The Ben Mulroney Show - Why are Officers in full Uniforms taking a position on the most controversial issue gripping this country?

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Guests and Topics: Why are Officers in full Uniforms taking a position on the most controversial issue gripping this country? 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

BedMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BedMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BedMGM. Download the app today and discover why BedMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BedMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM. A sportsbook worth a slam dunk. An authorized gaming partner of the NBA.

BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA

stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Welcome back to the show and it's time to take your calls at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225 to talk. Let's level set about the tow truck war. Yes, we are speculating that the violence that erupted in Scarborough, where 12 people were injured in a mass shooting, was directly related to the corruption inside the tow truck industry.

But let's just assume that that is the case. And no, this is not a conversation about how every tow truck driver in the city of Toronto is a criminal. They are good and hard working Torontonians trying to provide for their families, but there is a criminal element within that industry. And that is what we are talking about today.

I wanna hear from you. Are you upset or frustrated that this continues? How do you feel living in Scarborough today? Have you been witnessed to or have you availed yourself of a tow truck in the City of Toronto on one of our highways? And did you did you feel intimidated? Were you a subject to price gouging? Let me know your thoughts. 416-870-6400-1888-225-TALK. And I do want to point out as well that in our previous segment, we were talking to a

couple of experts about the city response to something like this. But of course, the province has a role to play as well. And I was talking with somebody inside the Ontario government who said that there was a task force. They brought forth legislation that requires the tow truck drivers to be licensed. It had never happened before in Ontario.

It did tamp down on violence for a few years, but then something happened and the gangs sort of ratcheted things up. Why don't we listen to Doug Ford, the Ontario Premier, about how he sees the lay of the land and what needs to happen moving forward. These tow truck drivers, a message to you, it has to come to an end.

You're putting the community in danger, flying bullets around. We're gonna catch you. You're gonna go to jail jail and you're going to jail for a long time, you know, this is out of control right now. There's a lot of great hardworking tow truck drivers that work their backs off, they want to bring a paycheck home, they want to pay rent or pay a mortgage. Guys get your head around this. You start shooting, you talk about in tow truck

words the heat coming down, the heat's just turned up a thousand degrees on each and every one of you. I will spend anything I can to put an end to this, make sure we give the resources to the OPP and regional police to bring you guys down and bring you down quickly. And it's not all tow truck drivers, they're good hard-'s not all tow truck drivers. They're good, hardworking people, these tow truck drivers. There's a few bad apples, but those apples we're gonna catch

and they're going into the slammer. Gosh, I like to hear what politicians talk this way. Call me crazy, but I like clarity on some issues that really demand and require it. Do you believe that the police have taken this seriously enough? We know that there are manpower issues at the Toronto Police Service. However, have they done what they need to do? Should there be an immediate revoking of a company license if one or more of the drivers

is found to be part of a criminal organization. I want to hear from you at 416-870-6400, 1-888-225-TALK. You know, like I said, I don't know enough about this. I'm learning about this in real time as many of our listeners are, but this is such a, to me, this is such a big problem that if solved would drop the rate of violence with guns in our city precipitously. It would make people feel immediately more safe. And you know, the worst thing has to be when you are on the side of the road in the middle of the night with a car requiring service and a tow truck shows up and with this violence as a backdrop you wonder is this person here to help me or are they here to harm me? And that has got to be such a feeling of helplessness that I would I shudder to think people in

the city ever have to experience. It's you know you just want to get home and you have a blown tire and And next thing you know, well, who knows what happens? And I'd love to hear from our listeners if they've ever been put in that position. But this is, to me, we talk about it all the time. The Toronto Police Service has a very difficult time retaining talent. They hire people and then life gets too expensive

and they don't live anywhere near the place they're policing and so they are in a car stuck in traffic on their way into the city and so they decide to leave for greener pastures and they decide to become police officers elsewhere closer to home where the pay is higher where the risks aren't as high where you don't have to deal with the violence associated with the tow truck wars and and so we don't have the people on the ground in Toronto that we need to deal with this. Possibly that can be, that can be equaled out by the OPP working as part of a joint task force.

But this to me, I mean, 20 years of this, it seems to me like if we dealt with this one issue, this one problem, so many other problems would go away or would become more manageable. Most notably, gun violence in the city. I'd like to remind you, 15, one five, tow truck related shootings so far in 2025. We're mid-March now, guys. That's 70% of the shootings in the city so far in 2025. We're mid-March now guys. That's 70% of the shootings

in the city so far this year. There were 63 of them last year. That was 15% of all shooting incidents. This is a problem that if we dealt with head on and crushed, the city would absolutely be safer. David, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Absolutely. I think that if they're more selective in who gets licensure for the roads

like they did on the highways, all this will stop. Yeah. Or dramatically. Yeah, well I- If it's okay, I can tell my story. I had an accident on the 401 and these two tow truck drivers came. Yeah, well, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, for is to get your car towed so you can go about your life. And look, maybe the licensing itself needs to be reevaluated. Maybe whatever benchmarks people need to clear in order to get their

license needs to be completely overhauled so that it's not as simple as do you own a tow truck and do you not have a criminal record? But like doing a far more scrutiny laden deep dive into who they are and what their business associations are. Thank you so much for that call. Mark, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. How you know Ben's story doesn't bother you? You're not bothering me, my friend. Okay, look, I'm 72. And one thing I don't really understand is why motorcycle gangs haven't been mentioned along with the tow trucks, which was a given years ago. And personally, I live in Burlington.

I'm not going to mention the tow truck company. I'm only two blocks away from it. And I was selling my motorcycle a couple years ago and I found out all this true to truck drivers that both ride and so on and they were both members of clubs, which I'm not going to mention. But how come this hasn't been brought up? I don't understand it. Yeah, well, thank you so much.

Yeah, I have to assume that there are a lot of criminal organizations that have varying degrees of involvement within this industry. And it wouldn't surprise me if motorcycle gangs played a part as well. But thank you for that call. And we got time for one more call before the break. Adam, welcome to the show. Yeah.

So this is not about toe toeing. No, this is about gun running. They're the guys who do the gun running in Ontario. Okay. And the only thing that will stop this is if the federal government will go to the Americans and say, you have to take all of ask us nasty because that's where the guns come over the border. If you were worried about fentanyl, we're worried about guns.

And this is the solution that that reservation has to sit either inside of America or inside of Canada, but it cannot, it can't go over the border. And that's going to never happen. You think that that's, that's the nexus point that is causing all this trouble? The sort of the police. Yeah. They say it straight up. That's why he was very, very, what was it called? Mick Kryptick when he was talking about we need to get our partners. And no one knew what he was really talking about. That's what he was talking about. Well, Adam, thank you so much for adding that to the conversation. We appreciate it. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. I started last segment by level setting.

I wanted to make sure that we had a proper level headed conversation. I want to do the same thing here. There is some audio and some video of two Toronto police officers that is making the rounds on social media. And they went onto a podcast in full uniform with the TPS logo emblazoned on the table in front of them. And they had some opinions that, while I have no doubt they have the right to have,

certainly aren't shared by all Torontonians. And because they were in uniform, it made me wonder, are they conveying that perhaps this looks like it might be the opinion of Toronto Police Service? Let's listen to their perspective on how one labels the protests that have gripped our city for a year and a half. I was well aware, and that is something

that we celebrate in Canada, the freedom of speech. However, when we have somebody labeling a certain group as something they're not, all of a sudden now it becomes when there's an Islamic, some phobic undertone. If someone is calling a Palestinian rally, a Hamas rally, then all of a sudden people start getting afraid. And they think, Oh, wow, these are people that support an entity that's been labeled as a terrorist organization. However, the people that are there protesting, they're there for a different cause altogether.

So then that becomes active discrimination when you classify an entire group with a group that they don't even identify with. So that's the challenge. And it creates fear, right? So I don't know these officers, but I have been told by people, someone who knows them,

that they are good and honorable men. And I have the utmost respect for anyone who puts on a police uniform to defend our streets. So that's where I'm coming from here. And I wanna make sure I do not turn up the temperature, but I wanna hear from you at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. I take great exception to the logic that they follow in this conversation

to to suggest that that to expound on freedom of speech, but then suggest that someone's characterization of those of those protests as islamophobic seems very much do as I say, not as I do. And having spoken to a great number of Jewish Torontonians,

it is the protesters that have made them feel unsafe, not the characterization of the protests as pro-Hamas protests. And when I have heard enough people chanting what I feel are hate-filled statements against Jews, not against Israel, against Jews, citizens of this city. And to me, the criticism of the protests is absolutely misplaced. And so I appreciate that they had a level-headed conversation. It was not in anger.

It was rational. And I really do appreciate that if the conversation is gonna happen, I would love to talk to these police officers because they seem like level-headed individuals. There are certain people in this debate I cannot talk to because they go to the simple act of disagreeing with them, turns them up to 11 and they see red and you cannot talk to them. I would absolutely love to talk to these officers. But they go on and talk about how October 7th was a turning point for Islam.

It's funny you say this because through social media, a lot of people after October 7th started learning about Islam. They did, yeah. And they said, okay, what is it with the religion that everyone, why is it so hated? You know what I mean? Why are they being attacked all the time? So people say, you know what, let me learn about Islam and there have been a lot of reverts through this whole problem. I would, I couldn't imagine, like, I guess, I guess when you're on social media, most of the feeds come through you once you see one, it just keeps coming, but the amount of people that are reverting to Islam is unbelievable and

they're just, I guess through education, right? They're actually educating themselves and saying, what is it that Muslims are being targeted? And why are they being targeted? With absolute respect to these police officers, October 7th was a wake up call for many people who either didn't know or had forgotten that Hamas is a group of barbarian rapists. And anybody who used that moment as an opportunity to revert and ask themselves why are Muslims persecuted when we have witnessed and ask themselves why are Muslims persecuted when we have witnessed the explosion of anti-Semitism

by over 200% in this city, when we have seen Jewish schools shot up, where we have seen protesters descending on residential areas of this city specifically to make Jews feel unsafe with all due respect to these police officers. I don't know where you're looking, but as police officers who are sworn to protect the city, I feel that you are looking at this through a keyhole as opposed to looking at what is what is happening to our city. Where are the people feeling unsafe? Who are the victims here? What is happening to our city? Where are the people feeling unsafe? Who are the victims here? Who were the victims on October 7th? And again, I appreciate that you're

being thoughtful and considerate and not ratcheting up the heat and the rhetoric with your conversation. But I'm not quite sure what the purpose of that podcast was, if not to confuse victims of antisemitism who have been victims of antisemitism since October 7th. Let's welcome Mike to the show. Yeah, good morning, Ben. Good morning, Mike.

First of all, both the officers should be suspended. These rallies are obviously pro-Hamas. They're not a rally where they had an effigy of a slain Hamas leader at one of the pro-Palestinian rallies? Well, there have been a number organized by different groups and organizations. And look, some have been populated by very good people, but that doesn't change the fact that by and large, there has been an incitement at a lot of them. The loudest voices are those calling for the destruction of Israel and death to Jews and death to Canada.

So I don't care if you go there with pure intent. If you're there with people who are calling for death and destruction, that's what we have to focus on. You have to focus on the most extreme parts. That's the point. Absolutely. And I have no idea what their motivation was, but their information in the podcast was so biased. And like you said, it's going to encourage or enable individuals who have violent intentions. Now, that's saying, I mean, I refer back to the cops. What was it last year, buying them all coffee

or whatever, something like that. Yeah, well, yeah, I think that was, I think they were just bringing them a coffee. I don't think they should have done that. But look, I'm sorry, when I see these protests pop up across the city with impunity, I'm not seeing people feeling unsafe. I'm seeing people emboldened to take over our street,

cause chaos, and make others feel unsafe. I am not seeing people feeling persecuted. I am feeling people, yes, who are angry, but they are directing that anger with the goal of making Jews feel unsafe. And as police officers dressed up in the garb of the people sworn to protect all Torontonians, I believe it missed the mark. At Desjardins, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets.

And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do, business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk. Business.