by saying, I'm going to right size it through attrition. Earlier on, he was being bolder in his pronouncements that certain people were going to lose their jobs.

It can be, it's, it's a, it's a poison pill in a lot of ways that if you go up against the bureaucracy, you might, you might walk away limping. Well, he didn't do them a whole ton of good considering the liberals swept Ottawa in the federal election, including his own writing. So, but yeah, but one of the reasons, well, exactly, he tried to temper the argument and he lost in his writing in no small part

to the fact that it doubled in size and that doubling came with a whole lot of bureaucrat voters in that riding and they did not like his message none too much. Yes, they're very sensitive. I remember people were warning about this years ago that you can't go after the public sector because his riding is Carlton.

So even attrition was enough. So they're quite sensitive about these things. Well, I got some nasty. I got some nasty comments on X about it. But people forget I used to work in the public service. I'll be it as an intern, but I did see it firsthand how it functions. And there were about half the people needed on that floor, including ourselves. We did not need the interns. We only needed half the people to run the like you had to run the floor is is the bloat everywhere or is it certain departments? It's probably everywhere.

If there was any indication of my time in the public service, I didn't work for a particularly important department and it was absolutely. Yeah, it was loaded to the gills. Yeah. What I don't get, Jeff, is that we've got the biggest public Yeah, what I don't get, Jeff, is that we've got the biggest public set of public sector far bigger than we need. And on top of that, we got $26 billion that we're responsible for, for consultants that we're bringing in. I'm not quite sure how, how anybody can justify that.

No, you absolutely cannot justify that it's just programs for the sake of creating programs. I don't understand the mentality, but some people think it's correct. And I can only hope that the new Prime Minister Carney will have some course correction on that. Well, I think he's gonna have to because the Parliamentary Budget Office is essentially telling him

he's gonna have to do something different. They crunched his numbers and said, you can't balance your spending on on the backs of attrition from the saving money from attrition from the public sector. It's not enough. You've got too many promises that you've made to too many places. And because of that, you're going to have to do something more than just wait for people to retire. Yes, well, if the past if the past show government was any

indication, they don't really care what the parliamentary budget officer says. So perhaps this will be another improvement for Carney. Yeah. I, I, I kind of think he has to listen, right? He's like, he's an institutions guy. He believes, and he has been the head of some big ones. And so he wants us to respect him because he ran those institutions. So so too should he give respect to the parliamentary budget office and the people that staff it and the and the work that they do, don't you think? No, I completely agree. And I also believe that the best way you can respect the public service is to make it better and leaner. Same ways if you care about your friend and he's eating McDonald's all the time, you tell them to stop eating McDonald's all the time. Yeah, well,

McDonald's all the time you tell them to stop eating McDonald's all the time. Yeah, exactly. I mean, those jobs aren't don't exist for the purpose of employment, or at least they shouldn't. They are they are purpose built jobs. You and if if the purpose can't be justified, then the job shouldn't exist. It's not it's not heartless to say somebody shouldn't have a job if that job actually should not exist. to say somebody shouldn't have a job if that job actually should not exist. Completely agree.

It's like completely like the public service is a tool it's meant to accompany growth in the country population and it's supposed to grow on an as you need basis. Not as I said, as a white collar welfare program which is what it's become. But I guess the positive would be if people were to lose their jobs, a lot of these people are, you know, they've got training and certain skills that are portable into the public,

into the private sector, are they not? Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's what we're all hoping Mark Carney catalyzes and allows for the development of a new entrepreneurial wave in this country so that the people who are working for the government right now could pivot into one of those new businesses or growth businesses or businesses in Canada that wants to expand. That would be the ideal situation, I think. Absolutely. And if you look at the way they seem to want to unlock national projects and mining natural gas, maybe an oil pipelines, people forget you generate about the same number of jobs in offices in cities as you do out in the bush or out in the mines,

there's a huge white car component to the resource industry. And so maybe there's a bunch of jobs available there. They can finally get the economy moving. I mean, Ford is unlocking the, you know, that ring of fire in Northern Ontario. So I guess we'll see what happens. All right, Jeff, Russ, thank you so much for joining us. It's always important to highlight important stories like this. I'm glad that you did the work for us. Thank you, Ben. The best high-concept sci-fi rig of them all in the universe is back.

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