The Ben Mulroney Show - Why are so many people dying in our jails?

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Why are so many people dying in Ontario Jails? with Guest: Brendan Kennedy, Toronto Star Investigative Reporter -Our Weekly history lesson with Guest: Craig Baird, Host of Canadian History Ehx -When construction hurts small business with Guest: Christian Rankin, Co-owner of Obladee Wine Bar 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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BenMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And you know, whenever we have conversations about crime in Canada and bail reform and, you know, this hug a thug and all that stuff, I think sometimes we stop short because we don't look at the entire problem. And I've been guilty of that myself, that, oh, just keep them in jail. Why are they getting out? And so I think it's important to highlight the hard work of investigative journalists who try to give us at least one part of a larger picture. And so today I'm really happy to have Toronto Star investigative reporter Brendan Kennedy

on the show. He's written a couple of really interesting stories about Ontario's jails and the quality of life inside these jails and how overcrowded they can be how violent they can be and how unless that is part of the solution, finding a solution for those things, we are never going to come up with a holistic approach to making the entire system better. So Brendan, thank you. Welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Okay, so talk to me about these two pieces. You wrote one called Ontario's jails are deadlier than ever. And this one is the worst in every respect. And then another one, she thought leaving her nephew in jail will get him clean, his fatal overdose, raises hard questions about how drugs get inside. So why did you want to spend so much time focusing on Ontario jails?

Well, you know, I think that my reporting on this goes back a while. But mainly, you know, there's been a lot of conversation about, as you said in the opening, bail reform and, you know, putting people away who commit crimes or who are charged with crimes, I should say. And, you know. And the reality is that the jail system in Ontario is arguably at a breaking point or at a crisis point. Almost all of the jails are

overcrowded to some extent, some of them by almost 50 percent. So Maple you know, Maplehurst, which is the focus of the first story, in December, which is the data that I have, it was at 144 percent capacity. So, I want to drill down into it, but I do want to give people, and I'm going to ask you to sort of paint this very sad and sorry picture for me in a moment, but I think it's really important to level set with the listeners. Before you go into that description. They should know that the majority of people in who are in an Ontario jail and specifically Maplehurst

are at least by the legal definition not guilty at this point. They've been charged but they have not been found guilty of anything. Not, by the way, not that that way if they were found guilty, that we should expect them to live in such squalor. But it is an important distinction. So now that people know that, tell us what Maplehurst is like. Yeah, it's a very good point. Roughly three quarters of all inmates in provincial jails are on remand, meaning they're awaiting trial, they've been charged, but they haven't been convicted. And they're legally and presumed innocent. So Maplehurst is one of the province's largest jails, it's in Milton and it is the most overcrowded jail and also,

you know, I would say not coincidentally, it is the jail where there have been the most inmate deaths for several years now. And the first story focused on the fact that last year there was a record tying number of inmate deaths of 46 inmates died in custody in provincial jails last year. And that's the same number that died in 2021, which was a record high. Yeah. 2021, which was a record high. Yeah. And in the interim years, it was the next most number of deaths.

So, you know, we know that the jails that are the most overcrowded, you know, this is where there's a lot of triple bunking happening. And because of understaffing issues, inmates are locked in their cells for long stretches when they normally would be allowed out of the cell onto the unit. So, you know, I think Maplehurst is one of the worst examples of what happens when the conditions

in jails deteriorate to this point. And for several years now, judges have been criticizing the government and calling on them to take action. And know as a result sometimes when guys are sentenced they actually get a reduced sentence because of the conditions and yeah so I mean this is happening across the province, Maplehurst is only the worst example but the overcrowding issue is happening everywhere, the deaths are happening everywhere and I think it's important for people to realize, like when they talk about, you know, locking more guys up in jail, not bail. At some point, there's a capacity issue.

And that's and before we move to the next story, and I don't have a lot of time left, but I would like to address that one question I think a lot of people would have in this moment, like what's stopping the province from building either more jails or more capacity at the jails that we have? Yeah, I mean, this government has has promised to build more jails. I mean, you can't build them overnight. And then the need is pressing now. Yeah. I mean, I think other people would argue that there do not have to be this number of people in jail, you know, like we

talked about earlier that three quarters are presumed innocent, they're on remand, we have never had this percentage of people on remand in jail before. Okay. You know, there's a lot of talk about how, you know, there's been some high profile cases where people who have gotten bail to have committed serious crimes. And that's obviously awful, but the- But you're saying the stats don't bear it out. We were at a point where it's almost 80% on remand.

That's never happened in the province's history. Yep. Brendan, I don't have a lot of time left and I really do want to get to this really sad story because I used to hear the expression, maybe a night in jail will scare him straight. That was something I used to hear all the time and maybe that's what this this this woman was thinking when she thought leaving her Nephew in jail would help him get clean and that didn't happen. So tell us this story

Yeah, so the main driver of the increase in jail deaths are accidental drug overdoses and You know some people like this this woman that I spoke to, she had bailed her nephew out before. He had committed a lot of petty crimes. And on this case she thought that you know he couldn't seem to get clean. He was addicted to crystal meth and opioids. And she thought that you know if was in jail, at least he wouldn't be able to use drugs. He would have three square meals. And she had this idea that there would be some safety in jail. And what ended up happening was that her nephew, Theo, tragically died of a fentanyl overdose

in his cell at the Toronto South Detention Center. And, you know, I think she was shocked to learn the extent to which drugs were available in jail. And there's, you know, I think she was shocked to learn the extent to which drugs were available in jail. Uh, and there's, you know, uh, the story goes into how drugs get in and that kind of thing. But, um, you know, I think a lot of people have this idea that, um, you know, that, that, that the jails are a place where, um, you know, you can, like I said earlier, kind of get square three square meals and, and you'll be taken care of, but of. But that's really not the case. These are places where inmates

are dying at record numbers. And the conditions are such that have been described as deplorable and inhumane and, you know, unworthy of us as a society. One judge said. Brendan, we're going to leave it there. But I hope the next time a story like this comes up or when we need to talk about, you know, this type of thing, I hope you'll be open to coming back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Absolutely, thanks for having me. Thanks for the interest in the story.

Hi, I'm Donna Friesen from Global National. Life moves fast these days and we wanna make it even easier for you to get the news you need. That's why you can now get Global National every day as a podcast. The biggest stories of the day with analysis from award-winning global news journalists. New episodes drop every day. So take this as your personal invitation to join us on the Global National podcast. You can find it on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite

podcasts. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And I got to say, the more segments I do with this next guest, the more I appreciate the value that he brings to the Ben Mulroney show. I'm talking, of course, about Craig Baird. He's the host of Canadian History X. And gosh, I learned so much about our Canadian history that more of us should know about with every passing week. Craig, welcome back to the show and thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me. So today we're talking about the 1872 election and you're going to talk about how it spawned one of the biggest scandals in Canadian history but based on what I've read and you're going to give us so much more color but based on on what I've read, what I'm beginning to appreciate is, you know, I think Canadians probably have this false sense, because we don't know enough about our own history, that Canada was created, and there you go, there it was. Right?

But it was actually in a precarious position for quite a while. Like the idea that we could just go in and build the railroads, we must have been able to do it because look, we said it happened and it happened. But it was a hard fought battle and it played out over many, many years. And the leadership of visionaries

like Sir John A. MacDonald almost manifested it and willed it into being. So talk to me about, with that as color, talk to me about the 1872 election, what was unique about it and what and willed it into being so talk to me about with that as color talk to me about the 1872 election what was unique about it and what was the scandal well 1872 election was very interesting because you know when we vote today obviously we have you know early voting that you can do advanced voting and such but this election actually lasted for three months and that's not like the campaign is Yeah, voting lasted for three months. And you know, different spots would open up.

So what the conservatives under Sir John A. MacDonald would do is they would open polls in areas where they knew they could win. And then by doing that, they could kind of like show that they were doing really well and then hoped that in the tougher areas, people would vote for conservatives because they were seeing that the conservatives were winning. Now whether that was the case or not, I don't know. But you know what? I mean the modern day analogy is how we've banned exit polls so you can't influence the

people who would be coming in after you and it's why we don't announce any of the poll data until the polls close in British Columbia, because prior to that, if you found out how people voted in Quebec and Ontario, by and large, that could tell you whether or not the election was even worth you going to the polls at all. Yeah, it would definitely influence whether, yeah, you want to, if you saw that, like, say, the liberals or the conservatives had a landslide, then you might think, well, why do I even bother going to the poll? Exactly.

Because who I'm voting for isn't going to win. But one thing that really set this apart was that they didn't have secret ballots. This is something we take for granted now. But back then, you would actually walk in and you would say, I'm voting for the conservative candidate or the liberal candidate. And that allowed your employer to say, I want you to vote for this person. And then the employer had people there to make sure you actually voted for them. Do you know when secret ballots became the norm in Canada? Yeah, it's actually in the following election.

1874 was the first election. So it's nice to see. We learn from our mistakes. That's a nice thing to learn. But yeah, I didn't even know like one of the things I learned from you is there was in the first election, there was an anti-Confederation party. Was that a party that was actively trying to break up the Upper and Lower Canada? I was more trying to just get Nova Scotia out of Confederation.

And they were mostly just elected in Nova Scotia. And then by the 1872 election, they were long gone. Okay. So what were some of the other factors at play? Like, what were some of the issues in this election? Well the main issue was the fact that British Columbia had joined Confederation and we'd made the promise to build the railroad which then led to the Pacific scandal that happened the following year because Sir Hugh Allen gave $350,000 to

Sir John A. MacDonald and a bunch of other conservative candidates to help them on their campaign in exchange for getting the railroad contract. And that actually led to the fall of Sir John A. McDonald's government in 1873, bringing in Alexander McKenzie and the Liberal Party who would then rule for the next six years. Yeah. I mean, I find all of this so fascinating. And it's again, you paint such an incredible picture. But it would I would just love if somebody would take

some of these stories and give us visual versions of them because the Americans are so good at telling, now in a lot of ways, the stories that they tell that way are fiction, but there's a myth building that happens in the States that we just don't have here. So I'm glad that you are contributing in your own way to that. But let's move on to another story,

a look at the life of Emily Carr. Who is Emily Carr? Emily Carr was, in my opinion, probably the greatest painter that Canada has ever produced. But she was somebody who didn't get the recognition she deserved till well late into life. I mean, she didn't have her first real solo show

until the 1930s and you know only ten years before she died and now she's you know she's celebrated across Canada but during her life she really struggled to be noticed apart from other artists who saw her talent and genius and tried their best to get her her work out to the general public but I think she was so far ahead of her time the general public just wasn't ready for her. What made her ahead of her time? Just in how she was bringing things like Impressionism and such to Canada, and she focused on painting First Nation villages and totem poles rather than say Canadian landscapes.

So she just, people just were not ready for that Imp impressionism and the style that she had until well later in life when she finally started to get recognition and started to be appreciated for her artwork. Yeah, and like in Canada, a lot of people know of the concept of the group of seven. My dad was a lover of the group of seven, collected as much of it as he could get his hands on slash afford.

But it says something when a member the group of seven champion her work and became a mentor. Yeah, Lauren Harris was a massive mentor. He saw her genius and he told her you are one of us, which meant a lot to her and actually brought her out of her 15-year retirement from painting because she had dealt with so much criticism of her work but to have other artists, especially artists from the group of seven say you are talented and you are part of us,

really helped her and started a new productive period for her in the late 1920s and through the 1930s. Well let's listen to a clip of Canadian history X and Emily Carr. She had spent years working and studying to perfect her style. She now sought recognition and acceptance. She'd risked everything, but none of that mattered to the critics. Emily wrote that people looked at her paintings and laughed. They said they were the work of a child. Emily wrote in growing pains. Perplexed, angry, they turned away, missing the old detail by which they had been able to find their way in painting. They couldn't see the forest for looking at the trees.

Now not all reviews were bad. The Vancouver Daily World wrote that she had great artistic talent, but the truth is the majority were negative and we always remember the criticism more than the praise. So Emily was devastated and the exhibition failed. She offered to give the new provincial museum all of her paintings, but they refused. The Vancouver schools where she taught refused to employ her and she was only able to keep a few pupils. In 1913, with money running out, she returned to live in Victoria near her sisters.

She wrote in growing pains, Nobody bought my pictures. I had no pupils. Therefore, I could not afford to keep on the studio I decided to give it up to go back to Victoria. My sisters disliked my new work intensely One was noisy in her combination one sulkingly silent one indifferent to every kind of art and for the next 15 years Emily did little she believed her artistic career was a failure Emily did little. She believed her artistic career was a failure. Wow. I mean, I don't know how you find all these people.

And what rises to the level of something that you want to highlight on Canadian History X? Well, I think for somebody like Emily Carr, you know, she is well known today, but I really want to tell the story of how she's well known today. But that was not the case during her life that she faced a lot of criticism and had a lot of difficulty getting her information out. I mean, today she has a minor planet named after her. So we might assume that, oh, well, she, everybody loved her, you know, ever since she started painting and know that that wasn't the case, unfortunately. Lastly, and I don't have a lot of time left, but I'd love to know at what point in your mind does news become history? Like we're like we're living the Canadian election right now. At what point does this

election campaign be something that we view as history? Well with my podcast what I tend to do is I don't cover anything within the last 25 years. Okay. And that gives enough time to kind of create the historical aspect to it. And Craig, remind us, where can we find Canadian History X? You can listen to Canadian History X on the Chorus Radio Network every weekend. Just check your local listings and you can listen on all podcast platforms and that's EHX. I got to tell you, man, I say it a lot. I interview and talk to a lot of people on this show that add value, but no one adds value the way you do. I really appreciate you, man. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me again.

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much for joining us. And if you've listened to the Ben Mulroney show for any meaningful period of time, you know that at any one point, I will be willing to jump into the fray to exalt, support, and defend entrepreneurs, small business owners, people who bet on themselves. And I believe some of the entrepreneurs who jump into the deep end, the hardest part of the entrepreneurial world is hospitality. If you're getting into the food business in any way, those margins are razor thin,

you're making your money in other ways, possibly, most probably through alcohol sales. And so anytime somebody puts a roadblock in front of an entrepreneur, it gets me, it gets my goat, as my dad would say. And I read a story about an owner of a Halifax wine bar, beautifully located on a corner. I mean, to get that corner location,

that's what you want, right? It has been consumed by scaffolding for far too long and it's hurting his business. And so to drill down on this and what it's meant to him and what the path forward is, I'm joined now by the co-owner of Obladi Wine Bar, Christian Rankin. Christian, welcome to the show.

Hi Ben, thanks so much for having me, I appreciate it. So tell me, how long has Obladi been in business? We've been in business since way back in 2010. So it's coming on 15 years for us, yeah. And so I have to assume that at some point times were great. Well, yeah, I mean, we, you know, the business started with myself and my sister, you know, I was visiting her in London, the UK,

we took a little trip to Rome and we were sitting out on the terrace there and we were both looking at what are we gonna do with our lives going forward. And we like, yeah, we really like the idea of entrepreneurialism. And so I was in Halifax, I said, you know, we should do something like this in Halifax.

So, you know, at that time there were, you know, just a handful of wine bars, you know, in the European bottle. Yeah, you got a lot of pubs, a lot of restaurants, not a lot of wine bars. Exactly. So we were bringing something new to Halifax and the first day we had a couple of soft openings

and then everybody was feeling pretty good. And so it was Nocturne, which is a huge art, street art festival in Halifax. And the streets are like New York City on that night. So we said, everybody's feeling pretty good. We'll open the doors. And everybody said, yeah. So, I mean, you literally could not,

you couldn't fit another person in there. So, you know, it was, you know, super busy for many years. Yeah. Yeah. And then look, you know, the pandemic affected everybody, but the hospitality space just shut down. You've got high taxes. You got the, you know, rents going up. Like there's, there are a lot of roadblocks

that are put in front of entrepreneurs, but at the very least we can say everybody was experiencing those things more or less to the same degree. You've been experiencing a problem that is unique to the O'Bloody Wine Bar, where for some reason, and you can explain it to me, scaffolding went up around the entire corner of your building, and perhaps the entire building. Why and how long ago was why did that go up? And how long has it been up? Yeah, so this has been up there since Canada Day weekend in 2020 23. So it's coming on two years.

Wait, hold on. It scaffolding has gone up. It's been there for two almost two years. That's right. And I've seen the images. It looks, I mean, it looks terrible. Well, it looks like an abandoned building. And it pains me to say that because, you know, we're in the experience business, we're trying to draw people here based on beauty and so on. And, you know, this is about, you know, the worst thing that you can possibly imagine to look at. So, but, you know, we got to bring attention to it because there's just no other way.

So, yeah, from what I understand, and I'm speaking with Christian Rankin, the co-owner of O'Bloody Wine Bar in Halifax, talking about how his business has been affected by a confluence of bad luck and possibly, you know, bad city policy. We'll talk about that in a moment. But the bad luck is that something fell off the building. And then for safety reasons, the city put up scaffolding, and the owner was supposed to fix it. And the owner sadly passed away. And because of that, you're in sort of this legal limbo, not knowing who is accountable for the building. Is that correct?

Well, yeah, that's that's that's sort of that's a brief synopsis, I would say. But, you know, we have HRM, their Halifax regional municipality, I would say. But, you know, we have HRM, the Halifax Regional Municipality, the Compliance Department. And so they ordered the building owner at that time to immediately fix the facade, put the scaffolding up just as overhead protection while the work was going on. Which is fair. You know, this is, you know, that's totally fine. That work was supposed to take, you

know, about a month, month and a half maybe. And so what happened is, you know, over the, I guess, the construction period from July on to December, nothing much happened, at least nothing happened to, to satisfy the, the order that the city had put in. And unfortunately, as you mentioned, the property owner did die on Christmas day, sadly, of 2023. And then his sister and his wife, they assumed the role of taking over the companies, including this building. So at that point in time, Halifax, they have now issued a total of four orders that all have the same work required in them.

And nothing has happened against those orders. So I gotta ask, is there any teeth behind these orders? Are they just like saying, hey, you gotta get back to work? Or are they saying, if you don't get back to work, here are the consequences that you will assume? Well, you know, this is the very peculiar thing about this situation. You know, I'm looking at these orders and there's no, there's no escalation involved in this. It's more or less repeating what's, what's required. And so, you know, we had a, you know, I would call it a positive meeting with the mayor of Halifax yesterday and his staff when we've asked them to give us what are the enforcement

mechanisms that Halifax has. I presume there are some. And part B to that question is why aren't they being used? Yeah. Look, in a world of carrots and sticks, if somebody doesn't respond to that question is, why aren't they being used? Yeah, look, in a world of carrots and sticks, if somebody doesn't respond to the first stick, you bring out a bigger stick. I mean, that's a pretty simple, that's how I understand the world to be.

And if they keep bringing back the same stick and nothing happens, then that's on the city. But I wanna bring this back to you, Christian, and the O'Bloody Wine Bar. How has this affected your business? Well, I mean, every day we're losing we're losing customers every single day. You know, we've gone to seasons with with no patio when that's, you know, as everybody knows, that's,

that's pretty important. Pretty crucial. So, you know, in your preamble here to the to this segment, you know, you did mention that, you know, it's a high, it's a low margin, and, you know, you need lots of volume to make even make that low margin. And, you know, as everybody's aware, you know, we're in a period of economic upheaval here. So all the winds are going in the wrong direction. So this is, you know, it's it's it's fatal for what we're doing. And if we weren't, you know, yeah, so doggedly determined, out of out of out of business long ago. And that that's the part of the what I was saying, the

entrepreneurial spirit, you're either born with it or not. Like for some people, the risk of doing what you've done is just too great. I know I don't have the stomach for it. That's why I champion it in others. But I have to assume if there's anything that could have been done from your end, you you you would have done it already. So I'm pretty sure you've done everything that you can to move this forward. What like what are what options are on the table? Do you if this doesn't get resolved? At what point does it become is there a red line that if you cross it, oh, bloody more or oh bloody is no more in this location well I explained it like this so let me just say that this morning I produced and got I got somebody to quote on the work of

the building myself yeah and that written quote was delivered to Halifax Regional Municipality and the property owner today. So there it is. It's a four-week project. So, you know, for us, if we have 15,000 people, you know, through our social media posts and comments who are saying universally, not only is this unacceptable to do this to Obladi, but it's also that sidewalk belongs to the city and we don't want it there. Yeah. This looks like hell and you know there's absolutely no reason it should stay there. So for us in the face of all of this if it's if there's no path for our government to actually you know

do a little teeny tiny project here for the public good, then, you know, I think we really have to, we're not going to be able to, to persevere here. Well, frankly, why would we? And Christian, I want to thank you for joining us today. I want to thank you for sticking it out. And you know, if we can bring some attention to it, maybe this is, you know, the plight of O'Bloody Wine Bar. I don't know that the Halifax wants that black eye of watching a business go away over something that they could have fixed So here's hoping we keep the pressure on. I wish you the very best

Thanks so much. I really appreciate you taking the time 911 what's your emergency Thursday's on global? The most intense season yet continues. She's a damn serial killer. We're gonna find her. Trump was hauling 22 million killer bees. So be NATO. He's breathing but barely.

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