The Ben Mulroney Show - To fix the shelter problem, we need to address the real issue... the asylum system

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

Guests and Topics: -To fix Toronto's shelter problem, fix the asylum system -Should people not be able to purchase condos until they're fully built? 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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when leasing or financing through NCF. Conditions apply. See Nissan.ca for details. Alex Pearson in for Mr. Ben Mulroney. It is great to have you here on this Tuesday and the question is how do we fix Toronto shelter problem? Is there a fix? I say of course there is. Of course there is. We're good people in this country. We're very generous. We help lots of people. We can do more. It's just the people who are elected to office are the ones who keep causing all the problems. I'm not sure if

you remember or heard about this city report on homelessness in Toronto came out on Monday talking about, you know, the crisis is now worse than it was five years ago. You know, there's more need, more people, more addiction, more drugs, more crime, less housing, less supports. I mean, I can go on and on and on, but it's not getting better. And we get all these big talks, lots of talk from the politicians, and yet there's still less supports. I mean, I can go on and on and on, but it's not getting better. And we get all these big talks, lots of talk from the politicians, and yet there's still not enough shelters. Right? It's like, why do we have so many people on the streets or in the subways or

everywhere else they should be and on the shelters? Well, that's because, and it's not new news, the refugees and immigrants that have been brought in too hastily have put a huge, huge burden on our resources. And so I'm going to put the phone lines on this and I'm going to take you through some of the stats and the and the data. But, you know, we are a very generous country, but we are displacing a lot of vulnerable people in this country already who have needs. And so why why are we not helping those people?

416-870-6400-888-225-TALK. But look, we have a 10,000 shelter bed system set up, right? We have 10,000 shelter beds. Should we have that many? No. But the reality is that's where we're at. And as of this weekend, 99% of those shelter beds were completely full. And when you actually look back over the last 10 years,

we've more than doubled the number of beds and yet the problem is getting worse, not better. And it's getting worse because of course asylum seekers and refugee claimants have come in and of course They have nowhere to go and so they take up what should be a stopgap measure Right. This has become the stopgap measure for a very broken immigration refugee program run by the Liberal government That will be will be sworn in today Who's going to be on immigration? Because they have a lot of

they should have been fired for one thing, but are they going to finally deal with federal jurisdiction on this thing of stopping so many people from coming in? Right? You look at the number 42,000 people arrived at our international airports and the majority of course they come to Toronto and Montreal, right, but these are people that just last year alone declared asylum. 58,000 people showed up at all our border crossings just last year seeking asylum and a lot of these applicants are not actual asylum seekers, right, these are people who are gaming the system because they know how and certainly dwarf the numbers that we've seen in Roxham Road, right? So we've seen them just cross.

You know, the bottom line is you look back 10 years, 12 years, in 2013 there were 4,200 people who were showing up at our airport and land border crossings who declared asylum. And now those numbers have exploded. But they're coming to places like Toronto and they're filling up our shelters so we don't have the room for them and it doesn't matter how much more money we keep throwing at this it's not going to fix it it's not sustainable by the way long term I mean Mark Carney's coming in made a lot of promises to reduce immigration but you know they don't even know how many people are in this country

who should not be in this country. And again, all of those people put burdens onto our cost of living, our housing, our social structures, doctors, those kinds of things. It's a huge number, but the federal government really, I think is the only one that can solve this and stop bringing in people, but the city, all they do is throw money at this.

But we bend over to help others in this country and we are displacing our most vulnerable who are in this country. And I don't think that can be ignored. And I don't know why we've allowed it, but how would you solve this problem? Because we don't really have any other options. 41687064008888225 talk. Let's solve our shelter crisis. Or can it be, can it be solved?

Let me talk to Anthony. Hey, Anthony, you say what? Good morning. Yeah, you know what? I have a problem. Listen, what who determines the immigration? I think immigration should be based on, you know, we're looking for opportunities. Yes, but what it is, is you got to get skilled workers, you got to people, people that are necessarily needed for for whatever. You can't just bring in anybody to come in because what happens is you get unskilled workers or they go to school and they decide to stay. You don't have enough housing and the jobs are being occupied by a lot of the new immigrants.

I could say even our healthcare is overburdened. So I think it's gone way too much, too far left. And it's gotta stop. Yeah, but how do you stop it? Who's going to stop it, right? And again, we're displacing so many of our own and allowing people who some absolutely are refugees. Yeah.

But a lot aren't. And look at England right now. They're having a big problem with immigration. I think the minister just said now, Prime Minister, there's no more. That's it for immigration. And it's the same thing that's going to happen to us. If we don't put a halt on it, it's going to be a big, big problem. I think it already is. I mean, at least we can talk about it. I mean, there was a point when last year you couldn't talk about these things, right? Because you were racist. You were not compassionate. You were awful. Didn't want to help people. But the reason we were

able to ask questions is because there are people who are coming in on asylum claims or refugee status and they're sleeping on the streets of Toronto in the cold. You know, you're not coming into this country to sleep on the cold or in a shelter. That's not how the system is supposed to work. And again, we're not fixing it because all we're doing is adding more beds and throwing more money at it, but we're not. the only way you fix it is by stopping so many people from coming in and making claims and are we going to be turning people away we have to but will we we won't solve the problem if we don't let's go

to Sarah you say what hey? Hey, Sarah. I really feel like I'm Alex. You're Sarah. I have an older sister named Sarah. She calls me Sarah sometimes, but no, you're Sarah. I'm Alex. Maybe Martha will join in our conversation, but she's the other sister. She's a elsewhere, but go ahead. I know. Alex, you know, I feel like if you're not employed within the next, within the first six months of you coming to the country, then you have to consider sending them back. There have been instances where I've actually experienced a church in Western Ontario. They actually took in a family, they sponsored them, they said they were going to get employed,

but they never worked. They said they were going to get employed, they never worked, and then once their period was over, now the church is responsible for paying for them to live. Another instance is I'm in Toronto, we have an older gentleman living in our park. I swear he's in his 60s. He's a nice man, everyone talks in the neighborhood, but then in the motel next door, we got somebody who's got to come from another country,

they're being fully housed, and someone was murdered there from that exact same family. Like, what are you doing here? Obviously, you're up to no good if you're getting murdered. You know, like, I don't understand what's going on in this country with people not getting employed, not becoming Canadian, and just not doing anything for our society. Well, it's easy when you invite people in by text to make a point. But again, it didn't do anything for our immigration system and it broke it. The question is, who's going to fix it and actually stop it?

Because Mark Carney said he would reduce the number. But we don't even know there's hundreds of thousands of people in this country who shouldn't be here. And no one even knows where they are. Let me give Frank a thought on this. Hey, Frank, your wife is wife works in a women's shelter? Oh yeah, so it's all immigrants right now and it has been for the last couple of years. She's gotten the odd user, maybe one,

as opposed to before it was a lot of users, which was a dangerous situation, obviously. And yeah, it's all immigrants, so I would say it's easy, but I mean, it's rather a lax situation, which is good for her, but that's what it is right now. Um, but are they actually, are they women who are abused or are they just people who need a shelter space? Could be anyone.

Okay. But that's not like we have, appreciate that call. That's not what, that's not what an emergency shelter space is for. That is for a woman or someone in, in, in harm's way to go escape. Right? So it's not enough that the shelter systems are all clogged up so that people here in local need, they don't have anywhere to go,

but if we've now got people in asylum claims, refugee status, taking up beds in emergency shelters where people in crisis are supposed to be able to escape, that is a massive failure in a time when we have record numbers of women and people being killed in domestic situations. All right I gotta take a quick break here but boy got you talking. So we're gonna keep talking about it. Alex Pierce name for Ben Mulrooney if you want to drop us a line on this 416870

6400 or 82825 talk we're talking about fixing the shelter system which definitely needs a fix that is not being put forward. We'll continue talking about it here on the Ben Mulroney show I've just been to spec savers and upgraded my lenses to extra thin and light with 50% off now What else can I upgrade my cat? Wow my scooter Wow! My scooter? Oh yeah! Get 50% off lens upgrades in the Specsavers Spring Sale. Hey, I can upgrade my kids!

You chill, Mom. I'll load the dishwasher. Awesome! Exclusions apply. See Specsavers.ca for details. Offer ends soon. Hi, I'm Donna Friesen from Global National. Life moves fast these days and and we wanna 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. Great to have you here Alex Pearson in for Ben Mulgary on the Ben Mulgary show. We are talking about what is the solution for our shelter crisis.

Certainly in the city of Toronto, right, we have about 10,000 shelter beds, but, you know, as of this weekend, they're still at 99% capacity and they are turning people away. Now we're going into the warmer months, so it might not pose as such a big problem now, right? But then we've got the bigger problems and they go into the parks, right? Or open spaces. But just to give you an idea of how this whole affair has been managed, and we've got lots of calls, so I'm going to get to you. And if you want to weigh in 4168706400 or 8888225talk, but Ottawa's paid for about 4,000 hotel rooms for 7,300 asylum seekers last year, just last year, right? But it's costing us huge amounts of money because the average asylum seeker is spending

about 113 days in a hotel. If they're not getting into a shelter, they go to a hotel. So we're talking about $208 per cost per person because they get meals and security, right? What about a homeless person who's, a local homeless person who's been struggling for years? But the costs are not small. between September 2021 to September 2023, the federal government spent 95 million bucks on hotel rooms, on hotel rooms for

people who are illegally coming over the border. They actually at one point thought of buying hotels because that would be the cheaper option. No, the cheaper option is to enforce rules at the border. That's the cheaper option. It's also the required option. So again, when I hear a caller like the one before the break saying, well, you know, my wife works in a shelter and we, you know, it's all filled up with refugees and immigrants. When it's supposed to be for women who are in crisis and need somewhere to turn, that is going to cost someone their life,

possibly. That's what we're talking about. Let's get to the phones at 416-870-6400-888-225 talk. Let's talk to Rob. You used to live in a shelter. Yes. Good morning. You got a unique perspective. I used to live in a shelter about three, or or a little bit for three years i've been almost three times in my life i'm almost sixty but uh... host now arm i was there three years or i found arm it means

just as the immigration not make you is coming up arm could we do see a lot more coming in but um... that the reason what i find it is hopefully short term it took side was ever three years it took six months to find a rehab bed for me, and that's why I was there, my addictions, and I was homeless. Also the housing situation in Toronto is terrible and we, like on ODSP, you cannot run a place without subsidized housing. You had an issue where you're dealing with addiction and substance issues and you're dealing with trying to stabilize your life, right? But

you're in now with a number of refugees and people that aren't there. I was, I was. You were. Right, but how does that work then? Because you've got people there who don't have those cuts. So you're mixing a lot of people that shouldn't be mixed. Absolutely. You know what? I found it like it's dangerous. I understand the streets, but for people coming from other countries that are a lot of them were a lot to make and and they don't know the system or language army people do try to help again little stop to her to help with non-nice swallow on support where you go for like

sure they want to get out there for the people but where do you go for that are They want an addiction. In the shelter, there's a campsite right beside it. Why is there a campsite beside a shelter? Well, again, these are band-aid fixes that the city keeps doing. I'm glad to hear though you are out and you're now in housing. Okay, so what would you say then, Rob, just before I jump to another call, what's the solution? How do you fix this?

Oh, this is, we can go for hours with this. I'll give you 20 seconds. People need to start forcing the government like our voters and such force people as I don't want people to support there are rich people that live in a community to support these places but we need more voices to push our leaders to do something on all levels. Yeah. Look, I appreciate that.

The thing is, we just had an election. And of course, this was not discussed at all. Why would we discuss these crisis when we only have to talk about Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump,

Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump that were all there before still remain. So again, we'll get a good indication maybe today, who are they going to put into this file to deal with it on immigration? Who are they going to put into this file to deal with all the other things? I guess we'll wait and see to see how serious they are about it. But again, this is fueled, this is federal jurisdiction when we're talking about all

the people coming in and filling these systems up. To Olivia Chow, don't just keep asking for money, it's not solving it. Let's go to Dean. Hi Dean. Oh hi, how you doing? You sort of stole my thunder. My point was, I was recently at a shelter discussion at Oakwood Collegiate and it came up, they were paying like you said 287 or whatever, $300 per night, 365 days a year, is $107,500 per person. It's insane. I said we could buy houses in South Patropio, three bedrooms for a million dollars and the city owns the land then. The cost of these two shelters are insane. They're like $30 million each and they're also, it's not just the shelter. The one on third street going in is harm reduction, meaning they're getting,

they're getting condoms, crack pipes and needles 24 hours. Anybody could walk in and get this. And these are going in on quiet residential streets. People don't realize what's going on. They're ruining neighborhoods with these. Yeah, no, it is a very, very big problem. And again, are we doubling down on these policies? Cause we got a brand new government that looks a lot like the old government.

And you're in a G7 country. This should not be the state of existence in a G7 country. Let's go to Peter, your son is going, is heading off to Scotland. Yes. That's from being Canadian. And from Canadian. Yes. That's from being Canadian. And from Canadian, yes. And the sad thing is he decided this two years ago to take his family, he's got two kids.

And he got his Irish passport because my mother was Irish. And in Scotland, they accept that. So you don't have to go through so much red tape he still had to have us cured home and a secure job prior to him going so he just got back home two weeks ago he's got a job

he's got a house and he is leaving july and he's gone from this country and you're losing that talent which he is a we're all tradesmen and he's putting up two tower three towers at Yorkdale which are rental towers and he's the project manager on this site. But he can't afford with six figures to buy a house in Canada.

And the rules are just open. That's why we're heading away. Right, right, again. Carney's gonna have to make the case to keep people like that here because cost of living is so expensive. Colin, you've been waiting,

so I wanna make sure I give you, you've got 40 seconds. Okay, you've been waiting so I want to make sure I give you that before 40 seconds. Okay, I just was going to suggest putting a pause on the system because it's overwhelmed. You could almost listen to the answers to all these concerns and everybody's right with the things they observe but the thing is that if we leave the system as it is, it's just going to get worse. We're accommodating people and letting them down, leaving it as is, versus we should just honestly say, you know what? This is broken. Let's pause it. Posing it

is not racist. Posing it is just giving us an opportunity to get it right. Well the bottom line is, do we want to fail everyone equally? Is that what we consider compassion and success? No, we're here to help people get them on their feet, but we're going the wrong way, right? Nothing to be too excited about with record use of food banks. Good morning to you. Yeah, it is Alex Pearson in from Mr. Ben Moroney. Great to be with you here today.

Let's talk about something that, well, I think the warning signs were here for a long time. Certainly we'll open the phones on this because Toronto seems to wanna, well, we have to solve our condo crisis, but the only way we do that is changing how we actually build them. The question is, are we doing this backwards?

Because New York City, where there literally is not a space that cannot be turned into a home, they get condos built right away and then they get sold right away. But they don't sell the units until they are actually built. In fact, this is how most cities around the world do sell condos.

It's they wait until, oh yeah, I have something to sell. Come in, take a look, and we'll sell it. Right? Isn't this how we should be doing this in Toronto? Because what we're doing now is not working. 4168706400888225. Talk. Maybe you're in the business of selling condos.

Maybe you're in the market to buy. Maybe you've got one. Or maybe you are kind of the builder type looking at the trends. Maybe you can comment on this as to why we do the building this way which is backwards to what most major cities actually do right which is build it and then sell it right developers in let's say New York they get things like construction loans they'll get financing from lenders to build the condos so they do all that stuff sell the unit.

But in the GTA, if you actually drive around in the GTA in Toronto, you know, 70 to 80% of the condos going up are pre-sold. And then that of course, secures financing for the project. And then the remainder is covered by the lender and the builder's own capital. and then the remainder is covered by the lender and the builders own capital. But that means as a as a purchaser you're buying your unit years before it's built. Like it's like it's a bit of a long tail a long game because you don't really know what the investment's going to be or if you're even going to like it you don't even know what your life's going to be. Right? And our condo market right

now is crashing. Buyers are walking away from units that they bought three years ago because three years ago, hey, I guess buying a 550 square foot unit seemed like all the rage, especially when you couldn't afford to buy anything. But that market has now changed and people are saying, well, I've got a family now and I can't, I can't, I can't buy this unit when I've got a family because, oh yeah, I have to have more than one bedroom. Right? I can't buy this unit when I've got a family because, oh yeah, I have to have more than one bedroom. Right, so they're just literally walking away from the investments that they put in,

and now the condo market is crashing and buyers walking away. And so again, you have to ask, what are we gonna do A with all these empty spaces, right? But isn't it how we actually build them? And then maybe we actually wouldn't have this crisis? So shouldn't we just actually build them and they will come? 416-870-6400-888-225- talk. Sometimes I have to say that in my head and think about it because, yeah, my

memory is going like everyone else's, but it's awful when you get your smartphone doing everything for you. It does make your brain a little soft, but yeah. So give us a call because I'd be curious, is it time, and maybe developers, you've got an idea about this, but developers here pre-sell most of the suites

before the shovel hits the ground. You know, that is a risky way of doing it, but for a long time, I guess that is the way it worked, although developers would probably tell us, no, that's not really the way it worked. We just made it work. But there's a real, there's a separation between the product built, you know, and the user buying it, right? It's like you buy something and then for two, three years, you just kind of go on with your

life, you do other things and you literally have to figure out, you know, what you're going to do. But then something's built and then you go back to it and say, well, this doesn't really make sense for me anymore. I don't really want it. It would make more sense when you go in, like once upon a time you would see a house or an apartment built in my lifetime. It was a thing. You'd go in, you'd see it, you'd walk around it. Does it fit your needs? Do you like the look of it? And then you would put an offer on it.

And once upon a time, you didn't even have to put an offer on it at a set date. You could just come into the house and see it and say, yeah, I wanna buy this house and put an offer in it. And then of course it all changed so that we'd structure it that was getting into big bidding wars and all the rest of it. But a lot of us now just have gotten very accustomed to only buying off of paper.

And I'm not sure that it's going to work moving down the line. Because a lot of times, not only does your life change, but the area around it changes. Right? you know, not only does your life change, but the area around it changes, right? And also, again, you wanna wait three years to start what you wanna do? New York's great and other cities are great for the sense that they are able to turn any space into livable units, right?

There's nothing that they don't build and they don't have to build because they just, if you've got a store and you've got a business and then you've got a place above, that thing's being turned into a condo or some high-end apartment or whatever. There are places in New York you can live that you probably don't even know is a place to live because when you look at it, you just see a wall, but you don't know what's behind it. They're pretty smart with how they do things.

They also build up and use more of their air rights, but they also do it so that they don't actually pre-sell anything. There's never any question about who's going to be coming in or who's going to buy or will the unit actually sell. They build it. But you know, on demand. You get it on demand. And I don't know why we don't do that here. And I don't know if we actually could go back to doing it otherwise, but it just seems that the developer certainly gets to take all the risk, right, 416870648888225 talk. Let's get that conversation started. Let's talk to Joe.

Hey, Joe, how you doing? Hey, good morning, Alex. I was just telling your screener, developers aren't gonna develop anything unless they pre-sell them, because it has to do with the financing. So if they pre-sell 70% of a condo building, then they can get the financing from the bank because A, they have the deposit down and B, they have financial commitment from the people purchasing the unit.

Well, don't we have to change that though? Because that's not how other big cities do it right? Big cities do it they get the financing and they're able to get that financing they don't have to pre-sell right? We've made this. Well I agree with you but right now the builders manage the risk involved in that matter. I was just telling your screener I think if the city wants to be a partner in that whole thing, they're very greedy in terms of the development cost, 240,000 per unit. So that gets passed down to us, the developer isn't going to be nice about it and say, ah, we'll take the hit on that. So the whole system should be looked at. And I don't know that the city is the one that's going to have the power to say,

let's change things. It may be on a provincial level where you have a task force. Now, you know, Don't we don't need it. Come on, we don't need another. Do we need another task force and then we'll do more studies and we'll do more exploration and then we'll set up a committee. No, you know what we need?

We need the government to get out of that way. First of all, they don't, they have proved to be too cumbersome. Like lots of regulations they want to put in, too many stabs. Maybe we go back to basics because it works in other major cities. It doesn't seem to work here. And we are the ones with a housing crisis. Right? But I just think if you build it, people will come is not working here. Whereas if you build it and then put it for sale, people will come look at it and want to buy it. Let me go to Steve.

Hi, Steve, you're an architect. You say what? Hi, Alex. Nice talking to you. I'm not sure where you're going with this idea. The idea how we've been pre-selling and financing buildings is more probably about affordability and risk. I think what you're talking about is having somebody taking on a huge risk, you know,

$50 million, $100 million risk and hoping that people buy. Well, that's what they do in New York City, right? They do it in bigger cities. Maybe they do, but they're paying a lot higher cost in New York City. And I mean, our problem is really affordability. And this idea is not really, I think, towards affordability. The affordability is we need to lower the cost of units. And how do we lower costs? Well, again, I think-

So is this my idea to lower costs? Well, I don't know. I mean, but if you can take a couple of the steps away, in other words, take some of the costs of the city out, which they will put lots of costs on, right? Get them out of the way. But we have which they will put lots of costs on, right? Get them out of the way. But we have such a glut as you would know of condos and such in the market that right now people just are walking away. It's taking too long for them to build. You know, at least in places like New York, if you're putting up all the money, you're going to make sure you get that thing built as soon as possible. Here it's like

dilly dally costs go up. But it's not working. If we could make it work, then maybe things become a lot more affordable. I'm running out of time, so I appreciate the calls on this. I don't think we're gonna solve this overnight clearly. To celebrate the Days of Our Lives 60th anniversary, W Network and Stack TV invite you to enter for a chance to win the ultimate fan experience.

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