The Ben Mulroney Show - With Canadian patriotism on the rise is now the time to explore mandatory military service?

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Guests and Topics: -With Canadian patriotism seemingly on the rise is now the time to explore mandatory military service? with Guest: Lieutenant-General Michel Maisonneuve -Gen Z has perfected the art of looking busy at work with 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 Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Whether you own a bustling hair salon or a hot new baker, you need business insurance that can keep up with your evolving needs. With flexible coverage options from TV Insurance, you only pay for what you need. TD. Ready for you. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for being here. We are living in a time of increased Canadian patriotism. Now, it may be in reaction to an external force, which to me maybe suggests that it's transitory. It's a, if something's done in reaction, that's probably not permanent.

You know, when the Trump threat goes away, maybe people feel a little less pride. I hope that's not the case. I believe I'm proud of Canada every day. But maybe this is the moment to take advantage of, of that ascendant Canadian pride and have a real discussion on how to recruit more soldiers into the Canadian military. Chris Lambie in the National Post suggested a radical fix, mandatory service.

And if you read the article, it's at first blush radical, but maybe makes sense. So here to discuss our problems recruiting and possible solutions, as well as a few other military themed stories, is Lieutenant General Michel Meseneuve. Lieutenant General, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for your service. Thank you. Ben, happy to be here.

All right, so how do I say this? Let's, let's take a snapshot right now. We have a problem recruiting soldiers. What does that mean in terms of boots on the ground? How many holes do we need to fill? And what do you think the problem is attributable to? Well, you can, different people you ask will give you different answers. But I mean, I've heard everything from 14,000 to 16,000 missing in the armed forces from both the reserves

and the regular force. The issue is not just those that are missing, it's who is missing. And it's usually that middle cadre of sergeants and warrant officers and captains and majors who have left after maybe 20 years service. And to replace those folks, I mean, you can recruit all you want.

It's going to take you 15 years to get them up to that level. So it's a real complex issue. Can you give me a sense of what those, that middle rank is responsible for in the chain of command? Yeah, well, they're all the ones who actually do all the training for recruits, first of all, so imagine that. You've got a lot of

technicians that are missing now, like those are repair vehicles. You've got pilots. I mean, we don't have enough pilots right now to fly all the aircraft that we have currently. So you can imagine we're buying F-35s, and so we're going to need more pilots to do that. It's a real complex issue, and it's tied to a whole bunch of reasons. Obviously, COVID had an impact. The fact that Canadians are a bit complacent, that we don't really talk about the honor of service today. So all these things are tied to that. I always had a theory and there's no way for me to prove it, but I had a theory that we spent 10 years sort of devaluing Canadian history, devaluing Canada's place in the world,

devaluing Canada's values. We held our flag at half mass for nine months. We called ourselves a genocidal colonial train wreck of a country. I can't imagine that that helped people feel a sense of responsibility towards the nation. But again, I have no proof of that. Well, I agree 100% with you when you declare that our

country is a post national state with no real culture of its own. You know, that means you have no history, you've got no border. So you're letting as many immigrants as you can inside. You know, the mosaic that we have means that they're all pieces that are not touching each other. There's no overall culture, no mortar between the mosaic. And so to me, it's a real, it is a real issue. Plus, of course, all that you've heard about the, all these so bad culture in the armed forces and they're all misogynists and they're all, Right.

you know, sexual predators and everything. I can tell you, my wife spent 21 years in the military, never once had a problem, never saw a problem. And she talks about such, she served with men that were honorable and everything. So you have to take all this with a grain of salt, but of course, you know, I know you're in the media now, but the media loves to, you know, get these things out there. The bad news obviously sells more than the good news. Well, with respect, I think a lot of people would like to hear the story of a resurgent Canadian military and you know our Canadian

Armed Forces as a tool to spread Canadian values, to employ Canadians, to train Canadians, to help as well as the knock-on effects of you know helping the economies of the towns where the military bases are and possibly you know growing our, for lack of a better expression, military industrial complex where we could build our own weapons and our own munitions. There's a whole beneficial story that could come from that, but I want to get back to the idea of the day that if we have a dearth of soldiers, maybe one solution is mandatory service. Some people call it conscription or the draft. What are your

thoughts? Because it would definitely be controversial even to introduce it as a conversation. Well it would be but you can actually look at what's happening in Europe right now. Even this morning I heard that Poland is going hot and heavy to reinstate conscription. Sweden's had it for a while. Different nations use different approaches. Some of them are based on a lottery system where not everybody will serve, but if you've got one out of four, we'll serve. And it's young men and young women right now. I commanded conscripts in 78 to 80 in France when I served with the French army on exchange. And those conscripted soldiers, not only were they great soldiers by the time we were finished training them,

but they also had an understanding of l'armée nationale, the nation and the army. What you just talked about, about the military as being a project of society and the way to, for young Canadians to understand their country. So what I'm saying is not just a military service, I'm calling it more of a national service. So yes, if you want to do your service with the military, go ahead. But also that all young men and women would have, would give a year of their life to serve the country in some way. Canada, First Nations in the North, anywhere else in their community. Of course, you know, we used to have these kinds of prodigies. There was Katimivik for a while, and the Canadian Officer Training Corps was another great one. Now, today we have Cadets. Cadets is another great way of young men and women understanding their country. And again,

it builds, it's a project of society. Young men and women will go all across Canada, will understand their country better, will understand their history better. And no, we're not a post-national state. We are a country and we have one culture founded on Judeo-Christian principles, et cetera, et cetera. I'm speaking with Lieutenant General Michel Mise-en-Neuve. We're talking all men are military. And one of the stories that I saw

and it made my ears prick up was the idea being floated by certain politicians, most notably Jagmeet Singh of the NDP and Mark Carney, who said something similar, that in the face of the aggressive posturing by the Americans, that maybe a good idea would be to cancel Canada's contract to buy US-built F-35s and look for companies to build fighter jets in Canada. Now, look, as a theory, that's great, but it feels to me yet again we have such a woeful tradition of procurement, efficient and optimal procurement of military materials in this

country, and it's the politicization of the military yet again. Going back and forth, not looking at what the military needs, but rather what does a politician need in this moment to curry favor? Well, the old F-35, what a political football that has been for 15, 20 years. I'm telling you, I tell you, it's just unbelievable. We've been participating in that program now for 15 years to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

And yet we made, we took so much time to make a decision to finally go with that aircraft. And now here we are with thinking, and of course, you may imagine, Ben, that there's been all kinds of work done on bases across Canada to get this plane ready to go, building infrastructure for it. So we're down the road.

We've got probably Canadians, and I don't have any inside information, believe me, and I'm not an Air Force type but we we have all kinds of Canadians serving in the CINIC right now understanding we're getting to learn the aircraft how to maintain it etc etc how to fly it and so so the big thing to to kind of think about is right now we would have if we get the f-35 we would have one type of airplane if you're deciding not to go with the f-35 we would have one type of airplane if you're deciding not to go with the f-35 or go with less of them you would need two aircraft now two different

aircraft I mean two different types of pilots two different types of maintainers infrastructure different etc etc so it's a really positive answer real you know you really have to think about it very very closely about whether you you want to go this way or not. But we've done it, Lieutenant General, we've done it so many times. I mean, we did it in 93 with the Sea Kings, and we found ourselves without replacements for generations. I mean, we've done this before and it doesn't work. And it certainly helps, I'm sure, in the immediate term for the politicians, but it certainly doesn't help in the medium, the immediate, the medium, or the long term for the military.

But I want to thank you for joining us. I appreciate your insights, and again, thank you for your service. Thank you. It's time now for the opinions of a good friend of the show and of mine. We're talking tech with Mohit Rajan's, a mediologist and consultant with thinkstart.ca. Mohit, welcome. Benologist and consultant with thinkstart.ca. Mohit, welcome. Ben, nice to hear from you. I get a bad rap for railing against Gen Z. I'm the old man screaming at clouds, but I read this

article and thought, oh my God, Gen Z, get your act together. They have perfected, according to this article, task masking in the workplace, which is when you look busy, but you're not busy. This is something that I think is probably not just a Gen Z problem, to be honest with you. I think we're getting to a place right now where, yes, we're there study being studied because their tactics right now show that 65% of Gen Z workers feel pressured to appear busy. And they do that by doing everything from highlighting what it is that they, you know, they have heightened stress and burnout. So they'll highlight what they're doing. They'll do things like rushing

around the office and joining non-existent virtual meetings and stuff. So it sounds very, very harsh, but the truth is there's a broader problem here. Why? Why are they able to and what is it that's happening in the workplace that's maybe not as efficient as we think? Well, that you know, that's a question to not let's come to the defense of this generation, you know, there we have tools now that can optimize your time and make the work that you do even better in the form of all sorts of AI tools. And it seems

to me that this generation would be the one that it was most apt and eager to adopt those tools and fold them into their workflow. Oh, yeah. And I think you and I can probably agree that we've been in situations where even back in the day when we were researching, it was certain things that we knew the quicker way

to get to the path, But obviously, because of process and because of compliance, you didn't do it. So I think Gen Z is really looking at this and saying, well, we know how to do this more efficiently, we can get the job done, work faster, maybe we want to hit the yoga class at lunch, that's an hour and a half. I'm not saying that's exactly what's happening. But what I am saying is that we need to start to learn from the younger demographic about how efficient they're actually becoming, because otherwise it's going to become problematic very quickly. I did not know that Google had any sort of partnership with Reddit. So when I read that Google is expanding its partnership with Reddit, I was quite quite

surprised. So maybe may rather than talk about the story of the day, take me back a few steps into why has Google even partnered with Reddit and some people don't even know what Reddit is. Yeah, so what's interesting is if you consider the fact that a decade ago, blogging was one of the only ways that Google was starting to index sort of the wide variety of conversation, it really did ignore what Reddit is, which is a massive search and information trove for an entire generation. And so if you can imagine that if you and I spent most

of our time going to Google and researching, there's a generation after us that spend most of their time on Reddit going through that Q&A process because it really does micro niche. It really does find conversations, but it is also problematic and it is also places where trends start and begin. So we're in a situation now where Google realized that they're not, they're not going to be able to index the actual internet for all of its value

just based on the way they've been traditionally doing it. And so Reddit ends up becoming this partnership, which you have to remember, right? It doesn't start as a profitable company. It doesn't have the ability right now to be able to move in a direction where it can survive on its own just based on users. So this Google ecosystem is supposed

to bring everyone together. But as you and I know, Reddit is not moderated by any professional company. It's moderated by the people. And so it'll be interesting to see if Google, while they partner with them, has the ability to get the best out of Reddit or if it's going to be a non-moderated mess. How far do you think Google would be willing to integrate with Reddit? I don't believe that it's going to be possible when it comes down to filtering.

That's going to be the biggest problem because as you and I know, when you look at your first page Google entries, you're looking at a mix of sponsored and extremely vetted, i.e. people who have been in the system and baked themselves into the Google system. It's going to be, you're going to have to go and really get deep into search queries before you're able to find what Reddit value you're looking for. But you will find it based on what people share and click on. So it's the Google problem, right? Yeah. The more people click on it, the more it gets bumped up to the top.

BBC is talking about a shift towards reduced online profiles. Now, if I just read the title, that would seem to me a good thing, that all of a sudden people are, I don't know, valuing privacy a little better, a little more. I think we're just finding the maturation of social media three decades into this, this world, people are starting to realize that we've gone from being people who felt like we were doing these documentaries of ourselves and really just finding a reason to be different people at different stages in our life. And my daughter's a great point of that. She asked me before she went to university to remove all of her youth pictures, let's say that I happily posted from really bad basketball games.

But that's not the point. The point is that 39% of the respondents in this conversation said they were worried about how companies start to use their online data. And so it can be anything from reducing your social allegiance to a brand right down to the personal profile you have on other social media. So I think- I found that my relationship with social media has completely changed.

I don't post anything on Instagram anymore. I use, I search it, I'll follow it, I'll watch stories on it. And I really use Twitter almost exclusively for work. And those are really the only two I've got. And so you're right, there is an evolution that happens in a person's life. But if you're on the early, on the early part of that journey, then you're probably still,

like you're on Snapchat and on TikTok today, the way I was on Twitter and Instagram 10 years ago, which is to say a lot. But I also think we also live through the time period where at one point everyone's like, well, you gotta be kind of everywhere and no, you don't. So that maturation comes in our personalities. And also, and this is where we have to remember, we need to go back and delete things we've

set up. Like I'm on Blue Sky and apparently people that interact with me on it, I don't remember when I signed up for it. So because it can be co-opted. So don't forget, Ben, your identity can be used on another social media platform, even though you're not on it. So it's very, you got to be very careful about where you disengage from as well. What is the unsent project? So this is fascinating to me, because it's something that's found a resurgence just recently because of your favorite app, TikTok, but it's actually been around since 2015. And it's created by a person named Rora Blue.

And it actually, the seed of it was just out East and PEI when she was doing her thesis originally. And quite simply this, it's a collection of over 1 million unsent text messages to first loves and people who do it anonymously. And it's this website where people just go and find how people were wanting to communicate with people. And TikTok, one of them, for example,

that went viral off of TikTok and has found this research and says 13 million views, just watching these, reading these unsent messages. So it's really enacted or triggered a little bit of a nostalgia thing for people where they've started to realize that the internet is also about documenting history in this expression and not just about doom scrolling. It feels like the new iteration of missed connections, you know, people who have a moment

on a bus or a subway and then it's only later on that they realize they should have done something about it. Very much so. I think we can't forget that, right? Like so much has happened in such a short amount of time. It'll be fascinating to see what actually survives in our online environments to be able to show what the sign of the times really were. I know.

And listen, I like this as an idea and as a concept and it seems entirely positive, which is not what something we talk about often with social media. So I kind of have to say, okay, TikTok for the win on this one. Okay, but it's not for everyone. And you and I both know that it can get annoying quickly. No, I don't know. I've never been on TikTok. I don't know anything about it. And I'm very happy to live in a world where I know nothing about TikTok, Mohit.

Yes. Yes. This is actually, this is more about the whole concept of the UnSend project than it is. It just bubbles over on these popular apps as we talk about them. Mohit Rajan's always love our chats. Thank you so much.

Talk to you soon. Have a great one. Chat soon. This is Carry the Fire. I'm your host, Lisa LaFlamme. Carry the Fire, a podcast by the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation featuring inspiring personal stories about what happens when world-leading doctors, nurses, researchers, and their patients come together to ignite breakthroughs.

Carry the Fire launches Monday, January 27th, wherever you get your podcasts.