Latest / Kvetch & Release / The Rundown with Jon Liedtke and Mark Mendelson - April 2, 2024

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The Rundown with Jon Liedtke and Mark Mendelson - April 2, 2024 · Kvetch & Release

• 0:03
  This is News Talk Tonight with Jim Richards on the iHeartRadio Talk Network. Somebody
• 0:10
  saw me on the street siding and he said, Jim, how do I
• 0:12
  get into broadcasting? And I said, by any means possible. You have
• 0:16
  to get into broadcasting, any means possible, That's what I said. And
• 0:21
  they said, is going well? I said, yes, going very well
• 0:26
  the broadcasting, and so you should do it. I inspired them, I
• 0:30
  think. Also now another situation, a neighbor had their home broken into.
• 0:36
  My next door neighbor actually home broken into, and what do you do?
• 0:42
  Have you ever had that happen? Have you ever had and then what do
• 0:47
  you do? Do you move? Because that's what she wants to do.
• 0:50
  That is coming up later on this very broadcast. I am Jim Richards.
• 0:56
  It's time for the rundown with the lovely mellfluous tone of the likes of a
• 1:00
  radio star and podcaster in Windsor. John Lidkey joins us. John, thank
• 1:06
  you very much for your time, Thanks for having me equally melifluous tones the
• 1:11
  host or part of the magic that is Mark Madness. Now, Mark Madness
• 1:17
  is a bit on a bit of a hiatus. If you don't know how
• 1:19
  Mark Madness works is we have two crazy news stories of dumb criminals and Mark
• 1:26
  has to pick the crazier one. But we wanted to line up with how
• 1:30
  March Madness is going to end, so we've delayed a little bit. But
• 1:34
  we're down to our final four of crazy news stories and we will unveil that
• 1:40
  later this week. Mark is our crime specialist and former homicide cop. Thank
• 1:45
  you very much for your time. Mark, my pleasure looking forward to the
• 1:49
  bracket at the end of the week. Oh, it should be exciting.
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  I want to start off with some audio. I had to check to make
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  sure it was an AI because it doesn't make any sense to me. It's
• 2:01
  like Trudeau has been a lot of times like talking about you know, if
• 2:08
  only I knew who the guy was who was in charge around here, something
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  would happen. If I only knew who it was, we would get to
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  the bottom of it. Justin Trudeau earlier today says temporary immigration needs to be
• 2:27
  brought under control and if only he could figure out who this person was,
• 2:34
  who he needs to talk to, he'd be able to do something about it.
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  So Justin, where are you with all of this right now? In
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  terms of all of these people who need to be talked about. My job
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  is not to be popular, all right, let's hear more. Or whether
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  it's international students in particular that have grown at a rate far beyond what Canada
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  has been able to absorb. Now we're at seven and a half percent of
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  our population comprised of temporary immigrants. That's something that we need to get back
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  under control. We want to get those numbers down. It's a responsible approach
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  to immigration that continues on our permanent residents as we it's responsible. What is
• 3:23
  like responsible? We're going to go pedal to the metal and then when we
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  find out we can't go pedal in the medal anymore, we're gonna slay them
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  on the brakes? Is he how that works? And we're the ones doing
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  it. In January, the Immigration Minister announced a cap on students via student
• 3:39
  visas admitted to Canada at about three hundred and sixty thousand, thirty five percent
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  drop from twenty twenty three. John, your thoughts of this new position on
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  trying to get this under control. Because the guys which happened to be them
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  let it go a little crazy. You hit the nail on the head This
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  is the epitome of the we're all trying to find the guy who did this
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  that goes around Twitter every now and then. I mean, this was your
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  government, this was your policies under this prime minister, and it's just surprising
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  that he'd come out and say something just as objectively silly. I think there's
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  other ways he could have phrased it better. He could say, look,
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  we are the ultimate approval, but provinces are actors in this as well.
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  I mean, I see this and I think he has given a lot of
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  fodder to his political opponents here. But I suppose acknowledging the issue is the
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  first step. I would say, Mark, go ahead, well, your
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  analogy was very good, full speeding and slammed the brakes on it. It
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  sounds like he's now suffering from whiplash that from that move. I mean,
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  you wonder whether he's trying to head polyev off a you know, at the
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  past here, you know, because that's one of the big quarterstones of him.
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  So he's coming up with this now. But at the end of the
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  day, the way the reality is that the universities love the international students.
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  So do the colleges because they essentially pay full pop when they come as opposed
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  to you know, students say in Ontario, but where are they going to
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  go? Where are they going to stay? I mean, I've put a
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  bunch of five kids through university, and I know when they go to smaller,
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  smaller cities like like Ottawa and like Peterborough, to those universities, it's
• 5:27
  difficult to find housing. And now we've got all these kids who don't have
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  anywhere to stay. We've got landlords who are renting out literally plots four or
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  five cots into one bedroom for students and essentially extorting them for huge amounts of
• 5:43
  money. And you know, and we're sitting around as a population looking every
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  day at people who are living in tents, who are living on the streets
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  in Toronto. A lot of them are immigrants. Granted they aren't students,
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  but they're still coming from other countries. And I think the public is just
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  saying enough, where are all these people going to go? Every word out
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  of a politician's mouth is housing, housing, housing, So why are we
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  bringing more people in who can't find housing. It's almost as iff like it's
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  amazing to me that back when they would have given birth to these policies that
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  somebody wasn't sticking around going, hey, by the way, what about this
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  housing issue? Ah, yeah, don't worry about it. It's it is,
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  it's really something else. And like you say, it's like they're they're
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  beating Pierre polliev Off at the pass and Trudeau can say no, no,
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  no, no. I was already mad at that guy who did that.
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  Pierre. I've got this one. Don't worry about it. Let's move along.
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  I've been calling that. By the way. Then announcement today to keep
• 6:46
  the carbon tax away, I think we can avoid talking about carbon tax today,
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  or let's just see how well we do. Interesting story out of Montreal
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  where a lot of people from the Vermont area who are coming up to enjoy
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  Label Provence ended up going back and I guess went back to Vermont and found
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  out that they had these apple tags on their car. Now I've realized that
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  these apple tags can be used for good and bad. If you're stalking somebody
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  and hopefully you're not, you can put this on somebody's car and you can
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  find out where they're going, that sort of thing. But a Vermont security
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  expert advises us you would have individuals on both sides of the border, and
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  the driver of that vehicle would be unaware that any contraband had been stashed in
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  their vehicle or on their vehicle, and it could be an easy way to
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  move small items from one side and then have it be picked up. Most
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  people, it seems, thus far, have had alerts on their iPhone of
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  air tags, and that's how they've gotten too reporting it to low enforcement.
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  I think you need to have I might be wrong, but I think any
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  smartphone now will detect these things will go off and you're like, what does
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  that even mean? So it's interesting what you can use these things for because
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  they were invented to help people like me who lose their wallet every five minutes.
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  Honestly, I've got my wallet, I've got my keys, I've got
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  my sunglasses case, and I've got a couple of bikes. I've got everything.
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  I've got these Apple tags for everything. Mark, you want to start,
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  Well, the two prime purposes for criminals doing this are and we've seen
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  this in Toronto, We've seen it in southern Ontario. Is quite often,
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  you know, the bad guys will be in Buffalo or Niagara Falls, New
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  York at one of the big outlet malls where people in southern Ontario left to
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  go and shop, and they'll identify an elderly couple and they'll see what kind
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  of vehicle they're driving. They will literally duct tape on firearms and ammunition and
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  drugs onto the undercarriage of the vehicle. Is that right? And then yes,
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  and then they put the air tag into the bumper area somewhere around there.
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  So this lovely elderly couple, unbeknownst to them, are bringing back guns
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  and drugs and there's no no, there's no exposure to the bad guys,
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  and the air tag will tell them exactly where they've gone to. So they
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  follow them to their home and in the cover of darkness, they take those
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  those items out of the bottom and they never get caught. That's the first
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  reason that, you know, the first sort of modus operanda, and the
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  second one is of course, for the stolen vehicles. They're you know,
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  they're traveling around shopping malls, and rather than getting caught and doing car jacketings,
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  they'll just tick a tag on them and follow them and they know exactly
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  where they live. Brilliant stuff. I wish nothing, That's what I wish
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  all right, let's take a quick break here on the rundown. We'll get
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  thoughts from John in the second and some of the other big news stories of
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  the day. And before we got out of here, the brilliant, iconic,
• 10:00
  hilarious Sean Colin on the passing Joe Flaherty. This our on in depth
• 10:05
  radio News Talk Tonight. Welcome back to News Talk Tonight with Jim Richards on
• 10:24
  the iHeartRadio Talk Network. This is the iHeart Talk Radio Network. Moments ago,
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  we were talking here about the use and the story comes to us from
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  CTV Montreal. Plenty of people who were from Vermont would come up to Montreal
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  and enjoy the city and then drive back and find out all sorts of apple
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  tags were on their car. And as Mark who is our crime specialist,
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  was just saying that this isn't necessarily new that you would it would be used
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  for guns and stuff. Mark, oh, firearms, I mean there's shotguns,
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  drugs. Like with duct tape or how would like they would duct tape
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  it to the bottom of the car or hide it in the bottom of the
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  car, or what would they do? Well, they they duct tape it
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  right there the undercarriage, they would I mean, you know, and if
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  you got like John and I were talking during the break, I mean,
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  if you've got a couple and they're seventy five eighty years old and they went
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  across the border to you know, get a better price on Turkey wings or
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  something like that, what are the chances of them being sent to a secondary
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  inspection? Almost nil. So it's a real simple risk. And if they
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  do get caught, there's no ties to the bad guys, there's none,
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  there's no connection at all. Well, it's it's pretty clear. It's pretty
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  clear that border on both sides should be now scanning cars looking for Apple layer
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  tags. No, John, Yeah, I mean that makes sense. We
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  know that when it comes to enhancing border security, especially you know, living
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  down here in Windsor, as new technology comes out, it's used first usually
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  by criminals, and that that gets tampered down with in one way or another.
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  But I don't know how you could be looking underneath every car that crosses
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  unless you put a reflective surface underneath their cameras underneath at the border crossings.
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  This is what's really concerning, because you know, the risk profile for the
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  people who are being targeted here is very low. That they're going to be
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  dealt with, but the risk for that individually is darn high if you're the
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  one smuggling a gun into the country. Yeah. Well, the well intent,
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  the well intended invention of the apple tag, I think was the tile
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  first and then apple tags, Mark was for you to find your luggage,
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  for you to find any number of different things that you're losing all the time.
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  And we've seen that they've been used in stocking incidents, and we've also
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  seen that the technology kind of adapted and now your iPhone will tell you if
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  there's a strange tag, and I think your android will tell you too if
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  it is detecting a strange tag. But I was wondering, Mark, do
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  you know whether or not you can drive by and it might not be your
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  local detachment, police force detachment, but they might be able to point you
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  in the right direction to have your car. I don't know if it's wanded
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  down or what they might do to find something like this. Well, yeah,
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  it's a communications suite essentially, is what it's called. And no,
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  they won't because first of all, it's very time consuming. And I can
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  tell you just just through my own company. We have a whole separate area
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  that do just this. You know, they sweep offices and houses, in
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  boardrooms, et cetera. And we're at the point now where the clients are
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  saying, you know what, we want our CEO and CFO, we want
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  their car swept as well. And not all of these tags are identifiable to
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  an Android or to an iPhone. There there are units that are out there
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  now that don't get picked up by your regular smartphones. So you know,
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  as as John said, the criminals figure out, you know, back door
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  away around it, and here we sit, it's always it's whack them old
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  chasing technology and that's why they keep doing it. But you can literally get
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  tags now that do not show up on your smartphones at all. A couple
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  of big announcements today, although you know, I don't know if people are
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  it seems like there's I'm not trying to diminish certainly, what we're trying to
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  do with housing right across this country is very very important. It just seems
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  like, you know, housing announcement poloza and I think for a lot of
• 14:24
  people they don't know what is this one about? What is that one about?
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  We'll launch the Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund with a billion dollars available to be
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  allocated in the short term from municipalities to support needs that will directly create more
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  housing, and five billion dollars for agreements with provinces and territories to support investments
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  in long term priority. So these, again, I think these get lost
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  on people. John in Ontario doug Ford has already kind of distanced himself from
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  this announcement before it was even made, trying to say, hey's no on
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  for four plexes. I bet you if Bonnie Cronby came out against four plexes
• 15:03
  today, he'd be all for four plexes. But I don't know. Do
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  you think these announcements get lost on people, especially again an announcement a day
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  to keep the carbon tax talk away? Yeah, you know. I mean
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  it could get lost in the static of it all. But I think that,
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  you know, politically, it's savvy for Trudeau to be picking fights with
• 15:24
  premiers rather than picking fights with polliev right now, and I think we're going
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  to be seeing more of that. We knew that most of the premiers would
• 15:33
  be saying no to this based off of prior comments, and today has sort
• 15:35
  of borne that true. They're all taking a wait and see approach, but
• 15:39
  his numbers are in the dumps, and you know, making announcements is a
• 15:43
  good way to, as you said, keep the carbon tax away and off
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  the screens. Okay. I like what they're doing in Montreal in the Plateau
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  Burrow, which is one of my favorites. Seriously, they've decided to stop
• 15:56
  allowing people to develop duplex is, meaning if there are duplexes, some uh,
• 16:03
  some landlords would be saying, now we're gonna We're gonna make it into
• 16:07
  a triplex or something like that, thus eliminating you know, you would have
• 16:11
  one unit instead of two units. And I guess you're saying, hey,
• 16:15
  we want to incentivize to build new things if that's what they're looking for,
• 16:18
  but we don't want to lose inventory here. That on top of the fact
• 16:23
  that this has been used in order to renevict people for lack of better term,
• 16:30
  mark, Yeah, Renevictor is the big problem right now, not just
• 16:33
  in Montreal, but certainly in Toronto as well. You know, you've got
• 16:37
  your landlord saying, you know what I'm you know what I'm giving I'm giving
• 16:41
  this this house and I'm giving these two units to my children. You guys
• 16:45
  are out here's your ND twelve or N eleven or whatever they give out here
• 16:48
  in Ontario, and you got sixty days to find another place. And of
• 16:52
  course it never happens. And you know, a year down the road or
• 16:55
  eight months down the road, you find out that they've just rented to other
• 16:57
  another family or another individual dual and raise the rents dramatically. So this is
• 17:03
  some way to control it. And you know, I I appreciate when,
• 17:07
  you know, when somebody says, I've got a four plex, but I
• 17:11
  want to kick everybody out and turn it into one big house and there and
• 17:15
  there's a voice out there that says and I don't necessarily agree with it,
• 17:18
  but they say, hey, look I don't own the road, I don't
• 17:19
  know the sidewalk, I don't own the air, but I own this house
• 17:23
  and why should the government? Yeah, I kind of feel that way,
• 17:26
  like why why can you tell me whether I want to do person? That's
• 17:30
  my house, Like it's my business. You know, I don't want big
• 17:34
  brother having control over everything. And you like, try and do a renovation
• 17:38
  in Toronto, Lord help you if your plans have you you know, creeping
• 17:42
  over one extra foot, uh, like in your your footprint, Well,
• 17:48
  everything stops. If you had a couple of these places and you wanted to
• 17:51
  turn one into them into your house, and they're saying, oh, no,
• 17:53
  you can't because you're going to sell the other one and then you're going
• 17:56
  to get you know, you're going to make this one your retirement home,
• 17:59
  and they're telling you you can't do it anyway. Got a bit of a
• 18:02
  problem with that. But in BC they've taken a little bit further where they're
• 18:06
  saying, hey, if you and your partner have agreed that you're going to
• 18:10
  be paying rent and it's just going to be a couple there and then you
• 18:12
  have a baby, we used to be able to evict you because it said
• 18:17
  two people on the least, not three people. And in British Columbia they're
• 18:21
  saying you can no longer do that. John, Yeah, well that makes
• 18:25
  sense. I don't think that people should be penalized for having child baby.
• 18:27
  Yeah, it's you know, that's not a great policy, quite frankly,
• 18:32
  and you know, it's surprising that it was on the books. We know
• 18:34
  that we're dealing right now with this unprecedented housing crisis across the Canada. Across
• 18:40
  Canada, across North America and we need to be able to ensure that people
• 18:45
  have roofs over their heads. And I do commend any efforts that governments are
• 18:48
  taking. I would agree with that. Guys, thank you very much for
• 18:52
  time. Really appreciate it. Thank you, have a good night. That
• 18:56
  is Mark Mendelssohn, who is the star of mar Mar Madness. Again.
• 19:00
  We've had brackets the past couple of weeks where two of the worst news stories
• 19:07
  they face off and Mark picks the winner. That will continue and return closer
• 19:14
  to I guess next week because we want to match it up with the end
• 19:17
  of March Madness. That's Mark Madness and John Lidkey. You can check out
• 19:22
  his podcast it's called cavec and you can hear him on the Windsor station and
• 19:26
  as in his podcast as well, We Remember the Life of Joe Flaherty next
• 19:32
  here on the iHeart Talk Radio Network.