The Ben Mulroney Show - We need to have a real discussion about Gender reassignment for Children

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Guests and Topics: -We need to have a real discussion about Gender reassignment for Children with Guest: Mia Hughes, Senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Specializes in researching pediatric gender medicine, psychiatric epidemics, social contagion and the intersection of trans rights and women’s rights -Major Developments between Russian and Ukraine with Guest: Adam Zivo, National Post columnist and Executive Director for the Centre For Responsible Drug Policy 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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and my Twitter would be blowing up, calling me all manner of sin. But it's an important conversation to have, and I wanna have a measured, fair, fair and balanced, to use the expression for Fox News. But I do, I to have a measured, fair, fair and balanced to use the expression for Fox News. But I do, I want to have a real conversation about Canada's position as it relates to how we treat young people in who are going through gender dysphoria. What are our policies as a country? Are we going down the right or wrong path? And joining me to

discuss a really great article that she wrote in the National Post is Mia Hughes, senior fellow at the McDonnell-Laurier Institute, specializing in research of pediatric gender medicine, psychiatric epidemics, social contagion, and the intersection of trans rights and women's rights. Mia, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.

So it feels like, you know, in a lot of ways the Western world was all in on, you know, if a child tells you that they feel like they were born in the wrong body, that we take that as gospel and we run with it. And that was sort of the reality we all lived in for a significant amount of time. But now evidence is coming out that might not be the right way to proceed and other countries are taking meaningful steps to address it. And Canada is sort of in the same position we've been in a long time. Is that a fair snapshot of where we are?

That's completely fair. Yes, I would say Canada is an outlier on the world stage now in that most of the world has at least scrutinized, taken made some attempt to look at what we are doing to young people in pediatric gender clinics and every nation that has looked at what's happening has halted the process, reverse cause no more medicalization. And we in Canada are the outliers because we just refuse to look at it. We still have our heads in the sand. Okay. So, so give me a, give that our listeners sort of a snapshot of where we were and where most countries find themselves by and large today.

Okay. So starting, I would say around 2014 pediatric gender clinics, very swiftly adopted puberty suppression. So if a young person says they are transgender, you have to believe them, you have to affirm them and then you block their puberty. And this was the idea was at the time in 2014 that it would buy the young person time to think it would slow things down and they could really figure out whether for the medical transition was right for them. And so the entire Western world adopted this protocol, even though there was no solid science to support it. So Mia, I want to jump in right there because if there was no solid science to support it, why did the argument that this is settled science become so prevalent and so powerful?

Anytime somebody would say what have a conversation like the one we're engaging in right now, there would be pushback from a lot of people saying this is settled science. You're denying the science. You're denying the truth of the matter. Because this treatment protocol and the entire field of gender medicine is guided by political ideology. It's a political movement, but it's tied to a very drastic life altering treatment protocol. And so in the beginning, nobody actually really understood how atrocious the science was. It started in a Dutch gender clinic. Nobody really noticed how terrible the science was.

We've since scrutinized and we can see that these studies were so flawed, they never should have been accepted as legitimate science. And because it's tied to a very aggressive political movement that forbids any dissent. If you even question the practice of blocking the puberty of a young person based on a self-declared adolescent identity, this movement would vilify you, attack you, destroy your career, hound you, hound your family. And so because it was so viciously promoted by trans activists, everybody was afraid to look at it. But we're not just talking some inconsequential medical pathway. We are talking a medical pathway that is as brutal as cancer

treatment. It can leave a young person infertile for life. It can leave a young person with drastically reduced sexual function. These kids often end up losing healthy functioning organs, healthy parts of their bodies. So if... And that's, that's Mia, that's also a part of sort of the misdirection that I saw as well, because on top of saying it was settled science, we were also told that this was a protocol that was reversible. It was not something that the reason that everybody should get behind it is that if a child decided to change their mind or came to a different conclusion, well, that's okay. They could go and resume the life that they had when they got off those drugs.

But it turns out that's not the case. That's absolutely not the case. And our media and our medical professionals in Canada still push that lie that puberty blockers are a fully reversible pause because that's what they thought they were around 2010-2014. As is so often the case in medicine, there are unintended consequences. And what we have seen is that 98 to 100% of the kids who are put on puberty blockers go on to take cross-sex hormones, which are completely irreversible. And in the past, about 85, 90% of kids would desist and reconcile with their body and not want medical treatment. So we've seen a dramatic reversal in the persistence and desistance

rates, which means basically puberty was the natural cure. Let these kids grow, let them mature, let them settle into their sexual identities and their adult bodies, and then they will cease to want medical interventions. But because we block the puberty, we block the natural cure, and therefore we set them up for a lifetime of medical interventions. But doctors get things wrong. History is full of examples of the medical world getting things wrong. The most important thing now is to face up to the fact that we got this catastrophically wrong

and stop doing it. And Canadian gender clinics, Canadian professional associations, and our politicians, they just refuse to face up to what we've done. So in the last few minutes, I'd like to, like, let's try to come up with the most constructive way to end this conversation.

So where is a best practice as you see it in the world? Who's got it as close to right as possible? And what changes would have to happen in Canada in terms of our leadership? What organizations, what bodies, what leaders in what positions in Canada would have to see the light to get us to that best practice? This may be a hard pill to swallow,

but for Canadians certainly, but the best available document out there right now is the document from the Health and Human Services department in the US that I wrote the article about. It is complete, it is thorough, it has got everything that you need. All of the evidence reviews have been done and they've been shown, Canada's done one,

Sweden, Finland, England, it shows there's no evidence. So all Canada now has to do is look at the evidence reviews. We know that there is no evidence and then we need to scrutinize what's going on in our gender clinics. So our politicians need to set politics aside and they need to look at this medical scandal as they would any other medical scandal.

Forget the human rights aspect, forget the political battlefield that's going on. Just look at what's happening to these kids. Review the practices. It won't take very much. We will see that we are harming young people. And then we can follow Sweden, Finland, England, where they are. They've shifted into a psychotherapeutic approach which just helps these young people understand why they've come to the conclusion they've come to and helps them reconcile with their body so they don't need to be lifelong medical patients. Yeah it's always it's very rich I find that

people on it from a certain political vantage point love to hold up sort of the Scandinavian countries as evolved on so many files but they're decidedly mute on this reversal that so many of them have taken on the gender reassignment question. If they're evolved everywhere else, are they evolved on this point too? We don't really hear from them on that. That's right. We pretend that everything that happened in Europe, we just block it out.

We don't even acknowledge that it's happened here in Canada because it does contradict so strongly with this idea that pediatric gender medicine is on the forefront of some progressive movement. It's not, it's a medical scandal and it needs to end. Well, my hope for this segment was that we were gonna have a conversation exactly like this, dispassionate and I think fair and not looking to demonize or vilify but instead educate and hopefully get us to a place

where we're dealing with what we should all be dealing with straight up facts and not feelings. And I think I think we accomplished that. Mia Hughes, thank you so much. The article is called Canada must launch review of pediatric gender clinic practices in the National Post. I appreciate you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And I don't think anybody thought that we would be still talking about the Russia Ukraine war in 2025. I think, I mean, Vladimir Putin certainly thought it would end pretty quickly, but here we are three years later. And it is an ever evolving topic, ever changing topic. And so here to get the lay of the land as it is today is our resident expert on the file, Adam Zivow, national post columnist. He's also the executive director for the Center for Responsible Drug Policy.

Adam, I hope you had a great weekend. I hope you had a great weekend too. Thanks for having me on the show. All right. So here's where we are now that Donald Trump and European leaders are threatening massive sanctions. If Putin doesn't accept a 30-day ceasefire by Monday. There is this coalition of the willing made up of the UK, France, Germany, the United States that is really, it seems like everyone's coalescing behind Ukraine again and putting pressure on Vladimir Putin. What has happened in the past few days? It seems like just a couple of weeks ago, This was not the scenario that we were staring at

Uh, I mean to be honest I think part of it is that Trump seems to have soured somewhat in Putin and realized that Putin is merely playing the United States Here and I think that that shift in approach has inspired other world leaders to be more confident in their advocacy for inspired other world leaders to be more confident in their advocacy for Ukraine. At the same time, I wonder if the coalition, the willing is doing enough to support Keef here. They say that they want to perhaps institute more sanctions, but what does that actually mean? Right. So after three years of sanctions, direct trade with Russia is quite low for many of these countries. Of course, countries like France still import a lot of liquefied natural gas from Russia. So it'd be great if they stop that, but they haven't yet. But the, if you really want to, uh, put economic pressure onto Russia, you have to

advocate for secondary sanctions where you essentially sanction third parties that trade with Russia. And, and I'm not sure if they're advocating for that yet. On top of that, you know, if this coalition wants to really put some fear into Moscow, they should explore once again, putting French or British troops, or at least offering to put up troops there to send to the front. That would be bold action. That's something that would actually make a difference. But we're not seeing that yet. And this it does seem like Donald Trump is on board with his allies. I mean, to see Donald Trump working in a multilateral world, in a multilateral, on a multilateral team flies in the face of sort of his world view, doesn't it? It does, but I think he realizes that this is not a problem that he can solve by himself. And I think that he was idealistic before he came into power, he said that he would solve this war right away. He thought that Putin was his friend. And now he's realizing that this is not going to be the simple solution that he wanted, he's not going to have that simple solution and that this is embarrassing for him and it makes him look bad.

And considering how egotistical Trump is, I think he's willing to work multilaterally if that means coming off as a strong man. So what's the timeline here? What are our expectations and when do we expect Vladimir? What are we expecting of Vladimir Putin and when are we expecting it? What are we expecting of Vladimir Putin? And when are we expecting it? I mean, who knows, right? So the coalition, the willing is advocating for a 30 day ceasefire, uh, starting almost immediately.

And there's this possibility that Putin and Zelensky couldn't meet in Istanbul on May 15th and begin some kind of negotiation for peace. But is there actually a chance that, you know, there will be any real peace deal? We don't know, because the Russians keep on saying that they only want a peace deal that will add that will address the root causes of the war with Ukraine. And for them, they define the root causes and essentially Ukraine having its own sense of independence, its own national identity. They keep on lying and saying that Ukraine has a Nazi problem,

and they say we need to address that by changing Ukraine's government. What they're essentially saying is that they want to replace Ukraine's government with a pro-Russian puppet regime so they can dominate Ukraine much in the same way that they dominate Belarus. The last time Russia was a problem on a global or regional scale was the Cold War. There are a lot of people that give credit to Ronald Reagan and the Pope, John Paul II at the time, for being leaders that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately the collapse of the Soviet Union. Just a few days ago, the new pope, Pope Leo, called for peace,

both in Ukraine and Gaza. It was during his first Vatican address. He said, never again war. Do you think that the Catholic Church and the leader of the Catholic Church still holds the sway politically today that that office once did? I don't think they have as much influence as they used to, but I think they obviously do have a significant amount of influence nonetheless. The pope remains a moral leader for over, you know, for hundreds of millions of people throughout the world today. Right.

And so when you have the pope calling out Russian imperialism, as he explicitly did recently, I think that says something. And you know, the previous pope was great I respected him in many ways But he equivocated too much when it came to the Russian-Ukraine war and I think that Pope Leo has shown More decisiveness and more moral clarity here and I'm just gonna say on a personal note, you know My Ukrainian fiance's name is Leo. So I'm a big fan of Every situation so I'm very pro-pope Leo at this point

big fans of Leo Kloxman. Every situation, so I'm very pro-Pope Leo at this point. Hey, what are we supposed to look at from Putin if we can't take him at his word? I mean, if he says that he's committed to restarting talks with Kiev starting on May 15th, but his word means nothing, then what indicators will give us a better sense as to what he's thinking? Well, I mean, like he continues to demand

that he be given full control over the four oblasts that he quote unquote annexed back in 2022. So Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk and Herson, even though he doesn't fully control those regions. So he's essentially asking Ukraine to hand over more territory. And crucially, that would also mean handing over territory west of the Dnieper River, which would allow Russia to establish a bridgehead across that river, which otherwise, you know, that river is otherwise a very powerful natural barrier.

So as long as he continues to advocate for something as absurd as that, I don't think that we can really trust that he wants peace. He wants all of Ukraine. He's made that very clear. He published an essay in the summer of 2021, 5,000 word piece, essentially arguing that Ukrainian nationhood is a fabrication. So the ideological grounds for his assimilation, his project is not ambiguous. We know that he's essentially an imperialist at heart. Well, look, if this, if this peace deal

happens, I think the picture that came out over the weekend of Prime Minister Kier Starmer, Volodymyr Zelensky, Emmanuelle Macron, as well as Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and German Chancellor Merz. I think that picture is going to be remembered as truly iconic of this moment, and it certainly flies in the face of the visual of Zelensky getting Zelenskyd in the White House. And it feels to me when we're seeing this picture

that we're dealing with a renewed, emboldened Vladimir Zelensky, who then turned around and he said that, you know, he hopes, like almost dictating, almost daring Putin. He said, I'll be waiting for you in Turkey. I'm looking forward to a ceasefire that you agree to, and I'm looking forward to seeing you there. It seems like he has wind in his sails today I'm looking forward to a ceasefire that you agree to, and I'm looking forward to seeing you there.

It seems like he has wind in his sails today that he might not have had a month ago. He does, but I don't think that if there is a peace agreement that it's going to be anything that we should be too proud of in the longterm, because ultimately any peace agreement that we can come up with today is one that requires Ukraine to essentially accept that 20% of its land is under permanent occupation, right? And that's not a victory. No, we don't celebrate the people who negotiated the end to the Korean War in the 1950s, where North Korea, you know, continue to exist, right? This is not this is a compromise. It's not a victory for us. No, it's not a cause. Yeah, but it's the best of a bad situation.

Yeah, but the question is, where do we go from here? Right. So the compromise is too significant. Are we going to have to worry about once again, Putin launching another invasion in a few years, as many Ukrainians fear that he will. And this is where I really want to emphasize that the coalition of the willing wants to come off as heroes, that they want to have their photos from this month celebrated across history as a great victory. They need to really commit. And that means, for example, putting troops on the ground in Ukraine to ensure that a peace deal is respected and that we don't get pulled back into war later on in the 2020s.

We can end this now. If he put the real effort in, this doesn't have to be the first step. Yeah. And yet another step towards global war. Lastly, and very shortly, Adam Zivow, do you think it's likely that Vladimir Putin and Zelensky will meet in Turkey? I have no clue. I hope they do, but who knows. Thank you very much for your candor on that, Adam Zivu. I appreciate it and I look forward to speaking to you again soon. Thanks for having me on the show.