The Ben Mulroney Show - The Toronto parking authority conspiracy? What's really going on....

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

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to museums that showcase the future, not just the past. Choose from 14 flights per week between Canada and Dubai. Book on emirates.ca. today. Happy Friday, everybody. It's the Ben Mulroney show, the Friday edition. What, what? Yes. Oh, my goodness.

Amy is raising one of the roofs. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm Ben Mulroney. And Amy Siegel is right here in the chair. Hi. Hey, how are you? Good. Happy Friday.

She's our video producer. My intrepid producer, Mike Droulet. Hola. How's it going on? On the ones and twos is this guy over here, Dave Spargala. How are things going? Well, up and down. My health, there's a sickness in the house.

I think it grazed me. No, no, look, I'm fine. It grazed me. It was a drive-by? It was a drive-by. And, but I, despite that, I went to the Toronto Hunt Club yesterday because they were doing a speaker series, and they asked me if I would be the final speaker of the year.

I said, what am I talking about? And Tony Chapman said, no, I'm interviewing you. So it was interesting to have people ask me to talk. I asked me questions, but it was fun. A lot of fun. I'm getting ready for my trip to Israel. I'm talking about too much on the show, but I'm going to Israel tomorrow as part of a,

you know, like a junket. And it's being organized by the Israeli consulate, and they're going to take us all over the place and got some interviews lined up. I may interview the Canadian ambassador to Israel. And that came about this morning. That came about this morning. There's some other ones that can't talk about yet,

but there's a pretty big one that I've been working on for a while. And yeah, so that's in the back of my mind. I'm very much looking forward to that. Also, I don't know if you guys saw it, but a very big interview on Rogan a while ago where Douglas Murray was talking with Dave Smith. So one guy believes in the absolute right of Israel to exist

and the other not so much. And Rogan just sat there and watched the whole thing happen. But watching Douglas Murray realize that he was talking to somebody who spoke with great, like the appearance, the patina of knowledge, and he'd never been there. So he's talking about an open-air concentration camp that Israel is. And he said, well, surely you've seen the checkpoints. And you know that that's what you're talking about.

It's ludicrous. And he goes, I've never been to Israel. I don't know. And then he would always backtrack and say, look, I'm just a comedian. It's like, well, you don't get to do that. You don't get to be brought on to these shows and purport to be an expert. And then when someone challenges you, you deflate the, you deflate the balloon.

by saying, well, I'm just a comedian. So I want to be able to do that. I want to be able to speak with more, with first-hand authority. So that is very much what I'm looking for. Will you have any downtime? I have no idea. I have no idea.

Listen, I'll be away from Toronto in the beginning of winter. That's downtime. Totally, but it's apparently just a really, the food is amazing. I said beginning of winter. Beginning. Yeah.

So I've been told by everybody, the food is incredible. It's amazing. Like, if you can go out at night, it's apparently just a really great... The life of Israel is something you want to see. You know what I want you to find out? Based on the Adam Sandler movie, Blame it on the Zohan. How much actual hummus they eat over there.

It's like one of the greatest gags in movies. Can I tell you, though? I don't like hummus. No. Don't say that over there. Where did... Like, one day I wake up and everyone just jumped. Everyone's on the hummus.

hummus thing. We're stupid with hummus in this country. Yeah, but you have to see it with the accent. I went to a grocery store, like a small grocery store in the city, and they had run out of milk, but they had like 14 different types of hummus. I thought, I don't know how much hummus is too much hummus. I think this is too much hummus. I could eat a whole meal of hummus. Ew, just without a non or without. Just my hands. Yeah, just you're licking the bowl. I also got, I've got some news this morning. I came to a realization.

Were I, one of these vain television people, radio people, media people, what I'm about to tell you would hurt my feelings. But instead, just take it as it is. The Ben Mulroney show is now more popular than Ben Mulroney. Oh, no. Yeah, the show has more followers than I do. Yeah. Is it more likable? Oh, well, it depends on who you talk to.

Depends on the day. Yeah, our Instagram followers are very much approach. Ben. Yeah. Well, that's a good thing. Yeah. Our Instagram went up like 10,000 followers in one day this week. I know.

We're growing. We're getting there. Please subscribe. Yeah, no, my personal Instagram is not. It's dying on the blind because the most I ever post is funny, like funny memes. I just repost stuff. I know. Yeah.

You know. I know. And should we talk about what we're doing after show? Yeah. We haven't, we, we, we teased it that we have an exciting announcement that you won't, you won't see for a little while. Yeah. But at least we're doing.

Talk about it? Yes, we are. Oh, we are. So, if you know Letterkenny or Shorzy, then you know Jared Kiso. If you watch the show 192, if you watched the CBC document or a biopic on Don Cherry, then you know Jordan Kiso, tremendous talent. Very, very funny guy. And he writes.

Yeah, he writes it all, he creates it all. And in short order, he went from, you know, digital short king in Canada to pretty much only the media and good for him. And doing it all, it looks to me like he's doing it his own way. And he's telling the stories he wants to tell. And that's really resonating. Got a new show. And it's called, I kill the bear. I think it just got the name recently. Yeah. They didn't have a name for it for a while. A lot of people in this that you'll recognize. You got Jared, obviously, Chad Kruger, Kroger, Kroger. Kroger. Kroger. Yeah. Nickelback.

From Nickelback. He's an actor? I don't know. I don't know. The story is about a family of bear wranglers. Okay. All right. Essentially. Yeah, so you can imagine where that's going to go.

George St. Pierre, Jonathan Torrance, Kristen Crook, and this guy. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm playing myself because I guess we're shooting it right here,

right here. And yeah. We're going to be in the pilot episode. Yeah. I don't know how much we want to give away, but we will be in the pilot. You, Ben, will be in the pilot.

Listen, one of the most fun times I ever had was playing myself on an episode. episode of Corny Gas, where they made fun of me the whole time. The dad was sitting by the TV and goes, ah, crazy. I say, hi, welcome to E Talk. I'm Ben Mulrooney. He goes, ah, that no talent, Ben Mulroney. And then it comes back to me and I say, coming after, coming up after the break, I juggle fire while riding a unicycle. And then they have me doing exactly that. And it actually looked really good. You mean you didn't actually do it? They just stuck my head on a guy's body. Now, I met the guy. He was about a foot and a half shorter than me.

Somehow they made it work. Wow. Somehow they may work. And then later on in the episode, somebody has a heart attack walking down the, down the road in that town. And everyone crowds around. Is there a doctor in the house? And then all of a sudden I say, no, but I'm Ben Mulroney. And they hear some guy go, let him through.

So, yeah, that was a lot of fun. I need to watch that. It was really fun. So we're doing this, we're shooting this thing today right after the show. Yeah. They want Ben, they don't want Amy. They don't want me. They don't want Dave.

They want me. Well, you need to help. do what you do. Yeah. But Dave and I are going to be watching through the window and staring. And guys, last night, I don't know if this ever happened to you guys. I'm in bed enjoying a beautiful night's sleep. And then I start having this feeling.

Because I start, I'm remembering my dream. And in my dream, I'm being, something's happening in my feet. Like, there's someone torturing my feet. I don't know what that's going on. And I wake up. And I start feeling these cramps taking over my feet. like in real time it's like and it's waking me up and it's painful it's all over both of my feet and i don't know what's it and i'm screaming in pain it hurt that much and i get up and i'm trying

to walk it off and i'm trying to stretch in real life yeah i woke up to this pain and it took about 15 20 minutes for it to go away and then i went back to bed but has that ever ever happened to you the the feet thing yeah but it's like so bad like it starts in your sleep and then you wake up to the dream going away and then the realization that's never have you had foot cramps in bed It had leg cramps in bed, yes. What is that Stephen King movie with Kathy Bates? Misery. Misery. Yeah, so what was it that?

Yeah, it was exactly that. By the way, there's a new movie coming out, which feels like a take on that. And it stars, who's a woman from The Notebook, Rachel McCatoms? Yeah. And so she plays somebody who's been. A psycho? Well, she's been mistreated by her boss a lot. And they're on a corporate, they're getting on a plane and they're flying to an event.

and he's an alpha douchebag. And then the plane crashes, and they're the only two survivors, and he's injured, and she has to take care of him. While they're on the island, he still tries giving her orders like he's the boss,

and something snaps in her. Yeah, it looks really good. Sam Ramey's a director of it. Speaking of the notebook, there's a new novel out that's likely going to be turned into a movie that was written by Nicholas Sparks, and M. Knight Shaw Maloff.

Together? Yeah. Oh, boy. So it's a romantic, it's a creepy romance? I don't know. Oh, my God. I was like this. As if the notebook couldn't be scary enough.

Are we talking to notebook again? All right. Yes, I want to see that with my best friend. Yes, we cried. That's all I can tell you. And I would do it again. Glenn, you complete me. You go.

Okay. All right, coming up. Is there a parking lot conspiracy afoot in the city of Toronto? Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the show. We got to keep our eyes on City Hall. Got to always watch those people, right? Always got to watch them.

And then even if you watch them, you don't necessarily know what they're doing. It requires extreme vigilance, especially in the time we're living in, where every single dollar that we give to that city hall, we should know where it's going and why it's going there. And case in point, what's happening with the Toronto Police Authority? Yeah, the parking, the parking people, the Green Pea people, right? The Green Pea people. Believe or not, this is one of the few parts of City Hall that actually makes money.

They actually know how to run a business. And that should be caused for celebration. I think they make over $40 million a year in profit. Wouldn't that be nice if we could replicate that everywhere in other places where there is money to be made? So explain then this to me, how city council last week, Was it last week? Yeah. Voted 15 to 4 to dissolve the Toronto Parking Authority,

board, and replaced it indefinitely with senior city officials. This caused Greg Brady on this radio station. He stayed up at night. He stayed up late at night to watch this council meeting. That's what he does. Yeah, no, no. You can keep him in your prayers. He's a city council nerd.

Well, or just sad. Yeah. I thought what, or both two things can be true at once. But he does it very well. Sad. Anyway, but thanks to him, he highlighted how weird this was. And the details matter. They waited until near the end of the council meeting. After all the other stuff had been done. And most of the media had left. Most of the media had left. Right, they had stories to file. They got the stories they needed. Also, this wasn't necessarily on the docket. This was fast track via a member's motion brought forth by Olivia Chow. Only 80 minutes of debate and relative to other debates, That's a quick one.

When you factor in the land acknowledgments off the top, it's already. So 80 minutes. That's well done. 311 green peas, 21,000 street parking spots, as well as the bike share Toronto program and the expansion of the public EV charges. I think they want to get that up to 500, which doesn't sound like a lot. So that's what the TPA oversees. That's what they oversee, right?

And the officials are claiming the just, There's like, there's nothing to see here, guys. There's not underhanded. There's no, there's no motivation beyond this is, we want to conduct a governance review and we want to find cost savings within the TPA. And there is some merit to find, there should be merit to finding cost savings everywhere. Like, hold on. Like, are you telling me that, look at how much money we talked about the homeless, the budget for homeless encampments and all that. It's almost a billion dollars a year.

do that first that's a that's all of that that some would argue that is investment in social programs and I'm not going to argue with that are you telling me in that nearly billion dollar budget you can't find you're not you're not actively looking for ways to save money but you're going to go look for it in a place that's actually bringing in 42 billion

42 million so uh just be consistent is what I'm saying there the most amazing well not the most amazing one of the interesting sort of side bits from this is that Olivia Chow wasn't even at the at the council meeting to take questions about it because she was at the police ball. So something fishy is going on here.

So as of, this is my producer. He goes, everything is connected. It is. Follow the money and everything is connected. And so we did. He did.

And we talked about it. Cars have been under attack for years. This we know. I know that a lot of politicians have pooh-pooed the idea. Rob Ford got a lot of on ending the war on cars? He didn't even want to win the war on cars.

He just wanted to end it. No, no, there's no war on cars. There's no war on cars. Well, there is. There is, and we know it. As of 2022, we'll remember, the minimum number of parking spots builders had to add,

you know, every time you build a new building, they used to have a mandatory number of parking spots you have to put in the basement. It's zero. You don't have to add any parking spots. None. That was a huge change. It was a huge change, right?

Because they're like, oh, well, you live on a subway line. I was like, does the subway get me to the airport? So we've had a few hundred buildings go up with zero parking spots, mostly on Youngstreet. And listen, in certain parts of the city, that makes sense. I have no problem with that, right? Also, because we have a robust network of green peas. That's how you keep that equation balanced. There's a new one at Five Huntley Street.

There's going to be room for 806 bikes and zero cars. Now, what's the bike storage shed look like? Yeah, I'd love to see that. Well, well, considering this is also near those sassy machines that we've been talking about, it's very, very close. Those ones were boarded up. Yeah, but people have habits. I mean, drugs are habit forming. This is a Jarvis and Wellesley area.

So, yeah. North the east of there. Maybe it's part of the idea of like cleaning up that area. But, I mean, think about it. The only way it works for these, for these residential towers to not put in any parking is if there are other options available. But that's not, that's never what happens with a certain type of activist politician. You give an inch and they're coming for the whole thing, the whole thing.

You show compassion or you show a willingness to understand their position and they will eat you for lunch. So tell me, do you think of those 730 residences? Yeah. At five Huntley. Yeah. How, none of those people are going to own cars. Well, look, okay, so.

That's a 63 store. So the argument would be, and this is where I understand the argument, it's like, look, there's plenty of place. If you want to buy an apartment, you want to buy a condo, there are plenty of places you can buy that have a parking. This is just not one of them. We want to attract a certain type of person. Okay, that's great.

That's perfectly fine. But that doesn't change. That's that building. Your job is, you're not the mayor of that building. You're the mayor of the city. And this city is a city that still has the internal combustion engine as an option to get around the town. This hasn't been made illegal. So, but this has changed the dynamic. This has changed. This has put more pressure on public parking because if there's fewer parking

spots for your car at home, you're going to want to park it somewhere else. The average number of spots per residential unit in Toronto dropped from just over one to 0.31. From that's in 2016 to 2024. Yes, dropped by two thirds. That's how fewer parking spots there are. And so we are hearing, and this was in the news today, that the mayor is looking to offload some of the Green Pea parking lots in a lot of prime location to sell them in order to balance the next budget and possibly turn some of them into shelters. If that's the case, congestion downtown is going to get worse. We know that. If you think it can't get worse, give it time. And it's already very hard to find a spot.

Now, some of the people are saying, oh, well, you know, these green peas, in certain cases, people aren't using them. They sit there empty. And the residents in the air say, no, no, they are being used, but your machines are always broken. So the metrics by which you are determining this is flawed. I already expressed to you, my problem with the green pea is that it's a hard system to use sometimes. There's no tap and go, right? You can't use your Apple wallet, your Google wallet, just tap and go. They want to direct you to the app.

The app sucks. So they are making it, they're making the user experience difficult. But like I said, this is the type of thing where if you, if you, even in these debates, if you're not vigilant, they are going to, they are going to come at you with some lefty ninja math. And, and they're going to come for the whole cake. I told you the story of the, um, the bike lane on universe, or avenue. the debate was always supposed to be are we going to put one on Avenue

or are we going to put one on Youngstreet and Brad Bradford told me this story I think I could tell this story he's on a public record and Diane Sacks we then ran for the Green Park before this ran for the Green Party she that was a debate

that was the paradigm that they got that the progressives got the city to agree on to everyone to agree on hey we're just going to take one of the streets okay and it'll be a pilot project pilot project my rear end because the second that that thing got official they start putting down permanent structures.

You want to tell me why permanent structures are going into something that you don't know whether you're going to keep or not? So that was a lie. The second that happened, then they started investigating, okay, how can we put one now on university? People like Brad Bradford, like, what's going on here? What happened was you showed compassion, Brad, and I don't mean to make it about Brad,

but you showed compassion. You showed a willingness to work together. What they saw was you were an easy mark. And guess what? Brad Brad Bradford wasn't able to ask a single question but the parking authority did. Yeah. Yeah. So why did the TPA board need to get replaced? I think we have our assumption on that, which is you're replacing independent people with your people. What's the mayor really up to? Can we get reports on this? All that. We're going to find out with this. We're going to get a lot of those answers coming up next with John Burnside. He is on, he's a city counselor for Don Valley East. We're going to talk to him about just this very topic. Don't go anywhere.

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choice, your donation is their answer. Donate now at Salvationarmy.com. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do, business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us, and contact Desjardin. Today, we'd love to talk business. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show, and we are talking about the replacement of the Toronto Police Authority Board with...

Sorry, Toronto Parking Authority Board. It's Friday, man. And anyway, with some city staffers, this is an organization that runs the Green Pea and the bike share, and it turns a profit. So a lot of heads have been scratched. So somebody who's far closer to this who can give us the lay of the land

from inside the belly of the beast is Toronto City Councilor John Burnside. John, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Okay, so a lot of people do not pay attention as Greg Brady does to the goings on at City Council to all these votes and the procedures.

When I tell my listeners that this happened late in the day with no notice and most of the press were gone, really wasn't talked about beforehand. Does that signal anything to you? Well, there are a lot of things we should be concerned about. One is it was what they call a member's motion,

which is usually something a little bit crazy. It may be a good idea, but there's really no oversight. Can you give us an example of one of those? Oh, yeah, I'd have to think off the top of my head. It might, yeah, let me think about that. But more importantly, is there are, staff aren't there to answer questions. Staff haven't done a report saying about the good or the bad.

Most of the times those members' motions actually get referred to a committee so that the committee can investigate, get city staff to investigate, and then it comes back with more fulsome answers. And the problem here, that wasn't the case. We couldn't ask questions to have city staff because they weren't there. here are two concerns ahead. They said, well, there'd be greater efficiencies, meaning we could consolidate insurance and cybersecurity.

So I asked the question, well, if you're trying to save money and that's the way you're doing it, why wouldn't you do the same thing with the TTC? Yeah. Right? Of course, oh, no, we're not considering that and with no good answer. The other question I asked.

And before I, we should just give the context to the listeners that the justification for moving forward with this is, hey, we want to see if we can find some cost savings because there's some duplications that, in terms of cybersecurity and that sort of thing, that could be beneficial, which is a great idea. But it feels like the answer to that by doing what they're doing is like trying to kill a fly with a bazooka. Well, 100%. And so the efficiencies they were discussing.

And I said, well, the TTC is an agency. And we could supersize those efficiencies if that was really what they're trying to do. But they didn't want to look at the TTC. The other thing in the note was they wanted more operational oversight. So I asked the question, I said, well, people doing the operational oversight, are they not the people who had operational oversight about pool closings in a heat wave and weren't able to remove the snow after a snowstorm? Right. And of course, you know, heads kind of went down. And I said, well, what operational issues have we had at the, of that magnitude at the TPA?

And, of course, the answer was none. Here's what's going on then. The mayor is coming into an election year, and what she needs is money. We've lost a lot of money because of the photo radar and the fewer transactions in terms of real estate, so lower land transfer fees. So what they want to do, normally with the Toronto Parking Authority, when they upgrade their facility, so capital maintenance, they take the profit and they self-funded. And then whatever's left over we get as profit to the city. I think last year it was $44 million. Well, now what they want to do is fund it through debt.

So instead of, let's say, putting $40 million towards improving the facility and then they want to take that $40 million, it shows up as profit, but then they're going to add $40 million in debt to the city offers. Right? That's the game. So it makes the budget look better, but it adds debt to future generations. Of course, it constrains us what we can do for other projects. Well, the rumor also is that we're going to try to sell off some of these properties,

and they are, by definition, in high traffic areas, you know. And so, I mean, a developer would love to get their hands on a green pea. And if there's no obligation, as we talked about in the last segment, to build any underground parking anymore, we're going to have fewer and fewer car, fewer and fewer spots. The green pea always existed, as I understood it, to compete in a positive way to keep downward pressure on private parking lots from going crazy, right? There was always a green pea pretty close to a private lot, and the green pea's prices were going to be what the green pea's prices were, and that kept those private guys in check. If there are fewer

spots, and those spots are run by pure capitalist with no one checking their ability to drive up prices, it's going to cost $100 a day to park in the city. Yeah, we provide the competition to keep everyone honest. But the mayor told me early in her, so you're banging on, the mayor told me early in her term that all she cared about was building affordable housing. And so you can see how all her policies are dovetailing towards that. And I think this is just one of them. And, you know, she's overspent on a lot of housing initiatives.

It doesn't really have anything to show for it. And now, of course, they're panicked because the election is less than a year away. I've said this before. Activists make terrible politicians. If your career was built on being an activist, you should do that. But being an activist is being laser focused on one thing and being selfish about it. I'm going to work my butt off to advocate for these people. And that means convincing other people to stop doing what they're doing.

That is, you should actually, it runs completely. You should write a, sorry, go ahead. Well, it runs counter to the skills required to be a politician. I mean, I've seen it in Chris Moyes, for example. When he hears something he doesn't like by one of his constituents, he will call them a racist. And he says, I don't want to know that person. Because that is his activism coming out. And that runs counter to what makes a good politician.

Well, that's exactly it. And, you know, they never mind facts, just yell at people, call them names, try to intimidate them. By saying, once you invoke the racist thing, very few people, very few people want to take that one on for obvious reasons. It's not only politicians that activists make poor politicians. They also make poor administrators in terms of governing. And I think that's what we've seen. The mayor has a real problem just with the day-to-day operations of the city. The group around her, I mean, they're smart people, but they're not thinking in a way of a what-if,

You know, what do we need to plan for? Because their activists by very nature are very reactionary. They just yell, they complain, and it's, but they don't really think of solutions. And so the people the mayor has around, some good people, some smart people, but they don't seem able to run the city in an efficient manner. And we've seen that, as I said already, with the closing of pools in the summer and the snow removing debacle and that sort of thing. But now we're getting into a dangerous spot here. And we only have about a minute left here. a spot that nobody should be comfortable with, which it feels like we're getting into

the phase of this administration where Olivia Chow is going to try to bribe us with our own money, where, you know, she's going to pad the budget, make it look better so that she can get reelected and do what she wants. And listen, every politician does that, but we are in a very special case right now in Toronto where we don't have any money. And the money, and the money that we have is being spent on things that do not directly help those who are funding the things. No, and I think the point,

to your point is that, you know, every politician seems to play that game. We saw what the province did when they sold off the 407 and the long-term consequences of that. The problem is Toronto is in such a poor financial shape that we don't have the room to make stupid self-serving decisions

and we need to be honest with people and let the chips fall where they may. She's had three years. She's raised our taxes by 16% in two years. If you can't run a government with that, then maybe you shouldn't be governing. Oh, gosh. I mean, Howard, listen, you were, you've been in Austin,

I'll give you to 15 seconds to answer this, but we were in, you know, you've seen a lot. You've got a lot of miles on your career. What was it, what was being in the city government like when you first started? Well, there was a lot more accountability. Now, so many things are done. In the area I represent, I don't even know about it. No one tells me they took out two tennis.

They're taking out two tennis courts to put in a fire hall. And no one thought to mention it to me is actually a resident that told me about it. So it's really hard for me to hold or any other politician to hold staff accountable when they just do their own thing. And that's why we need a mayor who, because the mayor has that additional power to hire and fire. And the tone is set at the top. but when everything is under cloak and dagger and you're introducing motions at 9 o'clock at night when everyone's gone home,

that's the tone that's being set and it's a real problem. All right, John Burns, I really appreciate the chat. Come back anytime. Thanks for having me. Bye now.