The Ben Mulroney Show - There is no place for vandalizing statues because you hate Wayne Gretzky

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Why Brands Should Avoid Using the Catchy Nicknames Consumers Give Them with Guest: Tony Chapman, Host of the award winning podcast Chatter that Matters, Founder of Chatter AI -There is no place for vandalizing statues because you suddenly hate Wayne Gretzky with Guest: Dr. Oren Amitay, Psychologist -OCDSB seeking court order in bid to unmask anonymous 'redditor' with Guest: Francis Syms, Associate Dean in the Faculty of Applied Sciences & Technology at Humber Polytechnic If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Ontario. All right, time now to again, switch gears from the election. It will be omnipresent. It's not going anywhere for the next 36 days. And so there are other stories worth exploring and other things worth thinking about. And one person that I love having on the show because he helps me think about things in a different way is Tony Chapman, the host of the award-winning podcast

Chatter That Matters, as well as the founder of Chatter AI. Tony, welcome back. Always a pleasure to be with you. Happy Monday. Happy Monday. Okay, so I was really surprised to learn that Canadian Tire is gonna be closing some stores and restructuring. What is that attributable to? Because where I live, in my area of town, there's a dependable Canadian Tire.

I always think of going there. A lot of times I think of them instead of going to Amazon because they're so close to me. And yet I'm clearly an outlier because they're looking to focus on growth. Yeah, I mean two years ago they were defying all the math and being one of the most successful retailers. But here's the reality, you used the word depend and I think Canadians can no longer depend on having retailers next door. I think that we are voting with our wallet. We're choosing convenience and having a vending machine in the palm of our hand called Amazon over supporting the bricks and mortars who also support our local economy. And I've been talking about this for years but when it's something like Canadian Tire,

an entity, something that we feel very a pillar in the retail community is struggling, you know that we are looking at very hard times for retail and we have to close our eyes and imagine what that Main Street would be without stores. What the energy that attracts people to the coffee shops and the local restaurants is the retail and the treasure hunting. What happens when that goes? Will that dentist or a massage parlor or nail parlor, all good small businesses,

but will they be the magnetic force that's gonna bring you to Main Street? I think not. But Tony, was there something that Canadian Tire could have done a few years ago that they didn't move on that would have changed where they are today? I think Canadian Tire became a department store

of all things to all people. They purposely went away from that sort of man cave where men used to just love to all people. They purposely went away from that sort of man cave where men used to just love to wander around. And they tried to be everything to everyone. And the problem is that when you're everything to everyone, you're now competing with Amazon and Walmart. And price becomes your primary tiebreaker in the case of Walmart convenience in the case of Amazon. And they've lost that point of distinction. The other thing I would suggest for kids and teenagers, is their Triangle reward program. I question, does it have the teeth to combat where we're seeing the giants like Avion,

Seeing, PC Optimum, should they have been thinking of maybe consolidating and being part of something bigger versus trying to hold their own? Let's move on to an article that was in the Wall Street Journal entitled why brands should avoid using the catchy nicknames Consumers give them and you know, I was really curious to read it because you know There's a time where people referred to McDonald's as Mickey D's and you know, Budweiser became bud The BMW became Beamer Tim Hortons became Tims or Timmies. I mean, it's almost like a natural, it's almost like a term of endearment

that that brand is closer to people's hearts, that they feel they can give it a nickname. And yet the argument is that they should avoid using them. Yeah, you know, I challenge this Wall Street article because I think if you become this term of endearment to the consumer Hey, let's meet up at Timmy's. Yeah, right and in and attached to your name I think it's a very wonderful place to be as long as you're sort of that have that humility as a brand

Have a sense of humor the brand so maybe Bimmer you could argue but even the Bimmer drivers We're very proud of calling it a Bimmer. But also, that's my tribe. Look, Tim's. Yeah, clearly Tim Hortons is not paying attention to this Wall Street Journal article because emblazoned on all of their red cups is Tim's, not Tim Hortons, Tim's. And so to me, it seems like and you're right, it makes it feel like it's part of the family. And members of your family get a nickname. Yeah, and you and they're in terms of a dearment and listen, Tim's again, as

you're a marketer compressing your entire brand into four letters and knowing exactly what it is and exactly what I'm going to get, I would argue that's brilliant branding because that's, you can, you've, you've, you've took that coal and you've turned it into a diamond. So I, I disagree with the wall street journal. Yeah. So a while ago, I saw a video Wall Street Journal. Yeah, so a while ago I saw a video that was making its rounds on social media and it was the CEO of Ben and Jerry's

and I believe they're head of DEI and they were talking about how proud they were of wearing their politics on their sleeve. And look, they make great ice cream but I think they have real hot takes when it comes to a lot of social issues, including their pro-Palestinian stance, but that's just me. Well, no, I thought it was just me. Turns out the parent company Unilever had issues with

it as well. They've removed the CEO because of this high-level hot button social activism. Listen, the craziest deal ever was Unilever, a very conservative Dutch company, buying Ben and Jerry's from Vermont hippies that were Cherry Garcia's that were known for their protest and activism. But they wanted the personality of Ben and Jerry's. That was a way to differentiate in a crowded ice cream market. But guess what? Anytime you buy something with personality and trying to change their personality, I would say as humans, we know that never turns out well. And that's what's happening here is that there's a culture clash.

And I would think that we're gonna see private investors come in and offer Unilever and buy Ben and Jerry's and let them loose. Because as a protest ice cream, they do a great job. Honestly, it's cherry ice cream. Sure, but when I was a kid, I went to summer camp, I went to tennis camp in Vermont. We always went to the Ben and Jerry's.

That was one of the outings we do. We go to the Ben and Jerry's. That was one of the outings we do. We go to the Ben and Jerry's factory. And what I knew about them, the social conscience that they had back then was they wanted to be good to the environment and they wanted to give back to social causes, like 2%, whatever. This is not that. This is a, to me, there's a level of militant activism

that is quite, it's really,'s really, how do I say this? It's niche, it's very wedge, it's divisive, it's not what they used to be. So I don't know that when Unilever bought them, I think they thought they were getting one type of activism, and it just morphed into something far more volatile. Yeah, it's a great call.

They were about protesting culture, not challenging cultures. And they crossed the line. There's no question Unilever is not going to sit as a global multinational company and say it's okay that this little small is basically an entry on our balance sheet. We're going to let them make statements out there. But Unilever is also a company that has doves and also acts. So there's a lot of different personalities to that brand. But I would say to you, would you go after cultures? I think you're crossing the line as a

brand. That's not your place to be. Exactly. I want to talk about the fun that some brands have on social media when they rib each other or they rib the people who give them trouble. And there was a man who was on a Ryanair flight. He's a bald man, which is germane to the subject. That's why I brought it up. He's a bald man who sort of says, I got a window seat and the pictures of him essentially next to a wall. He doesn't have a window.

When you book a window seat, but forget it's Ryanair and there's no picture there. And they, Ryanair replied with turkey flight, as in the place that bald guys go to get their hair done. And I think that's really funny. We see Wendy's trolling McDonald's a lot. I appreciate the value in that. From your perspective, is that automatically a good thing to develop that personality online,

that saucy, spicy personality for a brand? Absolutely. We had that we talked about the mattress wars a couple of weeks ago. If you understand your brand, you don't take yourself that seriously, you're part of the conversations that's happening versus I'm going to tell you about my mattress. Yeah, I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you about my flight, but you're having fun with it. Yeah.

I think that the brilliant part of it, and especially if you're smart enough to realize the inside jokes like Turkey with the bald guy, only 5% of the people will get it. If they get it and they want to celebrate it, because hey, look what I found and discovered, you get that amplification factor. And that's what today marketing is. It's a gamification. It's a video game. The days of shouting loud, big, big media buys and overpowering your competition are done. It's a game of finesse and nuances. Same way you ask your listeners at the beginning of this episode, hey, write in, you don't always agree with me. That is smart marketing because you're creating engagement and engagement and attention is the oxygen of building a brand.

Well, listen, whenever we talk, I feel engaged. I always feel like I learned something from you. So Tony Chapman, I want to thank you very much for joining us. I hope you had a great weekend, and I hope you have a great week ahead. Well, chat soon, brother. Thank you very much. Hi, I'm Donna Friesen from Global National. Life moves fast these days, and we want to make it even easier for you to get the news you need.

That's why you can now get Global National every day as a podcast. The biggest stories of the day with analysis from award-winning global news journalists. New episodes drop every day so take this as your personal invitation to join us on the Global National podcast. You can find it on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And we got to talk about something that I believe is a trend that needs to be addressed. These are not isolated incidents. If you look at them from a broader perspective, they are part of a movement that I think needs

to be nipped in the bud. Disappointing news out of Edmonton, Edmonton, comma, the hockey city that Wayne Gretzky built. There's a statue of him in front of the Rogers Arena, a 950 pound bronze statue that somebody decided to deface with excrement. I think that's the way to say it. Now there's a news story that says there's no, we do not yet know if there were political motivations behind this. Of course there are. People didn't just wake up one day and decide they didn't like him as a hockey player. So of course it is. Somebody didn't like him. They decided to take out how upset they were by defacing this public statue. And this is to me part of a larger trend. When somebody feels that they have something

that upsets them so much, they are willing to not just derail your life as somebody walking around and living it, but in other cases, break the law outright. Whether they take over a city block, whether they hurl insults that could be viewed as hate speech, this is something that is happening more and more.

And so to talk about, you know, where this could be coming from is Dr. Orin Amate, a psychologist. Dr. Welcome to the show. Doc, you there? Yep. Oh, fantastic. Yes. So, Doc, listen, I am perfectly happy to ascribe political motivation to these things.

That is not why you're here. I want you to answer these questions as a psychologist, because I'm wondering happy to ascribe political motivation to these things. That is not why you're here. I want you to answer these questions as a psychologist because I'm wondering if, I mean, is all of this happening at one time because perhaps an entire, I think this might have something to do with how an entire generation was raised. I think because we were given participation medals

to people for so long, we've convinced them that the world needs to bend to them just because, and if it doesn't, they have the right to lash out and have temper tantrums like children used to do at the mall. Right and that's a huge part of it and this is going to you know underlie so many of the stories we ever talk about this idea that yes, children are born narcissists. They have to be, okay, because if the world doesn't rotate around them, they're going to die. So their parents, you know, and anyone else who's taking care of them have to cater to their needs. And then every good parent

knows that in the first couple of years, there's a transition where the child has to realize, wait a second, no, I am not the center of the universe. I need to find my place in my environment. I need to negotiate with others. There's a hierarchy. We have to sometimes, you know, put aside our needs, we have to delay gratification. And that's a good parent's responsibility to teach those, those needs to our children to how to function properly. And that is something that has gone by the wayside in so many cases, for sure. That's part of the problem. Now, I do know that the way we parented in the past cannot by the wayside in so many cases, for sure. That's part of the problem. Now, I do know that the way we parented in the past cannot be the way we parent today, because the world is different. That being said, that doesn't mean you throw the baby out with the

bath water. There are a lot of great things that I learned from my parents. I've absolutely imported whole hog into my life. For example, with my kids, when they would come home with anything that resembled a grade that told me they weren't trying, I would not congratulate them. I would say, if you're expecting me to be proud of you, do harder work. Come home with better grades. Show me that you're trying. But I am not going to pat you on the back and tell you did a good job if you didn't do a good job. I know that you were playing video games when you should have been studying. So forget, you're no ticker tape parade for you. This is not good work. Go try harder.

Exactly. That's good parenting. Well, hold on. I would like to point out that has not necessarily translated into good grades, but I stand by it. Right. And again, this idea that our needs can't always be the priorities. Sometimes we have to, as I said, delay gratification.

We can't just act on impulses. We need to exert effort if we want something. It's not just going to come to us. You can't expect that. And if we're having troubles in the area of life or in the world or with people, we can't expect them to automatically accommodate our wants and needs. Oh, well, Doc, I'm glad you mentioned that because some of my favorite audio gold from the past, there's an old clip, audio clip, I believe,

of a university of, and I'm going to say it's a bunch of leftists getting together to have some sort of confab, and they can't get it off the ground because everybody has a grievance that they want everybody else to listen to. Let's listen to this. A privilege, a personal privilege. Guys, first of all, James Jackson, Sacramento, he, him. I just want to say, can we please keep the chatter to a minimum? I'm one of the people who's very, very prone to sensory overload.

There's a lot of whispering and chatter going on. It's making it very difficult for me to focus. Please, can we just, I know we're all fresh and ready to go, but can we please just keep the chatter to a minimum? It's affecting my ability to focus. Thank you. Thank you, comrade. OK, is there a speaker against name chapter?

Point of personal privilege. Yes, please do not use gendered language to to address everyone Hi, James Jackson Sacramento DSA he him I have already asked people to be mindful of the chatter of their comrades who are sensitive to sensory overload. And that goes double for the heckling and the hissing. It is also triggering to my anxiety. Uh, so we are a bit behind schedule. Of course you're a bit behind schedule. You can't get to what you're there for because everybody is trying to tell you that their grievances trumps everybody else. This to me is, uh, encapsulates everything that is wrong. And I don't know how we solve it, Doc.

Well, first of all, that was from the Democratic Socialist Association. Or so that explains a lot. Far left as you can get or almost as far left. So how do we do this or how do we address it? Yeah, it's really up to the people in charge, the parents, the educators, the lawmakers. And unfortunately, they've the educators, the lawmakers. And unfortunately, they've been asleep at the wheel. And a lot of the people that you see, let's say, encouraging this behavior are engaging in themselves. Right? And if you look at the protests that are going on,

there's a lot of professors, a lot of people who should know better. Okay. But they were raised with a similar mindset. They don't understand how society works. And this is unfortunate. And I'm not using this just as a cheap insult. I am saying this from a psychological perspective. It is true. Studies have shown that people, quote unquote, on the left, really don't understand how people operate. They live in a world of ideals, not of reality. Yeah. But at some point, isn't reality going to smack them in the face?

Like at some point, these people have to go out and get jobs. And it's like the baristas who decided they wanted to, they want to unionize. And the second they unionized, the coffee shop got closed and they didn't understand why that would happen. And I want to turn our attention to one last aspect of this because there's a story that suggests that high social media use can be linked to

delusional disorders. That's according to BC Research. Can you tell me a little bit about this study? Yes, they looked at a bunch of different psychotic disorders and delusions are one of them. And it's not just that. There's other ones as well, paranoia and others. But the point is, as humans, we're social animals, our sense of self, our identity, how we perceive ourselves, how we perceive the world around us and our role in it is dependent in large part on our interactions with the world, with the people in it. And if people are living their life primarily online, where the normal rules of society, the hierarchies, the way where we normally learn how to function, what we're allowed

to get away with, what we can do, where our strengths are. If that is all fantasy, if we're not living in a world grounded in actual reality, in face-to-face human interactions, we can develop a very distorted sense of ourselves. We can develop distorted thinking and part of that thinking, if it goes too far, can become maybe not literal delusions, but pretty close in the sense that these are such false beliefs and they are very hard to challenge. And the person holds onto them and is almost literally unable to let go of them. I used to sort of make light of all of this and say, hey, if you're not if you as a parent

aren't going to build, if you're not going to build a resilient child who turns into a resilient adult, that's fine, because I'm building mine and mine are going to win. But now I see that this has issues that are bigger than that as it relates to social cohesion and building an arena where people can respectfully disagree. This has long-term ramifications beyond people entering the job force, for example. This is about the unity that we have as a society. And we're seeing that unity fall apart. I mean, this has happened the last couple of years. It's gotten really bad.

And the fact is, these people who, you know, as you're talking about, once they enter the workforce, look, I have so many patients who have been in the workforce for a long time in every, you know, every field you can imagine. And they're saying that the norms of the workforce for a long time in every field you can imagine and they're saying that the norms of the workforce, the hierarchies, the understanding that there's a job to be done, there's a system in place and you have to work your way through it and navigate it and rise to the top.

That's not happening. No. People are being put in the top for reasons that go beyond their capabilities. It's because of DEI and other stuff. And again, I'm not just throwing this out there as an insult. I am telling you what is actually happening and that's leading to the deterioration of all these different systems, whether it's school system, universities, medical care, medical health. Doc, we're going to have to leave it there, but I really thank you for the insights.

All right. Thank you as always. insights. All right, thank you as always. But in the meantime, here's a dilemma that is facing Reddit. The Ottawa-Carlton District School Board is seeking a court order in a bid to unmask an anonymous Redditor. And so there's somebody on Reddit who has been posting about issues that they have with a particular school and people at that school as it relates to racism and other negative interactions. And now the OCDSB is trying to take to the courts to unmask this person, to release them from the veil of anonymity, which could send chills to that entire community and the raison d'etre of a place like Reddit. And so to discuss this and really drill down

is Francis Sims, Associate Dean in the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technology at Humber Polytechnic. Francis, thank you so much for being here. Yeah, happy to be here, Ben. Thanks for having me. I'm glad you're here, because you're here with two hats on.

You're here as a member of the academic community. And you're also here as somebody who knows a thing or two about technology. So talk to me about who has access to these databases and the servers with all the users information. I mean, do authorities have the ability to get to them without permission? Are they hackable? Are they protected? What's what's the status? So So what the the the Ottawa Carleton District School Board is doing is they're seeking what's called a Norwich order, which is what would force Reddit basically

to identify the user who posted it anonymously. Now, some of your listeners may know about something like this if they've ever accidentally downloaded a movie, right, off the internet. Well, you may run into a situation where your carrier, whether it's Bell or Rogers, would send a note and say, well you know we noticed that your IP address has downloaded a movie and we have to tell the copyright holder of that movie about you.

That's typically the type of situation that some of the listeners may have heard about or had some experience with. So that's called a Norwich order And there's a legal framework for that in Canada. It was actually adopted from the UK, this concept. But they have to show that there's a bona fide illegal claim and that the info is necessary to identify the alleged wrongdoer. What they're saying is that that wrongdoer, who is purported to be a teacher, according to what they said, effectively defamed some people of that community. And it wasn't just one complaint, one particular comment, it was 51 comments across 17 different Reddit threats. So what the school board is arguing is that it was a sustained set of comments

that defamed particular individuals. And so really what it's doing is it's causing real risk of significant harm to those individuals. But it's a tough situation because, you know, you know, Reddit's arguing that the user activity was in the public interest, right? And the courts previously, Supreme Court has previously recognized that value of an anonymous speech, especially when there's a power imbalance. And if that person was a teacher, they might not have felt comfortable, you know, saying that in in the in, you know, to the school administration for fear of losing their job or some sort of repercussion.

Well, and Francis, I always see, I always see not always, but I have seen in not similar situations, but I've seen situations where an individual, be it a student or a parent or a teacher, takes issue with an institution and it feels like the standard operating procedure is to circle the wagons and protect that person and really mitigate the the fallout on that person. And so I don't want to, I don't know enough about this, but I'm just saying how it feels. It feels like Reddit comes in to sort of even the playing field a little bit. Yeah. I mean, right. It's entire model is based on anonymity. And their point is that if that could be stripped away after some criticisms of the school board, then they risk setting a precedent.

And we all need in society whistleblowing platforms. If there's a power imbalance, you need a way for that person that feels vulnerable to be able to say something about it. But the risk, what you don't wanna do is hurt people individually. And that reputation is important, right? A school board has a reputation

to deliver high quality education. And if they feel like they're being unfairly commented against or targeted, well, that's not great either. It's a complicated situation. Yeah. So you work in a school. Do you like the idea of issues that maybe someone is not comfortable talking about publicly getting aired out online, so it doesn't go unnoticed and making sure that their voice is in fact heard? What are your thoughts as somebody who works inside an institution? I can talk about my personal experience, not the institution, but large.

But what we generally do is, you know, as educators, we encourage feedback. And what you hope to do is you set up a framework in place at the school, any school, so that people feel like they can they can talk about their issues and those issues can be dealt with. And I think that's some of the concerns here in this particular situation is people are saying that, you know, there's questions of whether the school board was actually treating those issues seriously. You know, at my institution, if somebody has an issue, there's lots of different ways they can communicate that issue, communicate it to, you know, public safety, they can communicate it to the administration, they can communicate it to the teacher directly, student advisors, there's a plethora of things like there are

at most institutions. And I think maybe the concern here, or at least the people that are commenting on the threat, is that there might not have been enough supports in place for that person to feel comfortable talking about their problems. Yeah. Had there been the ability for this person to, let's call it, let's assume the best of them and let's call it whistleblowing. I don't know if it's factually accurate or not. So, but let's believe for a moment that it is. If there was an avenue by which they could whistleblow, then perhaps they wouldn't have resorted to going to an anonymous site like Reddit in the hopes of having of exposing what they think is an ill

that was perpetrated by the institution. I agree. I think we all promote transparency here and we care, every institution, principal cares about the people that come to that place, whether it's a student or a client and you wanna take care of them. And for whatever reason here, somebody feels like they're not being taken care of.

I have to assume Reddit is gonna defend themselves viciously here because it seems that their raison d'etre, as you said, is an anonymity. And if that were stripped away by the courts in this one case, that could cause a cascading effect moving forward. 100%. Now, but what I find interesting here is that Reddit is a private organization. And so they have access to all that data. What they do with that data through their terms of service is not entirely clear. Do they share it anonymously with other people? It's not like it's a government server that people have commented and whistleblown.

It's some private corporation. And so today that's Reddit's position. But you don't know, I mean, I wouldn't necessarily argue that Reddit's a safe platform. People do it now. Reddit's protecting them as long as it's in their business interest, right? At some point, that could change in the future too. Didn't the UK government get Apple to bend on protecting users' identities and privacy? Yeah, I think I don't remember that specific case. But there's always arguments on the court

that they have to protect individual rights and balance sort of the whistleblowing concept. So this is not a problem that's new by any stretch. Well, I've got to wonder also, I mean, you've read the Reddit threads as well. Do you feel as someone who works in education that this person ran afoul of the laws that they in fact defamed or slandered somebody?

Well, what I worry about, what I don't know is because I don't know what I don't work there is why weren't there channels where that person, if it's a legitimate concern, could feel like they could report these issues and have them addressed. So either those channels were broken, or I guess in the school board's perspective, maybe that person isn't the right person or following the right channels. So I'm worried about the whole system and I'm also worried about the people that are being potentially you know defamed because these are people's lives with wives and husbands and daughters and sons and sisters and brothers and so if it's not real

then that does have a real impact on them. So I see both sides but what I worry about is just the channels was that was the system set up properly to support the students and the people working there. But I think in any any company you want to if you're a leader in a company, you want to know what those problems are, whether it's the public sector or the private sector. And this isn't the ideal way to find out about those problems. But it's highlighting that there's something there that's not working. Yeah, exactly. Take the crisis, turn it into an opportunity, make your organization more transparent, more open and more willing to accept criticism on a fair and even playing field. Francis Sims, I want to thank you so much for being here. Always love talking to you. I hope you do well over the course of the next week. Thanks, Ben. Take care. At Desjardins, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization.

We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardins 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 Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business.