The Ben Mulroney Show - The mailbag! Also, online anonymity and is Canada at its breaking point?

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

GUEST:   Lloyd Richardson. Director of IT, Canadian Centre for Child Protection GUEST:   Darrell Bricker – IPSOS If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This spectacular evening features internationally acclaimed singer-songwriter Benjamin William Hastings, known for his powerful worship songs. heard around the world, including so will I and gratitude. Share the wonder of Christmas with friends and family at Roy Thompson Hall. Tickets are on sale now at Salvationist.ca slash Christmas. You are listening to the Ben Mulroney show on this Thursday, November 13th, And we want to kick off this hour of the show by reminding ourselves and reminding you that this show is a conversation with you, our listeners and our viewers on YouTube. And you reach out in so many different ways when we open the phone lines, you phone in, when we tell you to text, you text.

And you also leave us all sorts of messages on various social media platforms on YouTube. You send us emails and texts. And so we want you to know that those emails and those, that part of the conversation doesn't just die as soon as you send it, that we read them. And we want to take a moment every week to keep that part of the conversation going. So now it's time for the Ben Mulrooney mailbag. Do-wop, do-wop. Welcome friends to play and sing. This is reply all the Ben-Moll runy mail bag.

Yes, it's reply all the Ben-Molrooney mail bag. And so I guess Mike Droulet, my intrepid producer, is going to read some comments and read some questions, and I'm going to do my best to answer them. Yes, our video producer, Amy scoured through all of our messages on Instagram and Twitter to be able to find these gems. So we start with a couple of light ones. This is from Melody. Not everybody puts their name on them, but she did. Did you get to eat some Saskatchewan pizza?

You were in Saskatchewan on the weekend. And when you were in Winnipeg, you were. waxed poetic about the pizza there for days. Yep, yep. The answer is no, I didn't. And the reason is, I mean, I would have eaten some pizza there. I wanted to get us some Saskatoonberry pie, because Saskatoon berries are awesome. And I didn't get that either. I was there. I got in at about, I landed at 1.30 in the morning, which was 2.30 in Toronto. And I had to do some work on my speech. I didn't get to bed until close to 4 a.m. I woke up. I went to the the convention center, the TCU Center. I had a buffet breakfast of eggs and bacon and so a little

bit of saracha. I had lots of coffee. I gave my speech. I listened to the premier speech. And then I left, I went back to my room. I packed and I flew home. So the only meal I had was the buffet breakfast. So the answer is no, I did not have any Saskatchewan pizza. Okay. All right. And this one is, I believe, in response to a rant you had about, you know, our former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his goings-on around the, when he went and did that speech over in Korea. Yeah. And such. It was his first paid speech on that, every leader does it.

When as soon as you leave office, you got to get your money while you can. And you got to strike while the iron's hot. And there's an interest in hearing from recently. departed politicians. And so he is making a tidy sum per speech. So these are less questions and more statements. And there were three of them. One says, you hit it right on the head.

It was all about ego. Another person, Peter wrote, it will take decades to undo Trudeau's mess. But this is the last one from Newfie Bullet 59. I wasn't a fan of your father, but I think I like you. You know, I'll take it. And if my dad were here, he would take that. He'd say, good on you.

Well done. um my dad didn't get into politics to be liked uh listen here here a couple of things about that speech and what i think it means there's nothing wrong with a politician trying to spin their legacy at any given opportunity someone gives you a microphone start start populating the conversation with your thoughts on how you did there's nothing wrong with that that happens all the time you know that people are going to be talking about you all the time might as well add to the conversation my problem is that there's always something to blame like are those 10 years there's we all live on the same planet and every country experience COVID and its aftermath differently most countries

that we would normally compare ourselves to are doing far better today than we are that's not because of global forces that's not because of a hidden hand that is somehow putting its thumb on the scale to make sure that we don't succeed those are issues of our own making. Those are roadblocks that we put in front of ourselves to slow down the growth of this country. And so when I hear him say, oh, the world is ever changing.

And the world's always ever changing, man. The world, oh, there's so many threats on Donald Trump this and Donald Trump. You know what? Those are excuses. The fact is you had the reins of power for 10 years. And this is where we are today. Now, 10 years from now,

we may be in a better place and we'll forget about today in the way that we are currently living in. But right now, in the here and now, we are not better off than we were 10 years ago. And to offload responsibility of it onto, like I said, the hidden hand of, I don't know, some anti-Canadian sentiment out there is nonsense. You've got to take ownership over your failures. And as of right now, a lot of those policies led to a big chunk of that failure. And the ruling liberals, including Carney, they agree with that.

They understand it. They accept it. They've said it many times. I mean, they thread the needle pretty well where they talk about the problem. mistakes and missed opportunities of the past for getting a lot of those people who are there voted for those missed opportunities. It is what it is.

The people I want to win the last election lost and these guys won, they, to the victor go the spoils, you get to say those things. The next one's a couple of comments and questions are based on our land claim stories at British Columbia with the Cowichin Tribe. We did something a little bit more extensive

on that yesterday with the garbage that's a little separate from the land claim story. Right. But we had a couple of comments about who's going to be investing in Canada with all these land cams because investors are going to, why would they take a gamble with what's happening with the indigenous people? Yeah, well, I think we're already seeing in real time that uncertainty. We already know Canada is such an uncertain place for certain types of investment

that foreign direct investment in this country has evaporated. There's almost none of it right now because this is not a place that investors look and say, oh, yeah, these guys are investor friendly. But then you look at British Columbia, add to that uncertainty, this very unique position that the BC Supreme Court has forced upon us where you don't know who owns what land. Nobody wants to put money into that. We heard about a $100 million infrastructure investment that just, that's what they put press pause on it.

We are hearing that people can't get their mortgages. renewed. Of course, of course no one is going to invest right now. You have to be, you'd have to want to light your money on fire. You'd want such high risk with, with what chance of return. Of course this is going to happen right now. So yeah, I don't know anybody with that kind of money to burn or with that willingness to risk their capital on. Of course not. And the second comment related to the land claim stories is somewhat related to the garbage story. Remember when we did the garbage story?

We spoke with Paul Johnson, the reporter who really showed us the extent of it. We made the point, and he made the point, that this was not the entire band. This was one person who was doing this. Now, what the rest of the people know is another thing. So the comment comes from Art Bank Collective Gow. Great name. Wow. The kind words and excuses given by you guys is unbelievable. It shouldn't surprise me. It's the Canadian way. Carry on and remain. Oblivious, but I'm no longer willing to sit by and let this nonsense carry on at my expense. I'm open to any ideas and how to sign off on this corruption. Okay, I'm a very, you're saying a lot of stuff there. One, you're no longer willing to sit back.

Okay, so what are you going to do? We're having conversations. That's the only thing we can do, right? I'm not going to shut down a conversation. And by the way, we shepherded forward a pretty interesting take yesterday where I suggested, and we suggested, thanks to the good work of Mike Droulet, that you would have to be actually, you would actually have to be blind to not see 29,000 trips by dump truck. passing the Cowichin leadership building.

Like that's where the leaders work. And right next door, right by that, went by 29,000 dump trucks. And we were talking about, sure, the garbage was coming from the city of Richmond and it was being dumped on Cowich and land. But the bad guy here is not the people in Richmond. Like, let me put it to you this way.

If somebody breaks into your house, then that person is a criminal. But if you welcome them in and then they do something inside or if you welcome them in and then you take their tools and steal your own stuff, you're the criminal.

Like they're not criminals if you're the one who said, hey, come on to my land and maybe give me some money and I can make your problem go away. That's on you. The people in Richmond who want to get rid of their,

They're garbage. They couldn't have done it unless you invited them in. It's like a vampire. Vampire can't come into your house unless you invite them in. And then that's on you. Sage words. Sage words. All right.

And that's been the mailbag for this week. All right. Don't go anywhere. We've got more coming up on the Ben Mulroney show. This is the Ben Mulroney show. And every now and then we like to take stock of a story that sort of bubbled up a few months ago and see what happened to it? Like, where's it going? Has it moved? Has the ball move forward? And a few months ago, the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, proposed digital anonymity

at the World Economic Forum earlier this year. He proposed that it was, that was a thing, that would be a thing of the past in his, in his country. Let's listen to what he said. Citizens could use nicknames if they want, but in the case of a crime, public authorities would be able to connect those nicknames to real people and hold them responsible. Because accountability is not an obstacle to freedom of speech. It is an essential complement to it. Now look, I'm of two minds, and I don't even know what side of this debate I'm going to land on at the end of this segment, but there are some really nefarious effects of being

able to do and say whatever you want online with complete anonymity. There are some terrible people doing terrible things, and people become emboldened if they know that you can't find them. It's an awful, awful situation. But is the answer a digital wallet? You hear a mandatory digital wallet, and all of a sudden, the World Economic Forum is coming for your rights. So, you know, is that cure appropriate for the disease? I don't know. So let's check in with somebody who probably has thought more about this than I, Lloyd Richardson, director of IT at the Canadian Center for Child Protection.

Lloyd, thank you for joining us on the Ben Mulroney Show. Yeah, and thanks for having me. So generally speaking here, where do you and where does your organization land in terms of sort of this, our default setting that so much that occurs online is and looks to remain anonymous? Well, what I would say is the direct sort of connection to digital wallet, we look at sort of the pillars of child protection. certainly is identifying when a child is a child or an adult. So that being one of the sort of the pillars of child safety online,

we as an organization would see digital idea or the sort of subset of that age verification being a huge component in protection online. So give me a sense of where we are from a regulatory standpoint, a protection of children, and that pursuit of safety. Where are we in Canada today? I think we've really just started the discussion on it, to be honest with you. I mean, there's a lot of individual sort of efforts related to this. I think we've acknowledged that it's an important thing for more than just children.

I mean, that's one aspect of it. We're starting to obviously see the talk of some regulation in this space, but that doesn't sort of see the other side of the coin. We can say, for example, that you must be, you must be an adult to be able to view pornography on the Internet, for example. but the mechanisms by which we do that, sure it's possible to send ID to a site, but I think that looking at digital ID, we can do that in a way that is far more privacy preserving. So I'm not suggesting that we don't use the old less privacy preserving ways because I think it's important to be able to restrict children's access to the pornography

that we see on the internet right now, but we can definitely be doing better in that space. And I do think that it's a multi-stakeholder sort of situation here where we have government that needs to move. We need legislative changes and we need industry to work within that framework. Yeah, look, if I owned a store and I saw two masked people walking into my store, my initial reaction would be, these guys are trying to, they're going to rob me. And I wonder, but if it is illegal for them to wear that mask, they may think twice about robbing my store. And I know there are people who draw parallels between that real world scenario and the online experience of having anonymous people who are shrouded in secrecy. You can't know who they are. They can be emboldened to cross a lot of legal lines that if their identity was available, they would think twice about that.

So that's one side of me that thinks, yes, there is a very real reason to be able to unmask people if we need to. but that fear of being monitored of being able of having people for you know all it takes is a government that oversteps its bounds on one thing or another and they're all over you and they know everything you're doing online that to me feels a bridge too far so how do we reconcile those two very real and very respectable concerns yeah i think there's a lot of nuance to it i think the blanket statement that um no one anonymity anywhere is probably a little bit overreaching. And then the suggestion that, on the other side, the suggestion that people deserve anonymity everywhere is also wrong thinking, right? So if you look at many of the environments that we see online right now, I think if you look at an experience on Twitter slash X, if you could probably argue that eliminating anonymity on there

would probably lead to much better discourse on there. There's a lot of different places on the Internet where I think there's probably good reason to get rid of the notion of anonymity. It would probably make the Internet a lot better. However, there's also places in the Internet where one would have an expectation of anonymity if they're searching for sensitive information that could be useful to a third party. But I think that's sort of the nuance, and where we don't accept that anonymity is acceptable everywhere. In particular, where we're looking in environments where children would intercept. sure, like you can get into that sort of a side where, yes, children have rights online, absolutely,

but we also need to look at children from a protective sort of lens. And when that anonymity leads to problems in terms of creating risks towards the child, that's where we need to address that issue. So it really does have nuance. So getting back to what you originally erred there related to Spain, I think the statement of electronic ID being of voluntary, voluntary thing is probably a worthwhile thing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you can access anything without it, right?

So it's really a nuanced discussion. And Lloyd, I want to just get to a better understanding of why people would be so concerned with a digital wallet or digital ID. I mean, because I might be missing the distinction between that and say, you know, having my Apple wallet containing all sorts of information of mine. And I just saw today that on Apple phones in the United States, you can now upload your passport to it. And so is that not what we're talking about?

I mean, to me, that's digital ID. But is it something else that people are concerned about? I think it's a few things. I think there's sort of a historical context to this where where does sort of that information said. I think a lot of people are fearful of government having more information. I think that's, certainly within Canada, I don't think that's, I think that's a misplaced fear. So it could date back to the sort of the notion of papers, please, back in Europe, say, 100 years ago, right? Like they don't want an internet that looks like there's any sort of barriers, which, quite frankly, is a wrong way of thinking about it.

If you ask me, I think it allows for a lot of other abuses to happen if we don't move for. with something in that space, with a balanced approach. Because quite frankly, you look at the Internet for the last 25 years. Like, I mean, none of this is new, really incredibly new technology, right? Like, this could have been implemented a long time ago. It's just that there's the sort of techno-libertarian will to essentially avoid that. Well, I think a lot of it has to do with a problem of our own design. As far back as I can remember, almost the default setting of the Internet was that anonymous

aspect of being able to be whoever you want online. There was almost like a fantasy. You can manifest whatever you want online because nobody knows who you are. And trying to then reverse justify taking that away from people, one of these defining aspects of what made life on the internet different than the real world, trying to justify taking that out is sort of like trying to take pee out of a pool. Like once it's there, it's baked in. Once you've given people anonymity online, that's what they expect. and taking it away is like taking away or right. Absolutely.

People are averse to change, right? Like if you actually go way, way back in time, you think about when driver's licenses were first instituted in Canada, there was pushback against that at the time. I mean, we're talking over 100 years ago, but the same sort of arguments are recycled from back then, and we look in hindsight now, that would be ludicrous to suggest that driver's licensing didn't have net.

And Lloyd, let's not forget, they go back and watch the videos of when all of a sudden they mandated people wear seatbelts or they said you couldn't drink a beer behind the wheel. I mean, there are videos of people upset that they couldn't have a beer on their way back from a long day at work. So you're absolutely right. I wish we could continue this conversation, but perhaps we can do so another day. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Ben.

Thanks for having me. Have a good day. Up next is Canada at its breaking point. Our next guest is asking that very question. Does he have the answers, though? Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. You'll remember that in the lead-up to the last election, one of the common talking points of conservative leader Pierre Poliev was

everything is broken. And he said it quite often and he got a lot of pushback for that. And the reaction by his opponents were, well, we believe in Canada. We don't think how negative he is. We're not. We're optimistic. We're bullish to suggest that is.

not have faith in Canadians. And while he may not have been wrong, it might have been a question of people taking issue, not necessarily with the message, but with the messenger. And so when somebody else in a different way brings up those very same issues, it may be a little more palatable to some to have the discussion. And there's a new book out by Daryl Bricker as well John Ibbotson that's called Breaking Point, the new big shifts putting Canada at risk. And And Daryl Bricker is the CEO of Ipsos Global. You know them from all the polling data that gets quoted on this station, on this show, as well as all over the country. And Mr. Ibbinson is, of course, a great journalist in his own right.

And we've got Daryl joining us right now. Daryl, congratulations on the new book. Thanks, Ben. Really appreciate it. So I guess, listen, we'll start with a pretty big question, is have we hit our breaking point? Well, we could very well. I mean, we're at a situation similar to what we were back in the 1860s when this country came together, where we had a threat from the United States and we had a, you know,

a whole series of issues that we had to reconcile in the country in order to be able to come together. The biggest ones really being related to national unity. Yeah. Well, we've got, so look, a lot of us, and everyone knows I tell people this all the time. They can take my bias and do whatever they want with it. You know, I felt that the values and that my vision for Canada as well as the problems that ailed us and the solutions that we need to bring to bear on those problems would best be solved by a conservative government. It turns out that side didn't win. But my concern with

electing the Liberal Party again, even under the new management of somebody as notable as Mark Carney, was we were never going to get the tough medicine required to fix the problems that we had by a government that was in part responsible for the problems themselves. And it feels like we're, it feels like that's what we're getting right now. We're getting kind of half measures or a slower path towards getting us to where we need to be than we would have gotten under a government that would have said so much of what the last 10 years was about. We've got to throw out and start again. Yeah, we're pretty clear about the last 10 years and not very charitable with the last prime minister.

But at the moment, I think, you know, that there is some identification in the liberal government as to what the problems are. I mean, the kinds of announcements that they're making directly relate to what we talk about in the book, which is, you know, building infrastructure to be able to get, you know, what our economy really is into the world. So, for example, things related to agriculture and mining and oil and gas, maybe not a pipeline at this stage. But that's a bit of a step back from where they were previously, which were going to be some sort of Silicon Valley norm. Well, we're now at least recognizing what our economy is and trying to find ways other than through the United States to get that into the market. So you have to give them kudos for that. But the degree of urgency, yeah, I think that there's something that can be set up on that point.

So why did you want to write the book? Because like I said, when I read that this book was coming out, I was like, I don't know that I'm going to learn anything. I didn't learn over the course of a couple of years of listening to Pierre Poliyev and fight against Justin Trudeau. And then what did you think was missing from the discussion and why you want to write the book? Well, it's really a creed de cour, as they say in French, you know, a cry from the heart. about the future of the country. I mean, one of the, my going-in idea when we started into this book was really, you know, George Grant's Lament for a Nation, which is a 60 years old today.

And, you know, he asked a really great question. Are Canadians a unique species on the North American continent? And we, John and I both felt that this was really a question that needed to be asked and answered very directly. So that's the reason that we wrote the book. But not only is it a catalog of the issues that we think that we're dealing with, with, but we've also in the, particularly in the last couple of chapters, really address what we think are some solutions to some of these problems. Well, exactly.

And I guess that was going to be my next question, because whenever I talk to an author who writes a big book on a big idea, very rarely do they end the book, not having learnt something in the process of writing it. So how different is your perspective today than it was before you start writing the book? I think that what differs is that we've moved off of. because we asked ourselves, ourselves, this question, you know, another book saying, you know, what's wrong with Canada really isn't required right now? Yeah.

It's, you know, what's wrong with Canada, what's right with Canada, and what can we do to advance our independence going into the rest of the 21st century? So we felt a real need at the end of the book to not just catalog what was going on, but to say, look, these are some of the things that we can do. And what we discovered as we were writing the book is that there are, you know, a fair number of proposals out there about what needs to be done. And that we're going to take them out from under a bushel and we're going to give them some light through the book. We're going to come up with a few of our own.

But the biggest thing is we were going to think more radically about what these solutions would be rather than just kicking the cans down the road and maybe in a slightly different direction. Because the moment that we're at is going to require more creativity, bigger thinking, and more urgency in what we do. And so that's really the tone that comes out of the book and the nature of the ideas that we suggest. I'm in conversation with the author of a new book, Breaking Point, the new big shifts putting Canada at risk. Daryl Bricker of Ipsos Global joins me. What was it like working with a journalist of the caliber of Mr. Ibbotson? Well, this is our third book together.

So you guys have a shorthand. Yeah, yeah. So it's really good. I mean, we don't really, we kind of write independently and then come together. And then on the 5% that we disagree on doesn't end up in the book. Or you could just resolve a good old-fashioned Greco-Roman wrestling. Well, exactly. I guess you've seen the videos, right?

Now, Darrell, I don't want to give too much of the book away. Of course, we want people to buy the book and read the book. But you talk about some radical ideas that you put forth. Give me a sense of how out of the box you guys were thinking in terms of what we need to do to get. Let's break up Ottawa. Okay, tell me what that means. Oh, that means getting every department that has a crossover with prevention. responsibilities in our constitution out of Ottawa.

Put, you know, Heritage Canada in Saskatoon. Yeah. Yeah. Put Parks, Canada, and Banff. Put Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Nova Scotia. And I don't mean just the department. I mean the deputy minister, all the senior officials and the minister. And what do you think that?

What would that achieve? Because I love the idea. Emotionally, it makes a lot, I like hearing that. But I don't know what benefit that would give us. Well, two. One, it would see that part of the country that's most invested in that particular area of activity. It would see that the federal government's actually working on their behalf and is listening to their interest because they're, you know, walking with the minister and the deputy minister walking past them in the grocery store. But the other thing is you can't help but absorb what realities of that, say, for example, in the instance of fisheries and oceans, what the realities of working on the ocean would be because that's where you would be.

Right now they sit in Ottawa all, you know, within a kilometer from the center block, all the meaningful jobs, and all they do is talk to each other. Yeah, the bubble, the Ottawa bubble. They don't go out of the country. Yeah, that's a good point. Hey, one last question for you before I let you go is, like, there are solutions to bring to bear on economics. You know, if we have an economic issue, there are economic solutions we can bring to bear on it. How much of a problem across the board is the issue of our lack of social cohesion, our lack of, our lack of, of a true Canadian identity that unites us.

It does feel like we have lost the understanding of what brings us together as a national community. And I wonder if that is something that needs to be addressed as well. We talk about that very directly in the book. And a lot of the blame we put at the feet of the previous government, you know, who celebrated us as a post-national nation.

And the blame for that is that, you know, the things that make us uniquely Canadian were never celebrating it, you know, with some sort of an emotional thing. But, you know, we would take, you know, prime ministers off of our currency. We knew all the things that we didn't like because we were constantly apologizing for them. You know, the celebration of who we were and what brought this country together was basically canceled. I mean, look at how many statues of Johnny McDonald were pushed over across this country or boxed up. But you know what? The single

best thing that Mr. Carney can probably do and his cabinet can do is go on earth a couple of biographies of Johnny McDonald because they're facing very similar sorts of situations. And understand the genius that brought this country together. Yes, there were bad things and we should call them out and we should definitely

recognize them in instances when it's required to apologize for them, but celebrate what this country has done our achievements. Daryl, last government hated us. We're going to leave it there. The book is called Breaking point, you can find it anywhere you buy your books. Darrell Bricker, thanks so much. I look forward to reading the book.

Thanks a lot, then. Up next, could a new Trump moment become the all-time classic Trump awkward moment? Welcome back to the Ben Mulritcher. We've had a heck of a show today. This has been a lot of ups and down, some laughs, some less than laughs. Yeah, you started crying at one point? I did not. No, there was no tears.

There's no crying. baseball. There's no crying into Ben Mulrheny. Actually, there could be. There could be. I've cried plenty of times. Actually, one of the first things I did in radio, it was, um, Mike Ben Dixon, our boss asked me to put together a special commemorating my dad in anticipation of the, of the funeral. And we interviewed all sorts of people who knew him really well. And the first, like the, the first I worked with George, my original intrepid producer, he was that was the first time I worked with him. And I guess we were doing the conclusion of the show. He said, Ben, just give you, give your final thoughts. And I said, okay, and I started and he stopped me. He's like, I'm going to need,

I'm going to need you to stop worrying about what the words are and just tell me what you're feeling. And I, so I, the next take I did was that and the water work just started. I could not, I didn't even know it was usable because I was sobbing so much. Are you an ugly crier? Oh, I don't know. I don't look at myself. You know, I actually never liked looking at pictures of myself and I really never, I had to, I would watch tapes back of myself for, to try to remember the good and the bad so I could incorporate that into getting better. But it was, I didn't, I never got into television because I wanted to be, I wanted my face on TV. I got into television because it was the only other option available to me besides becoming a lawyer. and I didn't want to subject my crappy legal mind to anybody. You know, somebody would hire me thinking,

oh, Ben Mulroney, he's got to be, and he's a mallroney, his dad was a lawyer, he's got to be a great lawyer. I would have been a terrible lawyer. I would have been an awful lawyer. So the only alternative that was open to me was TV. And I was like, I'll do this until they fire me. And I was in it for 24 years, 23 years.

I never looked at my old stories, ever. After I did them, I just walked away and moved on to the next. When you started, did you have hair? somewhat yeah yeah sure yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I didn't have a big afro and have you ever grown a beard because you know some some some people who can't grow hair on their head they do the reverse and they grow it on the bottom of their face chin strap yeah I grew beer

I grew a beard like two years ago yeah and where did you end the side of the reverse sideburn the reverse side well because my sideburns end here but if I had a beard and no hair there'd be a reverse sideburn no just a regular spot just like and you do a fade I did it. The first time I did it, I was like, I don't even know how to do this. But sure, and I mangled it. But yeah, I did a face. Just curious. Yeah, yeah. This is a safe space. I grew a beard. We're in the trust tree. We're in the trust tree.

And then it went, it was like super, super white. I was like, I look like, I look like Santa. Like a, Santa has a full head of hair. No, he doesn't. Yes, he does. No, you take his hat off? He's not. Well, certain interpretations of Santa have been bald. The Santa that I know. When Ed Asner, when Ed Asner, when Ed Asner played Sand He was bald, but by and large, Santa has a full head of hair underneath his hat. The real Santa does not.

The real Santa. The real Santa is within all of us. Okay, so we wanted to talk about Donald Trump. Oh, my. Yeah, okay, so I strap in for this because this is interesting. Okay, so the Syrian president, Ahmed al-Shara, visited the White House. And he's a former al-Qaeda commander. He was once branded a terrorist by Washington.

There was a $10 million bounty on his head. and he stood alongside Donald Trump in what marked the first official visit by a Syrian leader to the White House since Syria's independence from France in 1946. That's a banana's statement. Everything I just read there is crazy. Yeah.

Like crazy. It's a huge deal. This guy is an al-Qaeda commander. Yeah. Al-Qaeda. And so the visit, it comes as the U.S. extended its pause on sanctions on Syria for another 180 days.

I guess they're there to say thank you. Well, I mean, because they had the sanctions on there for the previous president, Bashar Alasana, and his, and the human rights violations, I mean, it was a mess. Yeah, and yeah, and when they were overthrown, there was this power vacuum. A lot of people were wondering what was going to happen, and this guy took over, and a lot of people have been worried about him. But I guess you don't worry about that in those moments. And I get somebody in charge. Yeah. And anyway, so Donald Trump gave a very unique gift to this man.

And they gave him, he gave him his own cologne, Trump Cologne. And also, but you have to visualize the Trump Cologne bottle. Yeah. It was, it looks like a trophy. And the trophy part is Trump. Like it's basically like a little statue of Trump on time. I swear, when I saw this video, I thought it was AI generated. I couldn't believe it was.

real because that, okay, so he sprays him with it. And when he sprays him with it, he's got some questions for him. Let's listen to the conversation behind between the Syrian president who's a former Al-Qaeda terrorist and he's spritz. And Donald Trump, the president of the United States, offering the former terrorist his cologne and spritzing him as you would at Bloomingdale's at Christmas. This is men's fragrance

It's the best fragrance, come here I have more here, sir Okay So what we'll do is just take that Joe, put it in And then the other one is for your wife How many ones are you're a wife

You guys I never know Because you never know How many wives Because you never know So he spritzed everyone in the room. So can you imagine how what that room would smell like? Well, I lost my sense of smell during COVID. I have no idea what Trump Cologne smells like.

I can't imagine it's, it's, I don't like Cologne to begin with. But he spritz to everyone, like a full on spritz. That's just, I mean, just special. That's a, that's a high watermark for me in terms of like Trumpisms. How many, how many wives? Because you never know with you guys. You know, what's more offensive? Spraying somebody?

Because, I mean, is he suggesting that he stinks? And just spraying him? And then he starts spraying everyone else in the room? I'm not looking at any of it as offensive. Because does Donald Trump mean to be offensive? In that moment, he's a stream of consciousness is whatever he says. I kind of find that to be charming as all hell because it's just, I mean, it's, it is what it is. So this is, we're talking about like gifts for presidents, for prime ministers and stuff.

But I mean, hey, you know. something about that. What's the worst gift your dad ever got? Well, I don't know that were any bad gifts. There were some odd gifts. You got a lot. Did you get a lot? Yeah, so whenever people give us gifts for my dad on trips, we would put them in what we called the Brian Mulroney Museum, which was the crawl space underneath our back stairs. And that was a Brian Mulroney Museum. But in there, there was, so there was an ostrich egg that my dad was given. And there was a pinhole at the top of it that they used to drain out the egg, the oak. and the white, and they cleaned it out. And then an artist used a long horse hair, and he would dip it in paint, and he would put it through the hole,

and he would, with one breaststroke, and then pull it out, and do another brush stroke, and pull it out, and another brush stroke, until it revealed, until he had painted my dad's portrait on the inside of the ostrichae. So that when you held it up and looked through the tiny little hole, and he held it to the light, you could see a perfect portrait of my dad.

How good was it? Very good. Wow. But it was so odd that it belonged in the Brian Mulroney Museum. Where did he get it from? Do you remember? I have no idea. I mean, ostrich? I genuinely don't know. It was that we never got past how weird and how do you develop that skill.

How do you know that this is something you can do? Who does this for the first time? You know what? I got an ostrich egg and a horsehair. Let's see what I can do. I've always wondered about those things. Those things we take for granted in life. Somebody had to come up with version one, mark one of that thing.

And it was probably nothing like the final. How do you get there? Yeah. I think back then, though, when your dad was prime minister, there was no sort of limit on what you could get. Now you have to declare them. You have to declare everything because you're not allowed to accept anything because of the monetary value.

I think I've said it before and I'll say it again. What I'm about to say is in no way a criticism of him in any way, but one of the greatest collectors of First Nations art in this kind of. is our former Prime Minister Jean-Cretzian because he was the head of Indian Affairs or Aboriginal Affairs or whatever it was called and every time he would go on a trip within Canada as well as to visit Aboriginal groups

from outside of Canada, he would be gifted incredible things and back then they didn't have the limits and so he consequently has, from what I've been told, one of the most incredible collections of First Nations art anywhere in the world. You should put it in museum. You know what? Hey, listen, he was in politics for a long time.

You deserve to keep the stuff you get. Oh, yeah. all right hey thank you so much for joining us on the show you know what to do follow us on all platforms wherever we are enjoy the rest of your thursday let's close up the week tomorrow on friday