The Ben Mulroney Show - When someone snaps and society lets them fall through the cracks

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

Guests and Topics: -When someone snaps and society lets them fall through the cracks with Guest: Dr. Oren Amitay, Psychologist -Immigration Is Not a Demographic Cure-All: Towards a Sustainable Population Strategy with Guest: Daniel Hiebert, Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia 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

The tariffs are hitting every aspect of the economy, but no more so hard hit than the automotive industry. With the integrated supply chains and parts going across the border multiple times before they actually become a car, the cost to automotive makers in Canada and in the US will be and is going to be significant and the CEO of GM Mary Barra said that the tariffs are going to cost General Motors somewhere between four and five billion dollars, but the thing that should make the purchaser of these cars happy and Should make people who own the stock unhappy is that Mary

Barra said that the prices will more or less stay the same. In other words, that cost, that four or five billion dollar cost will not be passed on to the consumer, which flies in the face of everything we seem to think we know about how these things work. We always say the tariffs are a tax on consumers. They ultimately pay the tariffs. Well, the GM is saying that is not going to happen, which I think is admirable. But if I'm holding the GM stock, I am not a happy camper today to learn that essentially

the company is going to be taking a $5 billion hit and there's nowhere to go get that extra money. So we'll have to wait and see if this is something that they can hold to, because there could be hell to pay from investors when they understand what's going to happen to their investment. Kevin O'Leary is a great friend of this show, and a number of shows.

Kevin's never met a microphone he doesn't like. And he, with what happened prior to the election with Donald Trump, he was perfectly positioned to speak to Americans about Canada and speak to Canada about Donald Trump because he knows Donald Trump very well. He also knows Elon Musk very well. And a few days ago, he was on stage or maybe in a ring. It was very well. He also knows Elon Musk very well. And a few days ago he was on stage or maybe in a ring. It was very confusing. He looked like a boxer. Explaining why Elon Musk is a once-in-a-lifetime visionary.

I'm gonna say this quickly, but in life you're gonna meet people and I worked for Steve Jobs. He was about 80% signal, 10% noise, which means he was a very focused guy, not easy to work with, very unpopular, really nasty guy, but he really got it. Elon has no noise. He's 100% signal. He wastes zero time in his day because he can't, but it does get him in a lot of trouble in different ways because he'll actually walk away from a conversation with you if he's wasting his time and he realizes that. He has zero time to waste. There's never been a man like him. You just have to look at what he's achieved and thank goodness he's doing Doge right now because he's gonna save a load of money. I don't know

how long he's gonna be doing Doge for. The rumor is that he's going to be leaving the federal government to go back and focus on Tesla, for example, that has been suffering tremendously because of his association with Donald Trump. And Donald Trump himself has suffered some some self-inflicted wounds as they relate to the crazy whirlwind that was the ups and downs of the stock market because of his tariffs not tariffs pausing tariffs reversing tariffs being flexible but not changing and he was asked by a journalist if he should take responsibility for the stock market being down. You frequently took credit for the stock market highs. You said it was a reflection of how well you were doing in the polls.

And then after you were elected, you said the stock market highs were a reflection of how well the transition is going and the American people's confidence in your incoming administration. Now the stock market is not doing so well, and you're saying that's the Biden stock market, yet you are the president. Can you explain that? Yeah, I'm not taking credit or discredit for the stock market. I'm just saying that we inherited a mess, both at the borders. You could look at every single one of the people here

and no matter who it is, they're doing better and they are far superior to what took place for four years before us. When you look at prisoners being allowed to come into our country at will, just at will. That is who Donald Trump is. You never admit defeat, you never apologize, you never say you were wrong, you keep forging ahead and there's always somebody else that you can lay the blame on.

Even though we watched it in real time. When a rumor would come out that he was going to reverse course on one tariff or another, the stock market would rally. Then when his communications person would come out into the, Carolyn Levitt, when she'd come out into the White House press briefing room and say, no, no, that was just a rumor, the stock market would tank again. This was due entirely to him. I'm sure on one level or another he knows that, but he will never, ever admit that he was wrong. Howard Lutnick, his Commerce Secretary, he was on front and center during the tariff parade, can we call it that? And so here's what I'm going to

be sharing with you. His cabinet meetings, Donald Trump's cabinet meetings, where he sits at a table with his entire cabinet. What these things have now become are just a parade, a litany of flattery towards the great leader. Every one of the people around the table, all they do is sit there to try to one up each other to see how well they can flatter their boss.

Here's Howard Lutnick kissing up to Donald Trump at a cabinet meeting. Together we're going to train the workforce to build America. It's unbelievable. We've got so much as I travel around the attention on the Trump gold card. I mean, it makes me very popular last night. I was out to dinner and someone came up and said, Can I buy 10 how do I buy 10 and I'm like it's pretty good it's 50 million dollars for dinner so you know it's paying for my dinner. Yeah I don't know how what kind of work is being done at the cabinet meeting because the cameras are there the microphones are there and everyone seems to be playing to the cameras I don't know how much work is actually getting done.

And by the way, Howard Lutnick is not, he's not the outlier here. Here's Attorney General Pam Bondi doing her best to let her boss know how much she values him. 3400 kilos of fentanyl since you've been your last 100 days, which saved, are you ready for this media? 258 million lives. Kids are dying every day because they're taking this junk laced with

something else. They don't know what they're taking. They think they're buying a Tylenol or an Adderall and a Xanax and it's laced with fentanyl and they're dropping dead and no longer because of you you what you've done. Is this is this what is this what passes for serious business? Serious people doing serious business. My dad used to say that his most important relationship in politics was with his caucus and the most important meeting he had all week was his weekly caucus meeting. Because they would close the doors, there were no cameras, there was no press, and his

caucus was free to speak their mind to him. And he would sit there and he would listen to their issues, he would listen to what mattered to them, he would see if he could help them. It was a way for him to get to know them and their issues and their struggles. And from that he built a great relationship with the people who were in his government. And there was no, he told me there were some days where he was given an earful by people he didn't really know that well but who were part of his government. And it was his job to sit there and listen, because they were going into war for him. And it was his obligation and his responsibility to honor the work that they were doing on

his behalf to shepherd forth his vision for his government. And if it meant he had to sit there and listen to people gripe and complain, that's what he was going to do. And he said, with his dying breath, he would have said that that was the most important meeting that he had at any point in the week, far more important than any meeting he would have with a president or a king or a queen. That was the one. And that, that to me is a stark contrast to these flattery parties that it seems to happen in the White House, day in

and day out. Anne Coulter seems to be the voice of reason when she said, would it be possible to have a cabinet meeting without the Kim Jong-il style tributes? Couldn't have said it better. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And I think a lot of us across this country are still trying to make sense of the tragedy of the festival attack in Vancouver, the Filipino Street Festival, where a man weaponized his car and mowed down, oh gosh, I mean at this point I think 12 people, 11 people have passed away with people still in hospital.

And I will admit that when I first heard it, based on the information that I had, it sounded to me like a crime that required throwing a guy into jail and locking him away and throwing away the key. But the more I've heard about the plight of this man, the more I think that it is so much more complicated than that.

And so we're going to talk about it now with Dr. Orin Amite, a psychologist who can help us make sense of the pressure and the unique situa- fairly unique situation that this man found himself in. Dr. welcome to the show. Thank you Ben. So what I, what I learned and what a lot of us learned after it was this was a man who was already suffering from mental health struggles and his brother was murdered, his mother attempted suicide, there was pressure on the family where they might lose their house.

This was, I mean, this man was not tethered to anything resembling a community. He didn't have his tribe anymore. And when I look at it through that lens, I ask myself, what do we do? How do we help someone like that? Well, it's really difficult because unfortunately, we're losing nuance these days. People want to take such a black and white approach. Right? So people are saying, walk him up. He's a monster. And others are, you know, like, the too soft on crime that we know exists in this country. So trying to find nuance and say, okay, let's look at the circumstances. I don't know yet whether he was in touch with reality or not.

If he had a psychotic break, if he temporarily lost touch with reality, then he would not be not, you know, he wouldn't be criminally responsible. And there'd be other, you know, remedies. And that would be more about like mental health care for him. If he was in charge of his faculties, if he knew what he was doing, he still, you know, needs to get that mental health treatment, but he has to be held accountable. So that's one area. As far as what to do to prevent it, I don't think people fully understand how powerful two factors that are relevant in this case are. One is stress.

Okay. I have so many patients and you know whether it's your memory, whether it's your cognitive functioning, whether it's your physical health, stress triggers, exacerbates and maintains all physical and mental problems more than anything else. Number one and then number two as you mentioned, isolation. When you feel disconnected, when you don't have that community, when you don't feel grounded to either a group of people, to a healthy belief system, to some meaning and purpose, it's very easy to get lost and to do some of, you know, to do terrible unimaginable things. Yeah. Listen, I'm not the type of person, you're talking to somebody who wants Canada to get tougher on crime.

I'm that guy. And yet I look at this situation and I think it would be really difficult to shoehorn this event into that conversation that we were having during the election campaign. This to me doesn't feel like that. It feels like mental health, it feels like loneliness, it feels like somebody who is not anchored to anything resembling a community. And when that happens, I don't know if this is a predictable outcome, probably not, but it is an outcome that you could, that clearly happened. Well, it's not predictable because most people

won't do this, but it's not surprising. Let's put it that way. Right? And that's why I was saying, when people are pushed to the brink, they can do the most unimaginable things, especially if, and again, we don't know this yet, if they lose touch with reality, if they have a psychotic break,

because we know that he was under some mental health care. He was part of some programs. And as part of that program, he was granted release. He was able to go into the community, and you know, it's not always that easy. Someone might be looking, you know, like they're doing reasonably well, and hence, you know, their kind of, the reins are loosened a little bit, giving them some, you know, freedom to go back into the community, and sometimes these tragedies happen. At other times, people who are known dangers, who clearly are, you know, are not in control of their faculties, or, you know, given some other indications that they could cause harm, they are also let go at times. And, you know, that's a total failure of the system. So one way or the other, I don't know, again, we don't have enough details,

but it does seem like, as I've said to you in the past, that there's not enough care, attention, or financial resources, or any kind of resources, you know, allocated and dedicated to helping people who are struggling. Doctor, now that we've seen this tragedy, now that we have this as an example, and it's a shame that that we have this as an example and it's a shame that it had to come with such loss of life and such tragedy but it happened now but now that we have it is there something can we use this as an opportunity to create some new pathway for people like this man in the system that we currently have I would like to say so but unfortunately we've had other examples in the past, and there hasn't been enough, you know, of a push from the people in charge to, you know, to

facilitate that kind of change that we need to have. So let's hope that it happens this time, but I'm not holding my breath, unfortunately. All right. Well, let's let's pivot to a video that shocked a lot of people. There's a video of a man pushing a shopping cart into a Toronto bike lane, and it collides with a rider sending him crashing. And I suspect all things being equal,

that the guy with the cart didn't know the cyclist. And I see things like this pop up on my social media feed where people just snap. Unprovoked attacks, I don't know if they're more common today or they're just, they feel more common because I see them on social media, but we hear stories about somebody pushing somebody into the subway, onto the tracks,

random attacks that seem to have no rhyme or reason, or even general outbursts on people in public for no reason. Now this, we've talked before about the Karens of society, but this is something different. Karens yell. Karens don't necessarily get physical. What does it take for somebody to get physical and put hands on somebody they don't know? Well, this is the problem. We don't know what was the motive in this person's case. So there are several different factors. One can be where someone, let's say is on drugs that you know, or is, you know, some other substance. Another is that they just have

that temperament. They might have, you know, psychopathy, antisocial personality disorder, just like a really short temper. For other people, it's, as we've talked a few minutes ago about, it's the stress, it's getting to them, it's being confined or feeling confined, feeling disenfranchised, disempowered, feeling that the world is against you or there's no hope and then just lashing out unpredictably. For others, sorry, I just say the other one is that, you know, that there just seems to be such a, we're finding this disconnect between individuals where the person really isn't thinking about the consequences of their actions. It just seems like something to do whether they think it's funny or whether again they're just angry. They're just, you know, just kind of lashing out and they really don't consider that, you know, there's a real potential consequence

to harm somebody. Yeah, you know what, that makes a lot of sense because I saw a video just yesterday popped up on my social media feed of a, of a dad lashing out at the referee at his son's wrestling competition. He literally walks up to the ref and shoves him about six feet. The guy lands, fortunately, on a mat. What the guy didn't know is the guy was a part-time referee, full-time lawyer, and he made sure that the police found him. He had crossed state lines and he was getting a manicure. The look on his face when the cops picked him up it was not the look on his face when he shoved the guy. Like if it looked like two completely different people. One guy was seeing

red and the other guy was feeling confused and probably sad and responsible. So I understand what you're saying, like he did not know or he wasn't facing the consequences when he shoved the guy in the first place. Right, and we're seeing more and more of this, I do believe, you know, where people, whether it's just the stress of living, whether it's feeling overcrowded, whether it's feeling once again that the world is not fair, that all these injustices are happening to me or my kind or my people, you know, whatever it is, it seems that people are more likely to just lash out. And I would say part of it is social norms. We are seeing more and more videos of this.

And it's for the most, for the average person, it's not necessarily going to make them do the same thing. But as social animals, we do mimic the behaviors that we see. So there is a certain proportion of people who will just kind of see this as the norm. And you know, again, they're just not thinking about the consequences in the moment. They're just acting on their impulses in that moment. And again, once again, we are seeing, especially with smartphones, especially with this instant gratification culture that we have right now, that the delaying the gratification, the not

acting on impulses, the trying to regulate your mood and your actions, these are becoming things of the past for more and more people. Dr. Orinamite, thank you so much. We really appreciate your insight today. As always, I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you Ben. Well, one of the conversations that we've been having on this show since we started was the sort of the breaking of the consensus on immigration across this country. It for the for generations, whether you're on the left or on the right, whether you're poor or you're rich, there was generally speaking, everyone agreed that we had a great immigration

system. And it was one of the things that we relied on to build our economy and build our population. In this radio host's humble estimation, that consensus was broken by the previous government. And now it's about rebuilding it in a way that makes sense for Canada of the 21st century. However, there is a new study out of the C.D. Howe Institute that says Canada cannot rely on immigration alone to address the challenges posed by its aging population and relentless decline in fertility rates. That's according to this new report. Without a broader population strategy, rising immigration could fuel rapid growth while straining housing, health care, and infrastructure without fully resolving

rising old age dependency ratios or labor force pressures. So this does not sound like good news to me. This this sounds like a looming storm on the horizon. So here to discuss it with us and break it down is Daniel Hybert, the emeritus professor of geography at the University of British Columbia. Professor, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Okay, so the what I just read was just the top line of this CD Howe Institute study, but it doesn't sound like good news. Well, it's good news if everything goes right. Immigration is done

with very careful foresight. and there's all kinds of additional factors that are brought to play to make sure that it's done properly. So it can be seen as a good news report, but it's more of a sort of call for action to really sort out what Canadians want and then to make that happen. I was always under the impression that to grow the population you had two options. You either did it from rising birth rates or you did it through immigration or a combination of the two. And given the fact that we are just not having kids in Canada right now it looks like we had to put all of our eggs in

the immigration basket. But this study is suggesting that that's unsustainable. So what do we do if we have to grow our population and people don't want to have kids? Yeah, sure. Let me get to that in a second. But can I just emphasize the point that you've already made, which is that there's these two ways of growing a population, natural increase versus immigration. Fertility is so low that natural increase is basically going to be zero for the foreseeable future in Canada.

That means that immigration policy determines so much of Canada's future. If you wanna know how many kindergarten kids are gonna be in Canada, ask immigration. If you wanna know how big is the Canadian labor force gonna be in the future, ask the immigration ministry and so forth. So it's, it's absolutely the foundation now of what Canada's future looks like and the choices that we make on the scale of the immigration program, uh,

determine all kinds of things. Um, so that's, that's sort of question you didn't ask. Okay. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you. You did my job for me. So now the question is, how do you do it smartly? And of course, then then the first question that needs to be answered on what is a smart immigration program is how big should it be? And I really do believe there needs to be a national conversation about this. I don't think that someone who is, say, an expert can walk in and give a magic number. I think Canadians have to face the hard issues that are out there in terms of what an aging society looks like, in terms of the kinds of labor market shortages that arise and so forth. Face these hard issues and make a decision.

How big should it be? And then the second question should be, once we know the size, what kind of configuration should it have? What is the best ratio, for example, of economic immigrants to family folks and refugees and so forth? So tough questions need to be asked and need to be really debated nationally, in my opinion. I agree with you. And I like to look at every crisis like an opportunity and the fact that the consensus was broken and we got immigration wrong for so long, that gives us the opportunity to take it down to the studs and build something even better for the future.

Yep, I would completely agree with that. And again, it's gotta be this mix of, let's get the facts right, and at the same time, let's think about what the vision of Canada should be. So it's an economic question, it's also a political question, it's a social question. It's a really big issue. Well, yeah, absolutely.

But what you said before about having really tough conversations, we have to be honest with ourselves. We have to be willing to say the tough things about what hasn't worked. And we have to be able to say the things that might offend people because it's not a politically correct conversation to have given who we are as a nation and what we've prided ourselves on. Multiculturalism is our strength, our diversity is our strength.

Well, we may have gone down a road where we have tested that theory, stress tested it a little too hard. And we might have to come back and say, all right, are we bringing people in from the right parts of the world that allow for social cohesion? We have to have that conversation. All those issues have to be on the table. As you say, we have to face the tough questions now. Is this something that can be built on the fly? I mean, we meet people coming in at a

fairly regular clip. Is this something that we can build bit by bit or does an immigration policy have to be created and dropped in fully formed? It's a great question. You do have to fix the machine while the machine is running, because you can't just stop it and wait. So that adds to the sort of urgency of this particular issue.

We need to be thinking and doing at the same time. And as you're implying with your question, that makes it much more difficult. Yeah. And when you throw in the fact that each province has a say as well as to who comes in, this is going to be, it has to be a national conversation. It has to happen at various levels of government. I have to assume cities like Toronto have to be involved as well because people, places like Toronto are stretched beyond their capacity as it relates to social services, hospitals, schools.

So this is not a small conversation. It's probably, now that I've had this conversation with you, I'm realizing it's probably one of the most important and biggest conversations that we're going to have as a nation. Absolutely. And do you have time for me to give one little example to give people a sense of just the issues that really have to be faced? Professor, I absolutely do. Yeah, okay. So since the current Liberal government got into power back in 2015, we've seen three different levels of immigration. When they came into power, Canada's immigration rate was about 250,000 a year,

give or take. Then they lifted it between 2015 and last year was the sort of high watermark of immigration to Canada. It was 485,000, let's call it 500,000, let's say it doubled over that period. And then this year they've scaled it back to about 400,000. So that's three different rates of immigration. Now what my study does is it asks the question, what would happen if you extended those same rates 50 years into the future? And I know I'm giving a lot of numbers but I'll just give you three more numbers and I think it really tells a big story.

If Canada stays at the earlier rate, 250,000 immigrants per year, by 2071 we end up with 45 million people. If we go to the rate of last year, the high watermark of immigration, et cetera, et cetera, we end up with 67 million people in 2071. That's a difference of 22 million people. That's half the population of Canada.

So that's a big difference. And it requires tons of forethought, tons of planning, tons of thinking. Thank you so much for joining us. You've given me a lot to think about. I promise you, prior to this conversation, I was not thinking what I'm thinking now. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. When I found out my friend got a great deal on a designer dress from Winners, I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from winners?

Like that woman over there with the Italian leather handbag, is that from winners? Ooh, or that beautiful silk skirt, does she pay full price? Or those suede sneakers? Or that luggage? Or that trench? Those jeans? That jacket? Those heels?

Is anyone paying full price for anything?