The Ben Mulroney Show - Red flags from the trucking industry. Could 50% of drivers be unsafe?

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

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Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show on this Thursday, August 21st. Thank you so much for spending a little bit of your day with us here at the show. I've been telling you all morning that I will be off the show tomorrow. I'm taking a quick trip out west with my mother. We're going to a charity event in Victoria. Very excited to spend a little bit of time with her. I don't get to see her nearly as much as I'd like. So really excited about this trip. I'll report back on Monday. All right, earlier today on this radio station, 640 Toronto, on the Greg Brady show, Stephen Laskowski. He's the president of the Ontario Trucking Association.

He was on with Greg, and he's sounding an alarm about the dangerous state of play in our trucking industry. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say. My biggest concern is drivers don't know how to drive trucks, and that should scare people. So let's just spend a minute to unpack a pretty stark statement. This gentleman is the president of the Ontario Trucking Association. And he said in no uncertain terms, his fear is that trucking companies are hiring people who don't know how to drive trucks. Okay. These are these 18 wheel big rigs can crush a hummer like an aluminum can, right?

Let's let's, okay, so you've been on the road and every one of us has been on the four, in the middle of the, like in a snowstorm and one, and everyone's heart starts racing when in the middle of that snowstorm, you find yourself side to side with, with a truck, with a giant enormous big rig. An 18 wheeler. An 18 wheeler. And all you're hoping is that guy knows what he's doing. So that's the fear of the driver.

What are the fears of truckers on the roads? You know, Greg, I don't want to be overly melodramatic, but we have a crisis here in Ontario with regards to truck safety and the ownership of trucking companies and driving schools. We have way too many trucking companies here in the province of Ontario that have a total disregard for safety, for the labor rights of their drivers, the safeties of their drivers, and quite frankly, could care less about how safe their drivers are. They're in it for the bottom line. And what we need to do as an industry and as a province is get them out of the business and get them off the roads. What have I been saying

since the beginning of the Ben Mulroney show? We have a real problem in this country. The stuff that we're supposed to take seriously, we are exceptionally unserious about. Road safety should be that's a layup, right? I think everybody can agree. When you get on the road, you want to make sure you get off alive.

And we are being told that there are far too many people operating the most dangerous vehicles out there without the requisite knowledge on how to drive them. And it doesn't seem like we're doing anything about it. Now, why are we having this conversation? What's prompting this? Well, there was a tragedy in Florida just a little while ago. A trucker was essentially trying to pull an illegal U-turn on the highway. He's trying to take one of those those connectors between both sides of the highways.

Better used by police officers. By police and by official service vehicles. I guess he'd missed his stop or something. And rather than go to the next overpass, he decided to try to do this. the the big rig jackknifed and three people died okay simple as that and um and this this this person's name he was a california trucker named hargender sing and i don't mention his name except that it is germane to the conversation after the fact he failed an english test after allegedly making this illegal you turn he failed the english language assessment getting only two of 12 answers right he was asked 12 questions he got two right and he identified only one of four highway traffic signs this man had no business driving a big rig let alone a freaking e-scooter and it was discovered that Washington and California issued this guy a commercial driver's license despite

not being eligible for it and now three people are dead and um you know last week it might been two weeks ago on this show. We pointed out that in the province of Ontario, and this is a point of pride. When it was highlighted, it was a point of pride. You can get your driver's license in the province in Ontario. Well, you can take the knowledge test, the G1 knowledge test. In how many languages? 31. 31 different languages. Now, I want accessibility for all sorts of people, but it needs to make sense, right? So I think it's should be in English. I think it should be in French. I think it should probably be, for the sake of reconciliation, be available in First Nations languages if that's something that we're

able to do. I like that idea. I think there's a very Canadian thing to do. But tell me why somebody should be able to take the knowledge test in a foreign language if the road signs are not in that foreign language. Explain to me how that makes any sense. And don't tell me, well, it's because for some people they don't they don't understand the language well then learn it if you want to drive if you want to join the community of drivers

where people's lives are at stake with every decision that you make we all have to be reading from the same hymn book and that hymn book's got to be in the same language if you if your chosen language is I could say Hindi but why why not

Serbo Croatian my family comes from Yugoslavia Serbo Croatian all right if my language of time if i came here from bosnia and i and i and i version is one of the languages so great okay so let's say sir let's say it's serbian or or croat and and that's and my english is so poor that i need to take that test in that language the fact is being offered is a it's dereliction of duty it's putting people's lives at risk because that person doesn't can't read the signs what if there's um what if there's you know those increasing we've got changing signs, you know, the lit signs, so the government can pump really important

information up there to say, hey, there's a massive crash ahead of us, or there's black ice in front of you. They're not writing that in Serbo-Croatian. They're not writing that in Hindi. They're not writing that in any other languages, but English and French. Let me point out, let me just put in the argument there, that they actually have the argument that, well, actually, the driving test is done in only English and French. But however, they do say that the examiners can offer hand signals for basic driving. terms like turn, right, stop, or park. So they're basically allowing them to cheat because they can't, they don't know the term stop. Yeah. Yeah. Stop. Yeah. So put your hands up for stop.

And how is that possible? That doesn't help. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills sometimes. I don't know how any of this makes any sense to rational human beings who are making these decisions. Now, In the United States, in the United States, there's a huge crackdown happening. Actually, let's go back to, let's go back to the head of the Ontario Trucking Association. Let's talk about some of the training that some of these truckers have to do. The extent to which the depths of knowledge and the extent to which they are tested

before they are handed the keys to a big rig. First of all, it's not six or eight weeks with a lot of these guys. They're lucky if they have six days. This needs to stop. All right, six days, six days. Listen. All right. And then here's another clip by that same man talking about, look at, like, how many of these guys should be on the road?

Is it, should 10% of them get taken off the road? Are we talking to our 25% of them, bad drivers? Here's what he had to say. Be very afraid when you pass a truck, because I guarantee you one out of two shouldn't be on road. And that's coming. Sorry, 50%. One out of two.

One out of two has no business on the road. I'm not saying it. They have the trucking association saying it. So the Americans have this problem. We know we have this problem. And the Americans are cracking down. Over 3,000 truckers have been removed from U.S. roads in the past two months

after failing federally mandated roadside English test, part of a broader crackdown under the Trump administration. Does anybody, anybody really think that in Canada, in 2020, We are going to force people to take a language test. And if they fail either in English or in French, we're going to take their license away.

Does anybody genuinely think that the powers that be have the political will to do anything like that in the face of increased dangers on our highways and roads? Absolutely not. That is a political hit that a certain type of politician will not take. They absolutely do not want to do that. guarantee you nothing like this is coming to Canada anytime soon. All right, we're going to take a quick break.

Sky-high fees are driving up the cost of flying in Canada. Could slashing taxes finally make air travel affordable? Welcome back to the Ben Mulrini Show. Thank you so much for spending a little bit of your Thursday with us. So the topic of air travel has been permeating everybody's lives for the past little while. with the strike from the 10,000 flight attendants at Air Canada that really for such a short interruption in service, it has created so many confusing negative knock-on effects and what we saw following the strike or during the strike was we saw competitors to Air Canada jacking up

their prices. And we've had conversations on this show about why it is. Why it is that flights are so very expensive in Canada. And yesterday on this show, we took calls on this and someone called in and pointed out, which I think a lot of people know a little bit about, but not necessarily the details around them, that the taxes and fees associated with air travel as well as the fees associated with managing airports across this country are ridiculously high. perhaps some of the highest in the Western world. And so we're joined now by Samantha Dagris. She's a communications manager with M.E.I, which is an independent public policy think tank.

And we're talking today about gouging in Canadian aviation. Samantha, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. So, look, what I've always believed, and you can tell me if I'm partially right or dead wrong, is that one of the reasons airline travel is so expensive. in Canada is we've got fewer people spread over such a massive, a massive country, four and a half time zones. And so, and that's one of the reasons that, you know, an airline to be able to get you

from one place to another, it's just a really long way to go. And we don't necessarily have the population base to take it to a scale where we could reduce those costs as low as people want. Is that at least part of the problem? So that's certainly what most people tend to believe. And actually, the most expensive part of a flight is the takeoff, right? That is the most fuel-dependent, intensive part of flying. But certainly distance gets brought up a lot.

So we actually compared very popular flight routes, so Montreal to Toronto, versus Las Vegas to Los Angeles. They are equidistant and two very high-volume flight paths. And what we found was someone in the U.S. can get a flight between L.A. and Vegas for about $66 Canadian dollars. In Canada, that doesn't even cover the government charge part of the cost of the ticket. Oh, my God, that hurts my brain. Oh, Samantha, that hurts my brain. Okay, so let's attack this problem with like, with the biggest part of the problem first and I'll work backwards. What is the biggest problem facing our pocketbook as it relates to air traveling Canada? Well, government, you're going to stop right there.

Government, full stuff, thank you. And that concludes my TED talk. No, but it's true that, you know, people's instincts are our right. The cost of a Toronto, Calgary, also a high-volume flight path, up to 43% of that cost to passengers is government fees and charges. So that's pretty substantial. And we're looking at a flight, say, a very basic flight, $120,000. $51 goes to the government. And taxes take on lots of shapes and sizes.

You have the fuel tax, which, of course, if we compare again to the U.S., is 158 times higher in Canada, of course. Then you also get- I'm sorry. Can you say that again? How? Yeah. So our fuel tax.

Our fuel tax is 158 times higher in Canada than it is in the U.S. About 4% a leader in Canada. Okay. Why? Why is that exactly? Is it, is it, is it the environmental aspect of it? What's, what's driving that cost up? That's just the fuel excise tax in Canada.

That doesn't even, uh, go into the carbon. Oh, that's not even the carbon tax. No, no, no. Oh, super. Okay, great. Completely different. Um, so again, that's higher. Um, if you look at the air traveler security charge, which is important.

Um, again, Canadians pay more for a round trip flight in the U.S. It's about $15 in Canada. that you're paying 20. So it just seems like we're paying a lot more for the same thing if we compare ourselves to our neighbor down south. But the main culprit where government takes the largest amount is in something called the airport improvement fee. I don't know if you're going to know.

Yeah, so I've heard that before. I've heard of that. And so what is that? And who collects it? So to the chagrin of airports, the government takes part of that. So what happened in 1992 was before that the government ran airport. force. But in 1992, it decided that it didn't want to, you know, undertake the responsibility of maintenance and improvements. So they passed it on to non-profit organizations, which currently

run Canadian airports. But the government stayed involved, and because it remained basically the owner of all the land. So each year, it takes a rent, and that rent can be found in the airport improvement fee. And it's pretty substantial. Pearson paid. about $220 million in rent to Ottawa in 2024. There's about 11% of revenues. And that's not money that gets then reinvested in the airports, you know, goes to build expansions, whatever the needs of the airports. That's money that goes straight back to Ottawa.

They get to spend it on. God knows what. And then the airports have to pay to actually do the work of operating. So when people get mad at an airline like Air Canada for, or how high a ticket price is. How much of the fault is it actually of Air Canada? Well, like anything, right, like all taxes, it gets passed on. Sure.

Right? So, you know, the rent gets passed on to the airport, which gets passed on to the airline, which gets passed on to us. So, I mean, whatever portion of the rent is in that ticket is not really up to the airline. It's not up to Air Canada. It has to pay it. It has no choice. So, Samantha, here's what I don't get is that I could go anywhere in the world and I can find an airport that's probably more impressive, has more amenities, is better run than a lot of the airports in Canada. So we're spending all of this money that is, you know, fee, listen, some fees are important, some taxes are important.

I'm not suggesting that we take a torch to all of that stuff. We need to pay our fair share. I get that, but we are paying clearly more than our analogs elsewhere, and I don't necessarily see any benefit coming from it. How many of these fees, how many of these taxes, how many of these improvement fees and so on are vital to the sustainability of our airports and of our air traffic network? How much of it's vital and how much of it is waste that we are spending

just because the government tells us they need our money? Well, listen, there's always going to be some sort of fee required to upkeep our airports, right? But the fact that half a billion dollars a year of passengers going just to Ottawa to do nothing with airports, that is clearly a way that Ottawa can come in and make flying more affordable. And also, you know, you also have provincial sales tax. You have the federal sales tax. I mean, these things can all be removed if the government decided. You know, I've got to say, I find it really ironic that our governments in Ottawa,

at lots of levels, they like to reference, sometimes when they'll put money into a program, they'll refer to it as an investment because they know that investing, say, in child care has a positive return on that with more people going into the job market, and therefore more tax dollars that they can then bring back. So that is in a lot of ways in investment. I don't understand why they wouldn't look at reducing these fees as an investment. so that people are more apt to travel. If you're more apt to travel,

you're more apt to spend more money. I don't understand why they want to hoard this small piece of the pie, or rather keep the pie as small as it is, when if they just loosen the reins and made it more affordable to travel, they would see a positive knock-on effect in more tax dollars coming back to them from so many different sources. Absolutely. But, you know, this government is projected to post a $90 billion deficit.

it, they're going to want to keep all the revenue streams they have. It's going to be very difficult to pry, you know, what has been a constant and pretty reliable source of revenue for the government. And it's gone up 10%, not 10%, sorry, in the last 10 years, it's gone up pretty substantially. Like, just in the last year, it went up $75 million, a 68% increase in 10 years. Samantha, I hate to end it on such a tragic note. But I want to thank you for being here. I mean, honestly, I like to say information is power.

You've given me a lot of information. I feel, I don't know if I feel more powerful, but I know I'm armed with far more information. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me. All right. Don't go anywhere. We're talking to the economy next on the Ben Mulroney show.

You are. are listening to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much. It's Thursday. It's the end of the week for me, not the end of the week for you. And I'm taking a little bit of a long weekend, enjoying some time on the West Coast with my mother. Very excited to spend some time with her. So we've got a number of economic stories we want to hit today. Most of them not good because it's Canada 2025. And so to help us navigate these treacherous economic waters, we're joined by the captain of the ship for this segment. Dr. Eric Cam of Toronto Metropolitan University. Welcome, Eric. Thanks so much for joining us. Benedict, I'm not sure I would refer to me as the captain of any ship, but I'll take it. All right, let's talk about the debt that is choking Canadians. And in the financial post, it's postulated that it's not the mortgage cliff that we should be worried about. It's credit card debt.

Well, yes. And in fact, really just debt. but credit card debt is the worst of the bunch, right? What makes it the worst? Is it the number or is it the interest rate? What is it? Oh, by far, it's the interest rate. It is absolutely like organized crime. I mean, the interest rate, if you use what's called the real rate,

which actually is even the posted rate, it's about 30% on your debt. And that is completely unmanageable for pretty much anybody. So, you know, it's a very scary statistic, Ben, that about one and a half million people missed a credit card payment in Canada, and then actually a lower number than that, but still far too many people skipped a mortgage payment. I mean, I don't know what the government needs to know that we are in trouble. Right now, the average Canadian is dis-saving,

which means they're spending more than they're making. I mean, this is, you know, there's two real problems in our economy right now, and you and I keep talking about it. One of them is debt, and one of them is unemployment, and they are correlated. And as one goes up, the other is going to go up. And the problem is simple. There is not enough disposable income for Canadians right now, and in a lack of economic growth, the number isn't going to get better, Ben.

So we talk a lot about these icebergs that are looming on the horizon. At what point are we going to hit a point where we're going to hit a point where we're going to hit one of these icebergs. You're going to hit it pretty soon. And the point is when you're going to see the number. Watch the number coming up when you see people defaulting on their homes. Because there is no number about defaulting on rent. That doesn't get tracked because it just appears as people just decided to move out of the home

in which they're renting. Watch for defaults on mortgages. People are going to start to walk away from their home bed. And it's triply scary because more. Mortgage rates aren't even high right now. Right. They're not high, but people still can't afford their mortgages. So keep an eye on the default rate because I think we're going to have a small but possibly

prolonged sale on houses in the not too distant future. I want to spend a little bit of time on this next story because this one is depressing. You know, there's nothing more impressive to me in the world of business. in our economy, then the heart of an entrepreneur. There's the idea that an entrepreneur can set out with a business idea and risk it all, right? They believe in themselves. They have no safety net. They have no one to rely on but themselves.

The days off that they take are days off that they take off from their business, right? And then they're betting on themselves. And I love the idea of an economy built on people who bet on themselves. And the lifeblood of the economy is our small and medium sized businesses. My dad taught me that from a very young age. Most jobs are created by small and medium sized businesses in this country. A lot of people think it comes from the big box stores. That's not the case.

And so I love small, I love entrepreneurs. And when I read this that 38% of small businesses will not last a year without changes to the tariffs that this economy is facing. That is scary. It is saddening, and I don't know what that means for the future. Nothing good, and your father was right as he generally was, that they are the blood of the economy. But right now, we live in an environment where, and it's not just the tariffs, but the tariffs don't help,

that we're living in an environment of rising costs and shrinking revenues. And so, yeah, about two-thirds of businesses in Canada right now are reporting their expenses going up and their revenues going down. And that's a picture, Ben, that's upside down. And when you look at who is most impacted by this, who are the losers in this? You hit on them. It's small businesses. It's people in the metal sector.

It are manufacturers and exporters, retail and e-commerce, and the poor canola industry that's been completely hung out to dry. Now, let me just say, because someone's going to say, well, Eric, in every economic environment, somebody wins, and that's true. Large corporations right now that have a very strong global supply chain, they're going to do okay. And if you rely on government revenue, then you're going to be all right as well. But right now, unfortunately, as we say in economics, the losing side is dominating the

winner's side. And when you throw in the fact that consumers are just going to start to pay more and more for imported goods as this trade war goes on, it's really time for Mr. Elbows Up to put his elbows down and open his mouth and get a deal before we have just nothing left at the end of the day, Ben. So I'm glad that we're talking about what is at stake here. And what's at stake, I think, is, you know, the job creators in our economy, right? This is the fallout from losing this many small businesses across the country could be

catastrophic. I mean, I don't know that that's something you can recover from in a short period of time. But a lot of people who are coming to the defense of our prime minister, and we prosecuted the election, and enough Canadians decided that this man with this team was the right group of people to negotiate the best possible outcome for Canada as it relates to our relationship with the Americans and the tariffs that come from that relationship. We don't have that deal yet. And people who are defending Mark Carney are saying, better no deal. than a bad deal. And I've got to wonder, with each passing day, with the risk growing for small businesses and the negative knock-on effects that that could have for our economy,

at some point, no deal in and of itself becomes that bad deal. Yes, that's exactly right. And by the way, that's just rhetoric from a prime minister that, unfortunately, doesn't have the answers that he promised the Canadian people. The only response he has is the one that all liberal, have, which is to spend money. So they're going to offer a $1.2 billion aid package to the lumber industry, and they're going to keep tempting people with lower interest rates so that people will keep spending.

That's all fine and good, except none of these moves, none of them, including zero percent interest rates, are going to create one job in Canada, and the timeline is getting shorter and shorter. The Canadian economy, since the pandemic, has been asked to endure murderous, murderous rates of almost every economic negative influence, and it just can only take so much. And so it is time to get a trade deal in place. Now, what I would say is a horrendous deal is worse than a bad deal. But the reality is we need a deal. Consumers and producers need to know with what type of numbers they're dealing with to make their future plans right now this uncertainty is killing businesses the way it's killing every forward market then so so essentially what i think we're circling around

is at some point given given this risk given this threat to our small business community at some point our options in terms of what we can hope for in terms of an upside of the deal is going to become increasingly limited at some point a deal for the sake of clarity for the sake of being able to plan for the next quarter or the quarter after that, even what would have been considered a bad deal six months ago will be better than no deal, because no deal is going to lead to a complete collapse of our small business community? You know, I hate to equate this to a divorce between the two countries, but I'm going to oftentimes then in a divorce negotiation, and I was divorced once, your best offer is your

first offer. And Canada right now is staring right down that gun. We had a chance. We passed it up and the deals are not going to get better. And I'm telling you, as an economist and as a Canadian, Ben, we don't have choices. We are out of time. Eric Cam, thank you very much. I appreciate it, my friend. Stay healthy, Benedict. All right, nearly half of Canadians will face cancer in their lifetime. Well, now a new Ontario Center promises faster, more precise treatments, and shorter weights, keeping care closer to home. Don't go anywhere. This is the Ben Mulrini show. Welcome back. This is the Ben Mulroney show on Thursday, August 21st. Appreciate your time. Appreciate your ears. Appreciate you joining us here as we build the Ben Mulroney

show one listener at a time, one show at a time. You know, when people get into politics, I think it's a lot of them want to get in to politics to do big things. Some want to do it to help their community and things like that. But doing big things on behalf of Canadians matters to a lot of politicians. And there are very few. politicians that I've had on this show that every time they come on, it's to announce something big. His portfolio as the Minister of Energy and Mines for the province of Ontario keeps him very busy on very big things. And here to talk about, well, this is a little bit of a head scratcher for me. I'm talking to the Minister of Energy and Mines about something that I would

have thought I'd be talking to the Minister of Health about. Please welcome to the show. Stephen Leche. Stephen, welcome. Welcome back. Thank you so much, Ben. Good to be back. Yeah, so we're talking about an announcement for the Princess Margaret Cancer Center. And again, I would have thought this would be something I would be talking to your colleague from Health about. Tell me why this is a Ministry of Energy topic. Well, it's a tech team because the Minister of Health, Sylvia Jones, is doing a lot of important work to expand cancer coverage and cancer care, access to CT scans, etc., across Ontario.

That's really important. But on my end, to sort of help this conundrum of why the Minister of Energy is involved, because nuclear science, nuclear power and Ontario's nuclear fleet, like a Darlington or Pickering or Bruce, those can do Canadian technology reactors produce medical isotopes. It's a byproduct. It's one of the many benefits of nuclear science and nuclear energy. And so for people out there, when they may have been watching the city news last night and they've seen, this on the coverage, it's a positive case study that nuclear science is literally helping

to save lives. What that means is we are taking medical isotopes. These are harvested within a nuclear reactor. You know, we think about some of the treatments you get out for cancer, radiotherapics or radiation or anything like that that, you know, comes from nuclear. It's the nuclear science that's leading the way in saving lives. And so, yes, I was very proud to make an announcement about investing in science that's going to help save lives. Yeah, and there's a $500,000 donation that's being made by the Laurentis Energy Partners to establish the Silber Family Theronautic Center at Princess Margaret Cancer Center. And for our listeners around the country who do not know the Princess Margaret Cancer Center,

it is one of the foremost cancer treatment centers on the planet. A few months ago, about nine months ago, I hosted on 640. Toronto, I hosted a radiothon on behalf of Princess Margaret. I was able to take a tour of that facility. It used to be called the hospital. Now it's a dedicated cancer center. I saw the best of our healthcare system. You know, we talk a lot about the problems in our healthcare system.

I was looking to that institution. And I said, this is a model. This is the best that we can offer. And to know that Ontario know how Ontario nuclear technology is going to go into treating over 3,500 new patients by 2028. That's a heck of a feather in the cap of the province, I'm sure. Yeah, and I mean, look, I mean, I know, Ben, your family has been affected mine too by cancer. There's just too many case studies in our friends and family that have been afflicted by this disease.

Like 247,000 Canadians are going to get diagnosis here. And so when we can harness the best of nuclear science to prevent or extend lots, lives or save lives. Yeah, I mean, going back to your introduction, like, this is what it's about. This is why people get into public service to make a difference and, frankly, leave a good legacy. And so what we've done is we've made a contribution to establish a dedicated center for what's called Theronautics. This is personalized, individualized healthcare, opposed to the one-size-fits-all treatment plans that often are given to patients. This is very targeted, very precise. It's like a heat-seeking missile that goes at the tumor and helps reduce

the unintended consequences of some of these treatments for cancer. And so the investment we're making, and this center that's going to open in about a year and a half from now, is going to use Ontario medical isotopes that come out of our can-do medical reactors to better detect cancer and deliver more precise targeted radiation treatment. So this is like an awesome case study where nuclear science and our nuclear fleet is not just keeping the lights on reliably for the people of Ontario, you know, affordable power, it's clean power, it's non-emitting power. But it's literally, to your point, it's helping thousands of individuals over on an annual basis get these individualized treatment plans that really mitigate their risk and elevate the benefits of nuclear science.

So for me, it was very special to sort of wear two hats. The son of someone whose mom went through cancer treatment and the minister of energy that's able to sort of humanize these announcements and bring it home for people like you and I, like everyone listening that's been touched by this. It's nice to be able to share positive news from our health care system, which as we know is underfunded. We know that it's in a crisis. We know that we're lacking in nurses and doctors. And so it's nice to be able to share good news on that front. So thank you for that. we have left, you know, in the past six months, the expression Canadian energy corridor has been

something that's entered our vernacular. And we are, so many of us are waiting with bated breath, a great anticipation on the grand designs that we've been told are in the works in Ottawa that are going to create this vast Canadian energy corridor. You, I have no doubt, as the minister in charge of energy for the province of Ontario, I have no doubt you are intimately close to these discussions. Where are we on these projects of national importance? Well, I think the nation building element that's

at the heart of what the Premier has been talking about is very much alive in Holland, Ontario. We're not waiting. We are proceeding with nation building when it comes to the largest nuclear reactor on Earth that we're looking at building in Port Hope.

Likewise, small modular reactors we're building the first in the G7. We talk about global leadership and nuclear and in power and clean tech. So we're doing these things. Minister, can I ask a question about the small modular reactors? You know, it's a Canadian technology. We are at the tip of the sword.

We want to make sure we stay that way. What's our capacity in terms of building them? How long does it take to build one? And how many are we capable of producing a year? Is this something that 10 years from now is going to be a massive industry in the province of Ontario that we're going to be selling Kandu reactors from here to Timbuktu? Well, on the Kandu side, which is the large-scale nuclear, those are being exported around the world, and they're being built around the world.

So that's a great technology. It's owned by Canada. 75% of the IP is owned by the national government, and we build them in Ontario. We have 17 of 18 nuclear reactors right here in Canada in this province. So we're proud of that leadership. On the small-mogger reactor side, this is new tech. These are miniaturized nuclear plants, 300 megawatts. That's like power for 300,000 homes.

And so to your question, it is, they are scalable. We're building four. Those four that we're building at Darlington will create 20,000 construction jobs and adds $39 billion with a bead, billion-dollar plus added value to the Canadian economy. So we are building the first. So there's the first movers advantage, Ben. What that means is we're now at the heart and the center of the deployment of all SMRs of the world. In Poland, that's building SMRs.

It is Ontario, not Canadian, the Ontario supply chain, like to bring it even closer the home that's going to build out the first SMRs for Eastern Europe. And we have agreements in Poland, in Estonia, in the U.S., the largest public utility, Tennessee Valley is turning to this SMR to be built. And again, our supply chain can benefit from those expansions. So we are looking at this to build them, to export them, and to leverage the Ontario supply chain. And so far, $500 million of supply chain benefits for Ontario businesses to build these SMR. So it's just such a great case study where you get clean power. It's reliable power

and it's clean power, non-emitting, and it's creating a ton of jobs here at home. And lastly, examples of nation building and action. And we'll end it on this, but from what I understand about these SMRs as well, they're actually, they're exceptionally safe as well. You know, we hear about accidents that have happened in the past at older facilities or we hear about how weather can affect a nuclear plant. These are designed to buttress against. that? Yeah, I mean, look, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission

is one of the most respected and toughest safety regulators on Earth. I mean, they are the envy of the world. Most foreign regulators come to Canada to learn when these countries are trying to answer into nuclear. Stephen, I apologize. I didn't realize I was up against the clock,

but thank you so much for sharing all this great news and come back anytime. Swarma in a Doritos bag? Yeah, that's real. The walking Schwarma is crispy, saucy, and made to move. Only at Osmos. Limited time only. Bold meet Swarma.

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