The Ben Mulroney Show - Why do politicians have their head in the sand about the guns used in crimes

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Why do politicians have their head in the sand about the guns used in crimes -TDSB field trip to rally compromised 'emotional safety of some Jewish students,' report says with Guest: Rich Robertson, B'nai Brith Canada's Director of Research and Advocacy 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 and our previous segment we were giving you the most up to date information we have on the man shot outside Terminal one departures level of Pearson International Airport. The organization within the police that investigates this the SIU is special investigations unit is on on top of that. And as soon as they have some information, they will start answering the questions that so many of us have. Not the only file open for the SIU, they are looking into a shooting that occurred of a 16 year old boy by the Toronto police over a routine traffic stop in North York on Sunday.

So they stopped a car. I told them six people were in the vehicle when the police pulled it over. There is body cam footage of the entire incident. And based on the information we have right now, it sounds that as the officers, well, they can be seen pulling the latch on the front passenger seat to fold it over to allow the occupants in the back to get out.

A young woman exits the vehicle first, and then soon after, a man who is seated in the back appears to lurch forward, pull out a gun, and fire toward the officer. The officer can be seen immediately backing away from the car before firing multiple rounds at the vehicle, shouting, gun, gun, gun. Turns out that this guy, this kid was 16. And Toronto mayor, Olivia Chow, says that the city needs to work harder to keep guns out of the hands of teenagers.

And do we have audio of what she had to say? Let's listen. It's a 16 year old. They don't need a gun. And where are these guns coming from? Right? A lot of them are American guns. So we have to double our effort in keeping young people off gang activities or using violent

kind of life and keep guns out of their hands. No, keep guns out of Toronto. Yeah, I mean, this is a reality that we've been living with for a very long time. And I'm not trying to be cute here. I'm not trying to make everything political, but it just so happens that just around the corner, there is a federal election, and crime has been something that the conservatives

have been talking about for a while, making our streets safer. And if not for nothing, I would like to know who the police associations in big cities across Canada are supporting. And by and large, they are supporting the Conservatives plan to make our streets safer. So look, that's it for me. That's the solution. The police tell me our streets, Pierre says the streets aren't safe. We know the streets aren't safe. He says, here's my plan to make them safer.

And the people who are entrusted to make our streets safer say the conservatives will make our streets safer. But I wanna hear from you at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. We know where the guns are coming from. 6400 or one triple eight two two five talk. We know where the guns are coming from. We have to do a better job at cracking down. Yes, on illegal guns.

There appears to be a plan to beef up security at our borders because we've been far too lax for far too long at border security. It's something that we haven't cared about. Instead of going after them, we go up against legal gun owners. I am sure that if you drill down into the numbers, you're gonna find some sort of violent interaction between citizens that involves a legal gun.

But is that the problem plaguing our cities? Absolutely not. I hear the liberals chirping all the time that the conservatives wanna bring American gun laws to Canada. That is a lie you are being lied to and if you believe that I don't know that I can help you. It is factually incorrect and the gun laws that the the the the liberals have brought in have done nothing to make us safer. In fact, I would argue they've made us less safe because we are not having an honest conversation

about where the guns are coming from. It's this performative nonsense of banning legal guns by responsible gun owners. Every single one of those guns that they're banning, or most of the guns that they've banned, we know who owns them. In order to own them, you have to get a license and you got to be trained. And most of those people are hunters or enthusiasts or people for whom guns are part of their their cultural legacy. The gun problem that we have is illegal guns coming from the United States and we have not done enough and everybody knows it and when people tell you that they have done enough or that the Tories are the problem,

you are being lied to. Dean, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Yeah, good morning. Good morning. We have a 193-page legislation document, the Firearms Act, and it's 193 pages of rules, regulations, storage requirements, all the rest of that, all targeting licensed gun owners, 2.3 million of us. We have been vetted by the government, tested by the government. We are, we are subject to the continuous eligibility process. Every 24 hours we get checked by the government. We are not the problem. The continued bans that they're wasting money on, they've wasted millions of dollars on all these bans and haven't collected a single gun yet. Yeah. And which means that you are in possession of illegal guns now.

Well we have a great spirit because they haven't arranged these things to allow us to turn them in. But all that is being wasted. That is wasted money and resources. It could be going after the criminals and the smugglers and all the rest of that. Yeah. It's the waste focusing on us. And Dean, like everything's binary, right? For every minute a politician spends focusing on one thing, that's a minute that they're not spending on something else.

It's about priorities, right? And their priority has been going after people who are not a problem when there is a very real problem that we should be focused on. And meanwhile, this is what I find offensive, in this election campaign, rather than ever say, you know what, we didn't do it right, we're wrong, we're gonna tweak it, we're gonna pivot,

they're doubling down on the BS and doubling down on the fear-mongering saying, oh, you know what Pierre's going to do? He's going to bring American style gun laws to Canada. He's going to do no such thing. And they should be ashamed of themselves for doing that. And thanks so much for the call.

Annabelle, welcome to the show. Hi, yeah, these are illegally owned guns. These are not legally owned guns that are causing me death. I am absolutely heartbroken. I saw the video of that poor 16-year-old child doing the dumbest thing possible he could possibly do. But again, he's a kid. They're just such a heartbreaking accident that easily could have been avoided. If we can't keep the if we can't

keep them from coming over the boards we've got to do more work to keep them from coming in. A legally owned handgun in the you're not allowed to take it anywhere from it has to be in its case yeah until you're at the gun range and then and only then can you remove it. And Annabel, that's that you're highlighting a very good point. I don't like being talked to like I'm an idiot. And when I hear from certain politicians saying, touting their success and how against gun violence they are by targeting people who aren't responsible for gun violence. And then when somebody presents a plan for really addressing gun violence that is endorsed

by police associations across the country, that they poo poo that and say, Oh, Oh, be afraid of this guy because he's Donald Trump. You are not serious people. This is a serious problem that deserves serious accountability. And there is none coming from the Liberal Party of Canada. Vassal, welcome to the show. Hi, always enjoy listening to you. Thank you. So again, you're you're right on the mark here.

The this whole election, the liberals, it's a fear campaign. Yeah. Fear of Donald Trump, fear of the conservatives, fear of Pierre Paul. Yeah, Pierre Paul Yeah, is this evil guy who's gonna let guns run rampant? But they're it's all fake. Yeah, they're not dealing the real issue The real issue is the illegal gun. The real issue is not the legal gun owners who are responsible You don't hear these stories about someone who is a hunter going into a school and shooting everyone up.

Yeah. Now there was, listen, we had the problem in École Polytechnique and that has been used as cover by the Liberals. Every single year they raise the specter of that tragedy to pursue their ideological witch hunt against legal gun owners. That tragedy was terrible. It would be nice if we knew that Mark Carney actually knew anything about that tragedy because the first time he brought it up he got the name of the school wrong. But it's a level of misdirection that I find really insulting to we don't have a legal gun problem in this country. We have an illegal gun problem and the the liberals

have been focused exclusively on the legal side. Dan, welcome to the show. Good morning, Ben. Morning. These all the politicians except on the conservatives, I gotta say, like you've just stated are liars. They're outright liars and manipulators. They know the statistics. All the police chiefs across Canada have told them the statistics on legal gun ownership and where all the gun crimes and murders and homicides are happening from. It's illegal guns from the state.

The liberals for 10 years have spent over $2 billion. It's at $2.2 billion now. What I'd love to know is ask Olivia Chow straight to her face, would she prefer to have a billion dollars to allocate more cops to do, you know, all those stupid basketball courts that don't do anything. She could let's put basketball courts on every square foot of Toronto if she wants, but at least she'll have the money instead of wasting it on the gun registry that just harasses legal gun owners and hunters. Yeah, well, listen, Dan, thank you so much for your call.

I wanna thank everybody for engaging in this conversation. It's a problem that whoever becomes our prime minister is gonna have to address, and here's hoping they actually, for the first time, address it. Hi, I'm Donna Friesen from Global National. Life moves fast these days, address it. 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 Mulrooney show and the numbers have been telling us that this is really a tale of two visions for the

country that appeal to completely different people the conservatives have locked down the youth vote and the liberals have the boomers. That's the top-level stuff, the top line stuff. But now I'm reading that two-thirds of Canadians said that they viewed relations between liberals and conservative supporters as either somewhat or very bad with responses holding steady across all regions of the country. So conservatives and liberals, typically we don't see eye to eye, but we can have a conversation. And it's getting to the point where frustration is building up on both sides of the political

fence and we're viewing the person on the other side as actively working against our interests. And it's causing problems in relationships. And so I want to hear from you at 146-870-6400 or one triple eight, two, two, five talk. Are you in this camp? Have you lost respect for people who are voting differently than you?

Are you angry at somebody with whom you have a positive relationship because they are going to vote Against the party that you support tell me and what's it be? What's how are you going to try to rebuild those relationships? Or are you someone who like myself is gonna I'm gonna fight tooth and nail to convince people using words I'd rather not shut them out and at some point this election will be and we're going to have to go back to live in our lives. So Julius, welcome to the show.

Hey, Ben. Good morning. Good morning. Long time listener, first time caller. Thank you. My fiance, she is torn because her parents have been traditionally liberal. But I have shown her the

The green the folly of her ways Yeah uh with all the facts and you know the the peer videos and now she's porn she's like she's always voted liberal, but And she doesn't want me looking differently at her if she votes differently, but you know, I still love her no matter what. Yeah no but listen love love Trump's everything hopefully but but can you understand the how where people are coming from that they're actually quite angry I understand when a young person is upset at their parents who say they're gonna support the liberal party. I can understand that.

If you're in the camp that believes that the only way you're ever gonna be able to afford a house is if you vote conservative and things are only gonna get worse because 10 years of history suggest that the next four years won't be that different. I can understand where that resentment will come from. Yeah. Yeah.

We are getting married this year and we have aspirations for home ownership and she is like, you know, she likes everything that Pierre has to offer but you know, it's just that her parents are strictly liberal and she's, that's all that's the only thing she's known in her whole life and it's hard for her to break that, right? Yeah. Well, Julius, I wish you the very best as you embark on your new life as a married man. Congratulations to you. Thank you, Ben. Have a good day.

Thank you. All right, Tom, welcome to the show. You got a conservative sign on your lawn and that rubs somebody the wrong way? I do. I live in Southwestern, Ontario. And yeah, I do. I have a conservative've got their decide and i got a plier in my pocket the three-page fire in my mailbox three-page

fire it's been done i you know i had a print shop and uh... it's there's a boat the uh... be careful who you vote for on the fifth this member he's a i'd have a thought that he's a racist if it even goes park all the neo-nazi far and call him a neo-Nazi. This is a three-page flyer, so this is where we're at these days. Yeah, and all of that, none of that is backed up by fact, I'm sure. I don't know the candidate you're talking about, but we don't live in a world that is

rife with misogynists and sexists and neo-Nazis, and we certainly are not living in a world where those people have managed to clear all the barriers of becoming candidates for a major party. It's, that flyer might as well say, I hope to God the person who reads this is a friggin' idiot because that's the only way that they're gonna believe it. Well, they're hoping I was. Yeah, yeah.

But they're wrong. Yeah. Well, and I'll tell you something, Tom. I would be more open to even to considering voting liberal if they did one thing, just one. I'd like them to get in front of a microphone and apologize for everything they got wrong in the past 10 years. You tell me.

Well, I took it to the, I'm sorry, I took it to his office. Yeah. I took it to his office in St. Thomas. And I took it up there. And I mean, it's got to be bordering on, you know, slander and illegal, almost, right? But the liberals will say, oh, this didn't come from us. Yeah, but you know, when you chum the waters enough with those phrases over the course of a decade, when you chum the waters enough with those phrases over the course of a decade, when you continuously link conservatives and the people associated with them with neo-Nazis falsely, then regular ordinary citizens are going to make that link

themselves in flyers like the one you received. Tom, thank you very much for your call. Rafael, welcome to the show. Hey, hi Ben, it's an honor. Oh, thank you. I'm a 58 year old conservative. Loved your dad. Thank you. I've made friends with a couple of older gentlemen that are fairly well to do and you know, I can't speak to them openly because of their opinions about because they're both liberal. And you know I can't speak to them openly because of their opinions because they're both liberal and you know and do they what so what happens if you start a conversation do they shut

you down or do they do they just start talking a different language or do they start talking about a reality that you don't live in oh it's all of those okay I haven't been shut down because I didn't open my mouth I was just shocked at the way they talk about people on the right. And for me they're just people. They're not people on the right, people on the left. They're just people with different opinions. And you know, they'll call people like, I guess I'm far right for them. Yeah. Oh, which makes you a Nazi. That makes you a Nazi. What bothers me. That makes you a Nazi. Exactly. Yeah. What bothers me is they compare Canadian conservatives to Trump.

Yeah. When I hear that, I don't think they know the first thing about American politics or Canadian politics. To me, it's such an oversimplification. It's like trying to talk to a three-year-old. If that's where your head's at, if you honestly believe that, then we got to take it down to the studs, and that's a frustrating thing. But I do want to go back to one thing I said.

If they just apologized, but they don't apologize, the hubris, the hubris in believing that you can sow chaos across this country for 10 years. And then with a straight face, get up in front of a microphone and present yourself as the agent to restore order. I'm sorry, until you get, until you show humility to me, until you acknowledge how many things you effed up as a government. And I'm sorry, Mark Carney, just because they changed the Carnival Barker doesn't mean the circus has left town. Jennifer, welcome to the show. Hi, thank you for having me. So I live in Toronto and I have a conservative sign on my lawn. I had a neighbor come and stop me saying, why are you using Amazon?

You're supporting Trump and you should be banning together to be Canadian and not be using Amazon. Oh my God. And I said, excuse me, these are Canadian jobs. We all stop using Amazon. We're putting Canadians out of work. Yep. And they're like, we've banned Amazon and how dare you? Yeah, of course, and I guarantee you,

maybe not this one person, but people just like this person. Three years ago, they were the ones talking about how terrible Canada was. We were a blight in the world that needed to be, we were a cancer that needed to be excised because of our colonialist genocidal past. And now they wanna wrap themselves in the flag

and say elbows up and Canada needs to be at the top of the mountain. It's, yeah, I got no time for it. Jim, welcome to the show. That, there's absolutely so much to impact here. Even just the last point that the caller made, Jeff Bezos is more left than anybody else out there. And all of the people who now are canceling

their Amazon Prime memberships, because they think that Jeff Bezos is a supporter. The reality is the individuals who are canceling prime memberships, who are ripping down the conservative sign, the friends and families who can't even sit in a room with somebody who has a disagreement with them, they are just getting fed disinformation like the pamphlet that the gentleman earlier mentioned and they are believing it Yeah for somebody for somebody to cancel their prime membership But I had a lot of other stuff to say but when this or the previous caller mentioned the prime at Amazon Jeff Bezos

But the Washington or whatever was the Washington Post or whatever the news outlet was that is total left Yeah, I don't understand how people and obviously you can tell in my tone that I'm... Because I have people in my close friends and family who even retroactively go back when they see the Stephen Harper commercials now endorsing Poliev, start shaking saying that Harper was a terrible prime minister. Yeah. I, I, they, they, I can, I'm just beside myself then. I cannot believe it. What's going on?

Well, we still have five, five, five more days before the election. So time will tell if a little bit of sanity is restored and a little bit of a little bit of rational thought is brought into critical thought is brought into the minds of some voters who just seem to be accepting a narrative that defies logic. Welcome back to the show. And there are a few subjects that matter more to people in Ontario than our kids

and how they are educated and what we do with them when we when they leave the Safety of our home and we entrust them to a school The hope is that when they are there they are learning everything that they're gonna need to be Productive members of society anything that they're not gonna learn from me I want them to learn in school and there was a story of a field trip. Nothing wrong with a field trip. Teaches kids to, you know, there is stuff to learn beyond the confines of a school.

Kids go on field trips all the time. Their eyes are open to all sorts of things. Their brains fire in ways that wouldn't happen in a classroom. Well, there was a field trip last year that caused an uproar. And let's to get the context of it. Let's let's invite into the show. Rich Robertson from B'nai Brith. He's the director of research and advocacy.

Rich, welcome to the show. And I should mention, I have a professional relationship with B'nai Brith. Rich, welcome. Thank you so much for having me, Ben. OK, so take us back to the TDSP field trip in question when they participated in the grassy narrows river run. Absolutely, Ben. So this was a field trip that was designed to bring students to an event that was organized to show solidarity with First Nations communities who are in this particular instance suffering from the contamination of their water supply. However, the event itself denigrated into a anti-Israel protest where the students,

over 500 of them, were exposed to vulgar language, vulgar actions on the part of the protesters, including anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic chants, insightful rhetoric, and some pretty heinous signs. Yep. And so that happened. There was an uproar. There was a lot of video that circulated. There was a lot of video that circulated. There were examples of the TDSB not fulfilling their duty to consult parents and they didn't follow their own policies. And so there was a report that was issued. There was a study that was done into the failings of the TDSB. Talk to me about what the report said. Well, the report and the handling of the report, rather than reaffirming the trust of the community,

specifically the Jewish community, has only led the Jewish community and others to question whether or not the TDSB and the ministry are in fact capable of ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of all of their students then. This report was ready in December 2024. Its release was delayed now until late April of 2025, and unfortunately, the report fails to adequately adequately address and even minimizes the harm caused to Jewish students who attended this event And that is the last thing yeah the Jewish community needed or deserved and look I did not read the report I read the news reports on it and that was as Plain as the nose on my face that the language used it They're trying to shoehorn in, minimizing and whitewashing

what a failure this was on, and you know, I don't even think failure rich is the right word to use because it implies good faith. That, you know, they tried and they failed. I don't think that, I think there were a lot of bad faith operators here. I believe that there's a reason why they didn't follow the protocols that were in place because they knew that had they followed the protocols

they would not have been able to get the kids where they wanted them to be. And you either have to be monumentally stupid or you have to be a bad faith actor to believe that in this day after a year of protests in the city of Toronto where Israel has been unfairly tarnished as a colonial state and and so there's there's been this victim victim victim perpetrator narrative that I think unfairly puts Israel in the in the camp of colonizer as opposed to indigenous you know that if you're going to go to a protest like this, it will be co-opted in a very big way by the pro-Hamas crowd. You know it and if you don't, you

should know it. And if you didn't know it, you should lose your job. And the fact that that's not even really being addressed is a problem for me. And you're absolutely correct, correct Ben. There was no due diligence done. Had any due diligence been done, brief searches on social media, review of the materials that were being put out in advance of this grassy narrows event, it would have been clear to any observer that this event was even in advance being co-opted, incorrupted. There was no consultation with the proper community stakeholders who would have

happily affirmed to the TDSB the concerns. Is anyone losing their job over this? I look, we have systemic issues within our school board system. I don't know if you saw them, but just yesterday the ministry rolled out a plan to hold our school boards more accountable for their their financial shortfall. Yeah. And we're hoping that the minister will continue to roll out policies and plans that will hold our school boards accountable for their systemic failures. And yes, if needed, there needs to be change at the top of these boards because what's happening is unacceptable and it's undermining our board's abilities and our province's abilities to ensure the proper education of our students. You know, when they say when the, when the,

the report comes out and says, Oh, their physical safety wasn't in peril, but their emotional, the emotional safety of some Jewish students was brought into question. I was like, that's a difference without a distinction as far as I'm concerned. You took my kid from a place where he, and my kids didn't go, but writ large, you're taking children where they are supposed to feel safe

and you're putting them in a place where they feel unsafe, that to me is a bridge too far and somebody should lose their job. Because that a child should feel safe at home and the next playstation should always feel safe is at school under the care of teachers and the school. And if they are incapable of doing that, I want you gone and I want to bring in somebody who is capable of doing that job. And then we also have to look at who within the ministry is being vested with the responsibility

of developing these reports. It's almost sinister in nature to read a report that suggests that, well, the children at an event that was hours in duration were only exposed to a few minutes of hate, and somehow that makes it okay. As if that person has the authority, the moral authority, to determine how many minutes of hate is too much for an elementary school audience. Rich Robertson of B'nai Bre'a, thank you so much for your attention on this file.

My pleasure, Ben. Thank you for having me. I'm ready to eat. Want to kick your cooking up a notch? This is the moment you've been waiting for. Flavor Network is giving one lucky viewer $15,000 to put towards the grocery bill. Oh, I love that. Tune into Flavor Network every night at 9 Eastern or stream live on Stack TV. Look for the daily code word and enter on our website for a chance to win $15,000. Oh my God, that's so good. We're going to blow some god, that's so good.

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