The Ben Mulroney Show - The Xmas eve headlines/Brad Smith is a maniac/Top retail stories of 2026

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

GUEST:   Brad Smith / 640 host   GUEST:  Bruce Winder President, Bruce Winder Retail  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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Get better answers to tough questions. BlueJ. AI for tax experts. I'm at least six in downtown Toronto. This is Global News. You're listening to the Ben Mulroney Show. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show on New Year's Day. Christmas Eve, thank you so much for being here.

It's the 24th of December, 2025. Thank you so much. You're deleted the entire holiday. I know. I went right to the end. I went right to the end. Done. We're done. Back to work. Back to work.

Hey, when you hear the words BC fairies, you assume that we are going to talk about some sort of boondoggle. people in BC love complaining about the ferry. Yes, but we're not We're not talking about the government aspect

or the cost or any of that. Instead, we want to focus on the people who use the ferry because there was a global, it was a global BC story and we were just taken aback by the characters

that ride the BC ferry. And on that note, just because it's Christmas Eve, we thought Let's just get to know some of the people who ride the ferry. Well, first of all, when I get to Nunama, I'm going to have a drink, okay? A fairly big glass. Progress at Tuosan Terminal.

The ferries are running. Yes, many of them behind schedule, and at least one minus a basic onboard amenity. All the toilets quit working on the ferries. What were people doing when that happened? Crossing their legs, mostly. A catch-up day for BC ferries after bad weather forced the cancellation of most sailings on the major routes Monday. First thing I saw was cancellations like, oh, fuck. I think I hate the most about waiting for fairies.

There's no smoking on the property. I get really grumpy. I mean, if this is a sampling, but if this is a cross-section of the people who ride the ferry, I want to ride the ferry. I love it. I want to just talk to people on the ferry. That's amazing. I get really grumpy. Well, speaking of people are getting really grumpy.

There are some people in, who cover Ottawa, are on their last nerve with cabinet advisor, Amira El Gawabi. So she is the cabinet advisor whose focus is Islamophobia. And our friends at Blacklock's reporters who do incredible work all the time, breaking stories, you know, getting into the weeds on access to information, finding documents, finding paper trails that others wouldn't even look for, have concluded that she secretly paid $80,000 for a pro-Palestine research to counter alleged disinformation by MPs, senators, and media. So really, what it comes down to, what people are saying is that, she had a conclusion in mind and paid $80,000 of taxpayer dollars to get somebody a third

party to validate her belief so that she could then push back against any accusation of X, Y, or Z. And there is a number of people that took issue with it, not the least of which was Black Rocks reporter. Jonathan K. from the Quillette said the liberals attempt to deflect Amira El Garwabi's financial mismanagement scandal into a bogus racism, Islamophobia accusation is so classic. And it didn't, listen, what they started doing on the liberal side is they started lining up in Defensive, enter Mark Miller. Mark Miller writes, thank you.

Oh, he writes, what did he write? He wrote, the recent surge in hateful comments and threats towards this woman, the special representative on combating Islamophobia are disgraced. and entirely unacceptable. One thing he didn't do right there is talk about the actual facts that were brought up by Blacklock's reporter. He just screamed Islamophobia.

He screamed hate. Well, I mean, that's the easiest thing to do. Yes, and she then came back. Thank you, Minister Miller, for your support. I'm grateful for the countless number of Canadians who support my mandate and oppose Islamophobia and all hate. Everyone is against Islamophobia and all hate.

I don't know a single person who thinks putting that stuff in the world is a good thing. But the question is, is this criticism that? And I don't know that it is. No one should face threats, hate, and miss disinformation, including while working for a more inclusive Canada for all. But it's easy to, the problem I have with it is that it's easy to shut people up by just saying, by yelling, you're phobic, you're, there's phobia, there's this or that. It used to be. I don't think you can do that anymore. Meanwhile, I hate that. Another woman, Melanie Bennett said, ma'am, you paid for,

ideological research that supports your narrow narrative and then lied to journalists about it. And look, I don't know if this is going to go anywhere. If the liberal government gets their majority, I don't know that the conservatives or the NDP are going to have any leg to stand on to do investigations. But I don't know where she gets the budget for this. I mean, you remember we were talking about how we don't have any money? That, but how Christia Freeland, remember, she was going to be. special envoy to Ukraine, I assume that those two things are on par with each other, a special

advisor and special envoy. We were told she had no staff and no budget. She couldn't spend any money. Yeah. How is this woman spending 80 grand? I mean, 80 grand in the grand scheme of things with the budget or in Canada is nothing. However, it's still, but you add those up. It's 80 grand we don't have. It's 80 grand we do not have. Right? Because we don't have any money. The money we're spending is money that's already, like our kids are going to have to make, our grandkids are going to have to make. Yeah. So I don't know where this money came from and I don't know who authorized it. And I don't know if she has a budget and if she does, I'd like to know what it is. That's it. That's it. Yeah. And if she has a good answer, I want to hear it. But a good

answer is not you're Islamophobic. You're putting hatred out there. That is not an acceptable answer. It's not an answer. If there are accusations of lying to the press, if there's accusations of ideological research that wasn't even research, you're essentially asking people to come back with facts that will, or information that will help you defend a position that you've already staked out, that's, I don't know if that's a good use of money. I just don't. So more to come on that. And, oh, geez, okay, here we go. This is, apparently, I didn't know this. There was supposed to be a ban on Canada exporting single-use plastics that was supposed to come into effect this week.

It's one of those things that was decided years ago. And they gave them years to sort of live up to it to be able to get ready for it. And it was supposed to happen on December 20th. I don't think anybody realized it was happening, except for people obviously in the plastics industry. Yep. And there are a lot of people in the plastics industry in this country. And then the government said, hey, you know what?

Maybe we'll just put that on hold. and then take a second look at it. Yeah. And now they may scrap it all together. They've launched consultations to scrap it, citing tariffs, supply chain pressures, and limited environmental benefit. Really?

Limited environmental benefit. I thought these plastics were choking the environment. And you know what? They are choking the environment. However, when you put them in comparison to like Asia, it's nothing. It is, well, it's barely a straw in a giant bucket. Well, it's, it doesn't make any difference here.

It's very little difference here in Canada, except the difference it does make is it hurts the economy. Well, and here we go, because the plastic sector generates about $35 billion in economic activity and about 85,000 jobs. That's as of 2023. Heavily tied to U.S. markets, this is, this is one big driver of the economy, and you are going to take away this massive, this massive market for them, this massive business for them. single-use plastic. You can't be the only economy in the northern, in this hemisphere here, or just in rather in North America, that is doing this.

You can't. Well, Trudeau tried to do that on so many fronts for 10 years. But why does this matter? Why does this pause and possibly reversal matter? Because Canada's economy contracted. 0.3% in October. Economists

expect subdued growth in 2020. We need to be firing on all cylinders all the time. And if the plastics industry has a market and people want to buy this from them, we need to allow them to do that. For the foreseeable future, everything is a must have in the economy. There's no nice to have. Everything's a must have.

If it makes money, we got to sell it. Because until we write the ship in this country, we figure out our productivity issues, we figure out the Trump of it all. We need to make money wherever we can. Anything short of that is stupidity. Up next, some Christmas wisdom from our friend Brad Smith. What does top talent really want? Do our tax research tools make us seem outdated?

What does top talent really want? How can we stop losing people to our competitors? What does top talent really want? What if new grads don't want to work like it's 1999? With Blue J, you can give your people the tools they need to succeed. Tools that make it possible to go from tax question to client comms in minutes. Get better answers to tough questions. Blue Jay.

AI for tax experts. In the 70s, four young women were found dead. For nearly 50 years, their cases went cold. I'm Nancy Hixed, a senior crime reporter for global news. In the season finale of Crime Beat, I share how investigators uncovered shocking evidence of a serial killer. And hear exclusive interviews with the killer's family. Listen to the full season of Crime Beat,

Eat early and ad-free on Amazon Music by asking Alexa to play the podcast Crime Beat. Let's take a look at the roads with 640 Toronto Big Trouble Chat. Still a big trouble spot with a crash. You are listening to the Big Trouble Spot with a crash. Ben Mulroney show, but every now and then we like to open up the show and invite our friends to join us. And there's no greater friend of this show than Brad Smith. He has been, he's been joining us here at the radio station in Toronto for a while now, putting his own stamp on how he does his show. And he's doing a terrific job. So happy for him, so happy he's

with us, especially during this holiday season. Brad, welcome to the show. Wow, Ben, I almost got emotional there. That was the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. Oh, I doubt that very much, my friend. When you were, you know, when you were giving out roses, I'm sure women said lots of nice stuff to you. Yeah, yeah. They couldn't air that stuff, Ben, because they wanted the women to compliment me,

but they weren't too impressed. Yeah, listen, I've been listening to your show. You've been having a lot of fun. You've been doing a lot of impersonations of Donald Trump, to say the least. Yeah, you know, I don't know where this comes from because my parents aren't uniquely funny people. But every, whether it's like childhood, a trauma or something, whenever I see something

happen in the world, I just automatically think, how can I make it funny? And Donald Trump is the gift that keeps giving. Well, I want to play some audio before we chat with you so that people who haven't been listening to your show get a sense of how it's a little bit different than, say, mine, for example. We're going to play a

version of, it's called your Christmas potpourri, and for the record, you have no idea how to spell potpourri. So let's listen. Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, move over. Christmas's new singing sensation is here. Donald J. Trump! Have you heard him sing Jingle Bells? Oh, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, MAGA all the way!

Oh, what fun it is to fight the fake news every day! Ha ha! Jingle Bells, Jingle Bell's winnings in the air! We're the best! Forget the rest! America's back I swear if you like that little ditty you'll love to hear oh holy night oh fall on your knees oh hear Trump rally voices oh night oh night oh night divine Oh, oh night when Trump was sworn in, the greatest night ever! Big Crosby, glad he's dead, because Trump just took over I'm dreaming of a white Christmas.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. one with borders so high where deportations glisten and ice, oh, they're listening to catch all the illegals and watch him say goodbye America. And Christmas wouldn't be complete unless Trumpy Clause was coming to take.

You better watch out. You better not cry. You better not pout. I'm telling you why. Trumpy Clause is coming to town. Oh yeah. He's making a list. He's deporting twice. He's gonna find out who's illegal from ice. Trumpy Clause is coming to town. You gotta act fast at 416-870-6400. because you won't be the cool kid on the block unless you know who Trumpy Clause is. He knows if you've been bad or good,

so you'll be deported for goodness sake. Brad Smith, that was fantastic. That was well done. Man, like, that's not AI. You wrote every word yourself. Yeah, no, I have a very good process, Ben. It's called I took an edible that night. And the next thing you know,

I was talking to one of my friends and she said just do the Trump voice and just spouted some random word because it's very easy to get into them and I started singing jingle bells for some reason but I have to tell you something though because when you're on Zoom

you don't get the underlaid audio so I'm dying over here just listening to just my vocals just by themselves oh they're terrible no are you kidding you were fantastic you almost carried the tune you did a great job How long does something like that take you?

To be honest with you, about 10 minutes. Yeah, you just, you just, Trump's very easy. Like, if you can imitate you. No, but you're going to write this song. Yeah, that's the easy part, though. Okay. When you talk like him, you just get his mannerisms and he just elaborates everything. It's the same talking points.

So it was about 10 minutes. All right, let's talk about you, my friend. What are your plans this holiday season? Ben, I heard your driving story. And I'm, I feel bad for you because I'm driving back to Montreal myself. And, yeah, no, I'm just excited to get to see my parents and really just kind of relax, you know, and be back in Quebec for a little bit as well. Yeah.

What do they think of your foray into radio? You know what? My parents, Ben, they're the most supportive people. I remember when I took over the job at breakfast television and my mom had her iPad in Montreal beside the bed every morning at 5.30 so she could watch a Toronto morning show. Oh, yeah. So they are the biggest supporters and the best people. My mom did the same thing when I started in TV in like 2001.

And she had to get a Bell satellite dish just so she could watch this one channel that wasn't available anywhere. And she and my dad would sit there and watch three hours of my show every night. And I have no idea. I was doing segments about pet psychics. And I had no idea why they would watch. And I figured out why they watched because my brother, Nick, called in from Montreal

pretending to have a dog that was sick or dead there was no dog there was no dog and this pet psychic was communing with the fake dog I knew it was my brother but I couldn't embarrass the pet psychic

so I'm sitting there staring into the lens looking at my brother and he knew I was looking at and my dad thought that was the funniest thing he's ever seen oh my God do you do you have this thing because I remember when I got the bachelor and they obviously interviewed my dad and who had just been a senator at that time and they said, you know, are you excited for Brad to do this?

And he's like, oh, no, I'm more excited that for once it's going to be Brad Smith and not son of Larry Smith. Did your parents feel that when you got E-Talk? Oh, no. Canadian Idol? Dad loved it. Loved it when people come up to him and say,

oh, are you Ben Mulroney's dad? He loved that. That's awesome. He loved that. Yeah, he loved that. He was very, very generous with that, that sort of thing. that's that's what happens when you become a dad you know you want the you want your kids to take

whatever you did and build on it yeah but you know he's so accomplished and it's just it's one of those things where you kind of just revel in the fact that they do want to transfer down legacy and how much that moment meant to me yeah personally knowing because you know i spent my whole life people yelling from the stands you're only here because you're dad and i'm like i know yeah yeah it's the montreal al-o-west i'm playing on them but also we're all we're all only here because of our parents like all every single one of us so get over yourself oh yeah Hey, what do you think Donald Trump? What's you think the next big headline is going to be from Donald Trump?

Well, I love that he's doing these things right now where he's just like tweeting, big announcement tomorrow. Can't wait. We'll tell you then. You know, next. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. I just love the premise that every day he's doing these press conference bits, just four years after Biden didn't do a press conference. So he's like really milking the media. And the beautiful thing about him is you don't know what it's going to be. Yeah, well, look, he's got three years left. right he's got three years left to finish everything he said he wanted to do so he's i have and honestly he's got one year until the the midterms and who knows how those are going to go so

he's he's a man he's a man on a clock the thing about him is that it's it you know when they'd come out with the numbers yesterday in the u.s about how how great their economy is actually doing and you have to have all the left media just be shocked and act surprised that they're seeing these numbers for the first time he's actually creating this thing where he's like i don't care what you think about me, I'm going to say everything I can right now, and it's even getting more aggressive. But he knows that his actions are going to speak louder than what his words are right now. Yeah, I think you're right. Hey, Brad Smith, thank you so much. I hope you have a well deserved time with family. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. And I will see you, I'm sure,

in 2026. Well, Ben, I just want to say you're a loser. You've always been a loser. And guess what? When you were on Canadian Idol, it was doing terrible numbers, the worst numbers ever. American Idol is a far superior product. You're no right. Ryan C, Chris. Everything you just said, all true. Thank you, my friend. Take care. See you, bad.

Merry Christmas. Up next, the top 10 retail stories of the year. Canada can be a global leader in. smoking, but it requires actionable steps. Now is the time to modernize Canadian laws so that adult smokers have information and access to better alternatives. By doing so, we can create lasting change. If you don't smoke, don't start.

If you smoke, quit. If you don't quit, change. Visit unsmoked.ca. You're listening to the first. the Ben Mulroney show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show on this Christmas Eve. Thank you so much for being here. And look, this has been a topsy, turvy year for retail across the country. Good news, bad news. We've had losses on the retail side. We've had some stars. We've had some high-level performers. We've had a tariff war. This really affected so much of the business in this

country. And we thought, at the end of this year, let's take stock. Let's look back and let's look at the top 10 stories in retail this year. Maybe there's some lessons we can glean so that we can avoid the pitfalls next year. And so let's welcome to the show. Retail analyst Bruce Winder. He's the president of Bruce Winder Retail. Bruce, welcome. Merry Christmas.

Hey, thanks, Ben. Yeah, Merry Christmas. Thanks for having me on. All right. So, yeah, listen, it's been a year of a lot of headlines in retail news. So let's start at the beginning. What's your top story? Top story is HBC says goodbye.

So, I mean, that was a big one, right? You know, after 355 years, the company bowed out. We all knew it was probably coming, but it hits hard when it finally arrives here. Yeah, and a lot of people attribute it to that pivot where they sold all their real estate. They became tenants in their own buildings? Yeah, they were more of a real estate company, Ben, than they were a retailer. And actually, the parent company is having problems even in the U.S. now with Sacks. They might declare bankruptcy with Sachs in the U.S.

So, yeah, just probably not so good in terms of the management side. Department stores were in decline as well. Yeah, but it was such a change in fortunes from, say, with 10, 15 years earlier, where they were reinvigorating their stores, they were buying brands, they were adding all sorts of new aspects to the experience at HBC. And then to see this happen, I remember 2010, it was really the heyday with the Olympics, right? and they were, they were, those red stripes were as eponymous as the, as the, as the, um, uh, as the

Olympic rings. And then to see them go the way the dodo bird is just depressing. Yeah, Bonnie Brooks was running the bay. She was, uh, really lighting it up. I worked at sellers of that time. Yeah, the company had a lot of momentum back then. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just, it's got to keep your eye on the ball, I guess. Uh, the set, your second story is the growth of hard discount. What's hard discount? Hard discount is sort of like the stores like No Frills or in Quebec Maxi. These are the discount grocers, so they don't have amenities. They don't have butcher's.

They don't have big bakeries attached. It's more of a discount. So consumers go there just to get the bottom, bottom price without all the amenities. So that channel is really growing a lot. And as we've seen, Loblaws has pivoted to that investing about $10 billion at capital over five years. $10 billion? Yeah, $10 billion. Are they building new stores?

or are they converting other higher-end grocers into these hard-discount stores? Yeah, mostly building new stores. They were looking at building 50 of these hard discount stores this year. And, yeah, they're investing in a new distribution center as well. So it's good to see some capital being deployed in the country. So if people are spending their dollars there, that must mean the other ones, the loblaws, the farm boys, the sobies, all of those are probably suffering a little bit? Believe it or not, it's not that bad. It's more, you know, it's more of a segmentation issue. So if you're fairly well off, you're shopping at the Loblaws and the higher end stores, right? If you're watching your money a bit tighter, you're gravitating toward the discount. So they really have something that serves everyone. But there has been sort of a growth in the lower end as more Canadians are in that sector. And people at the high end are still spending well also in the other banners like Loblaws.

Well, yeah, I mean, with the price of food going up so much, I guess a lot of Canadians are looking to counter it with discounts in any way they can get them, right? 100%. Yeah, hang on. All right. The next one is one that we wish didn't happen. I don't think a lot of us saw this coming when Donald Trump was elected, but he turned, turns out Canada's enemy number one to the United States and therefore tariffs are all the rage. Yeah, that was a little scary and we're still going through it, obviously now. But, you know, when President Trump took office, we saw, quite a few tariffs come on. And then for a while, the Canadian government counter tariffs on,

which increased the price of products here. And it's created a bit of a fear, you know, in businesses in terms of hiring and spending. And that fear is obviously trickled down at consumers. So hopefully, you know, this year or soon,

we'll see something move on that, whether it's the renegotiation of QSMA or what have you. But, you know, business hates uncertainty. So we're looking for to get that one behind us. Well, I think a lot of us are just assuming

that at this point in the game, It makes more sense for Mark Carney to wait to see what the Supreme Court says about Donald Trump's ability to levy some of these tariffs. He does have some powers that are beyond reproach, but not all of them. And so part of me thinks that that's what he's doing now. He's just waiting to see if he can be negotiating against a weaker opponent after the Supreme Court renders a decision that some people think will go our way. Yeah, it's a great point. We're all waiting for that in the spring, and that'll be pivotal in terms of what our next move is, I guess, as a country. All right. Let's move on to the next one.

Buy Canadian. All right, the by Canadian in following the tariffs. That was the reaction, right? And a lot of us were wondering, was it going to be a moment or was it going to be a movement? What did it turn out being? Yeah, it turned out to be a bit of a movement, you know, because most of these things, to your point are kind of a moment, right, where they pass by. But Canadians seem to really stick onto this one.

I think, you know, that we kind of woke up the bear here. And Canadians are a lot more conscious of buying funds. from our own country, selling our resources internationally, you know, really lowering our dependence 100% on the U.S. So, yeah, this really took a life of its own and it's even, you know, continued on through the fourth quarter here. Well, because I guess part of it is once you build up the habit of buying certain things, you're going to continue doing those things.

And so after it takes a little while to change those buying habits, but once they're changed, they're changed, right? Exactly. I mean, that's what they've, you know, I think Canadians have tried new brands from Canada and they like them, right? So now they're sticking with them. And, yeah, we'll have to see where this goes, if and when the trade dispute is settled, whether this dies down or whether it's sort of a permanent new approach.

But correct me if I'm wrong, but like all things being equal, Canadian goods are probably more expensive than goods that come from China or Vietnam or even in some cases of the United States or Mexico. So how do you square that with the searching for bargains and the sort of the cost of everything going up and people not having the money to buy? buys things. Yeah, that's the issue that I think a lot of Canadians are sort of facing is they want to buy Canadian, but at the same time, they've got to make ends meet, right? And you're right, a lot of the products that are from Southeast Asia are a lot less expensive than Canadian

products, not always, but sometimes, right? So that's sort of been the challenge for Canadians in terms of what they want to do versus what they can do. All right, the last one we're going to talk about in this segment is the restructuring of Canadian tire. Yeah, this one was interesting. is a very successful company, but I think they realized, you know, they've got to update some things. So they announced their True North strategy. They're going to spend about $2 billion. They're going to become more of a centralized company, do more with digital, focus more on the triangle rewards, really sort of, you know, sharpening the pencil here because they know that it's a real competitive landscape in Canada with national champions and international

retailers. I honestly thought that Canadian tire was bulletproof. I was shocked to see that they needed to restructure at all? How long has this sort of been in the offing? Yeah, I think it's been around for a couple of years. You know, they've realized they had some great years during the pandemic, but not so great years after. And if you look at the competitive landscape, I know we're going to talk probably about Amazon later on. You look at some of the international retailers, you know, the changing demographic of Canada, the electric cars, things like that. So I think they realized that they just have to keep moving. And like everyone, and they're trying to increase their earnings per share, right?

Yeah. And they have to find, you know, new creative ways to do that. And we can take this back to the first story. Didn't they buy all the IP, the valuable IP from Hudson's Bay? They did. That was kind of a nice surprise, you know. They bought it for $30 million, the stripes and the HBC. And they've got some merchandise out there now in store.

So I think Canadians appreciate that, and that'll serve them well going forward. Well, yeah. And I think if somebody pointed out to me that what they should do is find a way to sell that at airports. Yeah. So it can be that impulse buy that people buy as they leave the country and they say, oh, I need that last bit of Canadian. I'm going to buy those stripes. Yeah, no, it's a great idea for tourists and things like that.

I think that's a great opportunity for them. Yeah, well, we've got lots more to get to after the break. We've been in conversation with Bruce Winder. He's the president of Bruce Winder Retail. We're going across the board from the beginning of the year to now. We're looking at the biggest retail stories of the year. And when we come back, we're going to be talking about a story that is, disappointing. It's worrying. It's worrisome. Retail theft. What does it mean? Have we gotten

as bad as we're going to get or could it get even worse? We'll talk about that next right here on the Ben Mulroney show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And we are taking a look at an entire year of retail stories in the news. with Bruce Winder. He is a retail analyst from Bruce Winder Retail. Interesting enough, it's named after him. He's the president. Coincidence? Possibly. Bruce, welcome to the show. Welcome back. Thanks for sticking around. Well, this one is one that really rubs people the wrong way. It's the explosion of retail theft. Now, listen, I don't know if this was the worst year on record, but we were flooded with videos on our social media,

so it felt as bad as it's ever been. You know, smash and grabs, people just going into jewelry stores or Apple stores, electronic stores, you name it. If it's a store that had money in it, the people were going in and they were taking things, taking things, taking money. And it didn't seem, it seems like the policy shifted where all of a sudden there's no such thing as shoplifting anymore. We just let them take the stuff.

Yeah, this is probably one of the things that hurts me the most, you know, from as a Canadian, is to see this happening, you know. And just, you know, it hurts us in so many ways. the cost of products, have put employees at risk, business owners are losing money. And, you know, I'm not an expert in justice,

but we need to change our justice systems. We have to have some serious consequences for people who do this. Serious jail time, you know, no bail, all kinds of things. Like,

there has to be a deterrent. When I was young, there was deterrent. Sure. But there's also the shame of being a shoplifter. But Bruce, in this case,

from what I understand, in a lot of cases, it's the retailers themselves that are passing down dictats to their employees. into their security guards. If you see it, just let them do it. Exactly.

So why is that? I have a feeling it has something to do with liability. You know, they're afraid of the liability of either hurting the thief or getting employees hurt or something. For them, it's just cheaper just to let it roll. But it's just such an ugly part of society. But don't you think we then have to change the insurance rules to say, hey, if you're injured in the commission of a crime

at a retail location, you assume all liability. I do. as the criminal. So if you have a broken collarbone because you're tackled because you stole an iPhone, that's on you. Yeah, I agree 100%. It's a $9 billion problem a year and it's just

been growing. We don't have $9 billion to spare. Our retailers don't have that money to spare. We have to write this ship so that every, we have the most efficient system possible on every aspect of it. Yeah, I agree 100%.

All right, well, let's move on. to the continued rise of e-commerce and is this, I mean, we know it's the future, is the future here, and is there room, is there space, is there a world where the bricks and mortar experience still exists? Yeah, I mean, there is still, I mean, bricks and mortar is still about, you know, call it 80% of Canada's business, but we're just seeing a continued growth of e-commerce and, you know, it's just the way people want to shop, younger consumers are looking to shop that way, you know, they're more comfortable with smartphones. And you have folks like

Amazon who, you know, spent about $65 billion in the country. They've got 46,000 employees, 70 warehouses. So it's just so easy now to shop online. But there are some categories that people want to go in store on. You know, if you want a high service category, a luxury item, you want to talk to people and things of that nature. Our next story is about the rise of AI. And rather than just look at AI in a vacuum, let's fold it into the previous story. How is AI going to change or supercharge or alter in any way that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, e-commerce. Yeah, AI is really sort of working hand in hand with e-commerce. I mean, it's used, right now, it's been used a lot this fall for consumers who are using chat GPT, perplexity, you know,

if you're on Amazon, you're using rufus to really do a lot of the heavy lifting on search for products, discovery for products, price comparison for products. It's also being used behind the scenes to serve up specific offers based on personalization for each customer based on their digital footprint. So it's, and used for optimization of inventory and things of that nature. Well, listen, we've gotten used to because of Amazon the lowest possible price. And now we're getting used to and expecting the fastest possible delivery. Same day delivery is more the rule than the exception now.

back in the day, you'd have to wait a week, two weeks. You'd be counting the days. Oh, I hope it gets here before Christmas. And a lot of cases now, there are a lot of services and options out there that allow you to have something delivered day before Christmas. Yeah, no, it's quite incredible. I mean, Amazon announced recently that in certain cities, Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, you can get not only same-day delivery, but four different shipping windows.

So you can order it before you go to bed and it arrives the next morning. You can order it in the afternoon. it comes in the evening. So it's just becoming so convenient now. And that's just sort of the name of the game. That's the table stake to win now in e-commerce. Well, I do want to point out that I work for a company, a startup out of Ottawa called Trexity that offers same-day delivery

for small and medium-sized businesses across the country and allows them to compete with Amazon on that very thing. Very nice. Yeah, it's definitely a growth area. Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's keep going. We've got with the last one here. So let's spend some time on this.

Lulu lemon. Well, Lulu Lemon, well, Lulu Lemon was. one of those stores. I saw it on my social media where people were stealing and the employees, one employee tried to stop somebody and then they got in trouble because Lulu Lemon had said, don't try to stop these

shoplifters. Now the CEO has left and what's going on with it? This is one of those great Canadian companies that we're very proud of but what's the state of this company right now? Yeah, no, I remember that incident too where the employee got fired. That's a good point. But yeah, Lulu Lemon is sort of a

drift right now. I mean, they've been definitely a stock market darling over the last several years, particularly during the pandemic when people started wearing sort of yoke wearing things. And everything was good. They expanded in different markets. You know, they had tremendous growth, all kinds, new categories, footwear, etc. But then in the last year, the stock has dropped about 50%. And the main reason for that is the U.S. market. They've been down in the U.S. market. And that's their biggest market. And I listened to one of their earnings calls recently, and even the CEO admitted that their product was off. It was kind of boring a little bit.

So what happened is just recently the company parted ways with Calve MacDonald, the former CEO, who'd be leaving in January. And now there's an activist investor, Elliott Management, who bought a billion dollars worth of shares, and they're looking to put in a new sort of turnaround CEO. So the company's sort of in drift right now a bit. Yeah, but if I'm not mistaken, I mean, I've heard stories of, you know, copycat products that you can find at places like Costco

that look exactly the same and cost a fraction of the price. So even when they don't have to deal with a tariff, say, in Canada, there are people buying, getting what they need from Lulu Lemon elsewhere. Yeah, no, that's a great point, Ben. I mean, that's one of the things that's changed in the aphleisure market is the competition is so much bigger now. And there are dupes. You know, Costco famously has that dupe you talk about for 20 U.S.

in the U.S. versus $100 at Lulu, right? So the market's changed a lot. And some people don't want to spend $100 on these garments too, right? They can buy a lot cheaper items. So there's a number of issues that have sort of attacked the retailer at once. And they're in sort of a new phase of their development right now. Well, it looks, I mean, so what's your prediction for Lul Lemon? Well, I think what will happen is they're going to bring in a new CEO, probably a turnaround person.

You know, Chip Wilson, the founders, very vocal level, getting back to product. So it'll be interesting to see the tension between Chip Wilson, who's a majority shareholder and Elliott Capital. And they'll probably get back to basics, hopefully reinvigorating their product assortment. My fear is that they sort of become a little too widely distributed or they go for lower price points too much. So I just hope they don't dilute the brand too much as they're in their turnaround mode. But we'll see what happened. Yeah, and I don't even know how many people work at Lulu Lemon, so I have to assume a lot of jobs at stake. Yeah, at least several thousand people work in Vancouver,

and then, of course, you have all the stores. So, yeah, there's lots of jobs at stake, and I think everyone's sort of waiting with bated breath right now when the next shoe drops part of the front. What about Eritzia? Because that's another Canadian retailer. I have to assume they're facing those tariffs as well. Yeah, Eritzia is just a marvelous story.

They're based in Vancouver, too. Brian Hill was the former CEO. They've done really well, but they've been very cautious about their expansion, too. And they've done a great job with products. So they continue to be a stock market darling. Wow. All right. Yeah.

I'm glad we're ending on some good news then. Hey, thank you very much, my friend. Happy, happy, happy Christmas. Happy New Year. And let's chat in 2020. Hey, sounds great, Ben. Thanks a lot. Have a good holiday.

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