The Ben Mulroney Show - Lottery lump sum or annuity? Also, Seattle and the big gay soccer match

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

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known for his powerful worship songs heard around the world, including so will I and gratitude. Share the wonder of Christmas with friends and family at Roy Thompson Hall. Tickets are on sale now at Salvationist.ca slash Christmas. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show on this 11th of December 2025. Thank you so much. for joining us on Thursday for the Thursday edition. We got one more, and then it's the weekend.

Please welcome to the show, Amy Siegel, our video producer. Hello, how are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm great. Dave Spargal, our technical producer, how are you, sir? I'm good. Fantastic.

And not here in the flesh, but certainly in spirit, is Mike Drillet, our intrepid producer. I'm looking over at your chairs if you're there. I am too. Yes. Well, he casts a wide shadow. Mike Drillet, how are you? I'm good. I need to get one of those giant cardboard cutouts.

Yes. For when I'm not there to be able to put there, just so you can stare at me. I still look over. I'll have those eyes that follow you wherever you go. You already have those, man. Yeah, I know, but in the cardboard cutout. Never change.

I don't think they make cardboard that tall. Yeah, they don't make cardboard that tall. And we're trying to lower our carbon footprint on this show, and that's just going to put us over the top. Every now and then there's a story in the news that you just know is going to make people, people pick sides, right? People are going to, you're either on one side of the debate or the other. There's a woman who won the lottery, 20-year-old lottery winner, and she had a couple

of options. Take a million bucks up front or a thousand bucks a week for the rest of her life. And she took a thousand bucks a week for the rest of her life, and I don't think she was right. I don't think she was right. Who here amongst us? part of the crew thinks that she picked the right way. I do. Spargalah, tell me why. Because if you have a million right in the bank, you're just going to keep spending, spending, spending.

And then that way, if you have a thousand dollars a week, hey, I can plan out my budget here. I can put this towards rent. I can do this for groceries and whatever. And then put the rest in a savings account. If you have kids, you can put it for a college fund. There's a lot of math involved, obviously. But I would rather have $1,000 a week

than just a million in the bank. But you can have $1,000 a week. if you put it in the bank and you take out $1,000 a week. How much do you make, though, a year? But you're making interest on the million dollars.

It depends what you invest in, yes. Yeah, but even if it's just sitting there and accruing interest at 2% you're still making, what, 20 grand a year? I would love with 2% interest. Have you seen interest first? Yeah, well, yeah, okay, but my point is that that's your money.

The way I figure it is you won that money is your money. Yep. And rather than sitting in somebody else's account or earning interest or them investing it, you should be investing. I don't know, man. I disagree. I'd rather have the four grand a month.

That's only $52,000 a year. $52,000. I mean, listen, it's a nice piece of supplemental income, for sure. Yeah. But you could have that if you had a million dollars in the bank. So there were some people who did some work on this, and they said, this is one of those times where taking the money up front is better.

Even after taxes, if you invest all the money, you're going to make more than $52,000 yearly from your poor. portfolio. A thousand bucks weekly in 20 years is going to be nothing due to inflation anyway. Well, that's, you know what? He's not wrong. You're going to get a thousand bucks in 20 years. It's going to be worth 500 bucks. What if you die early? So I did the math. Yes. I did the math. Of course you did. Of course I did. Well, I did. Well, you're a good producer. Yeah, but the internet did the math. I'm not doing math myself. But here it is. So if you had, if $52,000 a year, okay, uh, it works out to, if to get the million bucks, it's not just over

19 years to get to that. Okay. to the million dollars. But if you're investing that $1 million and you're smart with it, and I see what Dave is saying, but if you just invested to say, I'm going to still live my life and get a job and do all that stuff and just put this money in there to invest. And I put it, I put, I put, I set it at 5% for a return, which is kind of middling. You can get 7, 8%. I mean, if you get 7, 8%.

In a good year, you might get 10, 12%. Yeah. So I put 5% because that's actually kind of low. After 20 years, that $1 million is actually $2.6. Oh, wow. Yeah, so there you go. So I will ask you again, Dave Spargold, do you want $1,000 or do you want $2.6 million?

I want $1,000 a week. You still want $1,000 a week, man. Because you don't trust yourself to spend... I really don't. Okay, so if I won... I know we're on time here. But like, if I won the million dollars right away, guarantee, dude, okay, I'm paying off my debt.

Then I'm going on a trip to New Zealand. I'm going to sporting events. I'm just going to spend, spend, spend, spend, spend. That way, with the $1,000, like, okay, dude, I know I can pay, here's $2,500 for rent. That's two weeks I don't have to worry about. And then my groceries and whatever. I see what you mean. I understand.

But you got to know yourself and you have to have some discipline. Yeah, we're going to ask Eric Cam. Oh, that's a great. That's a great idea. He just texted me and he just said, you never take the annuity. Never, ever, ever. Because it's your money.

You take the lump sum pay out every single time. He'll explain why. All right. Well, listen, we promised you an update on a story we talked about yesterday, about a woman from Regina with a rare parathyroid disease. Her name is Jolene Van Alsteen. And she had been approved for medical assistance in dying after years of debilitating symptoms and long waits for specialists in surgery in Canada.

This Glenn Beck in the United States got wind of this. And he made a ton of hay. He was a podcaster. He was a huge podcaster. the state's right-wing podcaster, said he'd fly her down to the U.S. and help her get surgery. So the question is, what happened after that big viral moment? It sounded like this American was coming in and swooping in and saving the day for this poor Canadian woman who's health had failed her. And also, you could argue, the health care system had failed her.

So, well, let's listen to Glenn Beck in his own words. her husband reached out and and DM'd me yesterday and said what is happening we're hearing about what is are you for real and I'm like yeah well he's he is for real but but we need to temper the excitement if you are excited that this could lead to some last minute miracle for her he's not saying he's going to pay for it. He said he's offered to send a plane for her to the United States, put her and her husband up in a hotel, and help out with the surgery costs.

There are a couple of problems, though. Is it curable? Well, yeah, but they don't even know if they can find a doctor to do the surgery. But let's listen to one of the problems that presented itself yesterday. The problem is they don't have passports. These guys live in Saskatchewan. They're just normal, you know, they're not rich people by any stretch of the imagination. I don't even know what he does, but they're just normal people, and they don't have a passport.

So yesterday, my staff reached out to the Treasury, and not sorry, the State Department. And Stu, Ricky, just remind me, I'll call Marco Rubio myself today after the show is over. and then I've just texted the president as well to see if he would get involved. We need a medical waiver so she can come in and see a doctor and have this surgery done. Look, it's always nice to know people. It's very, this should,

we should never think this is normal that somebody can just text the Secretary of State and the president. It's wonderful that you can do that for her, but like this shouldn't happen. Like, come on, right? Like, you don't want that to be the norm where certain people have access

to the people making the decisions and others don't. And we also have to remember why he's doing this, right? He's not... Well, yeah, there's that. But there's also, you know, he thinks that our version of health care

is the worst version of health care and he wants to highlight how bad it is that this woman is literally, if she doesn't get help, by the 7th of December, she's going to be walking into a medically assistance in dying clinic, I guess, or whatever it is, and she ain't walking out. And so he wants to highlight that

to ensure that it never happens in the United States. I'm sure there's a part of him that is doing this out of the goodness of his heart. There are people who are viewing it cynically. If this leads to her getting the surgery and not having to avail herself of medical assistance and dying, then that's a great thing.

I don't care what Glenn Beck. believes. I don't care what his motives are. The end result is this woman's life was saved and her life was made better and her husband keeps his wife. There are people in this country who are very precious and they are taking great offense. We don't do this.

Weird out of you, looking down their nose at Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck's doing something that the Canadian system can't do and therefore let's just give them room to operate because there could be a miracle in the offing. Courtesy of Donald Trump.

All right. Hey, We need more energy to fuel our AI and electric futures. I mean, that's undeniable. You're not going to believe the numbers when we tell them to you after the break. There is no denying that we need more energy, but are we ready for it? That discussion is next. on select nights now through January 3rd. Step into a winter wonderland

filled with millions of dazzling lights, festive shows, rides, and holiday treats. Plus, Coca-Cola is back with Canada's kindness community, celebrating acts of kindness nationwide with a chance at 100,000 donation for the winning community and a 2026 holiday caravan stop. Learn more at canadaswunderland.com. Build, play, and display with the 3-1 Megablock's preschool sets.

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You might be watching us on YouTube or you might have found us on social media. That's where we are because that's where you are. And we say, thank you. If you are like most people, then you have been grabbing at the lowest hanging AI fruit. The easiest and most accessible AI around, which is chat GPT or the AI enabled version of Google or any number of other whatever they're called LLMs that allow you to ask

far more complex questions, get far more fulsome answers from those things than you have ever gotten from a search engine before. And a lot of us think that they are one and the same. It's just a smarter, better search engine. That is not the case. And it is not the case on one very, very important metric.

And that metric is how much energy is consumed per search. According to recent data, one AI query can use 10 times the energy of a traditional Google search. So as we're doing this more and more, there's more and more energy that's being eaten up off the grid that would normally go to other things. And we've got to figure out where that power is going to come from as we ramp up the AI revolution. So here to talk about this is Jim Caligiris, Vice President of Secure Power at Schneider Electric Canada. Jim, welcome to the show. Ben, thank you for having me.

I'm glad to be here. Okay, so listen, this is a, I remember something similar being talked about when Bitcoin was being mined, that it required a ton of energy and a ton of cooling for all the servers. And we don't talk about that so much anymore, but this feels like it's going to be so much more significant in terms of the energy output required than anything before it. That's a valid statement. And in fact, I'd say Bitcoin is actually kind of the infancy of where AI was born. Because if you look back at Bitcoin, the kind of technology they were using was very much similar.

It was Nvidia GPUs that were driving this algorithm that needed to be computed to kind of manage all the transactions that were happening globally. And I think that evolved into what we now know is AI. And AI is using, like you mentioned, about 10 times in some instances, even more the amount of power that was used for regular compute when we were. We're doing typical, simple Google searches. So, yeah, the power conundrum is real. So, and where, what is the power being used on? Is it cooling, from what I know about data centers, AI data centers, which apparently we're all trying to stake our claim to those.

And, you know, you've got places like Saskatchewan and Alberta, they want to be the home. Northern Ontario want to be the homes for so many of these data centers. But one of the reasons those places are so attractive is because so much of the total cost of running an AI data center is the cooling of the center? That is also correct. Look, I think what people need to understand is that the compute that's required in these facilities now is so large that it generates so much heat. And, you know, physics would tell you that heat in means you got to get heat out. The only way you can get heat out is either you pump the hot air out or you find ways to, you know, neutralize it with cold

air. So there is a huge amount of air conditioning that gets put into these facilities that drives the energy consumption up, but the other part of it is that these actual devices, the GPU, the computers that are being used, are actually using a ton more energy as well because they're doing so many more calculations than they were traditionally doing to get this data to you at a much faster pace. And look, like we said, we are at the infancy of this, where a lot of people are just are using it the way I described off the top of the segment. But as we get more sophisticated, as the tools become more sophisticated, as they become

more integrated into our everyday lives, we are going to be using AI almost from the moment we get up to the time we go to sleep and probably while we're sleeping as well. So have there been any projections as to how much of our energy grid is going to be taken over by AI? Well, I think some of the numbers are staggering. You know, you're hearing that in the next by 2030 is going to be, you know, an increase of 165% relative to where it currently is. Right now, I think data is.

centers use between two and three percent globally, that number is going to get into double digits very fast. So it is something that we need to definitely do responsibly and look at how we solve some of these issues for sure. Yeah, but correct me if I'm wrong, because these things are going to be increasingly valuable and increasingly vital, right? These tools are going to be vital, which means they're going to be up there with, they're going to be prioritized on the grid. So if all of a sudden the AI compute required is it requires more energy than we necessarily have on the on the grid at any one time could that mean that we're going to sacrifice uh people having the lights on in

their homes uh in favor of keeping the AI up and running look it's i think it's a real concern but i think if we build these effectively and efficiently and responsibly i think we solve a lot more problems and worrying about having the lights on and i think that's not going to be an issue and I'll tell you why because at Schneider Electric, for example, we work on solutions where we create a power network. What does that mean is, you know, if we look future, out into the future, we're going to end up in a scenario where general constituents in a community are going to be part of that power grid and creating energy for the power grid. It's going to be what's called a prosumer market. So what you'll have is you'll have a bunch of homes that not only are

efficient operating smartly for themselves, but they're going to be able to give power back to the grid. So we're going to find ways to increase grid capacity through that. The more important thing is we're going to, right now, if you were to kind of take an inventory of all the buildings, infrastructure that's out there, facilities that are running power, there's probably a 30 percent, you know, anywhere between a 20 to 30 percent wastage in power because of phantom loads or inefficiencies in how they're being built or aiding equipment. So we have to kind of right size all these buildings, build resiliency in them, drive efficiencies in them. And then what that does is it allows us to focus that energy in this area,

which is potentially going to make everyone's lives a lot easier. Talk to me about the future of these data centers because the more I read and the more I watch, I'm being told the future of these AI data centers is in space, in orbit around Earth, always in the sun. So it's being powered by solar electricity, the power of the sun, which I believe is six times more efficient in space than it is on Earth.

And, of course, it never goes into the shadows. the other side of it is cool. So that's where you get your cooling from. Is this a pipe dream or is this something that is just around the corner? I mean, there's companies that are actually exploring this. If you were to kind of go back a few years, you know, maybe in 2020, 2020, 2021, I think it was Microsoft, one of the large hypersal scalers, who started to put data centers, the seabed of the ocean.

And that was for the same kind of reasons why people are now exploring, you know, out of orbit data centers. and that is, you know, very good cooling options, extreme power options. So when you look at it that way, yeah, they're absolutely going to explore it. Now, is it real? Is it going to happen tomorrow? I think it's more of a discussion around what is lacking on Earth that's causing us to think about having to go into space. And that is the power conundrum, the cooling conundrum, the water resource conundrum.

So I think if we solve for some of those things on Earth, which I think we can, it'll be much more interested to kind of do it. here than it is to send it up into orbit because the cost alone just to get stuff up there is massively different than what it is to go here. Yeah, Jim, and listen, and I appreciate that it's good that we're thinking about these things now so that we can build and build for those needs, not just the needs that we have today, but the needs that we're going to have in 10, 15, 20 years. But can we also count on the technology improving where perhaps the AI data centers of the future won't require the cooling that they require today.

They won't require the power that they're requiring today. I think we're seeing it now. We're starting to see it with some of the solutions that we've come up with, Hed Schneider. We're starting to see it with some of the innovation that's being driven by AI itself. Absolutely. I think that we are headed in that direction. You know, even today, we go into data centers

where we can put in some AI software that allows the equipment to kind of be managed in a certain way where we're driving efficiencies on the cooling applications. on the water utilization, on the energy effectiveness. So we can do that stuff now, and we can do it in a way where it makes a substantive difference. And that's sort of the message that we're trying to get out into the market is that, hey, let's get really responsible to how we build them now so that we can kind of give ourselves a little bit of runway to get the resiliency on the grid up, give us a chance to build our infrastructure, give us a chance for people to kind of manage their homes in a way that is not necessarily going to happen if we don't start doing these things. So, yeah, that is absolutely on the horizon.

And AI is going to help with all of that evolution as well. Jim Caligeros, thank you so much. I didn't know which way this conversation was going to go. And I'm glad that it did not steer into panic and the sky is falling. But rather, we just need to plan and be deliberate as we build out the future. Thank you very much. It's a big pleasure. Thank you so much for the time.

All right, tis the season for bargain shopping. Has this holiday season been the biggest. bargain hunt in recent memory. We'll find out next. You are listening to The Ben Mulroney Show, but this show is nothing without our world-class guests who join us each and every day. They take time out of their busy schedules. They take time out of what they do for a living that makes them the reason we want them as guests to then share and impart their wisdom. on whatever dumb questions I have for them. And here's a prime example of one of those people. Dr. Eric Cam Economics Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Welcome, Doctor. I'm just honored that when you were trying to find a world-recognized expert and nobody answered, you called me. Well, it got shot speed down, bud. Thanks so much. So the past few days was will they or won't they with the Bank of Canada, were they going to raise the interest rates? And, you know, it occurred to us, Eric, that we hear a very similar,

language out of the press in the United States as it relates to the Fed. But I can't believe that the Fed and the Bank of Canada are exactly alike. And so I was hoping that you could give us a little bit of a tutorial on the, I like a comparing contrast between the Bank of Canada and the Fed. Well, yeah, we're going to do that. And then we're going to back up the truck for a second. But to your first question, they're not the same. And in fact, the only thing that's the same about them is their title.

central banks. But in Canada, Ben, people don't realize this and they should. We have one mandate, price stability. We target the inflation rate. But in the United States, the Fed has what's called a dual mandate. They target an inflation rate and they also target a full employment number. And so they're effectively juggling two balls. We are juggling one ball. And that's why you sometimes see the two banks diverge on whether they raise or lower interest rates because the United States has two things to balance. They don't want the economy to get inflationary because then you lose your purchasing power, but they also want to make sure the country continues to grow so that they can hire enough people to hit their employment number. For better or for worse,

Canada's never had employment as a bank target. Some people have pushed for it, but right now all Canada has to do, and I use that in quotes, but all it has to do is manage price stability. So the two banks are very different. Yeah, it is. But now, well, let's look at what the Fed did. They dropped rates in the United States, even though the Bank of Canada stayed put. And look, if the Bank of Canada's mandate is price stability, then I don't know that they've necessarily been living up to their mandate recently.

We got, you know, inflation and the food inflation and, you know, the prices are skyrocketing, all left, right and center on all sorts of consumer goods. So how does the bank can to determine whether or not it's doing a good job? Well, that's an excellent question, and they won't tell you that. But what they do is they do put out a monetary policy report a few times even tell you how close to their targets they've come. And I'm going to say two things. Number one is that you're right.

They've had a bit of a sketchy record since COVID. However, you cannot imagine the big steaming pile of, you know, what they were handed during COVID by Trudeau and asked basically to solve this problem and solve it quickly. And so they didn't do a great job of it because they went up too fast with the rates and then they came down too fast with the rates. But they were really asked to do an impossible task was to fix the level of COVID. its spending and that frankly would be impossible for any central bank ben so are you saying that

given the mountain that the bank of canada had to climb that even though it may not be living up to its mandate it's done admirably uh it's done admirably with the caveat that it did it way too fast right but again you have one thing they have to do ben they want to get inflation to between 1 and 3%. And so they did it as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, that is on the backs of Canadians. But that's their mandate. They had to do it. Now, what about the Fed? They've got a dual mandate. How have they done acquitting themselves on those two fronts? They've done much better because employment numbers until very recently in the states have looked very strong. Plus, they took a different path. Canada's had a holy war on inflation. They said, not so fast. Let's

rates a little bit higher and see what happened. And what happened, of course, was trillions of dollars of capital flight going into the United States because people realize I'll park my money in the U.S. where I earn more interest. Now, Ben Mulroney. Yes, sir. Let's talk about interest for a second. I hope Spargal is listening. Yes. Oh, yes. Because he's wrong. The dumbest. And we're talking about a conversation we had a few segments ago about if you win the lottery, Do you take the lump sum at the beginning, or do you take an annuity a little bit every week, a little bit every month?

All right. So, Spargal, I'm glad if you're going to step in it, really step in it. And he couldn't have done it worse because money now is worth more than money later because of inflation and investment opportunities. A dollar today is always worth more than a dollar spread out over time, right? But a lump sum, you can invest it and earn more than the slow drip. and that's Dave of weekly payments because compound interest works on two principles number one how much do you invest what is the rate of interest and how much time can you give it to maximize those things you always take a lump sum and if Dave doesn't believe me ask him what he would do

if I offered him a dollar today that doubles every day for a month or I offered him a million dollars he would probably take the million no if you take the money that doubles it turns into 30 or 40 million. The problem with Dave is that he is a lot like a lot of people who don't truly understand the rate of interest and that's why schools have to teach financial literacy. I mean, I tell Dave all the time

you just don't get it, man. You just don't get it. Yeah. I get what you're saying, Eric. It's just I don't really trust myself to because I know the money is, you know what I get? The money is there. There's a million dollars in your account or whatever. I know you can put it away and I know you can like lock it up and whatever, but I just

don't trust myself to like Because it's there, right? But I would also say, okay, I get that. You don't trust yourself, but you can teach yourself to trust yourself. You can, but it's going to take a while. I don't know why you would put so much trust in this faceless corporation to hold on to your money. Faceless corporation. I don't know who it is.

I don't know. He's right, Dave. He's right. You know what? What happens to the person that has set up this annuity for you goes bankrupt and your annuity goes down the toilet? And you don't have to be disciplined. You don't have to be disciplined.

Take the money and give it to any of the very sensational investment houses in this city and there will be disciplined for you. And then, lastly, speaking of disciplined, Mr. Malruni, yes, sir. If we're going to talk deli, you've got to invite on a Jewish person, you did, I give you credit. The best delicatessen in Toronto is Pancers on Bathurst Street. And I will, I've been there. I've been there.

It's delicious. Some of the best fries in the city, too. Absolutely. It's unbelievable. and you can people watch because some of the most famous Jewish Trontonians are there all the time. But you know what? To your point about Lester's, close second, Wolfie's on Shepard.

But I'm glad you said that. And I don't own Panthers. I don't get any money from Panthers. That is, if you want anything from smoke meat to Kenishas to anything, that's your go-to. All right. Thank you very much for that. In case anybody from around the country is listening, Panthers Deli in Toronto is where you go for Smoke Meat, French.

I like the basic smoke meat, French fries. and a black cherry cola. Okay, let's talk about this thing that's been happening around the country because after Donald Trump did what he did to Canada, every province that had sort of a centralized buying power for alcohol took all their American alcohol off the shelves and housed it, warehoused it somewhere and said, no soup for you. And then Nova Scotia and now Manitoba have decided, you know what, we're not going to warehouse this stuff anymore.

We're going to sell it and we're going to give a portion of the proceeds to charity. I think that's a brilliant, lovely idea. It's a great way to get those, that booze off the books, don't you think? It's a tremendous idea. It's a no-brainer. It has no downside. There's, you know, listen, I know everyone thinks in their mind they're waging war against the United States and everyone wants to do their part. But that doing their part thing falls apart if you see Canadian prices on something way more expensive than American prices.

So, A, don't punish your family because you're mad at Donald Trump. and B, yes, if we can do this and we can sell that alcohol, especially at this time of year, we've got to follow the lead of other provinces. This is a great idea. Well, yeah, and Ontario is currently sitting on $80 million worth of American booze that we are paying to warehouse. And I get, I get, earlier in the show, I differentiated between performative and symbolic. To me, it feels like there's a difference between those two things. I appreciate the symbolism of what Doug Ford has done

but I think now is the time to take advantage of this moment especially the holiday season sell that booze give it to charity and make everybody happy Eric Cam thank you so much for being here appreciate it just don't give it to Dave

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You there? No, he's not. All right. I think he's muted. He's muted. Maybe he'll join us in a moment. But we wanted to talk about FIFA. We wanted to talk about the World Cup.

and we want to talk about the most the choicest, choicest, most beautiful, most wonderful story to come out of FIFA. It's not the draw, it's not who's playing where. There is a little bit of who's playing where. Mike, you there? I am here. All right, I want you

to join me as part of this conversation, because this is incredible. It's the first FIFA World Cup controversy and boy, it's a dozy. It's a great one, isn't it? It's probably the most remarkable thing that I saw come out yesterday

and I was like somebody set this up yeah well well I don't I don't know yeah so you set it up though so yeah so look as you as everyone knows I mean if you don't if unless you've been living under Iraq you know that June is pride month pretty much everywhere right

and in cities in progressive cities like Toronto and Montreal San Francisco New York it's a big deal the cities get up for it you got lots of lots of rainbow flags and culminating in a big pride parade and there's a lot to celebrate. I mean, we've been critical of certain aspects of, you know, what is pride has morphed into.

But by and large, it's still, it's a great, it's a great celebration of people who had to fight to be seen and respected. And Seattle is one of the most progressive cities in North America. And so they got very excited because they picked June 20, months ago as their official LGBTQ Pride Night with rainbow flags, installations, community events, the whole package. And they decided that on that night, when Seattle was hosting a World Cup game, a match,

it was going to be the Pride Night. It was going to be a celebration of all things queer and lesbian and gay and bisexual and trans and plus and all the stuff. And so that was the plan. And they set it in stone, right? And, like, we'll come back to how progressive Seattle is in a moment. But that's the lay of the land, right? They got very excited about it.

They announced it. They told everybody. And they started working towards making this happen. Okay, so that's the Seattle side. Okay. That's one hand. And you would expect that one hand knows what the other hand is doing. Not in this case.

Because now you go to FIFA. And the tournament dropped. and eventually they figured out who was going to be playing in that match in that city and of all the countries that you could pick

of all the countries that you could pick to be playing in a pride match a match celebrating the LGBTQ AIA plus

struggle, spirit and ethos and the fact that they're here they're queer and get used to it Egypt and Iran

That's right Two of the most homophobic and two of the most belligerent towards the gay community nations out there will be playing in a gay pride match

Let's listen to Fox News having fun with this one Outkick with a headline Seattle's woke World Cup agenda in shambles with pride match set between countries with anti-gay laws. Oops. The city intends to kick off Pride Weekend with a match featuring Egypt and Iran. Iran, the maximum punishment for same-sex relations is the death penalty.

In Egypt, morality laws are used to suppress gay rights and relationships. The other option is Qatar, also with strong anti-gay laws. Democrat mayor elect Katie Wilson in Seattle is promoting the World Cup schedule saying with matches on Juneteenth and pride we get to show the world that in Seattle everyone is welcome even countries that hate gays does she read

look this is a mitrolet this feels like the living embodiment of that question that's asked what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object because that's a really interesting

Who's going to blink, right? Like, I can promise you, Egypt and Iran ain't going to blink. These are countries. Iran enforces the death penalty, and Egypt regularly arrests gay people under debauchery laws. Leaders in both federations publicly condemned associating the teams with pride events. So they ain't changed in their stripes.

What's going to happen here? Is the mayor of Seattle, who is uber-woke socialist, is she going to she's not changing her stripes she wants to make a point she is hammering this home so then she is going to be able to say this is an issue and yeah it should be an issue it should what how they treat the gaze over in egypt and and iran is horrific yep but i don't know if this is the right the right place to do this uh it's it's really this is a troubling one I think it's going to be interesting. And what are they going to do?

Are they going to really gay it up, as it were, at this game? Is it going to be rainbows in the stands? There's going to be drag queens, really, like, putting it in their face? Well, wow. So, yeah. So look, I'm going to believe, I'm going to choose to believe that when Seattle put this match on their schedule and said, this is going to be the launch of Pride Weekend. I believe they had the best of intentions.

I'm not going to sit here and say that they were machiavellian about it and were hoping to God they could get two regressive regimes in the stadium on that day. I don't believe you'd have to be a sick, sick person to try to orchestrate something like that. However, I think that there's going to have, hmm, I think there's going to have to be something. I think they're going to, they might keep the pressure on for as long as they can to highlight, how intolerant these two countries are towards gay people and then at some point I think the city is going to have to blink

right because if they think that actual sports fans and if they think actual soccer fans who have been waiting for this want any part of this celebration to be a culture war they wanted to be a war on the pitch between two soccer teams You know, like, I get it in the periphery, yes, fight the culture wars. Absolutely, if that's what you want to do.

But when it comes to the actual match, somebody is going to have to blink, and I just don't see it being Iran and Egypt. And so if they have a good PR team on the municipal side, I'm sure they can extract as much juice, social justice juice as they can out of this in the lead-up, and then they're going to have to let it go. I think, what do you think? I think that, well, there might, there may not be anything planned in the stands. It'll all be outside, but people will make their way in. But FIFA has that dilemma because they allowed Qatar to be able to enforce their rigid rules about homosexuality. And a bunch of Europeans, a bunch of people brought in, like they tried to put the arm bands on team players.

Yeah. And some Wales fans brought in hats that were removed. So people snuck stuff in. really tried to push the envelope. So, yeah, I mean, no matter what they try to do, it'll be a political event. Look, if the fans want to dress up with the rainbow flags and pride paraphernalia, that's one thing, right? But if it's an official thing, right? Like, if the city puts a, make sure that they paint a pride flag on the pitch or something like that. I don't know how that'll, I don't know what will happen, which is why I think they've got tons of time between now and then to really take advantage of this square off that they have, right?

And if they can take advantage of it now, then they can, right before they can say, you know what, we made our point, we exposed how homophobic they are, and now because, you know, we put the politics down and we all play soccer, now we're going to play soccer. And then if the fans want to come in and wave the flag, they can do that. But I don't think it could be official. Does that make sense? It does make sense It won't be official

You're going to get The politicians Want to do something Greg Brady From our morning show Here in Toronto Said he suggested What will Olivia Chow do

Because it's Pride month Yeah When the FIFA World Cup's happening She's going to do something big You just know she will I don't know if she will I just I think she will

I think she will But that mayor of Seattle Yeah I will I want to stamp myself one of the best players to ever play this game. Wednesdays on Global. That's how you're doing. This is their moment.

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