The Ben Mulroney Show - What do you do when your child is bullied at school?

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Guests and Topics on Today's Show -What do you do when your child is bullied at school? -Can journalism and AI co-exist? with Guest: Jane Barrett, Head of AI Strategy at Reuters -The Sad State of affairs of Healthcare in Canada -Canada's Housing market in 2025 with Guest: Ron Butler, Mortgage Broker with Butler Mortgage 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

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much for listening in London as well as here in Toronto. My wife and I have two rules that we have laid down for our kids as early as they as we can remember and as early as they would listen. And we said there are two things that we will not accept from you out in the world. We will not accept finding out from your teachers, or in the groups that you're in that you did not try your hardest. And we will not accept if we ever discover that you weren't kind in your interactions with

other people. Which is because we said, look, you might not be good at math, but you better try. We can't control the outcome sometimes, but you can certainly you're in control of the process. And if we find out that you were ever a bully, and you didn't take the side of the of the person who needed to be protected from the bully, then you and I are going to have a problem. And but not by and large, 100% success rate, at least on the on the being kind

one, the trying, we're still working on that, but they're getting there. And I believe that we are raising kind people. Sometimes I wonder whether my boys need to get toughened up a little bit, but the world will take care of that. And so that's how we've dealt with it in our in our family. And we're also lucky that they have great friends. And they by and large have a community of kids that they're in that err on the side of kindness, I suppose. But that's not the case for everyone. And there is a Brampton family that was tearful for their

son's safety. They reported incidents of bullying to the school. The principal agreed that the students involved showed aggressive behavior towards their son. The principal acknowledged the parents' concern that the students' cultural background played a role in the bullying. And then when they met with the principal, the mother said the students apologized to the son, but the bullying started up again

within hours of the meeting. The school was ineffective in helping this kid who needed help being singled out and being bullied. I mean, I've said it before, a person should always feel safe at home and at school. Those are the two places a child should always feel safe. You've taken that feeling of safety away from your from this child. It's a dereliction of duty. And so I want to hear from you at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. Let's talk bullying writ large.

Were you bullied? Were you a bully? Bullies have changes of heart. There's reasons behind why people display aggressive behavior and that can be mitigated. That can be changed. As you can grow out of it and apologize. Are you a teacher do you see bullying at your school?

How do you deal with it when you see it in real life 416-870-6400 or one triple eight two to five talk. You know, my daughter has been described by her teachers as one of the kindest kids they've ever met. She had a friend once. They they went to summer camp together. And they're at this little inflection point in their lives where some of the kids want to remain kids and and these these these these 10 11 year olds, they want to be older. They they see, they see their future and they want to be there already. And so they want to talk about boys and makeup and they want to dress a certain way and they want to be there already. And so they want to talk about boys and makeup

and they want to dress a certain way and they want to be out and about and they want to phone. My daughter wants none of that. My daughter loves being a kid. She loves being 11 and she knows who she is. And so when they hit this fork in the road, the girl who wanted to be older started being very mean to my daughter, very mean broke my daughter's heart that they

weren't friends anymore. They were thick as thieves for a while, broke her heart. But after a while, my daughter realized like, I know who I am. And this girl doesn't know who she is. And it just became background noise for her. And that is such a it's a trait to admire. But I was really heartbroken when I saw what she had to deal with. Hey, let's welcome Chris to the show. Chris, thanks so much for calling in. Hey Ben, how's it going? I'm well, thanks.

Um, no, I was just saying, you know, bullying, you know, I grew up, you know, whatever, high school, 25 years ago. Bullying was always a thing but, you know, I think it's just changed a little bit. There's a lot more, always a thing, but you know, I think it's just changed a little bit. There's a lot more. Uh, I don't know, but I guess my son's experience, he's in grade nine this year and he can't even go to the bathroom at the school because there's always grade twelves and elevens apparently in the bathroom and they're all vaping and whatever, they just stay in there and you can't even go to the bathroom. They'll be kicking in the back.

They'll be kicking in the doors. They'll be, you know, being aggressive, whipping you on the ground and all this different, like my, my son's six feet tall. Like he's, he's a big guy. He plays hockey in lacrosse, but when you get somebody who's 190 pounds, like these great 12s and they're six foot five and whatever, I mean, we're lucky that we live within a five minute walk from the school. He can't even go to the bathroom. You're gonna have to have the conversation with them about, okay, well, is there not like a handicapped bathroom that you kind of get some private time and you can, you can go there? No, you have to have a key. Okay, well, that makes sense. And so then it is,

okay, well, can you go to the office? What's the office gonna say? Well, okay, well, yeah, you can use the bathroom up here. Just be quick and clean about it. I don't understand why how hard it is for a teacher to go and clear out the bathroom every now and then. Like just when I was in high school, what the teachers said, that is what teacher says goes, and I get we're living in a different time and I and I get but but you know, these teachers aren't powerless. And I gotta

wonder Chris, like what is this doing to your son's ability to concentrate and study and move the ball down the field academically? There's no way that he is he is performing at the optimal level that you probably want him to and that he probably wants to. Well, sure. And you know what the thing is, is that it's specific times, it's only happened twice where he's been like, I got to get home, I got to use the bathroom type thing.

Yeah, but still to have that in the back of your mind, I mean, you know, it's a quick Chris, I'm gonna leave it there because I got a bunch of other people that I want to get to buy. Thank you for your call. And I'm sorry to hear that your your son's even had to deal with that once. Kim has called into the Ben Mulroney show. How you doing, Kim? Good. How are you doing? Love your call. And I'm sorry to hear that your your sons even had to deal with that once. Kim has called into the Ben Mulroney show. How you doing, Kim? Good. How are you doing? Love your show. Thank you.

My son from the age he's in university now but when he was in public school from grade one to grade eight, the severe bullying that he went through. Teachers even advocated for them advice principal and principal did nothing. He one year he refused to wear the pink t-shirt to school He got harassed for that and he said I'm not wearing it you guys do nothing to protect me The only thing that helped me was when they went into grade eight They all became 13 and I got the police involved Yeah within six hours

And then they were all suspended within six hours. Once I threatened the police and threatened the charge, then within six hours, they were all, eight of them were suspended. Well, it shouldn't have to, Kim, it shouldn't have to come to that. It really shouldn't. If a kid is being bullied, then there should be a protocol in place in every school

on how to deal with these things. And you know, it's a, and a school is a small community. I mean, word gets around. It's it's not necessarily a he said, he said she said situation get people know you know who the bad at the bad apples are you know who the bullies are they have reputations in those schools put your ear to the ground figure it out. Let's take one more call before the break. Let's say hi to Nadia Nadia. Welcome to the show.

Hi, how are you? Well, so much for having me on your on your show. And I think you're amazing. Thank you. I just wanted to sympathize with all the parents and people who've gone through bullying. I myself too, come through that. When I was very young, I came from a single parent family home. I'm European, so it wasn't very accepted. And so I was bullied a lot. I think for me, looking back now, I am very resilient

and I'm able to self-manage those past emotions and you move forward. But I think we have to look back to our school system where they don't teach children how to self-regulate and they're not working with parents to teach confidence and promote your highest level, you know, your finest abilities. I think we're losing a lot of children because they're craving so much discipline and attention and love and everyone's self-centered and focused on themselves making money and forgetting the root of family

dynamics. Nadia lucky. Yeah, I want to thank thank you for sharing your story. And I'm glad that you came out stronger the other side. But like I said, it's not something anyone should have to go through certainly not in in a country like ours. We're gonna take a quick break but more of your calls after the break on the Ben Mulroney show. Welcome back to the show. We're gonna take a quick break but more of your calls after the break on the Ben Mulroney show. Welcome back to the show. We're taking your calls at 416-870-6400 or

1-888-225-TALK and we're talking bullying with the backdrop of a story out of Brampton that is absolutely heartbreaking. The story of how he got this young boy got swarmed. And his mom says he cried a lot that day and some other students studying higher grades saved him, told him to take long breaths. It was a situation, it was very bad that day. It was one and a half, two months ago that that happened. And since then there were three other incidents

including being punched in the face. This is the system failed this young boy. If that happened to my kid, my kid had to send my child out into the world. And he knew that he what he was going to be encountering day after day after day, I don't know what I would do. And so I asked our listeners tell me what you've done. What experiences have you had? When you found out your child was getting bullied? How did you handle it? What was the

effect on your child? Let's say hi to Dean Dean, welcome to the show. Hi, Ben. Good morning. Good morning. So I'm an old man with two young children and I probably raised my kid same way my dad did back in the 70s and 80s. You don't start stuff. You stick up for your friends, but you don't become a victim either. Yeah, you don't allow people to make you a victim and get that reputation. So my eight-year-old

in grade three this year, first few years of school, no problem. And then this year switched to a different class, different classmates. And within a week or two, he was saying, you know, I don't have any friends. There's only a couple of kids I get along with. The rest of the kids don't like me. I'm asking why. I don't know they're jerks, blah blah blah. Okay, well just ignore them. I really drilled down on the six and stones ideology, you know, who cares what other people say, if they don't matter to you, don't worry about them. But then we get a call in November and there's been an altercation and I gathered my son, this is multiple teachers saw it, went over to talk to some of the classmates out in the yard

and they started making fun of them and pushing and begging one kid in particular to go after my kid and mine turned around and grabbed the other one by the throat and that's when it got broke up. So when I got that call and I sat him down at that evening, I'm like, you know, tell me what happened. I want to know exactly. And he told me and I said, you're telling me the truth, right? You didn't

start anything. You didn't precipitate this. You didn't call them names. No, no, I didn't. Okay, well, you do not allow people to push you around. Yeah. I will back you 100% if you have to defend yourself. Always. I do not want you to start anything, anything ever. Yeah, don't start it, but but have the ability to finish it if somebody does. Joe, thank you so much for your call. I don't like living in a world where kids have to be put in those

situations. It's it's not right. But I got to wonder whether how much of it is is the product of the world we're living in with the importance of cell phones. I'm glad that there is a cell phone ban and at least at the TDSP. I believe that everything that we try to teach kids at school is undermined by the very essence of what a cell phone is a cell phone makes you promote some like sort of an inward framework as opposed to a collaborative nature it it makes kids more aggressive, it shortens their

attention span. It's also a pathway where they lead to digital bullying. So a lot to unpack there. So hopefully that we can we can strip that out of our schools. Let's let's welcome Joe to the show. Joe, thanks so much for waiting. I thanks for taking my call. Yeah, I had a personal experience too with my son. He was being bullied at school. And I said to him, I said, okay, well, if I come there,

I'm the one that's gonna be in trouble. So my son wouldn't do anything. So what I did was I ended up putting him in karate school. So after the third year, this continued on. I said to him, okay, now you know some karate hit him. He goes, no, he goes, the census told me not to hit him unless my life was in danger. I go, are you kidding, No, he goes, the census told me not to hit him unless my life was in danger.

What that's that's the benchmark that you got to hit and before you can defend yourself. That's what he told a real life karate kid here. Yeah. So at least the good thing about this, I knew that he was able to defend himself in case something did arise. Yeah, well, I was happy with that. I'm glad I'm glad to hear it. So And you know what, martial arts, I know for a fact, it helps promote self-worth, makes you feel more confident. So even in the face of some bad stuff, I bet your son's got some wind in his sails. Pat, welcome to the show. Tell us the story about your daughter.

Oh boy, it was a really bad scene then. So about 25 years ago in grade seven, she was bullied by a group of boys after she reported something that happened in the classroom that was really egregious. And you know, I just feel sorry for students because they say go tell an adult. When she went and told the principal, he actually came into the classroom and said, my daughter told on these boys. And it was, I'm going to say like it was hell on earth. So he, the principal narked on your daughter. Exactly.

He put a bullet, he put a target on her back. Yes. And that's exactly what it was. And they, it got to the point where the principal told me I could no longer come in. I could no longer advocate for my daughter's safety. The teachers were keeping her in. The boys had a plan to sexually assault her. It was horrible.

Oh, I'm sorry. And in the end, I had to just take her out of the school because there was literally, it's just such a ruthless sort of policy to report to a teacher or a principal, because I think when the kids go around and do that, there is absolutely no protocol in place. But that's I mean, they've crossed the line from from something you would call bullying to a criminal

conspiracy. A bunch of kids coming together and planning on a sexual assault is a criminal conspiracy. A bunch of kids coming together and planning on a sexual assault is a criminal conspiracy. I mean, that's coming from a radio host, not an actual lawyer. But I mean, that's the police need to get involved in something like that. I'm so so sorry. Let's say hi to Kevin. Kevin, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Good morning, Ben morning. Well, I'm about 25 years old. And so I've had a firsthand experience seeing how things go in the TVSB nowadays

I'm not sure roughly how old the children of most of your colors would be but You know, I was in high school not that many years ago compared to a lot of your colleagues Probably and it definitely is about demonstrating that you're able to defend yourself. I was in the situation where I was Coming into a new school where I knew nobody where everybody else I've been friends going back however long back to grade school. And so no matter what I did, I was not able to shake guys who wanted to press you for no money or your gym shorts or anything at all. And it's only when you really demonstrate that

you're willing to fight back that guys will leave you alone unfortunately. Well, Kevin, like that's that's what it's the joke. Like, that's what you got to do the on your first day in prison is is is get into a fight to let people know that you're not gonna, you're not going to take it. But it's such a sad state of affairs that we've got to apply prison rules to, to the school ground. Hey, thanks so much. I think we've got time.

I don't know if we got enough time for another call. But yeah, it's it's just a, it's a, it's a crazy scenario. And what I'm hearing so many stories of failure of the administration failure of the principle to do some pretty basic things. I mean, we are in trusting you with our children. The least you can do is honor that the fact that that we've we're trusting you. And and and take that take that job seriously. If a parent comes in and tells you my kids being bullied, believe them. No, no parent wants to wants to

wants to make that call or have that meeting. So believe them assume they're telling the truth. And then do the legwork that you're supposed to do to make that kid safe, get to the bottom of it and create a punishment that ensures that whoever's doing the bullying doesn't do it anymore. It seems like that is pretty low hanging fruit in terms of the responsibilities of the administration at any school. And I want to thank everybody for your calls. So appreciated. Doug Ford gets it done for developers.

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Thompson Reuters. Whenever one hears that name, they think, you think news. You think one of the beasts of news around the world. You think of reliable you think one of the beasts of news around the world, you think of reliable, historically fair institution from which we glean so much of our information. And so when I heard Thomson Reuters was one of the earliest adopters of AI, I did a double take. I thought, I didn't know, I need to know more. How does it, first of all, how did they get onto it so early, onto the AI bandwagon so early? How did they recognize its value as early as they did?

And how does it fold into the concept of news gathering? So we're joined now by Jane Barrett, the head of AI strategies at Reuter. Jane, thank you so much for being here. Good morning, Ben. Lovely to be here. What did Thomson Reuters see in AI, and when did they see it?

Well, actually Reuters has been using AI for several years, well before ChatGPT came out, we all kind of got very excited. We'd been using kind of more boring old school AI in terms of like natural language processing, some machine learning to help us do particularly financial and sports reporting. So in a way when TrackGPT came out

and everyone started getting excited about generative AI, we were already on the bandwagon and we'd already been testing it. And exactly as you say, we'd been making sure that whatever AI did for us in use kept to our trust principles of reliability and freedom from bias. Now, obviously, Gen.AI is very different.

It's a different beast. We've had to spend a lot of time learning how to make it work for news. But really, it was kind of a bit of a continuation of the story. So when it came out, we jumped onto it. We thought, okay, this is going to be big. We need to learn how to drive this Ferrari, as I tend to say. And just try and work out with this hugely powerful tool, how can we make sure that it can help us do our work? It can help us be more efficient, productive, reach new audiences, maybe create new news experiences, but always within those trust principles, as you say, of reliability or accuracy and freedom from bias. So we spent a lot of time over these last years trying to do that. Yeah you must have to have some significant guard rails

in place otherwise you run the risk of the tail wagging the dog. Yeah and as I used to say like we're never giving the keys away to the castle right you, Reuters is 174 years old. You know, we have a lot of history that we need to protect. And as you mentioned, we are the source of news for so many media companies and businesses around the world. So it's really important that the tail does not wag the dog. Well, I just want to remind people that Jane Barrett is the head of AI strategy at Reuters. And I think, you know, I should just serve it up. What is Reuters AI strategy?

So our strategy is really that we're going to increase our use of AI to increase the way that we, that we report, that we produce and that we distribute our news. Our plan is also that what we do for ourselves at Reuters, we are a big news organization, 2,600 journalists around the world, but also 3,000 media clients around the world. So what we do, can we then make that available and help other media clients around the world to be able to use AI sensibly, responsibly, and in a trustworthy way for news? So I can give you a couple of examples of what we've

been doing. So we've been thinking really about three main buckets. So how can we reduce the rote work that our journalists have to. So how can we reduce the rote work that our journalists have to do? How can we augment the value of what we already report and reach new audiences with what we've been doing? And then really trying to kind of look around the corner for transform, like how are news experiences gonna transform?

Your listeners are listening to us having a chat this morning, but in the future, maybe they'll want to, I don't know, have a chat themselves with an artificial version of me, depending on what we've talked about or something. Who knows? Maybe that's a bit too scary. As we've been looking at that, we started off by looking at that reduced bucket.

How could we help our reporters to do more work faster, take off some stress, help them efficiently? One of the tools that we produced last year takes in all of the corporate press releases that we get around the world and extracts the key facts and puts them in front of a journalist to say, hey, are these the key facts you want to send? And the journalist says, yes or no.

And so the journalist is still absolutely in control. You asked about guardrails. The best guardrail is a human journalist. So that was gonna be a question that I had because you know we were seeing across the world a shrinking of in newsrooms a hollowing out of newsrooms, fewer people doing more work. And with the advent of AI, a lot of people can justify it and say, oh, we don't need we don't need that human element anymore. And you know, we've seen we've seen the images of AI news reporters on television. So you're telling me that the the human element is is will be as strong as it's ever

been, even with the advent and the adoption of AI. I really hope it's even going to be stronger, Ben, to be honest with you, like, I feel that, you know, with the arrival of sort of digital platforms for us to serve, we've had to tie a lot of people to their desks doing news production. And like you're doing, like the reason I became a journalist was to get out there and find stories and talk to interesting people

and find out what was going on. And so what I'm hoping is that as we invest more in AI to help us produce the news, the dollars that we save, we can reinvest into our news gathering. That's what AI can't do. AI can't go out and film the LA fires. LA can't break news about Canadian politics and have sources on both sides of the house. AI can't report on markets and central banks unless it sees the data in front of it. Our journalists can. That's what we train our journalists to do. I'm really, that the arrival of AI might allow us to be more human in our journalism. So the human element is going to stay, is AI going to be writing

the articles? Potentially. I mean, I think we've seen some incredible advances in AI, even really since ChatGPT came out. So 3.5, what's that? So two years and a couple of months maybe. And already it's just got so much better. We've got different models now kind of competing with each other. We've got so many data scientists here at Thomson Reuters. We have the Thomson Reuters labs, which is about, I think about 130, 140 data scientists who just do AI every single day. And some of the ways that they have been tuning different models, they've been working out different strategies, we've been building

some small language models in the newsroom just to sort of test things out. And the quality is really very good. So will AI ever be able to write us? If an AI writes an article that was sourced by a human journalist and researched by a human journalist and then the AI takes over, will it be edited by a human being?

I mean, again, I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine. Again, we've got some neat editing tools, but I think it's a really critical thing. And this is what our editor in chief, Alessandra, put out way back in early 2023, was that we will lean into testing everything and seeing what is possible. But Reuters will always be responsible for what it puts out. We will always hold ourselves accountable. So if AI ever is given some of those responsibilities that you have just listed, it will only

be because we've tested the model so thoroughly, and we are convinced that they actually can do the work as well or better than a human journalist. So we've got some serious guardrails around that. And what are your human journalists telling you about the adoption of AI in their space? So it's really interesting. We've got some fantastic journalists in this newsroom who have thrown themselves right

into the challenge and who are trying to work out how to make this happen. So we've got the team, for example, working on the press releases. I was kind of concerned because I was thinking, oh gosh, you know, are they going to feel that this is almost displacing their work? Well, quite the opposite. We've got 90% adoption on that tool. And why is it? One, because it does it really well.

It assists them in their work, takes off some of the stress. It's like having a friend doing the job with you, but also it's freeing up time for them to do other work that they wanted to do, but they didn't have the time to do. So that's a really good story. There are other people who have kind of been

quite anxious about using AI. One of our copy editors came up to me and said, AI is never going to be able to help me edit a story. And I said, okay, you know, let's have a look. And he tested one of the models and he just came back to me with this huge smile on his face. Oh my God, I just realized AI is not going to take my job. It's going to help me to do my job.

It's like having an assistant. Yay! It's like having a research assistant and having a second set of eyes. Jane Barrett, head of AI strategy at Reuters. Thank you so much for sharing these insights. It's an exciting time. And I'm glad that you guys are enjoying and not fearing AI. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Ben. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And boy, do we have a great country. I mean, I love this country. I think everybody in their own way loves this country and there is so much to be proud of in time and time again when Canadians are asked in polls and surveys What about Canada do they love and that there's so much to point to? But almost almost in every single one of those surveys that I've ever seen

Near or at the top of every list is the health care system. It is this weird, odd Canadianism, where we take such pride in our belief that our system is so great, and so equitable, and so fair and just and right that we define ourselves by this government program. It is this there's something to admire about that. But increasingly, I think we're deluding ourselves. I think it is a self-inflicted delusion to believe that our health care system. Is delivering on its promise now Now it may very well have been something that we should take pride in a long time ago, it is no longer such a

thing. It is bloated. It doesn't deliver on its promises. And more and more Canadians find themselves up the creek without a doctor. To the point that when a new physician set up a practice in Brockton, Ontario, he put out the word in the community that he would take the first 500 patients who showed up. And in the snow, as it was snowing, the line of people waiting was so long,

it wrapped around the block. Let's listen to some of the people who are waiting in line. It's insane. This is just not what the medical healthcare system is supposed to be like in Ontario. Got here about 5.30 and been on the Healthcare Connect list for about 10 years now. Haven't had a doctor for longer than that, so kind of a strange way to have people sign up for a doctor. But hopefully I get one. Look at that. eternally the optimist he shouldn't have to wait that long. No, no, no one should. No one should. There was

a caller on Greg show who called in with his horror story. Listen to this one. Two years ago, I had two discs in my lower back completely explode. I was like paralyzed. Take an ambulance to the hospital. They say there's nothing you can do. So long story short, had the MRI done. They told me it was a nine month waiting period for the surgeon. They sent me home with 250 oxycodones,

told me I have to wait. Did you take that? How were you on those drugs? Cause a lot of people worry about oxy, don't they? No, I've heard all the stories about oxy on day 28. I was in bed for 45 days, Day 28, my wife come home. I was in tears. I gave her all the pills and told her to get rid of them because I was having really bad thoughts of doing something stupid. My wife phones the surgeon's office and they told me to call an ambulance, go to the hospital, tell them I'm peeing my pants. I get to the hospital, they tell

me they don't have a bed for me. But I figured I'm gonna I'm gonna lie to them and tell them. So I said I'm peeing my pants. I was in a bed within four minutes had a doctor on the operating table two days later. If this were the only horror story that we hear, then it would be the exception that proves the rule that we've got a great system. It is not.

And I'm not saying that this is the rule. We have great hospitals and fantastic frontline healthcare workers in this country. They deserve better than the system that we have. They deserve to know that the work that they are putting in is leading to better outcomes than this The numbers four one six eight seven zero sixty four hundred or one triple eight two two five talk I want to hear from you. What has our health care system become? It is a bloated bureaucratic

mess and Average Canadians are suffering because of it. It is shameful and average Canadians are suffering because of it. It is shameful. We can and need to do better. And I do not want anybody to come at me and put words in my mouth. I am not offering up a solution. I am simply identifying the problem.

I am not suggesting two-tiered American-style healthcare. Don't come at me with that nonsense. That is unproductive. It is unhelpful. Hey, Peter, welcome to the show. Listen, I just spent $56,000 on two surgeries in Quebec. I had a C67 herniated disc that I couldn't get fixed at St. Mike's,

had to quit work, my hands were in absolute agony and pain. I had such a great experience in Quebec that I sent my daughter there for F1 surgery because she had pain down her leg for three years with no resolution. So I sent her to the F5S1 clinic or L5S1 clinic out of Quebec City. It was a great experience. I'll never use public surgery ever again. Peter, thank you so much. And, you know, we spend $344 billion in the 2023 budget on healthcare that comes out to more than $8,000 per person in this country per year, we shouldn't have

outcomes like this. And let's not forget, one of the reasons that we tout and want to highlight and support a system like this is so that people can be the healthiest versions of themselves. Everyone. If we have a healthy population, that means people go to work. That means people aren't taking more from the system than they are contributing. That's supposed to be the magic of the system. But we've now heard from a guy who was in bed for 45 days and they almost hooked on Oxy and another guy who had to leave the province and quit his job. So these are people who by definition are going to be taking more from the system.

Even though we are funneling money into a furnace called the healthcare system and we're not getting what we want out of it. Ivan, thank you so much for calling the Ben Mulwerney Show. Hi, good morning. Good morning. Ben, How are you? I'm well, thank you. That's awesome. Listen, at the end of the day, we cannot just blame the health care system. At the end of the day, we got to blame ourselves as people. We go out and we tarnish our own health by eating the nonsense that's out there. And then we expect the healthcare system to be right there with us

ready to take us on and for every every little illness that we have out there. I've changed my health for the last 10 months. And let me tell you, I've never felt better. Yeah, no, listen, two, but two things can be true at once, Ivan. I'm glad to hear that you've taken control over your health. You're doing the preventative thing, which is the smart thing to do. I did the same thing after my dad passed.

I said he would not want me living the way I am. And I'm in far better shape than I think I've ever been in my life and I haven't really gotten sick since then. But if I do get sick, then what? What system do I have to rely on? And Ivan, you are going to be healthy as long as you can until you're not. And that's when the system has to be there for you. And I don't know that it would be there for either you or me or any Canadian under the circumstances that we would need.

And it's it's, you know, and given how much money is spent, it's an astronomical number. The outcomes should be better. So we have to look at where the money's going, why it's not leading to better outcomes and fix it. And again, I don't know what the solution is. I believe that AI plays a big role in it. I know that the bureaucracy has grown to the point

that a lot of doctors are spending so much time on paperwork that they don't have time for patients and they burn out and a lot of them leave early. They're not getting paid what they could be paid in other jurisdictions and so they leave. There's a lot of problems. Again, I don't have any solutions. That's why I'm tripping from the cheap seats.

Teresa, welcome to the show. How are you doing? I'm't have any solutions. That's why I'm tripping from the cheap seats. Teresa, welcome to the show. How you doing? I'm well, thank you. So here's an interesting story. And one that makes me quite angry. My son is 29 years old. He has not been ill since before COVID. He ended up with this, you know, this virus that's going around. He went to make an appointment with his doctor. His doctor said, well, because you have not been here for five years, you're no longer on the roster and we will not see you. What? Oh yes, absolutely.

He was upset. He tried calling every avenue. So he decided to go personally and show his face. When he was there, they told him, no, he said, well, because I'm being punished because I'm healthy, and I don't have used the system. And they said, No, you have to check in. And he did drop the f bomb, not in a loud voice. Then they threatened to call the police because they felt like their life was being

threatened. Oh, my God. Yeah, that car system then, Teresa, I'm sorry to hear that. And I hope your your son is on the mend. You know, the real estate unaffordability crisis is is very real for a great many people. But things may be changing on that front, at least for a certain type of person with interest rates expect to hit the bottom this year, the Canadian Real Estate Association anticipates a surge in demand from would be home buyers who have been waiting it out in the hope of a better deal. This this could be what we've been waiting for

this there's built up anticipation. And according to the senior economist at the CREA, they say the big assumption is that we have the big assumption we have is that there's a record amount of demand out there on the sidelines. And, you know, if we could unlock that, that demand and bring them into the market, that would be a good thing. And so to talk about this and a couple more stories were joined by Ron Butler of mortgage broker with but Butler mortgage Ron,

welcome to the show. All right, man. Thanks for having me. So I'm assuming that this is a good thing. Is it really a good thing? Lower interest rates are always a good thing. There's no question about it. It's good for people who are renewing. It's good for people who are considering buying.

Perhaps it's a little over enthusiastic. The average price in Ontario of home price is $909,000. That's over a million dollars in BC. There's not a whole ton of first time buyers without substantial parental support, right? And consider those kind of prices in those two provinces. And those two provinces are over 50% of the Canadian population. So So So what happens then if you've got all this anticipation,

but no ability to get into the market? What does that mean? It means the same thing as going on for the last two years, that it's going to be slow. And until we start to see some, some kind of a real price potential within these two big provinces, hey, I think the house sales in Quebec City are going to be fine. And Winnipeg and Edmonton, it could yeah, those those markets can absorb lower interest rates and, and go out and people can young buyers can find homes, there's no question. Well, in major markets, it's tough.

But Ron, like when I got into the housing market 1718 years ago, I knew that I couldn't afford a detached home in Toronto. So I started with a condo. And then from there, once I was in the market, I just started going up the property market. Now I'm in my forever home. I never want to leave only buried in the backyard. And so I see this study that came out that says that that in a city like Toronto, the the condo market has crashed with lower the lowest number of sales since what 1999.

So why wouldn't a young person or young couples instinct be let's get in on the condo market right now and then eventually move our way up the ladder. Great question. I mean, when you first got into that market, I can assure you most condominiums that you looked at were not below 500 square feet. So we've had this sad, unfortunate experience of all of the the strength of the building has gone into these ultra tiny condos, these dogcreek condos. And what's everyone's discovered is,

nobody wants to actually own one. The whole concept was that you would buy it and rent it. And now we have falling rents, a massive oversupply of new inventory coming in the next two years. 50,000 of these tiny units are coming on stream in the next two years. And a kind of constrained economy where people are saying,

I'm gonna have to move back with my parents, I'm going to have to move in with a roommate, I can't, the affordability is harming me. So that whole market is in a state of complete free fall 30 year lows and sales. And it's not going to get any better next year. How did they get it so wrong? I mean, I remember back when I worked on Queen Street, there was a there was a tiny condo building that was opening up just down the

street of from our TV studio. And it was the talk of the town. This was going to be this was how people wanted to live in the city. It turned out to be that this was what investors wanted to buy and have your rent. And then once people came to realize they didn't like it very much. But it was too late. We committed to so many towers. I mean, Toronto was the building crane capital of North America. Yeah, many years straight. It was boomtown. It was the biggest.

In some cases, we had double the cranes of New York, LA and San Francisco combined. It was unbelievable. So now, that unfortunately, that the chickens have come home to roost, and we just dramatically overbuilt a product category that only people who really could rent would want to have. And now we're seeing what happens when you make that mistake on product and price. So what happens to that product? Do they have to go back

to the drawing board? I mean, I'm sure for some of the for some of the buildings, you could pivot midstream. But for a lot of them that have already been built that are sitting there empty. What do you do with that? Well, in theory, the builder doesn't have to care because they have big deposits, 20% deposits on the new builds. And the people will either have to buy those properties to get a mortgage or be sued by the builder.

So at the end of the day, most of those, if not all of them will complete. And that's where we've got this real price reduction potential that's looming in the next year and a half. All right, well, it's something we'll keep our eye on and hopefully you'll be there to help add some color to the story. Ron Butler of Butler Mortgage, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks, Ben. Home Network is here. I love it. Discover the best shows and your favorite trusted experts all under one roof. Every Thursday watch heartwarming programs like an all new Extreme Makeover Home Edition at 8. Who's that for? We are so lucky to be a part of this. And Honest Renovation, starring Jessica Alba and Lizzie Mathis at 9. Changing these homes, we can change families. There's no place like it.

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