The Ben Mulroney Show - Why hasn't Justin Trudeau addressed Canadians yet?

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

Guests and Topics on Today's Show -Trudeau shuns media... except for this hour has 22 Minutes with Guest: Sharan Kaur, political strategist and partner at Sovereign Advisory -Harm reduction vending machines could fill gaps after Toronto safe consumption site closures with Guest: Yonah Budd, Corus addictions and counselling expert  -What strived, what lied and what died in tech in 2024 Guest: Mohit Rajhans, Mediologist and Consultant, ThinkStart.ca 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 Enjoyt

Hey everybody, it's Ben Mulrooney. We had an incredible show today, including why hasn't Justin Trudeau addressed Canadians yet? What are harm reduction vending machines? And looking back at the biggest stories of the year in tech. Enjoy. So we know that Justin Trudeau has not had a few good weeks, and he went on vacation. He also cancelled all of his traditional end-of-year interviews. It's something every Prime Minister has done for as long as I can remember, but he didn't like the story that was developing. So he decided not to tell any stories. That being said,

there was one interview that he recorded that made it, that is going to make it to the air. He sat with Mark Critch from this hour has 22 minutes. And he had this to say. And we know that 40 years ago, your father famously took a walk into snow when the conservatives were up in the polls and decided it was time to give it up. There's no one out there now. When my father was my age, he still had a dozen years of prime ministering ahead of him.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Just OK. Like I said, even before Chrystia Freeland resigned, that was a bad joke. That was a bad joke. Not going to land well with a lot of people. We're joined now by Sharon Carr, a political strategist and partner at Sovereign Advisory. Sharon, Happy New Year to you. Happy New Year. I'm glad that my last interview or segment of the year is with you, Ben. Oh, thank you.

So, OK, so he cancels all of his interviews. But he did do one with Radio-Canada, the French version of the CBC. They pulled it and said they weren't going to air it because the context has completely changed. I think that is the wrong move. I think Canadians deserve to see it. Let them decide.

Uh, they should throw it up online and let us decide the value of that interview. Yeah. So, you know, yesterday night when, when CBC posted the clip of Mark Critch,

who, by the way, I love, and I think he's funny and hilarious, and this is no shade at Mark and his show, but so they posted that video out and, uh, you played the clip that just kind of came out of it. And then four hours later, around four hours later, Mark posted a note saying this was recorded before Freeland resigned. And then we saw Radcan come out and say they pulled it. Listen, I think that they could have aired it and timestamped it, but also given the age we live

in of the amount of misinformation, disinformation, people just not getting context online, I get why Radcan pulled it. That being said, I actually think that the video that went out on Critch's show was strategic on CBC's part because they could have timestamped it. They could have said this was filmed before. I think they wanted the buzz and it's gone crazy. Yeah, absolutely. And, but what, what do you make of this non-communication communication strategy?

Saying nothing in, at this time of year where, where there's not a lot of news to begin with, which is one of the reasons those interviews are so important. Like this, it's a perfect time to give people an update because there's not a lot happening anyway. Who's advising him that this is a good strategy? This is a thing I think people are struggling with. They think that he's kind of hiding, yet he's out there with his family doing whatever, and everyone deserves to have their break. I personally have always been of the view, and I've always advised executives and politicians

that transparency is key. You can diffuse so much out there that if you're willing to be transparent and just have a message. Like no one is saying that he needs to go out and do a press conference with every single journalist. But given what's occurred over the last few weeks and given what's happened over the last week with this internal further caucus coup slash or like I'm hearing tons about people organizing for Freeland and all this stuff. Like people kind of need to know what's happening. And I think that someone's not giving him good advice. Yeah.

No, I mean, do you think an address to the nation, a scripted address to the nation would have worked? Or do you think that people are demanding, the voters are demanding more accountability like a press conference where he takes actual questions from actual journalists so like i would listen if i was in pmo right now and advising them i would say you don't need a national address because like no offense but your finance minister resigning is not a national address type of thing but what i would have done is i would have put him down with a journalist and it doesn't have, again, it could be a friendly, it could be someone who's fair and had like an

honest conversation about it. People could hear directly from him. It doesn't need to be blown out of proportion, but the silence is what's I think triggering everyone because they feel like he's hiding. And then we're hearing all these, like we're seeing all these things coming out of different potential candidates. And I think people probably saw the Carney piece in the Globe yesterday. And everyone's like, what is going on? Who's actually in charge of the country right now? Well, and that's it. It felt like it felt like for two weeks that no one was in control, which is all the more reason for the prime minister to come out and say anything that projects that he's still working. He's still in control.

He's still, you know, people needed to know that the ship still had a captain and it felt like we didn't. And this is the thing. So there's a balance, right? You need to have that balance between not giving something too much attention and fueling it, but then also showing confidence. One of the key things of any leader, and like, you would know this better than anyone, because I truly believe that your father

was really good at this, showing confidence, showing the country that there is someone to have confidence in, because a lot of what's happening out there is just anxiety around, oh, is there going to be an election? Is there going to be this? What's happening with that? And he could have sat down with one broadcast journalist. It could just have been one. And he could have been very controlled and just answer the questions and say, hey, listen, I understand people are concerned. Things happen within your caucus. I'm here to serve. And I want to make sure everyone understands that. Like, simple. It doesn't have to be crazy. Now, tell me what you think of my theory, that if the Liberals prorogue Parliament so that

they can get their own party house in order and cast a vote for a new leader before Canadians have the right to cast their own vote for a new government, I think that is going to backfire terribly on the Liberals, who have been playing keep away with people's vote and their right to vote for years. And I feel that if they if they say, no, we get to figure out who's going to run us before we're going to give you the right to figure out who runs the country. I think that that could be a disaster for them. Yeah, listen, I don't think it's going to go well in any way in that case. So like there was a poll yesterday that came up from Angus Reid. I think it had the Liberals at like 16 percent or something.

Like a really, really bad drop. Like if I'm putting on my my liberal hat to tell us how I would advise someone right now. Listen, I do think that I personally don't think the PM at this point in time is going to step down. Something could change. But right now, I kind of think that they truly believe and to a certain extent, I agree that he is probably the best of the worst options to go against Pauliev. Because he's got name recognition, he's got that fight in him against him. That being said, when you have your Quebec caucus, your Ontario caucus, your Atlantic caucus telling you to resign, you like you can't go into an election with the majority of your caucus against you. So they into an election with the majority of your caucus

against you. So they would have to have some sort of internal leadership battle. It's not going to end well right now, like my prediction. And this is sad because I've worked really hard on campaigns my whole life. And I truly am a I would say a liberal at heart that they need to get their house in order. And maybe what it means is that you guys are not going to win a minority or majority. You got to save as many seats as possible. And maybe that means you need a leadership to do that. I think I'll give you the last word, but I think the reason for him to stay is because if a leader comes in to replace him, they are going to have to differentiate themselves and say, yes, I served under Justin Trudeau, but I am not him and this is not his party.

And therefore, to differentiate myself from him moving forward, the Liberal Party will not stand with the carbon tax. And I do not think that he he knows Pierre Poliev wants to get rid of it. I don't think he could stand the idea of a liberal ending the carbon tax. Well, I think that's probably one of the pieces, but I think you're absolutely right. This is why I struggle so much with this anointment of all these caucus members coming out saying we need Christopher Yellen as the prime minister

because how do you differentiate yourself? There are some great names out there. Like we've been hearing Christy Clark's name rolling around and guess what? She's not somebody who's close to this crew. So what they're going to have to do is whoever comes in is they're going to have to distance themselves. And if it's anyone from within caucus, they're going to have to say

things like, I don't believe in the carbon tax. Thank you so much and have a great 2025. Thanks, Ben. Have a good one. Welcome to Kidsplain, where kids explain how underfunded our schools are. Let's take a call from a listener. Kelly, are you there? Hi, I was wondering why I get less one-on-one time with my teachers. Great question, Kelly. It might have something to do with the fact that we have 3,500 fewer teachers under Doug Ford. Ugh, that sounds about right.

Want to help support students and teachers? Visit nomore.ca. That's K-N-O-W-M-O-R-E dot C-A. A message from the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association. Canada's opioid problem and the issues of mental health and drug addiction should affect all of us. We should all want to solve this problem because those suffering with addiction, they are our friends. They are our relatives. They are our neighbors. I come at this with a lot of compassion. I come at it with a lot of empathy and understanding

and a desire to try anything that is going to help. I think we've had some false starts in this country. I think we've had some bad decisions, some good decisions. And so anytime there's something new that pops up, I think we should look at it through good faith lenses and see what it's all about before judging it. And there are new harm reduction vending machines set to pop up, some of them are already in existence, in the city of Toronto. And some feel that they could fill the gaps left after the closure of a number of safe consumption sites.

Now, I could give you my own opinions on this. They are not tethered to fact. They are tethered to emotion. So I'd rather bring someone in who has been on the ground floor and the front lines of fighting addiction. Yonah Budd, he's chorus addictions and counseling expert, and you can find them at Yonah Budd.com.

Yonah, thank you so much for joining us on this, the last day of the Ben Mulroney show in 2024. Happy holidays, Ben. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. So,

so talk to me about what are these harm reduction vending machines? Oh, okay. So let's, let these harm reduction vending machines? Oh, okay. So harm reduction is a big word. So anything that we can do to help people stop hurting themselves in the spirit of their addiction or acting out in some form as a result of mental health breakdowns and so on. That whole harm reduction concept harm reduction concept is, you know, as simple as, you know, using methadone instead of opioids, right? So that goes back to way back. These machines in particular that we're talking about today are device machines. So these machines provide things, as you know, I'm sure you've read the article as well, you know, things like

clean needles, naloxone, which is something you can put in somebody's nose if you believe they've had an overdose on opioids. It's stuff, right? Like condoms and things like that. Very much designed, I believe, to try to combat the spread of hepatitis B or other diseases that are spread as a result of dirty needles and so on. There's nothing in there that prevents someone from using and dying. Safe injection sites are essentially are designed in simple terms so that you can use in front of somebody. So if God forbid you have a horrible reaction there's someone with some medical attention uh someone that has you know some peer support that's trained in terms of helping you recover from it there's someone around so you don't die alone basically these

these machines do nothing then to mitigate that okay so yeah so they they are a source for people to have. And I get it. You know, harm reduction is a politically charged expression these days. And that's why I was so glad to talk to you, because, you know, you've been dealing with these things face to face. You've seen the demon face to face and you've gone toe to toe with him. And so, you know, the value of these things. Like when I read harm reduction vending machines, I went back to the video that I saw a couple of months ago of some sort of vending machine outside of BC hospital. And there was a massive uproar that this was there and it was taken away. They got rid of it.

And is this different from that? Very much so. Well, I'm not sure which one you're talking about in particular, but there was a device that was developed by Dr. Kindel in British Columbia. And what it did is it provided needles and all of those things that this other vending machine that we're talking about provides. But it also provided a daily dose based on a prescription for a drug called hydromorphone. And hydromorphone is a drug that we use often when we're stepping somebody down from opioids and trying to get them from opioids, let's say the methadone.

You can't just stop and go, right? So you need a step over. Hydromorphone seems to be the easiest of the step over drugs because the withdrawal is less significant than, let's say, opioids or even methadone. So hydromorphone is designed for people that have a prescription that are interested in also getting help. So it's tied to a treatment program. But the intent, Ben, overall, in terms of harm reduction, what does it mean to me after almost 50 years and thousands of people I've interacted with? At the end of the day, you don't want them robbing, stealing and cheating and you don't want them to kill

themselves on the street. So if you can provide a safe, clean source of drugs, which is what we need to do. So two things we need to do either provide a safe source of something so you're not dope sick. So a controlled form of hydromorph or something like that would make sense so that you're not dope sick. You're not going to go rob, steal and cheat. You're not going to use something on the street just so you get past your your horrible withdrawal in the moment. that we understand that the concept of harm reduction also has to include the intervention of other people involved in the process, right? So we don't want people to be using anything alone. And when stepping somebody down from opioids to something else, it's always that withdrawal period that makes it the most difficult for everybody. Right. So, for example, I have people in my practice that, you know, if they if they can tolerate cannabis and CBD, you know, the both sides of cannabis, THC, CBD, you know, and they're coming down from opioids of some form or or other, you know, drugs before they they try, you know, a drug benzodiazepine from a doctor from a doctor, like an Ativan or something like that, I tell them, go buy yourself a big bag of weed and smoke as much as you can, because

you're not going to kill yourself on it. The worst that's going to happen is you're going to fall asleep. And it actually does help with the harm reduction, the mitigation of the aches and pains and the illness. So, Yonah, I think one of the problems that exists currently in Canadian society is that, you know, for example, the the the B.C. experiment that was supposed to be modeled on the Portuguese protocol. I was actually very bullish on that. I thought, let's try it out. They've had so much success in Portugal.

Let's try it out here. And because this is a crisis and we need all hands on deck. And what I saw and what I've learned, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is they stopped short that they didn't build the entire model out to include that diversionary protocol where if you if you're caught with drugs, you're diverted into a sort of a mental health lane as opposed to the justice system lane. They did none of that. And because of that, the system fell apart. They built a table with three legs and it fell apart. And and so I think there is a lot of nervousness that we as a country are unable to get this right. And just having one piece of the puzzle isn't going to solve it. In fact,

it's not going to help because it doesn't, it doesn't take a holistic approach. So what do you say to people who see these things and they, they default to protecting themselves and saying, this is just another one of those progressive liberal ideas of given free drugs to people. We should be trying to get them off of drugs. So, great question.

So Marshall Smith in Alberta did a great job. They have a pretty substantial model there where addiction, mental health is part of their health care system. Everybody gets help if they want it. That's certainly the intent of the program, the pilot at least. You know, at the end of the day, these programs fall short, Ben, and you know better than anyone. You understand the politics much better than I do.

We fall short because of moral choice. We fall short because of social choices. We're not looking at it from the addict's point of view. We're looking at it from the community's point of view. And when we look at it from that perspective, we're going to fall short of doing the hard work, the difficult work, like the parent that has to kick their kid out of the basement door before they kill themselves with drugs, right? You got to do the hard work. You got to make the hard decisions. The simple solution, my friend, is this. If we provided

every addict on the street like we did during the HIV epidemic, we gave everybody and their brother condoms, right? Everybody. They got them for free on the, everywhere you went. If everybody had a test strip, like I have behind me, a box of test strips. So you can test any drug to see if it has fentanyl in it. Right. I brought it to attention to lots of people did it while I was on air, when I had my programs on, on both networks. And just no one ever thought about it. If, if, if we take the harm reduction approach by starting with helping people test their drugs so at least they know what they're using, we can

combat a lot of the death. Yonah, we've got to leave it there, but let's pick up this conversation next year, shall we? Love to. Our next guest, love talking to him. We've got Mohit Rajan on the show. Mohit, you there? Yeah, Ben, I am here.

Mohit is a is Mohit? Mohit, you there? Yeah, Ben, I am here. Okay, great. Mohit is a mediologist and consultant with thinkstart.ca. And it's the end of the year, my friend. It's the last show of 2024. So let's look back at the tech stories that really informed this entire year. And we're going to start with AI going mainstream. Yeah, let's talk about that. You and I have had some great conversations this year about what it is that is artificial general intelligence and what that hype cycle might be. But the truth is, it's been a little bit of a hype cycle because we've seen a lot of products come and give us the wow, but at the same time have also given us a little bit of, is that right? Is that the right thing? Or is this actually going to be tougher than we think?

So let's talk about how they've all succeeded. In some ways, some of the AI companies have proven that there is room for things like ChatGPT and Google Gemini and Microsoft and Tesla as well. But they've also started to create a lot of fear amongst people who understand that AGI, the phase that we're in right now, could replace jobs, could disrupt industries, and could also not necessarily be ready for open consumption. Yeah. Yeah. No, and listen, I find I'm colliding with AI in ways I didn't expect. I mean, anytime I Google now, Gemini gives me, like, that's the first thing I see. And a lot of times,

it's very useful information. Yes. The entire industry of search is about to change. That's the cusp that we're on. No longer will it just be that you go to Google or our kids will just go to Google for information. They'll use a combination of what social media is providing plus these major AI outfits. What will be interesting is how much we look at that as being work being done for somebody versus the research that they have to corroborate. So I totally screwed up this segment. We want to call it what strived, what lied and what died in tech this year. So this is what strived. The next one is the social reboot, navigating the social media shift. Cause you got

Twitter became X, uh, it completely changed what it was and the value in people's lives. It's different than it used to be. And then you got blue sky and threads. And, you know, so talk to me about that. I think that what we have learned this year is that there is no spray and pray, as they say, when it comes down to social media, this idea of posting somewhere and just going viral. Instead, all of these social media apps that you've referred to have really become their own ecosystems and problematic in some senses for some people. So take X, for example, which was Twitter.

It is now in a place where it's gone far past what people were hoping to do and protect Twitter. It's now seeing an exodus of advertisers. It's now trying to become a safer platform for a certain type of engagement and not one for all types of engagement. So what I fear or what I think is that X will eventually become something for a niche and not one for all types of engagement. So what I fear or what I think is that X will eventually become something for a niche and not necessarily for everybody. On the other hand, Instagram has threads and they've got a hundred million signups. I'm still not sure what to do. I've never used it. I signed up for it because it was easy to do. I've never used it. It is a useless, it is a useless add on, on my phone. I have no idea who uses it or why they use it.

Well, a hundred million people have signed up for it, but I guarantee you and I will be talking about this as being one of the not so successful programs that Instagram has rolled out. But blue sky is also getting its third wind. As they say, it received two separate hype cycles. It's a decentralized platform that Jack Dorsey, the co-creator of Twitter, has started. It's getting a lot of hype because people are moving away from X again, but it's still not finding its cultural footing in the way that people need it for advertising. What I do think

will be interesting about all of this, Ben, is that we're finally going to get to a point where a generation is going to realize that it's not just about everybody on YouTube or just about everybody on TikTok. Instead, it's going to be about how you want to spend your actual time. You don't have to be everywhere doing everything. All right, let's go to what lied in 2024, the AI know-it-all myth, rethinking with AI. Yeah, I think what ended up happening, there's two things that really died for me. One, the whole idea of AI was one press button and going to fix everything.

So that has died immediately. And no, the robots aren't taking over the world yet. I said yet. We might have to revisit this one year from now. The other thing is that everyone thought AGI was foolproof.

And, you know, thousands of teachers across the province have already started to disrupt the fact that kids can be busted for using certain things and you can't hide behind doing things with AI. So now we're starting to see the guardrails up. So don't think you're getting away with things just because you're using it.

But the other thing that failed and I watched it fail and I loved kind of that it failed a little bit was the NFT culture. Yes. Yes. Thank God. NFT culture came out of nowhere until a point where even when producers were asking me to talk about it, I was skeptical about being able to actually converse about it with any authority just because I was uncertain about where the profit was going to be. What has happened now is just this idea, NFTs, non-fundable tokens for the listeners, just this idea of being able to create any value out of any digital product that people can invest and take money out of. That's the non-fungible part. The problem is

it got co-opted by digital art. And now those things that were commanding millions of dollars as digital art- What was it, Bored Monkey or Bored Ape, or what's it called, Bored Ape? Bored Ape, yes. Even Steph Curry bought himself some Bored Ape JPEGs. And those, unfortunately, have decreased in value. Do I think there is a business that can happen as a result of NFTs and digital currency and the way that people can communicate? Yes. In the gaming world, 100%, it'll happen in the future. But the way that it was co-opted in this monster way of hiding money and this useless way of being able to show value, NFT culture is no longer a flex, as they say.

And last in about 30 seconds, wearables without purpose. Yes. So what happened was we got into a situation where, do you remember the wizard? There were so many wearables that have gone off the market. In fact, I think what's going to end up happening is that we're going to get into a situation now where all of the Fitbits of the world

and the worlds that are in the secondary market for these wearables are going to start to show that they don't have a positive impact on people and they're not necessarily as efficient. The reason we brought up wearables is because as we get into a place where people are going to be buying more and more products, you know, just to stay connected and get information,

just make sure you're buying into something that's not going to end up costing you more in the future. I love it. Mohit, hey, have a happy end to your 2024. I look forward to talking to you next year. My pleasure. Happy New Year to you as well. Thanks for listening to the podcast.

We hope you enjoyed it. And we hope you'll join us on Thursday for another loaded edition of the Ben Mulroney Show.