The Ben Mulroney Show - Why rebuilding our Military needs to be our top priority

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Guests and Topics on Today's Show -What's Trump's strategy globally with Guest: Richard Goldberg from The Foundation for Defense of Democracies -Enough is enough. Rebuilding our Military needs to be our top priority with Guest: Spencer Fernando, Campaign Fellow for the National Citizens Coalition -Patient dies in waiting room at Winnipeg hospital with Guest: Dr. Brett Belchetz, ER Physician, CEO of getmaple.ca -Alphabet soup acronyms are not helping the queer cause with Guest: Adam Zivo, National Post columnist and Executive Director for the Centre For Responsible Drug Policy  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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Maybe, but definitely 100% closer to getting 1% cash back with TD Direct Investing. Conditions apply. Offer ends January 31st, 2025. Visit td.com slash DI Offer to learn more. We're talking Trump today. We went from Trudeau to Trump and the press conference yesterday where it seemed that Donald Trump was laying out at least the beginning of an expansionist vision of America's destiny, a new manifest destiny, if you will, that includes Greenland, the Panama Canal, and for some reason, Canada.

And so we're joined now by Richard Goldberg. He's a senior advisor for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Thank you so much for being here, Richard. Great to be here, thank you. So Rich, let's start with, one of the things that I think a lot of us feel where he will be very effective is in bringing the Hamas hostages home. And let's listen to what he said on that file.

That all hell must be paid if they don't release the hostages. You know what I mean, don't you? Do I have to define it for you? All hell will break out. If those hostages aren't back, I don't want to hurt your negotiation. If they're not back by the time I get into office,

all hell will break out in the Middle East. And it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out in the Middle East. And it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good frankly for anyone. All hell will break out. I don't have to say anymore, but that's what it is. And they should have given them back a long time. They should have never taken them. They should have never been the attack of October 7th. People forget that. Yeah, he's a very interesting political figure in that he can be very definitive that October 7 should not have happened.

And then he'll speak in sort of these amorphous threats that scare the crap out of people because no one knows exactly what they mean. Is that by design? I think so, but I think it's also a commitment and there's policy behind it. I think we should be clear-eyed got the data for the biden true dough appeasement there whether it's of a runner a mop the pressure on israel withholding weapons both days are gone uh... just a couple weeks

and it's gonna be maximum support for israel maximum pressure on and other uh... sponsors of hama and so i think the key phrase that I lock in on when the president speaks about this is, hell's gonna be paid by Hamas, but also he said other people, other actors involved, who are the other actors he's talking about? I would say Iran, the Qataris, the main sponsor of Hamas

who are brokering this negotiation. If it doesn't come to fruition, they're holding the back. They're the lawyer for Hamas. The Turks, the Egyptians, the Lebanese. There's a lot of actors here we have never brought pressure on in a real way. And I think if there's one thing President Trump knows, it's how to use leverage. Yeah, absolutely. Well, he's trying to do that in other places around the world as well, specifically Greenland. I believe his son is visiting there as we speak. Talk to me about the strategic value and the military value to the United States if it were to come

under American control. So I'll actually start by flipping it and talk about the strategic challenge that we would face if it were to come under Chinese or Russian control. That'd be very bad for the United States and Canada, it'd for Europe as well, be bad for the NATO alliance. Greenland, obviously both its strategic position in the Northern Atlantic, but also the home that it is to really important critical minerals that remain untapped. In a world where China is controlling so much of the critical mineral supply chain, if China is able to box the United States, other Western countries, out of tapping into those minerals,

if we're not able to tap into those minerals, and they hold us hostage, everything that's going into the products you buy that you don't even realize, the second, third tier effect, that they start cutting off these critical mineral flows. That's really, really, really catastrophic for our national security, our economic security. So whether or not you actually have a brokered purchase of Greenland, which is something that I know President Trump explored in his first term, and it's taken very seriously back then. People maybe weren't paying attention or wrote it off.

It's back in even more important way as we see the Chinese starting to put their own trade limits in response to US moves on critical minerals that are input into a lot of the most important things that we use in our daily life. And so we do need to have a conversation about why Greenland is important, make sure people understand it, make sure the Chinese and Russians don't get access to Greenland against our interests and figure out a way where we are ensuring we support the people of Greenland. We're not going to abuse the people of Greenland, but we actually improve their lives by tapping into some of that, as you know, the president calls liquid gold for oil in the

United States that we're not tapping into. There's some sort of a critical mineral gold beneath their feet in Greenland as well that can do wonders for our national security or economic security and improve their economic well-being as well. And from Greenland, we go to Panama and as just coincidental that tomorrow Americans are laying to rest President Jimmy Carter and it was under the Carter administration that the control of the Panama Canal was handed back from the Americans to the Panamanian government. So is it the Chinese question again that we're dealing with in Panama? Overwhelmingly so. It is all about the Chinese. The Chinese are making all kinds of inroads into Panama. It's

been happening now for a couple of years. This is a red flashing warning sign for the United States, for Canada, for the Western Hemisphere. If the Chinese take control of the Panama Canal, that have serious consequences for economic and therefore national security and i don't believe the president rumble but it happened i don't think any u.s. president should let happen now other economic tools to prevent that from happening of the diplomatic tools maybe uh... now president trump it is prerogative he had actually said he

would use military force potentially uh... to prevent the Chinese from taking over the Panama Canal and cutting off US access. I think that would be warranted in a situation like that. I see. So yeah, so and that's a nuance that's that's worthy of of sort of repeating or going over again. So from what from what I understand from what you said, Donald Trump isn't saying he's going

to go in and take control from from the pandemonians. He's saying if he feels that the that access to the canal is under threat of the Chinese, that's when he would pull the trigger on on possible military involvement. Well, I don't speak for President Trump. But I'll just say my interpretation and my understanding of the situation of Panama is such where that would be my additional words I'd be putting in for context, whether that's what he means or not, that's something for him to address. But in my view, it is absolutely in our national security, our shared national security interests, economic security interests, when I can share US, Canada, to ensure that the Panamanians

don't hand the keys over to the Chinese. Earlier on the show today, we had Ambassador Gordon Giffin, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ottawa on the show. He said he was working in the Senate in the 70s when the canal was handed back to the Panamanians. And he said one of the reasons that it was handed back is it was unfeasible, untenable for the American military to hold that position on a permanent basis. I have to assume that a lot's changed with the military from the 70s to today. What's your assessment? That's true and I would defer to Southern Command and DOD on that assessment. But in general, when you have a national security moment where

you just have no other choice, you find a way. And even if that's on an interim basis to provide for other contingencies along the way, the bottom line is here the Chinese have been making inroads in Latin America and Central America for many years now. We've been doing very little about it. We have something of an extended Monroe doctrine that needs to be revived. That's true for actual military capabilities that are being brought up to the hemisphere

by the Chinese, the Russians, and the Iranians. And it's also true for economic security in the Panama Canal. Lastly, and because we're in Canada, we have to talk about the Canadian part of it, because that's the one that's got me scratching my head. I appreciate everything that Donald Trump has highlighted in terms of Canada's dropping of the ball

on a number of files. I find common cause with, I have been complaining about those things for years. But the effect of his economic threats on Canada was getting him towards those goals. Do you have any explanation as to why he keeps pushing even farther, saying he's going to absorb Canada? Well, there's a whole I know of there's something completely toxic and catastrophic about Frudeau

and his government. The policies that they espouse and that they have implemented that are fundamentally in many ways contrary not just to Canadian interests and your economic interests. You look at your energy policies but also American interests because of the interplay of the American energy. Richard, Richard, I'm sorry I'm gonna have to leave it there but thank you for your time. You bet. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney show and Donald Trump's got to be in his bonnet, rightly

so over Canada, sort of abdicating any responsibility in continental defense, border security, you name it. The priorities of this government have been anywhere but there for years. And the chickens have come home to roost. Anthony Kosh on Twitter said, out of the 31 NATO members, 23 are expected to meet NATO's guidelines of spending 2% of their GDP on defense. That is a huge increase from 2014 when only three NATO allies hit that spending target. Now only eight members are not estimated to reach that target in 2024. They are Croatia, Portugal,

Italy, Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Spain. Of course, if we stick to the Trudeau plan, we're not gonna get there till the mid-30s. He goes on, Canada has been a vassal state of the Americans for a long time. Now we're shocked that they treat us like one. Absolutely completely fair. Let's listen to Donald Trump and what he had to say about Canada, the United States,

and our military relationship. But why are we supporting a country 200 billion plus a year? Our military is at their disposal, all of these other things. They should be a state. That's why I told Trudeau when he came down, I said, what would happen if we didn't do it? He said Canada would dissolve, Canada wouldn't be able to function. All right, let's welcome back to the show Spencer Fernando

campaign fellow for the National Citizens Coalition. Let's talk military. Let's talk about the importance of the military in Canada. You said Spencer, the next Canadian election won't be a carbon tax election, it will be a Canadian sovereignty election and who has the best plan to massively and rapidly build up our military election. So welcome back Spencer. Thank you. Good to be, Spencer, thank you. Good to be here.

I think you're right. I think you're right. I think we're at that point. This is, the existential threat is not from Donald Trump. The existential threat has come from years and years of taking our eye off the ball and not paying attention to the serious matters of defending this country and promoting our values through military strength.

Yeah, I mean, it's obviously what Donald Trump is saying is not respectful to our country. And I think we should take it seriously. Maybe not to the extent that the US is going to, you know, militarily invade Canada, but certainly that they're now going to pressure us extremely aggressively. Obviously, there are many other things. Trump says $200 billion subsidy. He's talking about trade. That's incorrect. So there's a lot of falsehoods being put out there, but it is true that Canada has completely neglected our military for quite a long time. And I think what's happened is Canadians really need to wake up and realize we're no longer in a world where a piece of paper, you know, a treaty or, you know, a statement of values protects you as a country. It's raw power now.

Do you have the ability, if someone attacks you, do you have the ability to, you know, send tanks and planes and missiles and troops? And you know, do you have the ability to, you know, fire on your enemy and defeat them or dissuade people from attacking in the first place. And right now Canada doesn't really have that ability. So of course we're seen as a country that's pretty easy to victimize. Oh yeah, and American pundits are having a field day with this. I'm pretty sure they're only half-hearted in it, but Matt Walsh, for example, said that

they could take over Canada in bloodlessly in under a week. And he's not wrong. If American, if they decided to roll tanks across the border, there's not much we could do. And I mean, we could take up arms, but the liberals banned all the guns. It's just a good thing that they banned them and didn't,

but they didn't do anything with the ban. They just banned them. So people still have their guns. They're just technically illegal, but he's the ban. They just banned them. So people still have their guns. They're just technically illegal. But he's not wrong. He's not right. It could happen that way. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know,

no one thinks that Canada could build a military that would be able to, you know, defeat the Americans, nor would we want to do so because we're allies with them. At least for now it seems we'll see what the new Trump administration thinks about that. But, you know, it's just about having a credible credible capability to say, look, to anybody, America, anybody else, you know, are more likely enemies, Russia and China. If you attack us, you're going to pay a massive price.

And these countries are not just thinking about attacking one country. Russia and China could be involved in wars against multiple countries. So if they try to put even a fraction of their force towards Canada, and we say, look, you're going to pay a massive price for that that we have the ability to make you you know suffer tremendous losses right now again we don't have that ability and I think you know and again I wouldn't totally dismiss you know some of the rhetoric we see from the states I know we want to think that it's all a complete joke but a lot of this is the kind of testing out extreme ideas and then seeing

how people react to them and trying to normalize it in people's minds so I I don't think we should completely see it as a joke. I think we should realize we have now a limited time to really build up a military and defend our sovereignty or else it could be taken from us. Spencer, you also had another call on Twitter where you said it's time for the leaders of all of Canada's major parties to hold a joint press conference in parliament, denouncing Trump's impending economic assault on this country and announce a plan to rapidly build up Canada's military. While I appreciate the sentiment, I don't see our major parties finding common cause on this. You've got the liberals even knowing that Donald Trump was

serious about about Canada pulling its own weight, said we're going to take our sweet time getting to our 2% GDP commitment. Pierre Poliev certainly wants to accelerate that growth, but concedes that the cupboards are bare and he can only work with the money he's got and he doesn't have any. And there's no way the NDP or the Greens are gonna get on board with anything

that they view as warmongering. And God forbid in case we have any military assets that we buy from Israel and then it's all over. Yeah, and this is why I talk about the need for a massive, rapid mindset shift in the Canadian, in Canadians, not just politicians. I mean, in the end of the day, countries get the politicians they deserve.

We vote for them. We don't have our the politicians they deserve. We vote for them. You know, we don't have our leaders forced on us. We vote for them. And so, if your leadership is good, that reflects the populace making the decisions. If it's bad, that reflects other things. And so, you know, this, but you know, you mentioned the covered is bare. And I see, as someone who's here, generally fiscally conservative, I understand the sentiment. But Canada right now, our deficit to GDP ratio is about 1.3%, probably a little higher now, maybe 1.6%. Poland is currently running a budget deficit of about 5.8% of GDP.

They are launching a massive military buildup. I think there are 4% of GDP on the military and they're getting to 5% because you don't have to tell people in Poland, hey, your country could get invaded. They know that very well having been invaded by Germany and the Soviet Union in the past. And so, yes, would it be difficult for us to do it? Sure, but it's not that we don't have money. And people say, oh, well, you'd be borrowing to do it.

Well, yeah, I think if there's any reason to actually run a massive budget deficit, it's to protect the sovereignty of your country, have a decent military capability. Is there an argument to be made? I don't know if there's any strategic value in this. But that's why that's why I have you on the show, Spencer is, is there any strategic value into having a conversation with the Americans and saying, you know,

we would be open to a conversation about allowing you I don't know, missile silos in our North, for example. I think jointly operated missile defenses and missile capability, I think would make sense. Again, I mean, we're NORAD allies, we're NATO allies. So I think, I don't see why we should look at that as a problem. I think there is perhaps a deal to be made on saying,

look, we're gonna buy a bunch of American fighter jets. We're going to buy a bunch of American tanks. We're going to buy a bunch of missiles. Things we need. We're deep in partnerships with American companies producing drones. We need to advance there. But in return, we'd like to talk about violating Canada's sovereignty to stop it. I mean, 158 Canadians died in Afghanistan.

We met Article 5 of NATO to defend America after 9 11. And so I think it's fair for us to say yes, yes, we have certainly not lived up to some of our commitments on defense. But we've also been there whenever America has asked and we have been a good ally many times. And so I think there does need to be some mutual respect there. Spencer, where's the where's the first expense got to go? Do we do have to invest in our troops first? Spencer, where's the where's the first expense got to go? Do we do have to invest in our troops first? Yeah, I think you have to, you know, raise pay, run recruitment ads. I think one of the big problems is people look at, you know, a lot of troops are having trouble finding housing, the housing they do have is not well equipped. They don't have good equipment. So I think the

first thing you have to do is and we have to do a lot of things at once, it wouldn't just be one thing. But you have to clearly send the message that a career in the Canadian Armed Forces is going to pay you well, you're going to be able to treat it. If you get hurt, you're going to be taken care of. Your family will be taken care of and you'll have good housing and the most modern equipment. I think anything you can't really start anywhere else because you have to get people to join up in the first place. So you bring in the troops and simultaneous to that, you, uh, you have a

massive expenditure for what tanks, planes, the like guns. Yeah. Fighter jets, I think would be one of the best things to do fighter jets. All right. I think we should also look at acquiring a long range bombing capability, but that's perhaps for another conversation. Spencer Fernando, campaign fellow for the National Citizens Coalition.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate your insights every time you're on the show. Good to be here. Thank you. At BC Children's Hospital, healing requires a great team. Doctors, nurses and therapists all work together, connected by a commitment to the health and happiness of kids and their families. It's more than just medicine. It's a collaboration where every role matters and every voice is heard from the smallest to the tallest. Together we help kids thrive. Amazing people wanted. Must love kids. Apply now at jobs.bchildrens.ca. Investigation is underway after a patient waiting for care died in the waiting room at a Winnipeg hospital that was on Tuesday morning. So the patient arrived shortly after midnight in the emergency department.

They were assessed, triaged, and directed to wait in the waiting room and to let staff know if their condition changed or worsened. Well, the patient was reassessed just before 8 a.m. and the staff noted that the patient's condition had significantly worsened. There were medical interventions that were subsequent and the patient was transported to a resuscitation room and unfortunately declared deceased a short time later. I've heard from people who said that their one person told me their father died in the St. Catharines hospital alone in the ER after waiting all day in bed. And this is so this is not unique. It's not a one-off. And so we're joined now by Dr. Brett Belchatz, ER physician and CEO of GetMaple.ca. Dr. thank you so much for being here. And I want to make sure as we highlight these things, my intent is to help find solutions so that they

don't happen in the future. I'm not looking to say one person did something wrong or another person did something wrong. Well, good morning and thank you for having me. So when you hear this story, I have to assume you've heard stories like this before. Absolutely. I mean, this does happen and we have seen similar instances in the past. And actually a similar event occurred at this very hospital within the last few years where there was an inquiry regarding a patient

who I believe had waited over 20 hours in the emergency room, waiting room, and had a similar outcome. And there were a number of recommendations made as a result of that particular outcome, which revolved around four times where patients were waiting that long that there was a requirement to continue to check on people in the waiting room. So

there are a number of questions in this case as to were those protocols and recommendations followed. But I think overall, you know, at the core what this really points at, a huge, huge light at is that whenever we have wait times that are this long, eight hours, and what I understand is at the time that this patient checked in, he was told it was going to be a 12 hour wait, everybody is at risk. In an emergency room situation,

we just should not have wait times that are that long. Yeah, and it speaks to sort of structural issues within the system that need to be addressed because I operate on the principle that if you are, if you work in the medical field, if you're a doctor, if you're a nurse, if you're a lab technician, if you're on the front lines, it's because you want to be there. It's because you want to help. It's because for you it's not a job, it's a calling.

So that's my default setting until somebody proves me wrong. And in a situation like this, if that person was left for as long as they were, it's not because people don't want to help. It's because it has to be because of something else. Now that's not to say an investigation won't uncover misconduct or negligence, but I think that has to be proven. It does. And you know, overall, I would say, you know, the number one fault here, you know, whether those protocols were followed or not, I would agree with you as a structural problem with the system.

And that structural problem is not enough space, not enough staff, too many patients coming in the door. And that results in the kinds of wait times you're seeing. And when you look at the typical emergency room, waiting room, you have lots of patients that come in with things that if you identify them quickly and treat them quickly, they will be okay. You have some patients that it doesn't matter how quickly we see you, there's nothing that we can do. And then there are others that have really nothing serious wrong with them.

But often only in the setting of quick diagnosis and quick attention for medical staff, can we differentiate between those kinds of cases. So whenever you have a situation where somebody is sitting for eight hours to 12 hours before even being assessed by a physician, many of those cases where things can go wrong and go from being treatable to untreatable, many of those cases are at risk of going in that terrible direction.

Dr. How much, you know, as everyone wants to save the healthcare system, I don't think there's a Canadian alive who doesn't think that it is vital to our national character and vital to our national safety to have a robust and fair and equitable system for all. Could situations like this be improved by the adoption of certain versions of AI technology?

I mean, in terms of getting people in the door and getting people signed in, I hear that there are there are technologies that could speed up that process and once they're in the system, perhaps they could be seen faster. A hundred percent. I think there is massive opportunity for artificial intelligence and automation to transform the way that we deliver health care. It really is my opinion, just looking at some of the quality of some of the technology we have now that can actually take a history from a patient,

come up with likely diagnoses and ask all the right questions. And I've played with these myself quite a bit. It's my opinion that no patient showing up at any hospital emergency room or in fact, at any clinic in our country, should ever go into a waiting room without having a discussion with an artificial intelligence agent where it asks all the right questions

and looks for red flags that might identify this as a high risk patient. And then there's lots of automation that can continue to monitor patients and ask them questions while they're in the waiting room and alert staff to people whose situations are deteriorating. So I think the answer to your question is yes, yes, and yes. And I think automation is probably one of the only things I think that can rescue our system in a setting of an aging population

that is getting more and more sick with fewer and fewer healthcare providers. Well, exactly. If you could lower the friction between the time a patient comes in and the time they're ultimately diagnosed or treated by a human being, if you could facilitate that and smooth that up and accelerate

the medical intervention by way of AI. Canada, I think, should be willing to be the tip of the spear in terms of innovation and adoption of these new technologies because the system itself is breaking on so many fronts. A hundred percent. We're actually well set up to be that tip of the spear because we have such a large universal public health care system where things like this can be implemented at scale very quickly if there is will at the top levels of government versus when we look at a lot of other health care systems. So if you look at the United States, you have very fragmented systems with lots of different providers of healthcare, different clinics, different hospitals, etc. It's very hard to institute things systematically across the country. But we you know, we are unique in that we can institute really

exciting changes across the system and do it very effectively and quickly. It just requires the will power. And to talk to me about practically on the floor, you know, you talked about people being in the ER, who have no business being in the ER. What are your obligations as a doctor, as a team, if you see somebody who's there with something that they think is an emergency, but you don't? Can you send them somewhere else? Or if they are there in the ER, you have a mandate and a requirement to treat them. You have a mandate and a requirement to assess them. You have a mandate and a requirement as an ER physician to treat anything that requires urgent treatment. You do not have a mandate and requirement to provide care that is not required to be given at this moment.

So you know, there are cases where people will come into the emergency room, we will make sure that we can rule out any emergency conditions. But if it does become clear that this is something that could be treated by your family doctor in a few days time, and potentially more effectively treated by your family doctor who has access to all of your ongoing records, it is absolutely fine for emergency room staff to send you to get follow up in your family doctor's office for the issue instead of being fully treated in the emergency room. And conceivably in the future, and we don't have a lot of time left doc, but conceivably in the future, as that person who thinks they have an emergency turns out they absolutely don't, could they be completely dealt with through an AI assessment tool and be directed, you know,

you can go to your family doctor tomorrow, but you're not coming in the ER. I think with human oversight, I think what I would want to see is the AI tool doing 90% of the work with a human doctor looking at what the AI has done and rubber stamping it to say, yeah, the AI did a good job here and this person can probably go once I've taken a peek at them. So, again, if we look at, I know we're low on time,

but if we look at overall the healthcare system, if we could reduce the length of time it takes to see every patient by 90% using AI, that would be a massive increase in productivity for the healthcare workers. Doc, we're gonna leave it there AI, that would be a massive increase in productivity for doctor work. We're gonna leave it there. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Have a great day. I'm old enough to remember when it was called the gay

community. We've obviously turned the page from Trudeau and Trump. Now we're talking something else. I remember what was the gay community. And then it became the LGBT community. Remember when it was the gay community, and then it became the LGBT community, and then it was the LGBTQ community. And Adam Zivow in his latest piece in the National Post says that now there is a new expression that the Trudeau government has adopted, 2SLGBTQI+, referring to gender and sexual minorities. And Adam is joining us now to explain why

just because the word gets longer doesn't mean the situation gets better. Welcome back to the show, Adam. Oh, thanks for having me back. It's a pleasure to be here. So what do all those letters mean? Okay, so lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, questioning or queer and intersex and then plus for everything else.

It's mouthful and it's kind of absurd. And the plus opens the door to many, many more letters joining the fray later on. It's sort of like a dangling participle at the end there. Well, that's the thing. There are actually some longer versions. For example, I think there's one that has 2SLGBTQIPPSA, something like that, the plus as well, which is something that no one can spell or pronounce an actual conversation. Yeah, it's too long, it's too hard to remember. And I think it does a disservice to constantly come up with these increasingly small little silos and say,

well, the giant acronym that you have doesn't cover me, so you've got to find a way to cover me? Well, that's the thing. So not only this language, deeply impractical, and it makes the LGBTQ community look ridiculous, it's also deeply unpopular within the gay community. So there's no polling data on this, really. But I know from my life, you know, as a gay man in Toronto, who knows an obscene number of homosexuals, no one who I've interacted with in real life uses this acronym. In fact, many of us make fun of it because we see it as delegitimizing. And actually, we hold on, tell me, how do you view this delegitimizing?

Well, because it makes us look silly. I mean, what normal person would use 2SLGBTQI plus in normal conversation, right? It is nine syllables long and I checked Wiktionary, which basically has a bank of all of the words in English, 85,000 of them, and this word is longer than 99.9% of the English language, there are only 60 words that are longer to pronounce in English. So who asked for this? Who asked for the an extension and

continuation of the acronym? Well, no one did. So when you look at Google Trends, which is the tool that helps you measure the search volumes on Google and YouTube, you'll see that compared to LGBT and LGBTQ, LGBTQI plus two, I said, she had club has less than 1% of the popularity. In fact, on most days, it is searched so infrequently that doesn't even meet the minimum threshold to be counted at all. So no one wants it, but it is pushed by a small clique of queer activists who work in a number of organizations who have the federal government's ear. And because they have the federal government's ear, the federal government decided in 2022 that this would be the official acronym

for all of Canada even though the communities in question don't even support it. Yeah, and in your article you liken it in at least one way to the adoption of the expression Latinx. Well that's the thing. So Latinx is very similar where this was a term that was pushed by a small group of progressive activists who believed that it was more inclusive, even though Latino communities overwhelmingly hated this new term, and 40% of them, according to one poll, actually found it offensive. And so what we're seeing consistently is this new terminology, which is being brought up

by a small number of people and being imposed upon all of society even though the communities in question don't like it. And the problem here is that sometimes this leads to a backlash against these communities. I'm well aware of the fact that there is this giant backlash against the LGBTQ community because we're seen as being, I don't know, obnoxious in some way. And it hurts me to know that there are you know, Canadians out there who might feel resentful towards us because of these ridiculous acronyms, which we don't even like.

Give me a snapshot of where we are, Adam, because, you know, I feel that there are certain topics that I can broach on radio today that had I broached two, three years ago, I would have put my career in jeopardy. I don't feel that way anymore. I feel you are yes, you're a gay man, but you're also a conservative gay man. I have to assume that this the simple act of you highlighting the absurdity of this acronym has brought some pushback to you. Is am I accurate? To be honest, no. Oh, okay. Good. That's a good that's a good thing. That's the thing because as I mentioned before, it's incredibly unpopular. The most, the most

response. No, but so sorry, sorry, Adam. So no, there hasn't been that a member of that fringe group that we were talking about earlier, who's calling you intolerant and calling you a traitor to your tribe. Well, I mean, look, there have been a few comments on Reddit, but Reddit is not exactly representative of society. In my circles, what I've gotten in real life, predominantly, is people saying, thank you for speaking up about this.

You know, I'm a gay man, and I agree with you. Now, this issue is one that I think that many gays, lesbians, and trans people have recognized is absurd. But I agree with you that there's a huge cultural shift. It's not 2021 anymore, not 2020 anymore. We're seeing the tension swing the other way. And I think that that's okay for certain radical policies, but we have to make sure that we don't overcorrect and throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yeah. Agreed. Adam, thank you so much. I love having you on to talk about all manner of issues. You're a great voice and we're happy to have it on the Ben Mulroney Show.

Oh, thanks for having me once again. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.