The Ben Mulroney Show - The few, the proud... but NOT woke American military

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

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slash Mulrooney today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp H-E-L-P.com slash Mulrooney. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. It is Wednesday, October 1st. Thank you so much for spending a little bit of hump day with us. We appreciate it.

You know, we are living in a time of, I think, renewed pride in our military and what they have achieved and what we want them to achieve in the future. A lot of credit must go to Mark Carney for putting our money where his mouth is and committing to far, higher spending on the military than we have in the past few decades. And I'm quite proud of that decision by this government, and I'll stand by that. That being said, the experience of the Canadian military versus our American analogs wildly different, wildly different. And there is a fear in the United States that Donald Trump is bringing his politics into the military. What does that mean, right? What does it mean to bring politics into the military? Well, let's listen to Pete Hegseth, who is the head of the Department of Defense. Let's listen to Pete

Hegeseth in terms of the perspective that he, the renewed and new perspective that this Trump administration is bringing to bear on the military. It's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and leading commands around the country in the world. It's a bad look. It is bad and it's not who we are. So whether you're an airborne ranger or a chairborn ranger, a brand new private or a four-star general, you need to meet the height and weight standards and pass for PT test. But today at my direction, every member of the joint force at every rank is required to take a PT test twice a year, as well as meet height and weight requirements twice a year. Every year of service. So PT physical

fitness tests and one of the changes is they are resetting these physical standards. They announced gender neutral benchmarks for physical fitness. In other words, they're not going to have one set of benchmarks for men and one set of benchmarks for women. Everyone has to pass the same test. Look, is there an argument for it? Sure. Is this going to eliminate certain women from positions of active duty? Absolutely. Is that the right thing to do? I don't know. But that's their perspective, and they are pursuing that quite doggedly. Senior officials, senior officers who disagree with this vision that we just heard Pete

Hexeth lay out, have been told that they should do the honorable thing if they disagree and resign. That's our way or the highway. And look, again, like I said, this is the way this administration wants to run their military. You can agree with it or you can disagree with it. and it is what it is. However, this is where things took a turn. They're going to end what they call woke policies.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared that the military will no longer promote leaders based on race, gender, or as they call them, historic firsts, but on performance and standards. Let's listen to the Defense Secretary in his own words. No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. no more climate change worship no more division distraction or gender delusions no more debris as i've said before and we'll say again we are done with that yeah look um that that rubs me the wrong way obviously that hearing that that cavalier language over things that i think deserve a little more respect and a little more nuance that rubs me the wrong way

There is a part of me where the battle in my head, there is a part of me that says the military is, is the military a breed apart. Is it a group that should not be affected by the things that we as the civilian population debate and take into consideration? Should it be a fighting force full stop? And if that's the case, maybe there's, maybe there is an argument for what this guy is saying, albeit really coarsely and crassly. I don't know. And again, not my military, not really my place to take a really firm stance. I'm looking at it almost academically, intellectually, because we have our own debates here.

Now, they are changing some discipline issues here. They've pledged to, and this is, this is weird. They're pledging to roll back some protections against hazing and bullying, saying that leaders need freedom to enforce discipline without being second-guessed. So essentially, they want to go back, they want to go back to the code red. They want to go back to the code red. Did you order the code red?

I did the job. Did you order the code red? You're goddamn right, I did. Yeah, you'll remember from a few, good men, that that was central to that incredible, phenomenal movie. So let's now turn our attention to Canada's military. Because the Canadian Armed Forces, we've already surpassed our 2024, 2025 recruitment goal. We've enrolled 6,706 recruits. We beat our target of 6,496 recruits. However, the main issue in the Canadian Armed Forces is retention. Now, why is it that we've

We are bringing people in and then we're losing them to attrition. What's the, what's the, and there's no right answer. There's no firm answer. You can't really put your thumb on it, your finger on it. It could be bureaucratic, bureaucratic issues. It could be D.E.I. It could be identity. We don't know what it.

It could be, they show up and they don't, they don't feel like they can do the job that they signed up to do. They're, you know, and we know that there's work being done to give our men and women in uniform, the tools. the tools that they need to do their job, but we are not there and won't be there for a while. So in the interim, what happens to these people who want to be soldiers and they can't be soldiers in the way that they thought they could be? So that's sort of where we are.

Now, is anybody surprised that we are losing these soldiers? I'm not, because as I just explained to you, we don't have a fighting force yet. We don't have the tools to allow these soldiers to, be the soldiers that they want to be you know what's the line uh in the army be be be all you can be that's certainly not the motto in canada yet yet i do believe that mark carney has an ambitious plan to get us there but that takes time absolutely um do we have a problem listen do we have a problem with overly political overly an overly woke um perspective on on on too many things in this country. I think we do. I do think that that's the case in this in this country. I think

we, we, we, we, I don't know, we want to show everybody how, how much better we are than anybody else. And we do so with, like twisting ourselves into pretzels to show just how welcoming and how open we are. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. This is a Harvard professor who spoke in committee on Parliament Hill just a few weeks ago. There's a ripe opportunity for Canada to poach American scientists. And even as a professor at Harvard, I would like to say, poach us. The situation in the United States is threatened. The only disadvantage that Canada has is that there is a reputation for being woker than the United States and for there being possibly onerous requirements on the range of opinions expressed, the racial and gender preferences

for, for example, the Canada chairs. So I can. I guess I would urge Canada not to squander the opportunity by imposing distortions of science coming from the other direction. Look, the Aristotle Foundation reviewed 489 academic job postings across Canada in a recent report, and they found that 98% of those listings included conditions that directly are indirectly discriminated against candidates, 98% of them. And you'll remember the Dalhousie position that we talked about earlier this week that said every application encourages indigenous people of black or African descent, disability, women, 2S, LGBTIQIA, anybody diverse.

Preferences will be given in hiring processes to candidates who self-identify as members of one or more of the equity deserving groups listed above. In my humble opinion, in an effort to be inclusive, we are being exclusive. We are denying opportunity to the people in the most competitive environment we've ever been in before at a time where Canada needs to marshal our resources and build teams of the best of the best. We are still choosing performance, performativeness over performance. And that has to change. Until that changes, well, no, we don't have time for this.

But, you know, it starts at the top. And unless we change that, I don't know what's going to happen. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much for joining us. And thank you for finding us wherever you listen to our show. You may listen on the radio or as a podcast. You may listen on a streaming app. You may find us on YouTube or on social media.

Wherever you find us, we say thank you. We're trying to build this show one listener at a time. And we take you where we can find you. You know, the past few years has been an exercise in adopting new language, new words mean new things. And every now and then there's one that sort of doesn't necessarily rub me the wrong way, but it gives me pause. And, you know, we learned the expression systemic racism.

And there's value in it. But I always wondered why questioning it was proof that it existed. That's what I was told. If you question systemic racism, then that is proof that systemic racism exists. And so I'm very glad to have our next guest join us because he and his group have done research into the notion of systemic racism inside Ontario schools and the findings are eye-opening. So please welcome to the show Matthew Lau of the Aristotle Foundation. They have a new study that challenges the claim of a recent Ontario Human Rights Commission report regarding systemic discrimination in Ontario schools or the lack thereof. Matthew, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. Okay, so my kids have been in the Ontario public school system for years, and, you know, it was an eye-opening experience to learn that within those schools, kids that did not look like my kids were experiencing systemic racism over generations, and for a person like myself to say, wait, hold on, is that true? That in and of itself was proof of systemic racism. Yeah, so, you know, the report that we did and the research we've done really tried to examine this claim from the Human Rights Commission about systemic racism and injustice in public education, particularly against the black population. And when we look at the report, what's missing from it is actual evidence of this systemic anti-black racism. So we see, for example, that there are, you know, individual acts of racism against black students or other students, which are, you know, undoubtedly bad. But this is not systemic racism in the sense of, you know, rules or policies from school boards or teachers' colleges or anyone else that discriminates against black students or any other types of students. So, Matthew, so where did the conflation come from? And I don't think, you know,

when you live in a country as diverse as Canada, of course you're going to have different and divergent and sometimes terrible views budding up against each other. And the result can be individual cases of racism, horrible cases of racism. So how does an Ontario Human Rights Commission report conflate that with systemic racism? Well, they get two things wrong. I think one is the conflation of individual racism with systemic racism. But the other place that they try to look for systemic racism is through statistical inference. So, for example, they may say black students, tend to on average underperform in certain areas

and therefore it must be that the system is racist and you know my view on this is hang on you can't just say you know this group of people and this other group of people at different outcomes for one group of people were discriminated against there are many other factors that are going to explain uh... whether it's differences in academic performance differences in an income or differences in any other type of outcome in society you can't just attribute it to uh... to racism

So, okay, so, and there's, so, so, all right, that's a, that's a great position to start from, and those inferences are, are, you challenge them, how, how much farther down the rabbit hole did you go? So there's, there's really two different, uh, uh, aspects at play. One of them is, to what extent can you say that the differences between groups are the result of discrimination? And, and, uh, to me, the answer is, well, it's usually a very poor explanation of differences. So, for example, if you go away from academic performance, you look at something

like life expectancies. You know, for the last hundred years in Canada, women have had longer life expectancies than men. Does that mean our society discriminates against men? I don't think that's evidence of that. And the other, you know, the other thing I look at is, well, you know, the Ontario Human Rights Commission said the curriculum is based on a Eurocentric views. And, you know, they focus exclusively on European history. They set aside contributions from people who are not of European descent. So the other thing I looked at is if you look at the standardized test scores, you know, some school boards will publish data on this.

So I looked at the Peel District School Board, which published some recent data on this. If you looked at the standardized test scores, it's true that black students perform on average worse and white students. But you know, the highest performing groups are the East Asian students, followed by South Asian, followed by Southeast Asian. So, you know, if we have a school system that, you know, perpetuates advantages for white people at the expense of black people. It's not doing a very good job of that. Yeah. How do you explain then that the students were actually doing the best on standardized tests are Asian students? So this idea that that, you know, the school systems,

system is rigged in favor of white people, I think, is without evidence. Well, let's go back to what you were talking about, about the curriculum itself, you know, that it's Eurocentric. And one could argue well, as a country founded on, you know, that historically came from those European peoples, there is value in teaching that. We could obviously do better, and we could obviously bring in, you know, the other contributing cultures that have made Canada what it is. but to me that's that's a you know that's a that's a that's a that's a content issue that's

not a structural issue yeah I don't I don't see that it's a racism issue now I don't I don't have any particular expertise into what types of history that that is being taught in in Ontario schools but you know I don't recall for example when I was in school that the curriculum was exclusively on European history we did learn you know many other types of history. Yeah. And my kids, you know, there's, you know, we're living in a world where Truth and Reconciliation Day is now a thing. I can promise you that the school boards go heavy into sort of the 60s scoop as well as the residential schools and the trauma that First Nations have dealt with because of it. I mean, the, the curriculum is an ever-evolving thing. It's

almost alive and therefore to me it's it's it's not stagnant it's not actually it's not a system because it's always changing yeah the the curriculum is always changing and you know there are many other things that are going on um i like look i i i admire and i appreciate that there are uh you know efforts to um you know teach students about different things uh but you know this idea that, you know, the school system is systemically racist or discriminating against certain races. That's just where I don't find any evidence. So, so Matthew, what do you do with your study? How does it, how does it do more than just live in conversations like the ones we're having right now? Well, one of the things that I looked at is, well, there are certain groups of

people that underperform in schools. And the question is how best to help them. And, And I think if we have our premises wrong, if we think that the reason that they're doing poorly in schools is because of racism, we're going to reach the wrong conclusions. The kind of the sort of thing I like to focus on is what will actually help them. And, you know, in terms of education policy research that I've done, one of the things that helps is school choice. So giving people more options as to where they want their kids to attend school, they'll be able to better find a school that is better suited for their kids. Well, Matthew Lau, I want to thank you for an honest and frank conversation. If the issues of educating our kids are as important to us as we think, then we can't be afraid of having tough conversations, and we can't be afraid of budding up against ideas

that may offend or may scare. And I do appreciate you bringing that to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you. Yeah, and I think fundamental to that conversation is I think every single one of us wants all of our children to succeed as much and as well as they possibly. can. And I think Matthew is right. If we start with the wrong assumption, we are going to have the wrong outcome. And it's important and incumbent upon us to be honest about what is holding certain kids back and how can we unleash them in the most effective way possible. Because

otherwise, we're just going to propagate if a lie based on a lie is just still a lie. And a misunderstanding of the facts leads to the wrong outcome. So I'm very glad to have had that conversation. And I hope that we continue it. Up next, our political panel stretches their legs on the talker of the day. A child whispers dark secrets from his past in a language he no longer understands. But a lost cassette will reveal the ugly truth. From Curious Cast and Blanchard House comes a cross-continental Odyssey to recover a stolen past. This is Stop Rewind, The Lost Boy, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.