The Ben Mulroney Show - Toronto makes decision on tent encampments/Affordability reality check

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

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Hi, this is Ron McLean. Did you know the Salvation Army helped 1.5 million vulnerable individuals and families in Ontario last year? Please join me December 2nd at One King West Hotel in Toronto to give back by supporting the Salvation Army's hopes in the city leadership luncheon. Together, let's provide hope and instill dreams. Sponsorship opportunities and tables are available.

For more details, visit hope in the city, Toronto.ca.ca. That's hope in the city, Toronto.ca. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. It's a brand new week. And with it comes hope. Springy Eternal. It is Monday. November 17th.

It's cold. My tires are flat on my car. I came outside yesterday. And yeah, I've got flat tires. And so today, so I did, and I don't know why. Something's in the tires. I don't know why. All four of them?

Yeah. And anyway. No, we go one tire. Anyway, it doesn't matter whether it's one. or four. I cannot drive the car. But when I switched my phone over to the new phone, and it's a wonderful phone,

excellent battery, by the way, it made it, I wasn't able to put a credit card on my Uber app. No matter what I do, it will, now my Uber Eats works. That's not good for my waistline, but my Uber doesn't work.

So I have gone back, back to the future, and I'm taking taxis everywhere. And I gotta say, the experience, not so bad. it's not bad really well look here

I'll tell you the thing that's annoying is so I use Beck Taxi shout out to Beck Taxi and they should if they're listening please do something about this because you go the website

and you click on book a taxi and then for some reason it's got to do this authentication thing where it sends you a four digit code to your text and normally that works out really well where you just click on the button and you don't have to open the text

and it just populates the field first of all you've got eight seconds to do it so god forbid the text takes a little longer but when it does come in on time and you beat that gun it refers like it doesn't it says wrong wrong digits

I was like it can't be wrong so yeah yeah you always have to end up calling them they say I remember back in the day when you'd call Beck or any taxi they'd always say five 10 minutes for it to show up and I'm sure if I downloaded the app I could probably track it

they do show up they showed up in seven minutes they said seven minutes they showed up in seven minutes. The guy was nice. He knew where he was going. Unlike with Uber, they take, I most of the time have to tell them the routes to take because the mapping is terrible. And it's like driving into a, driving into a, just a, the worst traffic. The most random streets. Yeah, no, but sometimes they take the most direct, but the direct doesn't mean it's going to get you there faster. The taxi industry would say that Uber is the worst thing to happen to them, but Uber needed to happen. But I would say that the best thing to happen to the taxi industry in terms

of service was the fact that Uber existed. Uber needed to happen because nothing was going to course correct the terrible service and the Christ, excuse my language, but it was really, it was so frustrating for so long. In the early 2000s, the fact that they just

wanted cash, I don't walk around with cash. Now they all have, they're all armed with the proper technology and you know It's safer for them as well. Yeah. And so anyway, so that was that. I'm sure we're going to fix the entire situation. Give me your phone. I'll fix the Uber situation for you.

Okay. Well, anyway, let's get to the here and now because we've got lots to get to today. By the way, welcome to the team with Amy Siegel, our video producer, nice to see you. You're looking very cozy are you feeling a little better? I'm still sick as you can tell, but yes. You've got the voice croak that

so many, that's so sexy these days. I know, it's sexy, right? We can talk like this. Yeah, yeah. It's, um, Britney Spears popularized years ago and now for some reason it's still held up as this thing that's sexy. But once you hear it in somebody and you realize they're doing it all the time, it's an affect. It's not. I know it's not affect in you. Yeah. Okay, you, we got to talk

about you. Mike Troulet, intrepid producer. I'm not wearing a winter coat like Amy or a tuk. But then again, that's in the summer as well. Are we going to, yeah, let's, oh, shoot, oh, we're not going to, oh, this is, yeah, I thought we were going to do the, it's winter. We're talking about what happened on the weekend and what you did. Good, yes, let's talk about that because, oh, what did I do? Yes, on Friday, before the tire slash. Oh, and Dave Spargalah as well on the board. Nice to see you as well, sir.

Oh, someone slashed your tires. I think so, yeah. Oh, shit. Anyway, it's all good. But on Friday, I went. That's not all good. I went to Hotel X for a charity pickleball tournament. And it was in furtherance of the motion ball.

They were raising money for Special Olympics. And I'd never played pickleball before. And I loved it. It's fun. It was fun as hell. So much fun. So long as you have like a basic knowledge, I think, of racket sports, you will not embarrass yourself the first time you do it.

So anybody who has not played pickleball, there's this area in the near the net. It's called the kitchen. The kitchen. And you're not allowed to stand in that area. Yeah. The one time I played pickleball, I got in so much trouble because I would always run up right to the net and just smash the ball. Right. But you're allowed to, no, you're allowed to go up to the net, aren't you?

No. You're not allowed to hit the ball when you're in the kitchen. Ah, I see. So why would you even go to the front? Why would you go there? Anger. You know, I don't know. He wanted to smash.

I got you. I got you. I got you. Anyway, a lot of fun and I think a great cause. And Daniel Nestor, the great Canadian tennis player. He was one who invited me. Hotel X is a fantastic property. Did you not watch the Cinder Alcatrazma out yesterday?

I did not. No, no. I went to go see Predator Badlands. And it was fun. I knew it was going to be good. And it was really. really, really good. This movie had a budget of like 70 million bucks. And it looked like it cost $270 million to make. It was fantastic. It doesn't cost as much to make movies anymore because

of the screens that they have. Oh yeah. Well, you can use that. Yeah. Yeah, you can do that. But I don't think, I think they shot a lot of it on location. But it was great. And then we talked on Friday about, about what was it called? Playdate, which was a movie on Prime. I watched it. I thought it was great and funny and stupid. You saw the same movie and hated it. I didn't hate it. I just thought it was it's on Amazon Prime. It was a waste

of time. It was on Amazon Prime and it stars Kevin James and Alan Richson. So the King of Queens and Reacher. No thank you. Okay, listen, I'll watch almost anything that Kevin James is in. I said it on Friday. I don't care. I loved King of Queens.

Oh my God. I hold it up as like it was an old school comedy. That lazy man and pretty mean wife. He even has a line in the show at one point where he goes, I'm fat, you're mean, who cares? That's I care. I care very much, Kevin James. Anyway, the two of them together, it was so ludicrous, it was so stupid.

And because it comes free with Prime, my barrier for entry is very low. And I loved it. Now, the other thing we were going to talk about, and we're going to do this now, because last week, I don't know when we talked about this, but you dropped this little nugget that you make the best chocolate chip cookies. And I pointed out

it would have been nice that you share those with us. Yeah, and I suggested that we should talk about that. Why? Because on the weekend I spent some hours. Yeah. You went into the kitchen where you are allowed. I am. I am. The actual kitchen. No, I've made my own recipe over the years and I've adjusted it.

All right. So right now we're going to see where if we can put... So how many batches did you make before you were like, this is the one? Probably 10? 11? At least? And I'm still sort of working on. If you give me 10 goes, I'll make the best chocolate chip cooking. Yeah, but now I've got at the point where I'm actually doing, okay.

All right. So yes. Okay. So let's let's have a adder. Okay. So I guess, so you've got like a. M&M. So you've got like a Craig's cookies thing going on, right? Yeah. Because what he does is you'll take other things and you'll put him in the batter. And so if you bite into his chocolate chip cookie, there could be. brownie on the inside. A surprise. So I want to try. The ones with M&Ms, you can obviously tell. I'm going to try the M&M one.

Can you give, can you, I don't want to reach in because. Oh, good, good call. Yeah. I'm sick. Okay. Which is the best one. Okay. All right, here we go. So taste test, see if Mike Droulet actually makes a good, a good cookie. Okay. Oh, whoa. There you go.

Mine has a surprise in the middle. What's your got? Mmm, that's a good cookie. It's a good. And there's a saltiness I love it when When there's a bite of salt It's almost like

Mine has caramel in the middle Oh yeah Oh you must have had one of the ones with I put a caramel milk in the middle Yeah smart So your texture The texture of it is almost like a Like a sugar cookie

As well which I very much like I'm a big fan of this my tail Yeah I mean It's batch to batch it changes So now Perfectly soft It's very well done

Very well done But here's the problem What you've now done is these cookies have now established a beachhead are at the Ben Mulroney show. You've established an expectation here. The expectation is what? We'll be expecting cookies from time to time. I don't know, no, no, no. Hold on, Spargalo. We cannot do daily.

Every Monday. I still have to work on the show. We've got, we've got, we got, we got, summer's just around the corner. And I'm not going, I'm not going to look the way I have in summer's past. Anyway, we got lots and lots to get to, including what's going on in the streets of Toronto. That's coming up next. There was a heated debate about encampments at near schools. What did the city decide?

We'll talk about that next. Welcome back to the Ben Moll-Runy show. All right. Make no mistake. There is a need. to address encampments, but there also needs to be a balance for respecting everyone who lives in this city, no matter whether they are taxpayers, whether they are children, or whether they are people who, for one reason or another, live on the streets.

There is a gentleman who has a, I guess it's an Instagram account, right? He's on Instagram. It's called read in the street, all one word, R-E-E-D. And he goes around and he interviews people and he talks to people and, He really went viral recently when he spoke with Ryan, a young man who lives under the gardener. And he passes his time by shooting hockey pucks. He's got a stick and he's got gloves. And let's listen to a little bit of this conversation between reading the street and Ryan. I go through sticks like water.

Crazy. All right. I'll keep my eye out for some lefties. Do you mind explaining a little bit about your story? how you ended up staying under the gardener and shit? Pretty much my girlfriend was diagnosed with some mental health stuff and I haven't really got it figured out yet. And we were getting evicted from any places that we had.

Okay. So we ended up here, but nowhere else really to go. And I wanted somewhere where, you know, she could have her episodes and then, like, not affect everybody else. So I said, well, where the traffic is? We'll go out of the gardener because now the cars, she can, you know, and the cars are louder than hers. Yeah, this is, this is his reality. There's a, oh, there's a positive aspect to this because of the exposure that Ryan got. People are sending him all sorts of things and trying to help out in many ways.

but there's a, if you read the comments, people are saying, we've got to do something about this. You know, we've got, and there's a need. It's not just about him. It's about people in the same boat ask him. There is a need for housing and for safe shelters. I think that's a nuance that's being lost here, that there's this idea, there's only one way to do things.

And, you know, he goes on to say that he doesn't want to go to these shelters because they don't feel safe there. There's no walls. There's open drug use. And we've heard that before. There are plenty of people for many, many different reasons that find themselves on the streets

and they do not want to go into the lion's den where they're probably more dangerous or at least they feel that it's more dangerous than being on the streets. So when somebody says well, they'll just build more shelters

and well let's, I want to go right to Gord Perks here because he's a city counselor who's I think lost the plot. He lost the plot on a number. Let's listen to it We'll criticize it on the other side.

Now, it may be a stretch for some people to understand this, but every person living in an encampment is somebody's child. Every person who, for one reason or another, maybe they lost a job, maybe they went through a personal trauma, maybe they struggled with addiction, something went wrong in their life. That person who is somebody's child has no roof over their head. And the courts have made it very clear that we have a legal duty

based on the charter right to the security of persons to say you cannot move someone out of a public park unless they have somewhere to go. To stand up and try to persuade the public, you're doing something to help solve the problem of homelessness and encampments. And at the same time, fight against the one thing that we must do

to end encampments, which is to build shelter space and help people get into permanent housing is not the way that I would hope anybody who was responsible would behave. How condescending of this man. How come? How come? We all know. Every single one of us knows that people in shelters and people on the streets are somebody's son and daughter. Get off your goddamn high horse gourd perks. We all know that. And shame on you for trying to demonize anybody that's not on board with your very narrow interpretation of how we can solve these problems. Who the heck do you think you are? And you demonize a person like Brad Bradford. who put forth a motion to clear encampments within 200 meters of any schools or daycare centers.

And shame on you for vilifying anybody who's not with your plan on how to build these shelters. The issue is not shelters. We all know we need more shelters. Our issue is with your vision of shelters as they currently are. opening them up to anybody to use drugs with impunity. A guy like Ryan doesn't want to go to the shelters that Gord Perks wants and has created because he doesn't feel safe in those shelters, Mr. Perks. According to the Toronto Star, no, the Toronto Star, according to the statistic, Toronto Shelter

Violence has risen 283% in a year. That's because of the rules or the lack of rules that you and your ilk have put in place. It's the frickin' wild west with meth. So it's not, and I'm so, I said it before, these politicians who are like, oh, if you don't like my version of these shelters, that means you don't like shelters. If you don't get on board with my vision of these shelters, that means I get to shout from the rafters that you are against shelters. This is my way or the highway stuff has got to stop. And so, yeah, this is all happening on the backdrop of this emotion that Counselor Brad Bradford pushed. He wanted 48 hours to clear any encampments within 200 meters of any schools or any daycare center saying that families shouldn't have to face unsafe park conditions.

So what did counsel decide with this two? 200 meters. Councilors ended up voting for Paula Fletcher's motion, which amended Bradford's items so that the city will concentrate on removing encampments within 50 meters of schools, daycare, or playgrounds within 24 hours of being reported. And for context, look, most encampments would be affected. About 80% of the city's 255 park encampments fall within 200 meters of schools, daycare centers, or playgrounds, meaning that they'll eventually face the three, the three, the three, offer system, right? You're offered three times to be put in one of these shelters. But that's if it was within the 200 meters. The reality is with the 50 meters, there's far fewer. Far fewer. They say only 18 encampments are within 50 meters, which would leave 230 some odd, 225 or something like that, still existing because they're no longer in that bubble. And still, you have to be offered three times to go to shelters.

And if you decline at the third time, then they will remove you. And look, here's what I still don't get. I still don't get the marginalization of the people affected by these. We are so hell-bent on focusing on the charter rights. By the way, who pays for the shelters? The people who pay for the shelters are people who don't feel safe in their own communities. How is that a bridge too far? It's not nimbism.

If my taxes keep going up, and my, actually, I won't use myself as an example, but as somebody's taxes keep going up. And then the result of that, the money that's taken from people, doesn't lead to a commensurate rise in the improvement in services, but instead goes to putting shelters in place in their communities where drugs are being used with impunity. and it goes to denying that that person has a right to complain and it makes it so you're not going to clear encampments anywhere near the schools that our taxes pay for and when they say our kids don't feel safe you get to turn around and condescendingly tell that taxpayer

well that's somebody's kid do you not get that that's somebody's child that somebody's child And we have a charter obligation to respect their rights to be there. And if you don't get that, then you're a terrible person. So you come for my money. You socially engineer a healthcape for my kids to navigate. And when I deign to complain to you, a person who is supposed to work for the benefit of the community, you start city councilor explaining why I'm the problem.

So basically they need to figure out how to run the shelters because apparently they're turning away 148 people per day and they're going to need a lot more, especially with the fact that the federal government has downloaded a lot of the asylum claimants onto the city. So demonize and vilify everyday Torontoans highlighting the charter rights of people who need help and the help that you're offering wants is rejected by so many of them because for them, to go into that place, it's worse than what it's like on the streets. Super. That's a recipe for success, Gord Perks. All right, coming up. Are you worried about Christmas shopping, affording your bills? Let's take a deeper dive into who or what is to blame.

The holiday season is full of choices. Cranberry sauce or gravy, skip rent, or skip Christmas. I'm Lieutenant Colonel John Merck. of the Salvation Army. When poverty gives someone an impossible choice, your donation is their answer. Donate now at salvationarmy.ca. 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 fourth.

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We want to talk about inflation, the cost of living. Look, one of the biggest issues we face is that so many of these issues, cost of living, housing, they all intersect. So the nexus of where these things meet, it's really tricky to understand what's causing them. And that's what we want to get into. But first, let's give you an example of the cost of living and how it's impacting a certain people. There was a young man, a Gen Zeter, Gen Zier, in Toronto, who let us know how much he had to spend on cereal and milk.

Our generation is cooked. We're going to be living in our parents' basements until we're 35 because I just spent $30 on two boxes of cereal and milk. like how do you expect me to move out of my house when that is two hours of work right there that's equivalent to two hours of my life is two boxes of cereal and some milk absolutely ridiculous welcome to the liberal government of Canada so listen there's some who are going to hear that and are going to say well it's not that's not uh that's not uh the liberal government that's tariffs all right when you get into that in a second but just for context uh for this this gentleman, or if not for him, for everybody else, over the past five years, so about 2019 to 24, food prices have gone up somewhere between 20 and 25 percent. Over the last 10 years from 2014 to 2024, food prices have likely increased by 30 to 35 percent, depending on which food price index you're looking at. But by every metric, food is more expensive today.

Now if you're blaming If you're blaming tariffs That's Most of the food that we buy is Tariff-free Is that fair to say? That would be fair to say Yeah, most of the food that you're buying

Is tariff-free And let's also take this To the Christmas shopping Conversation Because a lot of people Are saying that they are going to spend a lot less On Christmas shopping

than they might have done. Yes, last year, because they're worried about tariffs. And we did see quite a few stories, just over the last number of days on various broadcasts, people talking to shoppers and complaining that, oh, the tariffs are driving up prices and stuff. And they're looking at, they're window shopping right now. But if you recall, tariffs are on automobiles,

aluminum, they're on, it's on things that you don't see in the store. Here's the thing. You can't treat a disease. until you first diagnose it, until you know what caused it, you're not going to know how to deal with it. And beating the drum that tariffs are the reason that everything is more expensive is not the proper diagnosis. Things are more expensive, but that's not caused by the tariffs.

There are plenty of issues in our economy. They're caused by Donald Trump and his tariffs. We talk about those all the time. We talk about the closures of factories. We talk about the hollowing out of some of our manufacturing. We talk about the issues facing our automotive plants. That's one thing. But the cost that you're seeing at the mall or when you online shop is not necessarily because of him.

I'll give you an example, right? Let's say that you want to buy a product at Christmas. You're in the mall that costs 100 bucks. Okay. The weaker loony that we have, our dollar as it relates to the Americans. uh is um it's weaker by about 11 percent so that that'll add about 11 dollars to that to that product now it's 111 bucks okay then you got the hst the combined gst and the provincial sales tax that's 13% so that adds about 1443 so now you're dealing with a product that's a 125 and 43 cents

and uh there is also there's a carbon price attached to it the industrial carbon price still exists which means there's a, that, that price that's paid for wherever the product starts, to however it gets to you, gets passed on to the consumer in one way, shape, or form. So let's just ballpark it and say it's somewhere between $1 and $2. So now you're at $127.50. Let's round up to say $128. So that's roughly 30%. So the $100 product is now costing $130.

bucks. None of those costs, not one of them, has anything to do with Donald Trump. Nothing. So even if that product was made of wood that was a tree that was felled in a forest in British Columbia, and it was turned into a wooden toy in a manufacturing plant in Saskatchewan, and then it was sent to Ontario, and it was put on the shelves at a toy store in Toronto. Okay? Never left the country. Has nothing to do with the Americans. Donald Trump can't get. his orange little fingers on it. It still costs 30% more from the time

that it was pegged it for a price to the time that you paid for. Are you making 30% more today than you were last year? No. And when we add the food cost to it, the affordability is an issue. So the

bottom line is this is not a tariff problem. This is Canada getting in its own way. This is us creating barriers for you to put money back into the economy. And that's kind of what we need. And unfortunately, there's a very, there's a political benefit to raising the specter of Donald Trump all the time because he's a boogeyman with a face. We can point to him and say, there is your problem. This was brought up in the last election. A lot of the

problems that we have predate Donald Trump, and they will still exist if we don't address them. These are fiscal roadblocks put in front of consumers, in front of businesses that are making it so that they are increasingly out of your reach. Would you agree? I'd agree. And if you take a look, most people, how many people are going to understand what CPI is? The consumer price index. It's not a really easy thing to understand. Basically, it comes down to this. It's the cost of a basket of goods and services.

Just a general basket. It's food, it's housing, transport. They bring it all in. They end into one sort of one number. I don't expect anybody. I don't understand what the number means itself, but they come up with this. It's very much like one of those high-tech baseball statistics that you're like, but anyway,

they boil it down to one number to be able to show how much stuff has gone up. And the baseline was at 2002, right? Well, in 2015, though, the average CPI, yeah, the baseline in 2002 was 100. So they said, that's the baseline. So then how much has it gone up?

So from 2002 to 2015, it went up 26%. Yeah. But then in 2015 to 2025, it went up far more. Yeah, now it's sitting in, like, 165. So 165, so 65% over the baseline in 2002. you, are you making 65% more? Is the average person out there making that much more than they made in 2002? Yeah.

So, I'm trying to wrap my head around that number. But essentially, I'm guessing that if that number went to 200, then generally speaking, that would mean that the cost of everything doubled from 2002 to whenever it hit, whenever it hit that new number of 200, right? Yes, exactly. It makes sense to assume that, right? So we are on a pace for life to have double. Let's say that happens, let's say it happens in 10 years.

In 10 years, I don't think it's going to take 10 years for that number to get to 200. Well, considering it's gone up 35% in the last 10 years. Yeah. That's how much it's gone up. So if you were making just an easy number to figure out, $100,000 in 2002, which is a very good salary. Yep. You'd have to be making $165,000 now to keep up. Yeah, yeah.

And is anybody doing that? Did anybody see it raise from $100, $165,000? Yeah, no, nobody did. So that's my point. Look, there is an absolute need to attack the issue of Donald Trump and his tariffs. But a lot of the issues that are scaring people away from buying what they think they need for Christmas or their everyday life, that is not a tariff issue. That is not a tariff issue. Some of it is.

Not all of it is. And until we focus on the problems that we are putting in front of ourselves, we're not going to, optimize the lives of Canadians. We're not going to make them as good as they possibly could be. I want to stamp myself myself one of the best players to ever play this game. Wednesdays on Global. That's how you're doing. This is their moment.

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