The Ben Mulroney Show - The vaccine debate heats up in the US. Will Canadians get pricked with doubt?

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

- Dr.  Isaac Bogoch    Professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of Medicine and an Infectious Diseases specialist   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 Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Let's be honest, we've all shared our problems in some pretty funny places, the group chat, your barber, maybe even a stranger on a plane, and hey, sometimes that helps. But when it comes to stuff like stress, anxiety, or relationships, it makes a big difference to talk to somebody. who's actually trained to help. That's what BetterHelp is all about. They connect you with credentialed professional therapists online. And what makes them stand out is their therapist match commitment.

After a quick questionnaire, BetterHelp does the hard work of finding someone who fits your needs. Most people get it right the first time. But if it's not a match, you can switch counselors anytime at no extra cost. It's flexible, totally online, and you can hit pause whenever you need to. With over 5 million people supported to date globally, BetterHelp is now available in Canada, Canada with a network of counselors who have expertise in a wide range of specialties. With a 4.9 out of 5 rating based on over 1.7 million client reviews, BetterHelp makes counseling affordable and convenient, and you can switch counselors at any time for no cost.

Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash Mulrooney. That's better help.com slash Mulrooney. This is a paid advertisement for BetterHelp. These days, it feels like everywhere you turn, someone's got a new theory. on how to improve your mental health, from ice baths to meditation apps, there's a lot of noise out there about what's supposed to make you feel better. But the truth is, finding what actually helps you isn't always that simple. When it comes to mental health, there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

That's why speaking with someone who is trained to listen and to help, someone who can meet you where you are and help you figure things out can make such a difference. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. BetterHelp connects people with mental health professionals from around the world, offering access to a huge range of experiences and expertise. They've worked with millions of people already, and with thousands of therapists available, it is easy to find somebody who fits your needs.

It's flexible, too. You can schedule a session with just a click, and you're free to change therapists whenever you need to until you find the right fit. Talk it out with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Mulruni today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash Mulruni.

Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show on this Friday, September 5th. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. We got to talk about the curious case of the public safety minister, Gary Ananda Sangaree. He's been, ever since he took this portfolio, it has been almost a comedy. of errors where his personal ties to problematic groups or a problematic group has made it so that people are saying, why are you in this portfolio? And before I go down a rabbit hole and try to explain it myself, I'd rather go to Jeff Semple of Global News, who is far better at explaining

this than I. beginning in the 1980s the tamil tigers fought a decades long civil war in sri lanka the group killed thousands including civilians the canadian government designated the tamil tigers a terrorist organization and in 2006 the rcmp found evidence the group was fundraising in canada police raided this toronto property then the headquarters of an alleged front group called the world tamil movement The RCMP said the group collected money under the guise of humanitarian aid, but was actually gathering funds from the Tamil diaspora to forward to the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Inside the main fundraising office, police say they found this document titled Area Sales Coordinators,

containing dozens of phone numbers, including a contact for Gary A. Global News has confirmed it matches the cell phone number of Gary Ananda Sangaree. Canada's recently appointed public safety members. It was about essentially saving lives. Ananda Sangri said he doesn't know why his phone number was on the document, but it was dated December 29, 2004. Three days after a boxing day tsunami devastated Sri Lanka. Ananda Sangri said he was fundraising for the relief effort and has never been involved with any terrorist group or raise money for the world Tamil movement. I think there was a sign-up sheet of some sort, but my role was more of an advocate.

kid. I was a law student at that time. Yeah, look, I'm sure that there is, there could be a very reasonable explanation for all of this. But if there's one thing I learned in law school, and I didn't learn much, but if there's one thing I learned, it's that the appearance of propriety is as important as propriety itself. If people don't have faith in the system, it doesn't matter if the system is actually working. If they think it's broken, it might as well be broken. And not for nothing. But this minister has had to recuse himself from Tamil-related files. Keep in mind, he's the public safety minister.

And he has to recuse himself from issues related to a known terrorist organization in this country. Both the Tamil Tigers and the World Tamil Movement are on Canada's list of terror organizations. He's recused himself in June citing, citing caution to avoid perceived conflict. But then when we hear an additional story that comes out of global news saying, here's another tie to that group via his phone number that doesn't give people faith that the ministry will be run the way it's supposed to. So again, watch this space. We'll see if Mark Carney is the type of leader who has patience for this sort of awkwardness.

We'll have to see. It doesn't seem like he is the type of person who suffers fools, not that the minister is a fool, just an expression I'm using. So we'll have to wait and see on that. Now, yesterday on the show, we told you about the Florida Surgeon General planning to make all vaccines voluntary. It was a heck of a speech that he gave to clearly a room of friendlies, right? And he literally, as the surgeon general, stood in front of a group of people, he's the top doctor.

And he said, who am I to tell you what medicine you should be putting in your body? Well, if the surgeon general doesn't feel that it is incumbent upon him or it is his responsibility or his burden or whatever he wants to call it to tell people based on the knowledge that he's accrued over the course of his studies and his career, then that means there is no. faith in medical experts in this man's mind. And what he did instead is he defaulted to the Bible. He said, I'm not going to talk about medicine because who am I to talk about medicine? Instead, I'm going to tell you you have a divine right over your body that was given to you by God and the room erupted. In my humble estimation, that is an exceptionally irresponsible thing to do. The idea that Florida could make all vaccines, all of them, I'm talking about the COVID vaccines that are controversial. I'm talking about the ones that are

settled science that have been saving us from polio and measles outbreaks for decades and generations, those are going to be voluntary. If you don't want them, you're not going to get them. And we've already seen what happens when just a few people don't decide they're going to go against the grain, not get those childhood vaccines that have been essential in keeping us all safe for so long. It's a real problem. Meanwhile, so if that's what happened in Florida, let's look at what happened nationally. So U.S. Secretary of Health, Robert Kennedy Jr., found himself before Congress to talk about vaccine policies.

And what he clashed. He clashed with Republican and Democratic senators that highlighted scientific evidence of vaccines saving millions of lives. While Kennedy acknowledged vaccines prevented death, but resisted quantifying their impact. And that's a problem. That is a problem. Let's listen to one of these exchanges. President deserves Nobel Prize, but are MRNA vaccines that we're working on the ones that we canceled,

which are for upper respiratory infections alone, are those? You canceled $500 million of research because the MRNA technology is about continuing the research to be ready for the next flu influenza, the next pandemic. and you have to do the ones. I'm happy to have a detailed discussion with you about it. You're so wrong on your facts. You're interrupting me. And, sir, you're a charlatan. That's what you are. You're the ones who conflate chronic disease with the need for vaccines. The history on vaccines is very clear. This is the 20th century. That's how many people had vaccines and had illnesses. This is the 21st century. This is the decrease, 99% down to 100%. This is what was delivered with vaccines, and you don't want to support that. Yeah, see, that's where I have a problem because I'm someone who believes very strongly in individual rights, right? I always say, like, hey, I'm never going to tell you how to parent your kids. You do what you want.

They're your kids, right? I believe in a person's right to choose to do what they want. But we have experts for a reason. And I am not saying trust experts blindly. But this isn't about trusting an expert blindly. This is about peer reviewed data over the course of decades and generations that saw some of these childhood diseases whittled down to almost nothing. And in the face of this data, if you are still holding on to this idea that everybody

should have a choice, then you don't believe in individual rights. You're an anarchist to a certain extent. You don't care if the house burns down so long as people get to choose whether or not they want to light the match or not. That to me is dangerous. And they're all, a lot of people's lives were saved by these. And ipso facto, if you get rid of them, a lot of people are going to die. And I'm not trying to be, you know, I'm not trying to turn things up to 11 and exaggerate. But especially in the state of Florida, where there are.

So many older people who have all sorts of health issues, if all of a sudden you start letting these things loose in the air, I don't know what's going to happen to these people who have worked their whole lives. And they just want to relax by the beach. They want to play shuffleboard and they want to wait out the clock until they get to go into the next phase of existence. And this is irresponsible. It's selfish, especially because, look,

everybody that's talking, all these people who are talking, they've all had the vaccines. And they're there at 40, 50, 60, 70 years old. They're fine. These are not dangerous. I can't believe we're having this debate. All right. It is what it is because it's 20, 25.

All right, what's coming up next? Could we be seeing the opening salvos of a vaccine civil war? Let's get to the heart of the debate. Next. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Let's be honest, we've all shared our problems in some pretty funny places, the group chat, your barber, maybe even a stranger on a plane.

And, hey, sometimes that helps. But when it comes to stuff like stress, anxiety, or relationships, it makes a big difference to talk to somebody who's actually trained to help. That's what BetterHelp is all about. They connect you with credentialed professional therapists online. And what makes them stand out is their therapist match commitment. After a quick questionnaire, BetterHelp does the hard work of finding someone. someone who fits your needs.

Most people get it right the first time, but if it's not a match, you can switch counselors any time at no extra cost. It's flexible, totally online, and you can hit pause whenever you need to. With over 5 million people supported to date globally, BetterHelp is now available in Canada with a network of counselors who have expertise in a wide range of specialties. With a 4.9 out of 5 rating based on over 1.7 million client reviews, BetterHelp makes counseling affordable and convenient, and you can switch counselors at any time for no cost.

Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash Mulruni. That's better, help.com slash Mulruni. With Amex Platinum, $400 in annual credits for travel and dining means you not only satisfy your travel bug, but your taste buds too. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Conditions apply. This is the Ben Mulroney show, and before the break, we sort of gave you. The lay of the land in the distance, you can make out that there is going to be some pretty big changes coming to the United States as it relates to childhood vaccines.

You know, the fight over the COVID vaccines is over, whichever side you if landed on, it doesn't matter anymore. But this is a different conversation and the importance of these childhood vaccines, as well as others that I probably am not even thinking about, are something that we need to talk about. And so to guide us through this conversation, we're joined by Dr. Isaac Bogosh. He's a professor at the University of Toronto in the Department of Medicine and Infectious Diseases Specialist. And if I may say someone I relied on a lot when I was in my TV days, doctor, it's great to spend some time with you again. Thanks, Ben. Happy to chat. All right.

So when you heard essentially what I just laid out in the previous segment, how concerning is this for the idea of public health in the United States? Yeah, it's a huge issue. It's a huge issue because I think it doesn't take a crystal ball to predict the future. We're going to see, and we're already seeing, so we're going to further contribute to the resurgence of vaccine preventable illnesses. And then more globally, we know infections or information does not respect political boundaries. They're global phenomenon. So more globally, we're going to see the erosion of public trust in public health and in public. health institutions, which further compounds the problem, and hence leads towards a greater resurgence of vaccine-preventable illnesses. Take me back to when these childhood vaccines became mandatory. How bad were the – how bad was the possibility of outbreaks? And what would the impacts have been on people? Yeah.

I mean, listen, we're victims of our own success, right? Many people alive don't remember widespread measles vaccines. widespread wupinkoff, also known as pertusses, vaccines, or don't remember polio, for example. Now, some people listening might remember polio and might have a relative or a friend who is still impacted by this. But we're victims of our own success, right? These used to plague the world. And since the rollout of these vaccines, and again, it was sequential as a lot of the vaccines

were being developed, but through from the 1950s and 60s to, you know, through around the 80s, many of these vaccines were developed and became more readily available. And we saw the public health impact and the clinical impact of these diseases squashed, like squashed. I mean, you know, and unfortunately, you know, we see lots of different drivers to mistrust. I don't want to just blame misinformation and disinformation in online settings. Lots of drivers to mistrust. Burning trust in public health, burning trust in science and medicine, burning trust in high caliber institutions. And we're already starting to see the resurgence of these vaccine preventable illnesses. We've had a huge measles outbreak in the United States. But let's not ignore that

Ontario and Alberta also has huge measles outbreaks here as well. This is here too. Okay. What do I say? What am I supposed to say when somebody calls into the show and says, hey, your kid got the measles vaccine? So what do you care if my kid doesn't? Your kids safe? What do you say to that logic? Well, I think it's faulty logic and it's faulty logic for a variety of reasons. On the one hand, let's not make blanket statements about all vaccines because, you know, there's different vaccines for different infections. They work in different ways. So sometimes we have these global statements that just aren't true. Specific to your question, you're right. If your kids did get the measles vaccine, they're going to be fine. The risk of

measles infection and a vaccinated child or adolescent is negligible if they've been vaccinated. But that's not the point. The point is you need such high rates of vaccines in a community around 90, 95 percent to ensure that you don't get rip-roaring measles outbreaks. And that's what we saw. I mean, we saw literally over 2,000 cases of measles in Ontario in 2025. That's insane. We saw a thousand cases of measles in Alberta in 2025. Like, are you kidding me? And we know that there is, there are predictable issues with this. There is morbidity. and there is mortality. And let's just be clear.

There is zero, zero. That number is zero reason for any child, especially in Canada, but I would say globally, to have a measles infection, let alone be hospitalized for this, which we had a 7 to 8 percent rate of hospitalization in Canada, let alone die from this. And we had measles-related deaths in Canada in the last couple of years. Totally preventable, totally ridiculous that we're facing this issue now. So, Doc, talk to me about when, as somebody who has spent their life studying this and learning and building communities of other like-minded, educated people and building that network so that when you speak, you're able to speak with authority and speak with context and speak being backed up by other people.

When you hear the top doctor of Florida, when you hear the Surgeon General of Florida, almost poo-pooing his credentials and saying, who am I to tell you what to put in your. body when he knows what you know he all the stats that you just told me he knows what do you think when a guy like that gets up in front of a crowd and says who am i to tell you what to put in your body instead let's look to the bible i mean we just see it it's a more global phenomenon but that's a great example we see the erosion of i would say public trust and public health but it's actually larger than that it's the erosion of expertise yeah and and and You know, yes, we're talking about this related to medicine, science, and public health. But Ben, I listen to your show from time to time, and I think you know just as well as I do.

We see the erosion of expertise in many other domains as well, and this is only causing us harm. When our leaders are weak, our institutions become weak, and it only takes one or two generations of weak leadership to weaken these institutions to, And then we see the negative impacts that we're seeing now. I can talk for days about how this can be applied to medicine, science, and public health. But I know you've seen it in other domains as well. But, Dr. You just talked about the weakening of the institutions. I mean, we saw it happen in real time when RFK Jr. fired the CDC director after just one month.

He was in there for a month. And he's like, you're out of here. And what impact does something like that have on, as we're just talking about? the belief that there are institutions that have been there for years that are there to help us. They're not going to get it right every time, but the intent is there, and they have enough checks and balances that over the course of time, they're probably going to get a heck of a lot more right than wrong. Yeah, I mean, the CDC is a once formerly great institution that has done, you know, unquantifiable

good, not just for the United States, but for the world, well-funded, incredible research, health security, public health, it's an incredible institution and everybody on the planet has gained from their work. But then when you start to erode the leadership and the capability of the organization, when you start to make it political and partisan, you erode trust. And if people can't trust a great institution like this, they don't trust the science, they don't trust the advice and this erosion of trust has real world negative consequences. And an example of those real world negative consequences, what we're seeing is lower vaccine uptake, especially for vaccine preventable illnesses, and the reemergence and outbreaks of vaccine preventable

illnesses like measles, like whooping costs in the United States, but also you're in Canada and elsewhere around the world. Well, and that's one of the problems of living so close to the United States, I don't believe that we have a whole lot of loud voices in this country taking up an attack on childhood vaccines the way they do in the United States. But because they're there, because we ingest all of their media, we are susceptible to those influences up here. I completely agree. Just like infections don't respect political boundaries. Neither does misinformation and disinformation. And, you know, we're mainstreaming that just like everyone else on the planet. It's in it's in the mainstream media. It's in the new media. It's in

online settings. We know how misinformation and disinformation is weaponized and algorithms amplify this in online settings. And we have real world consequences for this. I wouldn't be totally honest if I said that was the only driver of low vaccine uptake and mistrust in public health. I think it is a significant driver, but not the only driver. for mistrust in public health. All right, Dr. Isaac Bogosh, we're going to have to leave it there, but I hope this is not the last time we speak

on the Ben Mulroney show. Thanks so much for joining us. Have a great day, Ben. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, this is, it could be frightening. Absolutely frightening if that's what the rule is going to be down in the United States. The end. For four years, Noah and Sarah have been clying out from beneath the Denver airport.

They have faced monsters, secret armies, and killing machines. But they're done running. This season on Escaping Denver, the truth is revealed. Captives become legends and a war a thousand years in the making erupts around them. Join us for the end of our story. The final season of Escaping Denver drops August 11th on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.