The Ben Mulroney Show - Pierre Poilievre says it's time for a "3-strikes and you're out rule" in Canada

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Pierre Poilievre says it's time for a "3-strikes and you're out rule" in Canada with Guest: Joseph Neuberger, Neuberger And Partners Criminal Lawyers, host of the podcast “Not On Record” 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

It's the Hump Day edition of the Ben Mulrooney Show. Welcome to Wednesday. Thank you so much for listening to everybody in London, to everybody in Toronto, and to all points beyond on the streaming app, the iHeartRadio app as well, as in podcast form. Thank you for taking time out of your day. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for helping us build the Ben Mulrooney Show into what I hope becomes an undeniable place for people to come and share discussion, share their opinions and tell us their stories. Speaking of telling stories, we were so lucky to be joined a couple of days ago by the great one Wayne Gretzky on the day after one of the unbreakable records in sport was broken. His career goal scoring record was broken by Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals and he joined us for a wide ranging conversation. And I was so pleased as a matter of fact yesterday I was driving around I had to park the car because I was getting a FaceTime from Ty Domi whom I've had the pleasure of getting to know personally over the past year or so. And I knew him a little bit before, but really

we've spent some time together and he's a lovely guy. Anyway, I pull over to take this FaceTime and he wanted to tell me that he thought the interview was great and I start singing Wayne's praises and all of a sudden the camera flips around and there's Wayne. So the two of them were hanging out and they just want to reach out to say it was that they enjoyed it, Wayne enjoyed it. And apparently I didn't know that I was the only guy to talk to him, like anywhere ever since the kerfuffle

that I think was unwarranted, the besmirching of his reputation, the challenging of his patriotism. I thought that was all unfair. He hasn't said a word to anybody. So I guess when he spoke with us, it made a little bit of a wave to the point that the Associated Press picked it up.

And because of that, it went everywhere. It really went everywhere. So I'm really glad that I was able to help Wayne tell his side in any way he wanted. I was not about to sit there and play somebody else's game by making suggestions and asking loaded questions. I think he deserves far more than that. And so I opened the door to him

and allowed him to walk through and do whatever he wanted on certain subjects. And I think he acquitted himself honorably as he has his entire career. And so that's all I'll say about that. But my hope is it will not be the last time we speak with Wayne or any great sports stars in the future. I love getting their insights

and I love talking to them about their games. And anyway, thank you to Wayne. And there we go. A little feather in our cap, we got picked up by the AP. Mark Carney has now gone on record with, I don't think anything that resembles a plan. It's a lot of words, but he's gonna turn Canada into an energy superpower.

Isn't that great? How's he going to do it? Well, let's listen to him. If we are going to build, and I am a proponent of building big energy infrastructure in this country, but if we are going to build big energy infrastructure in this country, there is a we in that. It is not imposed. It is not imposed by the federal government. It's not imposed by an opposition politician. It's not imposed by a company. It requires the support of, in the example you gave, in Energy East of Quebec, the other

provinces that are affected. It requires the support, the free, prior, and informed consent of First Nations. So that's the exact opposite, which is that coming together to build. That's not a plan. That's not a plan. There are stakeholders that you did not mention,

like Alberta, where a lot of this stuff comes from, that has told you in no uncertain terms what they require in order to build energy infrastructure. They've made a list and the top of the list is the repealing of the no new pipelines law, which is not what they call it to be fair, Bill C-69. Top of the list, get rid of it. Every single big company in that area

and in that field has echoed that sentiment. Get rid of Bill C-69. Who did you mention? You mentioned Quebec, okay? 60% of Quebecers today favor pipelines. For the first time, this is the moment, but instead you're focusing on, oh, well, we gotta make sure they're happy.

But you're laying the table oh, well, we got to, we got to make sure they're happy. You're laying the table, setting the table for a situation where they won't be happy. You can hear it in his voice, like, well, they've been skeptical in the past, so we got to get them on board. They're already on board, sir. So you got Alberta, you got Quebec, you got the energy companies, they're all on board. And you're saying you're going to do this without repealing the choke point that your government and it is your government put in place designed specifically to do this. I mean, part of Bill C-69 says you gotta do an assessment on, first of all,

the environmental assessment is onerous. But I think there's a part in there that talks about like gender assessment, the impact, the gender impact of pipelines. So you don't want to get rid of that, even though every stakeholder, most of the stakeholders say that's essential. And the one part of the country that has been a sticking point currently is on board. So give us your plan, sir. Don't say, oh, well, we got to get everybody on board. They're on board, sir. Everybody's on board.

What's your plan? He continues. What I've proposed, both at the First Minister's level and more broadly, is that we as a country use this crisis to identify those projects of national interest, many of which, not all of which, but many of which are energy infrastructure projects so that we can get those agreements, so that we can come together and we can accelerate. And last point, with respect to C-69, what I've also been clear about is the ability under C-69, not as it was, but as it is, and the Minister of Natural Resources, Mr. Wilkinson, is here, as it is

under his leadership, we have an ability to rely on, as appropriate, impact assessments that are performed at different levels of government. And that is part and parcel of how we can make this work. So I reject the question, but I hope I've provided some illumination. Thank you. Illumination? Illumination? You turn the lights off. We can't see.

Here's what I've noticed. And I hope that everyone is listening. It feels to me like when Mark Carney says, let me be perfectly clear, the next statement out of his mouth will be as opaque as it can get. Let me be perfectly clear as code for, I am now gonna toss big words at you

and you're gonna remember I'm a central banker, I'm the smartest guy in the room, so I'm gonna say a whole bunch of stuff that nobody is gonna understand because it really doesn't mean anything. That's what I heard. Now, I think I want to go a little bit long here because I do want to play this. Vashi Kapilous on CTV has been, I believe, acquitting herself very well during this campaign, calling out inconsistencies on both sides. She's been very fair. And she didn't pull any punches when she spoke with a liberal candidate specifically on the topic of

liquefied natural gas. Mr. Sousa, your government has signed, for example, I think it's four or five free trade agreements in the last ten years. And despite that, the portion of exports we send the United States has remained stagnant, if not slightly increased. When you talk about being an energy superpower, I was the reporter asking world leaders if they would take our LNG and they were responding positively. And then the question was asked of the former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Well, come on, like they want to buy it. What about that? And he explicitly said there was not a business case. So why should Canadians believe all of a sudden

a liberal government will do something differently? Okay, so that's the question. I think a fair question. Here's the answer. No, that's right. This is what you give a word salad answer, I should say gives a word salad answer as he would. He talked to she talked about LNG. He brought up breaking down interprovincial trade barriers. It was nonsense. Here's what she replied with. That doesn't really address, again, with respect, the substance of my question, which is, the things that the energy sector identifies

as standing in the way of trade diversification include C-69, include the emissions cap. They include the fact that your government explicitly said there's not a business case for doing this. So how are they and the rest of Canada supposed to believe all of a sudden you're going to sing from a different songbook? So actually we are having those collaborations, those discussions with respect to Indigenous communities and the provinces.

We are sitting down. We are having those conversations, recognizing what's at stake is to expand Canada's ability to export and to deliver on energy within Canada made alternatives. And we are looking at that and more will come in the platform as we go forward in terms of solutions, the complicated solutions we have in Canada through our Federation to enable success in expanding our energy roots. Yeah, again, that's not a plan. Those words don't mean anything.

Hi, I'm Donna Friesen from Global National. Life moves fast these days, and we want to make it even easier for you to get the news you need. That's why you can now get Global National every day as a podcast. The biggest stories of the day with analysis from award-winning global news journalists.

New episodes drop every day. So take this as your personal invitation to join us on the global national podcast. You can find it on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And contrary to what Kim Campbell once said, election campaigns are indeed a time to discuss policy and talk about ideas.

And there's a big idea that has been floated by Pierre Poliev just this morning. Before we get to it, let's just level set. Crime in this country is in a lot of places and in a lot of ways out of control. So how do we deal with it? Enter Pierre Poliev and his idea for repeat offenders, violent offenders. It's a three strikes and you're out policy. No nuance, no mitigating factors. If you've committed three of them in a row

and you are convicted of three of these crimes, 10 years minimum in jail, automatic. So to discuss this and whether or not it's a good idea, I don't have an opinion on it yet, is Joseph Neuberger of Neuberger Partners Criminal Lawyers, and he's also the host of the podcast, Not On Record. Joseph, thanks so much for joining us. My pleasure, Ben.

Thanks for having me on. So look, at this point, I'm willing to entertain anything, any idea that could help reduce crime in our cities. It's a fact. No one's going to dispute the numbers. Tell me why this is not necessarily the best way to address it. Well, it's reminiscent of what the Stephen Harper government did. And all of the three strikes here out, mandatory minimum sentences were all struck down eventually through significant litigation, Court of Appeals, Supreme Court of Canada, and we're all struck down. And so, it's just gonna cause more and

more litigation and grinding our cases in the system when there's a much more effective way to deal with these issues. And I'll just say this, I'm hoping it's more policy for votes. And when the conservative government forms a majority government, I'm hoping that they will think very carefully about this. Okay. All right. So let's assume it's a starting point.

Okay. Let's assume it's a thought piece. Okay. So what are more effective ways of dealing with the crime that we as a society have been hampered by? So first let's take a look at what's going on in our jails So we know that in Ontario alone we have about a 70 to 80 percent incarceration rates for people awaiting trial We have very high incarceration rates in Ontario higher per capita than New York State California and other US states.

We know that general deterrence is really not the factor. We need to denounce offenses and punish them for what they are. But when you talk about three strikes, you're out. It's three serious crimes. What type of crimes are we talking about? Are we talking about gun crimes, drug crimes? If we're talking about serious drug crimes and firearms offenses, people who would be their third time around do get significant sentences. We see people with

trafficking and fentanyl or heroin or cocaine with firearms and other offenses getting well into the double digits. So that's already going on. So I think this will add nothing to the sentencing regime. Okay. So where's the solution? Well, I think we got it. First of all, when you look at the stats from 2014 to now, our population has doubled. So with the, the GTHA is about 7.1 million people. You're going to have these issues. I think we need to look at a number of things, increasing budgets for policing and specialty crown units. Yeah. We need to be able to have police go out and do their bail checks so that they're not hampered by spending 19

million dollars on protests. They need to be doing their jobs and they don't have those resources. We also can tweak to some extent the bail provisions with respect to the most serious offenses and then I think we have to look at other factors, mental health, homelessness and our economy. People may go, what are you talking about our economy? Well, our economy has been in crisis for nine years. If you have people invested in their futures, unlike you who think, I get $300 to Jack Kachar, not much is going to happen to me under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, but I got nothing else going on for myself. If you get people invested in their education, invested in their lives, that they feel that they're going to be

able to be productive people who own a condominium or a home and have a chance in their lives, that they feel that they're going to be able to be productive people who own, you know, a condominium or a home and have a chance in this country. When you get them more interested in their, their economic success, they don't necessarily go towards gang activity. But we don't have that in Canada. As much as the liberals want to tell us we do, we don't. Yeah. No, and listen, I appreciate that there have to be that there has to be a multi-pronged vision here. And you're right, economic opportunity makes crime less attractive. But it just feels like we're living in a time where there's no sense of deterrence,

there's no fear of repercussion. And based on the narrative that the conservative government is putting out, you've got a handful of inveterate criminals who are using sort of a, there's an in and out policy. They get arrested, they get checked in with the police and they go right back out to committing crimes. And it feels like something like that,

that means it's pretty clear to me. There's a lot, there's a small number of people who are doing a ton of crime. And I, yeah, I, I understand, but statistically speaking, we have an enormous amount of people in pretrial custody. So it's not the revolving door that one may think we have certainly some repeat offenders who are out there and people who break their bail. We do not have, as I said, enough resources invested in policing to catch these people and apprehend. And our borders have been forced. U.S. is worried about us with the 0.2% of fentanyl. All the weapons trafficking is coming from the United States.

Gang activity flows up here. This is a multi-jurisdictional issue. We need to pay attention to that. But couldn't it be as simple, Joseph, as, okay, if there are, let's say it's 600 guys, I'm picking a number out of a hat. Let's say it's 600 criminals that are doing thousands of crimes a year.

Why don't we just find 600 spots in our jails where we're housing 600 people on lesser charges, on lesser crimes, who are less of a threat to public safety, who are have not been as excited to to perpetrate crime, let's kick them out, put them in under house arrest and stick these guys in there until until they go to trial. Look, it's an interesting issue. But I think capacity shouldn't be, you know, an obstacle to putting people in

jail who are truly committing offenses, and you've got a strong ground case. I think on bail hearings, for example, the tertiary ground, which is the ground where the Crown can marshal a lot of evidence as to how strong their case is, is not well litigated. And we've got pressures in getting bail hearings on. If we've got these specialty units putting together these very strong bail hearings, people will be detained more and then courts will meet out long sentences. And I'm just going to say this one more thing, you know, for fentanyl, serious amounts of fentanyl already is well into the double digits close to a life sentence. They're there. We just need the

system to work more efficiently, and we need to pour in more resources. Finally, before we say goodbye, Joseph, I want your thoughts on Pierre Poliev's announcement from a few days ago about intimate partner violence. Yeah. Okay. So that nearly killed me. So intimate partner violence is a serious thing we have in Canada. It's a serious phenomenon. However, what he was saying was he wanted to create a new offense for intimate partner assault. We already have within the criminal code definitions for intimate partner violence. On bail, there's a special provision that a JP or a judge has to consider about intimate partner violence. Offenses that are serious to intimate partner violence draw heavy sentences, and we're talking years. So, again, I'm hoping this is just vote gathering as opposed to translating into policy, because what he also

wanted to do was for a first-time person charged with intimate partner violence offense, they're gonna be on the strictest of bail conditions. And those areas, especially in high conflict divorces, it is ripe for false allegations. We must be careful about what we're asking for. And there is a lot being done now on intimate partner violence. So your recommendation would be after an election if the if the conservatives form government that they, I don't know, convene a task force of lawyers and litigators and and and experts to tweak a policy like this. Well, I mean, they'll have hopefully a robust Justice Department.

They look at it. I mean, the liberal government already tried to make amendments. We have the reverse onus provision in bail, but if it's your second time around on a domestic and you have a prior conviction, then it's your onus to seek a release. People do get released on breaches with ankle monitoring. So it's there. I think we're talking about minor adjustments. And I think if you have a very well staffed with experienced people who understand the criminal justice system, understand policing, and also take into considerations from the defense bar, you can make nuanced changes that will help.

All right. Thank you, Joseph. I appreciate it. Have a great day. You too, Ben. Take care. And I want to hear from you on this next on the Ben Mulroney Show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show.

And I want to turn the microphone over to you, our listeners, because in our previous segment we were talking with Joseph Neuberger who's a criminal lawyer about Pierre Poliev's campaign promise that were he to form government he would enact a new three strikes and you're out policy in in a way to tamp down on violent crime across this country if you're a violent offender and you've been convicted three times on the third time that's it no, no chance at bail, you're staying in jail. For minimum 10 years in prison, no mitigating factors, no questions, no answers, that's it.

And he came out and pushed back and said, it doesn't require such a heavy hand, we have almost everything we need on the books for it, but there are other factors that need to be considered. And with a few tweaks, we could get to where Pierre Poliev wants to get and I want to hear from you. Do you think that that that's a good idea? Do you think the policy is a good idea? Will it put an end

to repeat offenders? Do you think the courts are going to challenge it? And so it's a moot point. Let's, let's see what you have to say. Edward, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Hey, thanks for taking my call. I personally believe the three strike rule is a good thing. And I appreciate lots of opinions on this, especially from your guest. Yes. But his sole objective is to get his clients off the crime that they may or may not have committed.

And so his answers, you know, he certainly does have a bias there. And hey, he's entitled to that. That's his J-O-B. Well, Edward, let me ask you. And you know what? You're probably right. There's probably an element of that.

However, don't you, do you think that with his experience and knowledge of the courts and how the system works, that when he says, look, something like this would get challenged in court, we would just be spending just so much time in court and chances are it would get a big chunks of it would get knocked down as unconstitutional or against infringing on charter rights. What do you say to that? Like rather than go through the effort of doing it now, why not come up with something that could work right off the bat with no

legal challenges? Well, we don't know unless we try. Yeah. I, I, I look at the former Carla Holmalka when she way with her plea agreement. Yeah. And that they found the videotapes and the province aired because they only consulted with the defense attorneys. and the province aired because they only consulted with defense attorneys and they also were,

you can't break the deal. Even though she broke the deal herself by not admitting to the video. Yeah, you're right. Hey, Edward, thank you so much. Thank you for the- We're the ones that paid for it. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, Edward. I appreciate it. Ian, welcome to this show. You told my producer something about criminal tourism. What's that all about? Hi, Ben. Thanks for taking my call. Yeah. Yeah. Well, criminal tourism, it's a known fact that there is criminal elements where people will come into Canada for the sole purpose to commit some crimes, steal some cars, break into houses, do whatever it is as part of a larger criminal organization. And then they hide, tell it out of here before they're caught.

So it hampers any kind of an investigation. Yeah, but then maybe six months, a year later, they'll come back into Canada, right? And they'll commit the same crimes. So that's a I didn't know that that was a thing. I didn't know that that was a thing. But listen, part of me, I take my my previous guest, Joseph Neuberger, at his word, and he's, you know, He's got domain expertise. I'll take his opinion and give it some serious thought.

But what do you think, part of the problem as I see it, Ian, is there's no fear of repercussions for inveterate criminals. There's a sense that even if they get caught, it's still worth it to do the crime because the punishment doesn't exceed the risk of doing the crime. Well, yeah, and that's a multi-tiered problem because one, we have police forces on every level and every jurisdiction that is completely under budgeted and understaffed. But then

on top of that, we all know that the Criminal Code of Canada is the sole jurisdiction of the federal government. So it really kind of hogties the provincial governments and municipal governments from creating any kind of legislation that is specific to their jurisdiction. Ian, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And look, I take Joseph Neuberger's point very well that economic opportunity would change that risk dynamic that I was just telling you about. If all of a sudden there's more opportunity out there

for you to do something legal, then the threat of, if you do a crime, sure, there might be an immediate payoff, but you risk losing that economic opportunity that now exists that didn't exist over the past 10 years. So I take that point. I appreciate that this is not a that is not a magic bullet. But a lot of things have to coalesce

towards a solution. I just I just I can't get around the fact that it feels like these criminals think that it's just it's worth it to do a crime. Melinda, welcome to the show. Hi, good morning. Good morning. I echo your sentiment there and similarly the previous caller. From a taxpayer viewpoint and from the community, it does feel certainly that the justice system and the criminal code is weighing heavily in the hands of protecting criminals rights and not those of non-criminal citizens of Canada. So the three strikes you're out proposal I think absolutely has merit.

You two callers ago talked about bias from the lawyer that called in or that you had on air and I think he's absolutely right. That is their job. They know the inner workings of all of the codes and but this this three strikes road proposal I think is something that needs to be aired in Canada and discussed with all constituents. I agree. And look, I also believe that in a lot of cases, sometimes you just have to put something you got to put something on the books and let somebody challenge it and see if it survives that test. And I believe my next caller is going to agree with that. Welcome to the show, Ben. Hey, good morning.

Good morning. Yeah. So I think I think, look, if there's nothing wrong with putting something on the books, passing a law, and then saying, you know what, we're willing to defend this in court. And, and yeah, yeah, we have historical data of this, or at least the US does. And when California did have three strikes in your out and then, and then in New York, when crime was rampant, the only two things that slowed down crime and actually saw criminal, violent criminal criminality go down was the three strikes and you're out. And when Rudolph Giuliani came into New York, then what what's happened is the moment they

got rid of it in California and you see the, you don't go to jail for a thousand dollars of shoplifting and so forth. And we've imported all those into our own cities, those same processes. Crime shot right up. So we got to look at the root of the problem. And the biggest one is everyone says, well, the jails are crowded. We don't have enough judges. We don't have enough courts. Yeah. But we wasted $2 billion on plus and counting on a gun registry and gun crimes gone up. No, you're right. Yeah, Ben, you're speaking the truth. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

One of the things Rudy Giuliani did that I subscribe to, I don't subscribe to anything he's done out of politics, but one of the things I do subscribe to is this notion of, you do not let people skate on the small stuff, like tagging and shoplifting and pickpockets. You tamp down on that because there's upward mobility in criminality. At least that's what the theory was. And if you start with the small ones, you're going to move up to the bigger ones.

So you catch them early and you deter them on the lower level stuff so they don't make their way up the criminal ladder. Hey, let's say hi to who do we have? We've got Joe. Joe, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Yes. Good morning, Ben. Nice to talk with you. Yes. This is Carlos. Not Joe. Carlos from Stouffville. Oh, Carlos. I just

wanted to say if I was prime minister, I tell you, I would first time if you get caught with a gun, you think they care about the criminals care about the citizens? No, they don't. So if you get caught with a gun, that's automatically five years in jail. And another thing I would do is, you know, the two for one, people when they go to jail, they get two for one time or three for one. I would cut that off automatically. Yeah. It's straight time. Yeah. Automatically. Yeah. There's there. There's an appetite. It feels like in our listeners to really, really tighten the, the, the not, I shouldn't

say that I was gonna say tighten the noose. that was not what I meant. But no, but yank the chain and really get criminals in line by letting them know we're not messing around anymore. And again, this is a feeling for me. I don't really have a sense of what's right here. That's why I want to ask you guys, we got time for one quick call Omar, welcome. Thanks for taking my call. So I look at it from a mathematical perspective, you have a normal distribution. Most people fit within the mean, meaning that we don't need necessarily a law to tell us not to drink and drive because most people don't want to kill someone, so they won't

drink and drive. But you have the outliers, and they are exceptional by nature. For exceptional people, you need exceptional rules. That is why if you are a habitual off, and you don't care about hard and fast positions on everything. This is one I think we need to get right. I'm willing to take time on it. But I do like that the conversation has started on this three strikes in your out idea. It may get morphed into something else. It may change into something more effective. I don't know. But I do appreciate everybody's input. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. and to all my listeners, I want you to mark your

calendars Wednesday, April 9th. This is the day where in two consecutive segments with two consecutive topics, I do not have a strong opinion. Never happened before. But I do want I want to hear from you because there was a proposal that was put forth to the the Ford government on ways to mitigate traffic during congested hours on the 401. If you've ever driven through Toronto or into Toronto or if you live here, you know that almost all day long, with the exception of a few hours, it's gridlock, it's a parking lot.

And so all ideas are on the table. They're throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks. Obviously, you know that Doug Ford is a proponent of digging a giant tunnel underneath the 401. There are talks of possibly an elevated second level to the 401, but somebody's proposed that we use the shoulder on either side as an extra lane of traffic in the most congested hours of of the commute. And it

has been rejected out of hand by the Ford government, which I think is interesting because it doesn't cost anything. And and and there's two lanes on either side. Now, I want to hear from you 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225. Talk. Give me the good, give me the bad. If you're something, you might be stuck on the 401 right now. And you see that lane right there. And you know, we've always, we've all said it to ourselves. I said it to myself yesterday on the DVP. I was like, ah, you know, it's right there, man.

It's right there. I could just take it just for a few minutes and pop right back in. And I appreciate the safety concerns those the shoulder needs to be available for cars that need to pull over if they have an emergency emergency vehicles need unfettered access to get up and down the highway so I can see that that's absolutely but what about one of the lanes being open what would you do so what do you think let me know 416-870-6400. Oh, I promised someone yesterday that I would go slower with the numbers.

I'm gonna do it again. 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. Let me know your thoughts. Here's the one thing I can't get around. It's free, right? It doesn't cost anything. but that butts up against the idea that once you start using it for that, where do the where do the emergency vehicles go? And I mean, all it takes is for one

person to lose their life and the cops can't get there and the fire department can't get there and the emergency services people can't get there. What happens then? So I think a pretty good discussion. Mark, what do you think? Where do you fall on this idea? Yeah, I think it's kind of a ridiculous idea. Number one, yes, emergency vehicles, there's an accident, there's an emergency medical emergency. So now how's the fire services or police going to going to access these people and your car runs out of gas. Your car just stops work.

And so where are you gonna, now the shoulder's full of vehicles, so now what's gonna happen? The tow trucks can't get to you. It's just gonna add more gridlock and more nonsense. These solutions aren't solutions, it's this. Yeah, I get it. It's a band-aid. I just, I just, part of me thinks, you know,

maybe we try it on a weekend and see what happens under really, just, I don't know, because I can't get around the fact that there are two lanes on either side and it wouldn't cost anything. And, but I completely, completely take your point. Frank, what do you think? I think it's a newish idea.

I haven't heard that before. It's a bad idea. Most people don't know where their car begins and ends and the wall's quite close. Yeah. I think it would just cause more accidents. The best one in my opinion is negotiating with the 407. Yeah.

And having, I mean, other countries have designated times trucks can be on the road in terms of people you know one of the biggest problems is trucks on the 401 yeah and the two lanes of highway going in and out of her city which is another story but in terms of the 401 why not have trucks during rush hour or during the day that that are not unloading in Toronto completely bypass the city yeah get on the 407 in Oakville and get off in Whitby or whatever the case may be. Yeah, no, I think that one needs to be explored. Now, Frank, what do you think of the idea of dynamic lane changing? Meaning at certain times of day when traffic is only bad

in one direction, you take a lane from the direction that isn't congested and you give it to the other direction of traffic. We're not set up for that. No, I know we're not set up. It definitely would be an outlay of cash for sure. But to me, like, I think we should explore that as well. Same thing on the gardeners. We should explore all options and mimic what other countries do that are way more populated than us, like the Philippines. You You know, they have you can't drive trucks during certain times in a rush hour and and and there's a whole bunch of other rules. Yeah. Whatever works. All right. I would suggest we're already set up with the 407. That's

probably the best option. Frank, thank you so much for joining the conversation. Will, what's what do you think about all this? Well, full disclosure, Ben, you've got a great show, and I listen to it all the time. I was a police officer for 42 years. Okay. Thank you for your service. You're welcome. I dealt mostly with the reconstruction of fatal accidents. Oh, no. And And giving the opportunity, you will get a certain segment of society. If they say it's okay to take that curb lane or want to lead the shoulder, they'll do it and they'll do it at an excessive speed. The problem is that you are going to get breakdowns and you are going to get breakdowns. Yeah.

And you're going to get breakdowns in both shoulder, shoulder leans, and they're not going to be able to stop. Yeah. Yeah. And there are people that are going to die. I mean, and that once once that happens, it's I can't put the genie back in the bottle, right? Because everyone will predict it.

We're talking about it right now. And as soon as it happens, someone's head is going to have to roll. So I take, Will, thank you so much. Again, thank you for your service. And thank you for the conversation. I think we have time for one more. Dave, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show.

Shut the radio off and shut my machine off so I can hear the Benarouski here This is an absolutely I don't know if I can say this, ascertain idea. Yeah, I we've heard the people who've heard that police officer. How many times has there been a traffic jam up and somebody cracker idiot, whatever has to use that, that lame because his life is so important. No, no, and to be fair be fair, let's be clear.

The Ford government is not contemplating this. They've already shut it down. I heard that earlier on. Why are we talking about it then? Because I want to know whether it's a good idea. I want to know what my listeners think. I want your opinions on it. Clearly there's a lot of opinion out there.

So we'll get on to it. Well, I think also, David, I should point out, look, we are at the breaking point. We're past the breaking point when it comes to congestion and getting people in and out of the city. And the value in moving them more quickly so their quality of life can improve, their mental health will improve,

they can get to their work faster, which means they'll be more productive, which means they'll pay their taxes, which is all things that we need. I think it requires us to explore all ideas, even the bad ones. But thank you very much for that. It feels like we're not I think it requires us to explore all ideas, even the bad ones. But thank you very much for that. It feels like we're not going to do it. And it feels like my opinion now is it's a very, very bad idea. you've been waiting for. Flavor Network is giving one lucky viewer $15,000 to put towards the grocery bill.

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