The Ben Mulroney Show - Should special constables be able to make arrests on the TTC?

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

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CTB Nova Scotia, one of the headlines literally was Halifax gas prices remain the same. So happy to be here. You're living in a utopia. What is your nightly news like? Live from Peggy's Cove, the ocean, still here. Thanks to you. Yes, the more boring the news, the better the place to live. But I got to say, the more boring the news, the less interesting this show would be.

Welcome to the Ben Mulrook. So that was Alistair Ogden, a stand-up comic. And we want to play that for you because the news in Toronto is, is not always good. And the news about violence and drug use on the TTC, as we are trying everything we can to get people to ditch their cars and get onto public transit is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Like what happens?

So here to talk about all of that is our good friend from Integrity TO. Daniel Tate, welcome. Hi, Ben. How are you doing? I'm good. But, you know, the story about crime on the TTC is, it's been a sort of a low-grade story for a while, but the numbers of transit-related violent crimes in Canada cities is, it's obnoxious. And it's, with the exception, places like Hamilton and Kitchener,

which I don't believe have the most robust transit systems. And actually, Vancouver's actually down. But everyone else is up. Everybody else is up. Calgary's up relative to 2015. You know, that special year of 2015. And Toronto was under 20. per 100,000 people in 2015. And it hit 40 and it's gone down just a little bit to about, I think, 38 now. We've got to do something about this. And putting people responsible for it on the TTC with no power to do anything but just point out the bad behavior is not a solution. Yeah, I agree.

It's the Wild West right now on the TTC. integrity T.O. gets videos and photos from people every day, and it's a horror show. You have a climate of impunity down there in the underground. You have people who are completely in a fent or meth-induced stupor, acting like the subway is their personal playground, treating it like a trash can, like a toilet. And this is happening with impunity again. There's no enforcement, and it's not fair to law-abiding citizens who have to endure these scenes day in, day out. And it hurts the TTC. It hurts ridership.

It hurts revenues. And it's not sustainable. We've got to fix it. Well, here's what Doug Ford, the premier, had to say about drugs on transit. Subways, we want safe transit everywhere in the city. And if someone's using drugs or shooting up drugs on a subway, they need to be arrested and removed from the subway. Okay. But in order to arrest somebody, you have to have people down there who are capable of

arresting them. And we've got these provincial offense officers, terrible acronym, but, but we've seen the video of, you know, these two guys who tried to stop some guy doing drugs and he got it, he hurled insults at them and they just got off the subway. Like, if that's, if that's what they're there for, then they're not serving a purpose. That was a terrible video. And I knew when that video went viral, it was going to send the worst message because it basically tells everybody who's riding the TTC that this is basically lawlessness. Yeah. And that the special Constables, who I don't even know what their full powers or controls are, but they looked impotent. Yeah.

They were being told by some vagrant who was, again, treating the subway like his personal living room, and they did nothing about it. And that got like a million views. So that reinforced this notion in the public consciousness that the TTC underground is a lawless wild west area, and that sent the wrong message. But there are people out there say, well, you can't, you can't kick them off the subway because they have nowhere else to go. And to that, I say, well, hold on. I was asked with my taxes to build an intentional transit network that would allow people to safely and at a low cost

get from point A to point B. That's what my taxes were supposed to go to. And now you've, safely. Now you've got activists who are trying to pull a bait and switch and say, well, this is their home. This is where they're safe in the snow. I was like, no, that, you've got to go to somebody else for that. Like, that's not, that's not a me problem. That's a city hall problem for not having found a place for them to be and to simply put them there and say, well, because we have nowhere else to put them, this is where they go, no, no, you were taking something was intentionally built for a very specific reason and you're trying to turn it into something else. And that was not the bargain that was struck with taxpayers when we said,

yes, okay, we'll open up the purse drinks for that. Yeah, I agree. Just because you're, homeless or you have addiction or mental health issues doesn't give you a free pass to treat the public realm, whether it's transit, the streets, bus shelters, parks, like, again, like your free playground, like your personal toilet. The rules apply to everybody, regardless of your housing situation, regardless of if you're in the throes of addiction or not. And if you violate those rules, you need to be dealt with in a hand-handly manner by authorities. And right now, that's not happening. So, okay, so how do we fix it? Because if our end goal is to ensure that people are riding it, that there's an uptick in ridership and therefore, in

affairs and revenue. What do we do? Well, I've said, I've said this since day one, ad nauseum. We need to have a special transit unit of police officers on the beat, walking in the cars, on the stations, throughout the entire network to send the message just by virtue of their presence. That's going to tell people, a lot of these people that you can't just act, again, with impunity and however you feel, because cops are around and they're going to handle business if you do something incorrectly. How big of a force would this need to be? What are we talking?

I mean, we're getting into the granular parts of it, but I mean, look. Is it 100 cops? At least. The Toronto Police got a $93 million additional budget this year. They are flush with cash, $1.7 billion annually. They're going on a huge hiring freeze, by the way. They have the resources. To me, this is about political will.

Okay. And yeah, I think step what? Again, when I say we don't want them doing that, that's not where I'm not placing the blame necessarily on those with mental health issues and with the homeless. I'm placing on the city for not having a place for them to go. I would say the same thing about libraries. Libraries are built and what we are paid for with our taxes so our kids can go somewhere to read. It is not supposed to be warming centers for the homeless. That is a failure of the city to recognize a problem and solve that problem.

Yeah, I fully agree. And look, I'm not saying the special constables have no role. Maybe there is a role in the less criminal point of view. Like, say, for example, if somebody is, like, lying on a full row of chairs on the subway or somebody is doing something gross, constables can come in and say, uh-uh, this is not how we act on the subway. But the police should be there to restore the deterrence factor, which I think we've lost. So we've got the premier weighing in. There's a role for the city hall.

Where does this change need to be born? on whose desk? Well, I think it needs to be on multiple desks, the TTC chair, which is Jamal Myers. I don't know if he'll go for that or not, but he needs to be vocal about it. Obviously, the TTC CEO, Mamm Deep Lally, the mayor, the premier, the police chief, the police board.

It's a multi-pronged attack. There's a few cooks in the kitchen. Let's make it happen. All right, Daniel Tate, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, we don't highlight this to be angry or upset. We highlight it because we need to get. to a place where that thing that we've built is being used for the reason that we built it

for. Absolutely. Thank you, my friend. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Matt. Keep up the fight. Thursdays on Global. I'm Madeline Matlock. She's the lawyer with a legendary name. Don't underestimate Miss Matlock. This woman's a sharp. You know it, baby. The one you can trust,

even if she has to bend the rules. Things aren't always as black and white as they seem. To crack a case. This is how I get things done. Emmy winning actress Kathy Bates is Matlock, all new Thursdays at 9 Eastern on global. Stream on Stack TV.