The Ben Mulroney Show - Toronto's political winds shifting? Ben's trip and health care woes continue

Episode Date: November 26, 2025

GUEST:  Karen stintz /  former city councillor / former TTC Chair GUEST:  MICHAEL KERZNER / Ontario solicitor General GUEST: Ben Mulroney GUEST:  SecondStreet.org President Colin Craig 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

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Is this really the best use of my time? Can my clients quick tax questions ever be quick? Is this really the best use of my time? Well, busy season always end in Barnhouse. Is this really the best use of my time? Do I have to turn down partner to spend enough time with my kids? With Blue Jay, you'll have more time to do what's important to you by completing hours of tax research in seconds. Get better answers to tough questions. BlueJ, AI for tax experts.

Let's dive into something that we're going to hear about pretty much every single day. until it happens because we are now into the mayoral campaigning season, at least in the city of Toronto. It's less than a year away. Brad Bradford making it very, very clear he's in this race and already corning the territory of cleaning up the mess Toronto has become. And so, I mean, look, there's going to be more than two candidates. I mean, Olivia Chow not saying yet if she's officially back in, but she's in, right? But I think what's different about this mayoral election is that there's going to be pushing. pushback now, not just from groups on the left, but from other groups who don't look at this

as a political fight. They say they're out because they want to represent the everyday people of this city who are just fed up with watching what could have been maybe a world-class city be run by ideological lunacy. And a lot of people say, look, it's ruined Toronto. And so Integrity, Toronto, you know, you've heard about them on this station. They built a following online branding itself as, you know, fighting back against things like open drug use and crime, community decay, failed services. And their virtual campaigns are pretty blunt and in your face. And on Tuesday, this group, you know, decided to open up another front of their campaign officially launching into the political scene. And someone who was there is Karen Stintz,

former city councilor, former TTC chair of when TTC actually worked well. Great to have you. Good morning, Alex. Always great to be on the show with you. All right. Let's talk a little bit about Integrity Toronto. And there are other groups. There's A, B, C, which is another group. I mean, we know that on the left there have been organized groups that have helped certainly fight for the measures that they want. But how do you characterize this particular group? And what's your takeaway as to how you see them?

I see this group as interested citizens that are getting engaged in. in the process, some for the first time, because they see a big disconnect between how City Hall is making decisions and how it's impacting people's lives. And that there is not, they're not a partisan group, they're not supporting a candidate, they're not supporting a platform, other than to say I think they would support a platform of pragmatism, if there's going to be any kind of platform, and getting back to what cities should be doing, which is focused on the day-to-day services that our property tax are our property taxes are funding. Yeah. And I know you were there. Greg Brady was hosting this

particular event. It was at the Maud Club. And they got a pretty good attendance, right? And I, the political stripe, as you say, kind of across all boards. But I get the sense that there is a real hunger for people to have a voice. And one thing that I'm always struck by Karen, when I talk to listeners on this phone, when they complain about municipal issues, city issues, Olivia Chow, they don't really see themselves as a solution. And yet it's so much easier at the municipal level for people, everyday people just to get their say, have their say, and yet people don't turn up to vote.

I know. And I really hope that if Integrity TEO continues on its path and its mission, which is to get people more aware of the issues and the fact that they can make a change and really drive out the vote for mayor and have people know what they're voting for, I think, is really key. and understanding that, you know, having employees show up and clean up the parks, that's not a partisan issue. That's a competency issue.

And, you know, making sure that our laws are enforced, that's not a partisan issue. That's just something that we should, citizens should expect of our city and our police force. So there's, they really are not trying to put together a platform. They're really trying to advance that the city, you know, it has a. an obligation to it, citizens, and it should deliver on that obligation. Well, yes, but you know, for some reason, Torontoians have been slow, I think, to get

to, you know, to the point of boiling, right? And do you get the sense that we're there? I mean, I do feel that we're starting to see a turn of the tides a little bit, but again, you know, I was reading over the week in Jennifer Kismat, the former city planner. I mean,

she and I, not at all politically aligned, but pointing out the obvious that, you know, when you've got parks disarray and you've got this, you know, the social contract is broken. Like, societies fall apart. And so, again, left and right, I think you can't ignore what is no longer ignorable, right? And so do you get the sense that we're seeing a change in the air? I do. And, you know, when citizen groups like this form and come out and get start to get engaged, I think that's the first sign that there is something that people are, you know,

They are getting out of their daily routine and, you know, everyone's busy, but they're making time because they see that the city is fragile. And cities are fragile. And as Canada's largest city, I think there's been a sense to date that everything's just going to be fine and Toronto's going to figure it out. But I think we are at that inflection point where if we continue to take for granted that these problems are just going to get solved and we can go about our daily business, I think that that is something that we need to remind people that know actually the things only change because people get involved. And if there is ever an election to get involved in it, it is this upcoming election. Yeah, I mean, this group came about by the stupidity, like the lunacy of renaming things like Dundas Square or TMU and then putting Dundas underneath it, right? And so Daniel Tate, who founded this organization, he's going after people, really, who want just to say and just calls for common sense.

Having said that, you have worked at city politics. And you know on the left, they've got their base. We know around Olivia Chow, Progress, Toronto, they've got a big voice. For some reason, they've got a big power in calling the shots of what goes on. That's not how City Hall politics is supposed to work. Would you see this group like integrity, do you see that in the same realm? Or how do they differ? At this point, they differentiate themselves, I believe, because they're not advancing a particular platform.

They're simply asking the politicians in City Hall be. you know, be reminded that they have an obligation to the citizens who elect them. And, you know, and how does that, what does that translate? What does that actually mean? It means that, you know, their money has to be spent mindfully, that the services that we pay for have to get delivered, that we can't pick and choose how we enforce our laws, whether it comes to encampments or people sleeping on the subway or, you know, illegal protests on the street, that we have a set of laws and we have to make sure that those laws are

enforced. And we also have to be, you know, aware that this is having a direct impact on people's lives. And one of the things that came up yesterday and one of the things that I believe is that they, you know, the left progressive, quote unquote, of course they have their viewpoints, but they actually tend to be intellectually dishonest in their arguments in many, many cases. The whole Sancofa Square was intellectually dishonest, how they're treating the encampments as dishonest because they're trying to frame it as an affordability problem when it's not. It's a very complex problem around mental health, drug use, and all kinds of social ails that are, you know, on display in our parks. And they're using that. And they're using it to their advantage to build up their

own networks around, you know, drug harm reduction policies and everything else that flows from it. So now there's a whole industry around harm reduction policies. And it is now, you know, they've become institutionalized. The progressive movement has become institutionalized, and it's very difficult to unravel. But unravel it, we must, right? We must. We must. We have to. But we're only going to do it if we citizens stand up and say, you know what, enough is enough.

And too many, myself included, in some cases have been like, oh, well, there's nothing I can do about that. But there is something we can do about it. So we do need to have these groups rally us and remind us that we can make a difference. I've got less than a minute, Karen, but, you know, names like John Torrey come up. again, I don't know why the mayor would want to get a second chance or third chance or fourth chance, whatever. You have been asked by people like me, myself, others, would you run? But do you get the sense that we need new blood?

Absolutely. I think it is time. And I do think it's time for generational change because to be candid, there's nothing new about John Torrey, you know, other than he's maybe different than Olivia Child, but not really because she's really just continuing on the policies that he largely began. So I think that if we want something different, we need to vote for something different. And that comes with different representation from a different lens and a different generation and a different energy around what this city could be, not what it's become.

All right. Well, there's still time to convince you, but we'll do that another day. I appreciate your time. Thanks, Alex. All the best. All right. Karen Stinson. Yeah, I'm a big fan.

I think she'd be terrific. It is Alex Pearson in for Mr. Ben Mulroney. It is great to have you here on this. Very busy day and certainly a busy time for the Ford government because in just the last couple of weeks, they have rolled out a whole long list of changes toughening up punishments for a lot of crimes that are, I think many of us can agree long, long overdue, right?

Never should have come to this. But certainly things like changing the practice of how bail is posted, you know, getting rid of things like cashless bail for repeat violent effects. I mean, really? Kind of common sense. Publicizing sex offender registry, sweeping punishments for dangerous drivings, including lifetime driving bans, which I think a lot of people will welcome for anyone who, you know, kills someone with their car. And I don't want to take up a lot of time

going through the list of the things that have been proposed, because then I won't be able to ask questions of my next guest, who is part of this big rollout. And his name, Michael Kersner. You know as a Solicitor General in the Ford government. Great to have you on the show. It's great to be with you, Alex. Let's talk about a few of these. I'm going to try to pick my way through some of these measures. Certainly, we learned about Andrew's law,

and this is sadly named in the honor of Andrew Castillo. He's a father of three killed in August, and ultimately it was a man who's now accused of dangerous driving causing death, stunt driving, dangerous driving. Also charged in a different altercation with the premier security detail that was hit on the 401. As that case works through the courts, we certainly got a lot of changes coming out of this. And so, you know, certainly these are tougher. What was the catalyst and what is, I think, the most challenging one for you? Because I think, you know, taking

the car away will be welcomed by a lot of people. But could you take the car away from somebody that's not owned? Let's say a father or mom lends their car to their son or daughter and something bad goes wrong, would that also be included in this legislation? Well, Alex, let me just start by saying the name of our new piece of legislation that I tabled it yesterday in the house says it all. It's keeping criminals behind bars act. When the Premier and I and the Transportation Minister, Minister Zakaria, met with the Christillo family, let me tell you, it was difficult. We sat with his wife, Christina. We heard about there are three little kids, Leah, Chloe, and Ella, Rose.

We met with Andrew's brother, Jordan, and Andrew's father. No family should ever go through something like they're going through. And I want to really give an acknowledgement to Jordan Cristillo, the brother. When it wasn't easy, he sat with us. He told us things that need to happen so that another family would never have this situation and be confronted with it. So we've come to move forward, we've tabled our legislation. This is another example, Alex, and you know I've spoken about it, about protecting Ontario,

and we have to go where no other government has ever gone in the direction that for those few people, those 0.01% of our population that can't be lawful, that can't obey the laws and adhere to the values of Ontario, there must be consequences. Well, there will be and should be, except for it's been really difficult in this country and certainly in the last few years to actually see, you know, punishment given. And so I think a lot of people have lost faith in the justice of our system because they just aren't seeing it. And one of those changes that you want to bring in would force impaired drivers

if you're convicted, you know, causing the death of a parent or guardian, you're going to go after financial support for the, victims of children. And so some of these things are modeled off of things done in places like Texas, right? But again, are you going to run up against groups that say, you know, civil liberties groups that say, look, you're you're isolating people that's unfair. You're causing unnecessary damage once someone's paid their dues. What's a pushback on that? Well, look at who we're targeting. We're targeting high risk driving behaviors. We're targeting people who are driving dangerously at enormously high speeds. We're targeting careless driving

and people that are driving while suspended. And we're also increasing the penalties for commercial drivers who break the law or distracted drivers. In the end of the day, whether you are doing all of that or whether you are impaired and driving, there has to be consequences. Again, I'll mention that the Christillo family were brave beyond measure. I said in my remarks, we know there's enormous grief, but their grief is deeper, and we have to prevent a tragedy like this happening to somebody else. And we're going to be bold, and we're, we're, we are absolutely committed to moving this forward, to debating it in the legislature, to seeking input from our stakeholders, especially our police associations. And we're going to move

forward. Let me talk about the sex offender. That's one thing that a couple of weeks ago, you mentioned that this will now be publicized, still being worked out. But a couple of the issues that pop up for me and certainly I think civil liberties of groups again would say this isn't fair. You're holding certain criminals to different rules, but also the issue of vigilante justice. I'm not sure if you saw over the weekend, but in Niagara there was a large group of community members and they stood out front of the door of someone who's been convicted of sex crimes are charged with sex crimes against children. And again, you know, they might mean well, but if we see a sex registry publicized, this is something we could see a lot more of. And we spoke about that, Alex, a couple of

weeks back. Our position is simple. Communities must be safe for our residents. They must be saved. 99.9% of Ontarians obey the law. They want to live safely. That's all they asked for. And finally, there's a government that gets it. We're going to explore our options. We're going to speak to our stakeholders, our justice stakeholders, our policing partners, stakeholders. But as I've said previously,

some of the people that are on the list are pedophiles. They're predators. They're very bad people. And that's what's motivating our government now to explore it and to explore it and to come with some options in the spring. And that's what we're going to do. And we're not going to apologize

to keep Ontario safe. And I understand that. It's a very emotional, you know, heightened emotional topic. But vigilante, I mean, people get angry, right? So is there a measure in there that that would stop that? Well, we're going to explore all the options. That's first and foremost.

But what we need to do is look at the pillars of public safety that our government believes is fundamental. And that is in the investments that we've made to put more boots on the ground. So there's more people that can keep our community safe. It's toughening our laws. It's making sure that we don't have violent and repeat offenders constantly on our streets in one day and out the next. Yesterday's tabling of the bill. And again, I'm proud of the title. It's keeping criminals behind bars said we have to be tough on crime. And we are. Yeah. The other one I would like to bring to your attention in London over the weekend,

there were about 30, 35 white supremacists dressed up and making very clear that they want non-whites to leave the country, but not even hiding what they believe in. We're seeing a lot of this, not just on the left, but on the right. And again, what's your government going to do about this? Because if they're on overpasses or they're going into neighborhoods, there's clearly no shame. Well, one of the things that we're exploring,

and I mentioned it in our news conference yesterday, is making sure that people's rights to go about their lives without having somebody block their access to points of key infrastructure, to houses of worship, to schools or hospitals. This is something that is important. We can't have those small, few percentage of people, the 0.01% who can't obey the laws feel that they can disrupt our societal values. It's not going to happen. But I do agree with you. There are opportunities for the federal government to put more emphasis on improving the criminal code. They have tabled their bail legislation.

I hope it passes. It was a good first step. I met Alex last Friday with the federal minister of public safety that I speak to on a regular basis. And I think they get it. I think they see that the stronger a government is in support of everyone that, lives in our communities to feel safe is better for all levels of government. And I really encourage the federal government to take a lead from Premier Ford. Yeah, anything would be great from the federal government at this point. But I'm out of time, but I thank you for yours.

I hope to have you on again because I always have more to ask and then the clock never works with me. Appreciate yours. It's great to be with you, Alex. There you go. Great to have you here, and I am here because, well, Ben Mulroney's not. And where do we find him? He's in a lot warmer temperatures than we are. He is in Israel, and he is traveling there to learn and be able to walk the walk and talk to talk. And today we find him talking about Tel Aviv. So he joins us now.

Hi, Ben. Hey, I am literally standing outside my hotel. I just enjoyed a nice walk back from Belav. downtown to the beach. Our hotel is right on the beach. I'm staring at the promenade. I'm staring at the Mediterranean as the sun is going down. This is a very special place, a very magical place. I learned a lot today. We did a number of really exciting things. First, we started in the foothills of Judean Samaria, the West Bank, the Samarian Mountains, to get a perspective where we could literally see almost every single large concentration of people from the south,

all the way to Gaza, into the most northern parts of Israel, from that position. And to see that is to appreciate how strategic that location is and why the Israelis are so intent on holding onto it, at least those foothills for sure. And from there, from there we went to a very special place. Essentially the head EMS department of the entire EMS service of the entire country. And what we witnessed there was, I don't know if you've ever, I'm sure you've heard me say in Canada, there's a number of things that we should be taking seriously that we're very unserious about. When it comes to emergency management and blood services, they take it very, very seriously.

So they don't have a choice, right? So they don't wait for the accidents or the crises to come. They get ahead of it. Oh, not at all. But they also have recognized that access to blood, and they came up with this before October 7, but access to blood is a strategic resource, and therefore they had to treat it as such. And when we're in this beautiful building, this three-story building, they said, we're actually on the roof of the building. We have to go down three-stores.

The entire thing is a bunker, which means not. Nothing ever has, no operations ever cease, the blood treatment, the emergency management. We saw incredible vehicles that are dispatched, depending on where they need to be dispatched to, sometimes it's a motorbike, sometimes it's an ambulance, sometimes it's a bulletproof ambulance. Sometimes it looks like a tour bus that is a fully functioning hospital. And depending on where, and I was thinking, Mike, every city in Canada should have one of these that the cost is about two and a half million dollars but you know at a concert or or at a at a big event like the like the world cup wouldn't you park this thing outside and just make sure

that you could take care of people in real time it was unbelievable how well prepared they are for these things quite it quite inspiring and then from there we went to their urban their their municipal infrastructure company that they've built out that essentially helps other cities figure out how to be the best versions of themselves in terms of smart technologies. And we're here with a couple of city counselors from Toronto. So very interested to pick their brains a little bit later. Yeah. Look, I mean, I know that there are a couple of city counselors on this trip. And the hope is that there's a takeaway for them. Because to your point, like, why don't we have

this in Canada? Because we just don't think and because we've never had to think of getting ahead of things. Well, we should be. It's just we don't seem to think in this country that we have to get ahead of things and plan for things so there's one lesson there but what's the pickup for those but also but there's all but because there's always there's always somebody inside a big organization like a city or in the in the case of toronto there's a city staff that feel that it is their city to run and and we and the tourists are just the elected officials you know it was it was a city staff in toronto that decided to raise the Palestinian flag that was not a vote at council

that was a city staff that decided to do it that is that is that is overreach of the highest order and and so we've got we've got those stumbling blocks and perhaps other cities don't have and but there's always somebody who wants to slow things down there's always somebody

who feels that they've justified their job if they've made something stopped and so we have to get over that as a city because places like this they do and there he goes as happens when you're dealing with international lines and we've done it's one of those things where

ever since we've been talking to Ben during the week since Monday it's been one of those things where we've got him no we don't have him we have him no we don't have him and then we get him and he's fine and then today we lost him but it is part of part of life doing

live stuff overseas so we'll try to get him back on the phone oh he is back already that didn't take long Ben sorry about that I didn't even know. Okay, you know what? It was a perfect opportunity for you to tell me I was talking to a long, Alex. That's okay.

My mother says that too, so I'm just glad you hear it too. Here's a thing. What is the expectation then, right? Like, what is the day take you? Because, I mean, obviously you're getting a pretty comprehensive look at the country of where, you know, things are, how it operates, or why it operates the way it does, you know, and ultimately you're going to continue on.

Yeah. Look, let me say, I'm, I'm, I've paid attention to social media and there's, there are these, I think, bad faith actors out there who are implying that there's something nefarious about a trip like this, trying to get to know a country like Israel that occupies far more of our public discourse in Toronto than it should, and, and, you know, certain bad actors in Canada are suggesting something untoward about a trip like this. Let me tell you, we, it's a trip like, like every, every, every, every, that you've ever been on where there are opportunities to go meet people. And then once that's done, there's nobody telling you, don't go talk to those people. Don't go through this part of town. I can do whatever I want, wherever I want. I've come to certain realizations that I think I told you, I knew instinctively, but I can now say I know for sure.

There is no apartheid here. There is, I mean, I don't know what to tell you. And anybody who suggests that, I immediately now have to discount anything else that they suggest and it's uh it's this is a this is as free of places i've ever seen uh and i and i've met arabs and i've met christians and i've met jews and um we heard a really funny story today where uh this this group of e ms guys were helping a woman who was giving birth in a parking lot and and they uh and they helped this young jewish woman and she gave birth and then she was so thankful She looked at the driver and she said,

I'm going to name my son after you. Like, no, no, you don't want to move his son after me. He's, please, I insist. I'm going to name my son after you. So what's your name? He said, Ibrahim, something, something. She's like, okay, maybe not you. Yeah, what was your name?

But everybody laughed about that because I guess living here, I think people who don't live here probably are more precious about certain things than the people who pragmatically have to have to rub shoulders and build this place together. Yeah, and to your point, because you are getting criticized for going to Israel. Last time I checked, it's not illegal.

But again, what's the worst thing that you can do is learn something? Yeah. The language is like, oh, the ministry uncovered, reveal the names of those who are there. Reveal the names. It's not here under the cover of darkness. I like the goddamn tweet.

I retweeted it myself. Like, give me a goddamn break. If this is the level of public, discourse, these people, and some of these people, Alex, are the ones who uphold themselves as journalists and they are looking down their nose at me. Yes. Well, look, no holding my nose here and we won't tell them about this call because if they find out you're there and we're talking about it on the radio, it'll really blow your cover. Oh, my goodness. So, okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, don't tell anybody. No, I'm just around the corner. I'm just around the corner at the lobloss. Yeah, I'll see you

in a few. I'll see in a few. All right. Look, enjoy the rest of your day. We'll look forward to seeing what you get up to. Thanks, Alex. Bye-bye. All right. Ben Maureen. He is in Israel. And, yeah, look, I get traveling, seeing places and going to places that you talk about, learning the region, I think there's nothing but benefits to that. I bet if Ben could safely go into Gaza, he would, right? If anybody could, because you see it for yourself and you actually learn what the real story is.

And so, again, those bent out of shape on this, maybe just, as Mark Carney would say, Look within. Look within yourself. Let's talk about why we need to look within ourselves in this country. Because we talk a lot about how great our medical care is. We fight apparently to keep it exactly how it is. And I'd love for those people who say we don't need change to explain how a couple of, you know, upwards of 20,000 people die on our waiting lists every year.

So how is that okay and how does that make us a great system? We're going to go through some of these numbers and what the stats actually tell us. It's great to have you here. I keep having the same conversation over and over and keep hoping for a different result. And I think I'm not alone in that conversation because it has to do with our health care system, right? It's just when we have these conversations, and say them out loud that some people get very angry. They don't want to hear about the problems with our medical system

because they seem to take it personally. But the reality is our medical system is not working and people are dying because of it. And I've talked about the number of patients dying on wait lists now for a couple of years. And we can talk about it because we actually get data from the provinces that show us how many Canadians are actually dying, waiting on surgical. or diagnostic wait lists.

So again, when we have this conversation, I mean, we have to start having an actual honest conversation about why the numbers don't seem to back up this talk about having the best medical system and certainly not getting access to timely care. And that is the last I checked, a charter right. And so the talk does not match the figures. But second street.org dug through the data.

and when I say data, it's not polling that they do. They go province to province and they collect what data is made available by the government of the day, whether it's the Ford government or the Smith government or the canoe government. And they're able to look at the data in our diagnostic surgeries and all those things and figure out the real story as to who is getting served and who is not. And what do they have? 23,746 people dying on waiting lists. Let's bring in 2ndstreet.org president, Colin Craig, to go through some of the numbers.

Great to have you. Thanks for having me, Alex. Last time we chatted, the numbers were still showing that they're way too high, and I think it's important to point out. These are only the numbers that you're able to get, because a lot of times the provinces don't tell us all the information. Yeah, that's correct. governments tend to have pretty bad data on this issue.

And so they're often missing things like pretty much across the country, governments cannot tell us how many patients are dying before they even meet with a specialist, never mind getting to the point where they're getting a diagnostic scan or, you know, deciding on surgery. So there are holes in this data, but even just 23,000, I mean, it's unbecoming of a developed nation such as ours, where people work hard, pay their taxes, pay a lot in taxes. You know, we just see this substandard care. And, you know, the only good thing in this, Alex, is that we have traveled to Sweden and France and Japan where they have public universal healthcare systems and their patients get treatment much, much faster than what you find in Canada. And they look at us like we're crazy when we tell them that it's not uncommon for Canadian to wait a year to get a hip operation or something like that.

And they wonder why Canada's a developed nation. Yeah, three years, whatever it is. It's crazy. And they can't understand why a developed country like ours has such bad problems. And it's because we don't change the system to be more like they do. We're not learning from their lessons. Right, which is the big problem is that you talk about it. You're able to go and talk to other countries and people in other countries about it, but we can't have the conversation here, therefore nothing's going to change.

And so when we talk about 23,700 Canadians dying, that does not include data from Alberta. doesn't include data from Manitoba and to your point we don't have all the data to know from surgical weights or diagnostic weights there's still a lot of holes that we don't know so that number could be very much higher why is there not a measure in your in this in our medical care that the data has to be given so that therefore you know the governance can actually start to address the real issues because if they have incomplete data then they don't have any idea what they're fixing? I agree 100% with you. And this is the crazy thing. It's that governments will, every day in this country, across the country, you have government health

inspectors going into restaurants. And they inspect them. And if they find a minor problem, like a missing paper towel holder, often that gets reported publicly. Everyone can see it. I mean, that's the standard the government holds everyone else to. But government set the standard for themselves. And this is embarrassing information. So they just simply choose, not to do a good job tracking it. In many cases, I would say almost all the time, they're not even looking at the data. They just don't even look at it.

They happen to collect it because it's part of their system process. And so they do a bad job. They should be much more transparent about this. They should want to be looking at these numbers to figure out the problem areas and address them so that there's less patient suffering. I mean, that's the fundamental mind shift that needs to happen in Canada when it comes to this problem.

Yeah, well, we just have to be honest with ourselves. because when I look at the figure, you're showing that we've seen a 3% increase in waiting list deaths. And I think it's fairly jarring where you show patients dying after waiting anywhere from less than a week, but up to nine years, nine years. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's awful. And, you know, to be clear, these numbers represent a wide array of cases. Everything from heart surgery, which you could obviously die from to things like cataract surgery, knee operations, whatever.

And governments are always quick to say, well, wait a second. And, you know, you can't say that, you know, just because they're dead, that it's, you know, because they had to wait so long. And people say, well, you know, you're not going to die from cataract surgery or whatever. And they try and downplay the numbers, but there's a quality of life issue here. I mean, who wants to spend the final year of their life wandering around with cloudy vision? Because the government won't give them cataract surgery. Maybe you're stuck in your apartment with chronic, chronic pain because you're waiting for a hip operation. Well, those problems can actually contribute to death in other ways.

You know, if you're not getting exercise, well, that can contribute to health problems that do cause you to die. So these are very serious, serious numbers. Governments generally need to do a better job of tracking, analyzing, disclosing this information. And more than anything, they need to be looking at these European models to copy some of the differences so that we can reduce patient suffering in this country. Like, let's aim to get it down to zero. So it's much closer to the results in Europe. And, you know, credit where credits do, the Alberta government has announced that they're moving in the same direction as these European models. And so, you know, we have to wait and see how good a job they do with implementing the changes.

But, you know, they're going in the right direction. And we need to see more provinces copying these policies that are different that are in Europe so that we can have a better public system. So patients have more choice, greater access to health care so we can reduce patient suffering in the first place. Yeah. I mean, the bottom line is Alberta's about to, it looks like they're about to Uber the medical deals, but, you know, will other provinces follow suit if they're worried about losing funding? So we'll wait and see how that goes. But, you know, since 2018, almost since we started talking, you know, and you've gathered the government data, we're talking like 100,000, 1001,000 people who have died. And I think the number is probably much, much larger. But we're 101,000 Canadians who have no other choice, but the system. intact, have died waiting for the system. But I want to play you a piece of audio because we have heard a lot of, I think, alarming things out of Ottawa. And certainly when it comes to, you know, who's coming in, immigration or asylum seekers, the strains that are going on the system,

when you try to get answers from any of the politicians, they don't seem to have a clue what's going on. But I want to play you a quick clip of MP Dan Mazur talking to Lena Diav, who is the immigration MP, immigration minister, and specific about, you know, people coming in, and does she have any idea? I'll let you listen to it because it's short, but take a listen to her answer. Any more patients can our health care system handle this year, according to your department's analysis? Oh, that's not a fair question for immigration.

It's totally fair, and if she doesn't know the answer to it, I mean, I wouldn't have hired her to begin with, but, like, your thoughts on that response? Well, that's staggering incompetence that someone that has risen to that level just doesn't even thinking about this. I mean, I wouldn't have people over and invite them over for dinner unless I had food in my fridge. You know, I mean, it's just responsible as a nation. We should be making sure before we invite people into this country that we have enough housing, that we have enough spaces in our schools and our health care system and so forth. And if we haven't done that analysis, then what business do we have inviting waves and waves of people into the country?

And, you know, to be clear, immigration historically has been a very good thing for this country. We've had people come from all over the world. They've helped build up a great nation. But you have to make sure that you're not inviting in too many people or you overloaded systems. And that's what Ottawa has obviously done. So it's staggering incompetence at the federal level as far as I'm concerned. It is. But nonetheless, they keep ignoring it, which is leading to all this divisions and anger and a lot of hate.

I'm out of time. but we'll talk again. Thanks as always, Alex. There you go. That's Colin Craig. He is the president of second street.org, and the number's definitely going the wrong way. And if that minister keeps her job for much longer,

then you know no one's serious about fixing anything. There are streaming services, and then there's Stack TV. What you want, when you want it. Action, comedy, drama, reality, all when you want it. Dive into Rick and Morty's latest season. Cast off with new seasons of Survivor and the Curse of Oak Island, or stream binge-worthy gems like the paper and all her fault. All when you want it.

This fall, StackTV has what you want when you want it. Visit StackTV.C.A for more information and start your free trial.