Why the Canadian Air Show Sparks Controversy | The Debate That Divides!

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. In 1946, the Canadian International Air show begun in around the CNE and now here, 2025, the 76th edition. It is the longest running air show in north America. And fans from Canada around the world come every labor day weekend at the c. E to see some of world's best pilots do their thing. I was there. I was a part of it. But not everyone likes it. To talk more about it, thrilled to be joined by my wingman, Mike and Brady. Gentlemen, how are you? [00:00:41] Speaker B: Wingman. I like that. [00:00:43] Speaker A: See, as usual, you never leave your wingman. [00:00:45] Speaker B: Right, Ice. There you go. [00:00:47] Speaker C: That was very dad jokey of you. But thanks, Jim, for having me. [00:00:50] Speaker A: Now, full disclosure, I grew up in an air force family. My dad served in the RCA air force. Freddy and one of his old planes was flying in the air show this weekend, the CP140 Aurora. And it was kind of a big deal for. And I'm always fascinated by it. And our daughters are in their early twenties. And there was a biplane, they're called the north stars. Three biplanes doing these. Basically, they're flying information straight up. They stop, fall backwards. And like some of the stuff we. [00:01:19] Speaker B: Were witnessing, they stall out as they. [00:01:21] Speaker A: Stall out on purpose and then get back going. There was another one where a woman is wing walking. She's walking on the wing of the plane in flight. [00:01:29] Speaker B: And so maybe this is why air Canada is striking. I don't think flight attendants of any sort should be. I didn't sign up for this. [00:01:38] Speaker A: But the point being is thousands of people of all ages, of all backgrounds, everyone are thrilled by flight. We've been like that since it started in 1946. To see something that's that close and that special is to me, one of the highlights of the C and E every year, Every labor day weekend. [00:01:57] Speaker C: One of the highlights too is the week leading up where they all kind of come into the area. You see them flying, flying over everybody's house and everything. It's really cool to see the old bombers and things like that right now. [00:02:07] Speaker A: I. Okay. I've always been a fan. I love it. I don't associate it with war or destruction. I associate it with the celebration of flight. [00:02:15] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And. [00:02:17] Speaker A: And look how talented these people are. And look at their abilities. It's something 99.9% of the people watching could never accomplish. [00:02:25] Speaker C: The. The innovative craftsmanship for some of those machines back in the day, like they're. They're. How many pounds does the average bomber weigh, Jim? [00:02:34] Speaker A: Oh, I had no idea. [00:02:35] Speaker B: Come on, Jim. You must know this, you're down in the Air Force. [00:02:38] Speaker A: I know, I didn't weigh the plane. He fixed it. [00:02:40] Speaker C: Well, the fact that it's even up in the air doing loops and doing tricks. [00:02:43] Speaker B: Cities in the sky. [00:02:45] Speaker A: Like a modern. The Airbus A380 is a complete double deck jumbo jet. [00:02:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:02:52] Speaker A: Like 400 plus people. And it flies and lands and everything. And for years it's the longest running air show in North America and everyone loves it. However, there's some people have taken it too far, including a self proclaimed journalist in Toronto. Seeing the air show in downtown Toronto. This is not merely a show for people, it is a deep trauma for the families of Palestinians whose homes were destroyed by Israeli bombings in Gaza. That's cruelty, not entertainment. Now I will say this. [00:03:22] Speaker B: What? [00:03:22] Speaker A: At no time in the air show did they simulate bombings. Do they blow up things? They're flying. [00:03:30] Speaker B: I'm so sorry. Can you read the last line of that? It's not. [00:03:34] Speaker A: That's cruelty, not entertainment. [00:03:38] Speaker B: Okay. [00:03:39] Speaker A: There is a Billy Bishop Airport for people who don't know Toronto well. And it's right off the lakeshore. [00:03:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:46] Speaker A: And there are planes that take off and land there from dawn to dusk every day, Jim. [00:03:51] Speaker B: Every night. Home on the 427. I mean, I think planes are going to land right on my car. [00:03:57] Speaker A: They're coming into Pearson. It's one of the busiest airports in the world and those planes are flying over every day. [00:04:03] Speaker B: Well, I'd like to say with a certain amount of respect to this journalist that that sounds like a. It's based in nothing factual I can imagine. On some extrapolated spreadsheet of trauma, this might show up there someplace. However, there's so many ways to deal with this. For example, I live maybe 30 minutes north of the city, didn't hear an aircraft. The ability and the freedom that people have to leave that area leads me to believe this is not real journalism at all. Who's the journalist? Let's call them out, shall we? [00:04:42] Speaker A: Nur Dogen. [00:04:43] Speaker B: Andrew, you are not a journalist. This is based in pure speculation and you just want something to complain about. [00:04:50] Speaker A: It feels like clickbait to me. Yeah. And I understand that not only is. [00:04:54] Speaker C: It clickbait, it's wine bait. [00:04:56] Speaker A: Correct. Now I understand. Okay. Someone who may be here from Gaza recently could hear a plane and freak out. [00:05:03] Speaker B: But I mean, and for that individual, this, this rare moment in humanity that's going to have this experience probably has trauma triggers in many other areas. I feel very badly for them. [00:05:16] Speaker C: Yeah, great. Boo hoo for you. But if I just lost a friend in a car crash yesterday. I have every right to not get in the car and go on the highway the next day. Like I can't control these things. Like there's got to be some sort of. [00:05:28] Speaker A: Why can't we have common sense? Why can't we have something? The vast majority of people get great enjoyment from the air show. [00:05:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:37] Speaker A: Kids, elderly, people from all ages, all backgrounds, just watch it. The actual segments of the planes last about 12 minutes, give or take. [00:05:46] Speaker C: The city of Brantford looks forward to it all year round. The air show, it pulls out the entire city and surrounding farmers. [00:05:53] Speaker A: Right. Abbotsford, B.C. have them. Yeah, they have them in the Maritimes. They have in them Quebec. The snowbirds are known around the world. There was a photo taken on the weekend from a photographer that's gone viral of the snowbirds in formation wrapping around the CN Tower. [00:06:09] Speaker B: How, where else in the world do you get to see aircraft do this sort of thing? [00:06:13] Speaker A: Right? Nowhere. [00:06:14] Speaker B: And by the way, you don't see aircraft doing any, any of this in a scenario that is, you know, a war campaign. No, an attack campaign. Planes do very different things. [00:06:26] Speaker C: I don't think there's loop de loops and in the middle of the loop, missiles are going. [00:06:29] Speaker B: No, no. [00:06:30] Speaker A: Here's the other thing that people sometimes forget as Canadians. No one has dropped a bomb from a plane on Canadian soil in the history of our country. [00:06:41] Speaker B: Also, I guess we can kiss drone shows goodbye. [00:06:44] Speaker C: Knock on wood. [00:06:45] Speaker B: Most of the warfare doing is going on. Right. Is drone war. [00:06:49] Speaker A: Yes. [00:06:50] Speaker B: So, you know, I, I, I can understand where this, the idea for this came from. All right. It's a, it's a horrible idea for a story. It's a terrible idea in the sense that there's absolutely no basis likely for it. What was the incident that led them to write about this? [00:07:10] Speaker A: Just because there were some military planes and there is noise over downtown Toronto and they thought it would be triggering. It's like you said you were in a car accident. Maybe. Does every time you hear a car now trigger you? [00:07:25] Speaker B: But Jim, you've hit it on the head. Sorry, Brittany. You hit it on the head. We can't have nice things anymore. Anything that people enjoy to any level, somebody might be triggered and offended by it. Too bad. [00:07:36] Speaker C: Okay, so I gotta play like the dummy here on war. You're saying that most of this war right now that are going or wars that are going on in multiple places are, are drone wars? [00:07:46] Speaker B: Well, certainly in the Ukraine. [00:07:47] Speaker A: We're seeing Ukraine, it's 80 are drones. [00:07:50] Speaker C: The Only reason there's people in the trenches is so the drones have something to shoot at. Right. It sounds like, like most of this war is technology now. [00:07:56] Speaker B: Key installations and key targets. [00:07:59] Speaker A: I mean, drones are taking up buildings and tanks and trucks and everything. [00:08:02] Speaker C: So let's not even use Gaza, which was what this journalist was saying. Let's say the Ukraine. I'm recent from the Ukraine. Am I going to be like, are planes flying overhead all day long or is it missiles coming in? [00:08:13] Speaker B: Like they're using some conventional. Mostly conventional. But you know, the one thing that wasn't part of the air show was missiles being fired. There was no gunshots, no nothing. Not even a dog fight. I think is included in the air show anymore and hasn't for many years for safety reasons. Not because they wanted to avoid triggering anybody. But in some of these cases, even if that is the. Sorry, Brady. Even if that is the case, no, it doesn't make any sense to me at all that that person couldn't be, couldn't be isolated for the two or three hours from that event. And I don't mean put in isolation. [00:08:55] Speaker C: The same way, you know, the dog in the basement when fireworks are going on. [00:09:00] Speaker A: And the other thing, gentlemen, is the pilots and the air crews are quite restricted where they can fly because you have Billy Bishop Airport, which is still Pearson. So the flight space they have is restricted to a section, a piece of geography over Lake Ontario. They may come over the city, then they do everything and then they take off. [00:09:20] Speaker B: Funny enough, right where we're shooting, Jim, is the turn point. Yeah, it's the beacon point right here. [00:09:25] Speaker A: West end of train above us. [00:09:26] Speaker C: So I got a little segue talking about the air show and maybe this goes into a kind of a weird space, but I was on the water in Lake Ontario about 25, 30 years ago when, yes, it was the plane went down. [00:09:39] Speaker A: It was a British Nimrod Subhan with their boat. [00:09:42] Speaker C: That's how close we were to it. [00:09:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:09:44] Speaker B: Wow. [00:09:44] Speaker A: Yeah, it went into a stall trying to bottom out of a thing and they couldn't recover. [00:09:49] Speaker C: If anybody doesn't know, maybe you can fill them in on the actual event of what kind of happened outside of the physical. [00:09:55] Speaker A: But yeah, it was. So it was a British Nimrod sub hunting plane. And they were. Did what the Aurora did this past week in a Labor Day, and they do a series of flybys and maneuvers and they bank and they show the wings and the planes. And it's a slow, graceful airplane. It's not for speed. It's to fly hours and hours on end and look for things. And as it went to the bottom of a loop and sort of a bank, it was kind of going down and go to climb back up, they had something happen and they couldn't come out of their sort of slow dive and climb back up again. And they went right into Lake Ontario. [00:10:30] Speaker C: So there's a massive risk by some of these pilots by putting on the show for entertainment. Why do we not get articles saying, let's praise the bravery of them doing these kind of things for our entertainment? [00:10:43] Speaker B: Why aren't we amazed instead of offended whining about it? [00:10:46] Speaker A: I don't know, Brady. I mean, anytime a pilot gets in any kind of aircraft, anything at whatever level, there is a chance something could go wrong. [00:10:55] Speaker B: Oh, my God. Can we stop feigning outrage over everything so that people will click on an article? [00:11:00] Speaker C: There's so many things that Canadians do differently than anybody else. But one of the things that we're losing we. Which is about being cool to each other. So these are Canadian pilots flying Canadian planes at a Canadian air show for our Canadian entertainment. And our Canadian journalist is like, but. [00:11:16] Speaker B: Think of the children. [00:11:18] Speaker A: But. And here's the thing that kind of got me. And that's why I wanted to bring it up. [00:11:21] Speaker B: It's irritating. [00:11:22] Speaker A: I'm actually irritating. We see the air show, we spend all day there with our family. And it is so representative of Canada as a multicultural, multi ethnic nation. And everyone's having a good time and a good vibe and they're going to the food building and they're playing some games and they're buying some fudge. My food. [00:11:42] Speaker B: What'd you get? What'd you get? [00:11:43] Speaker A: I got the chicken tenders that were wrapped in cool ranch Doritos with buffalo sauce. Yeah, no, it's fantastic. And then my wife got the deep fried cheese curds. [00:11:52] Speaker C: So we're going to do a story on food at the cne. [00:11:54] Speaker B: Sounds like a sweet man. [00:11:55] Speaker C: Yeah, let's go. [00:11:56] Speaker A: So good. And yeah, so sounds like we might. [00:12:00] Speaker B: We might have to defibrillate Jim before the end of the show. Sounds like some of that was deep fried. [00:12:05] Speaker A: But everyone's like, they're so cool with each other. Like, oh, hey, sorry. Because it's crowded and everyone's there together. We're there together. And you know what? We, we. Not that long ago we weren't allowed to do that. And everyone was so happy to be there. And it's like it's always been the unofficial end of summer in southern Ontario. The Canadian national Exhibition. And people know kids are going back to school, everyone's back to the routine, and everyone was having a great time. [00:12:29] Speaker C: So outside of this journalist, if anybody was offended because of what goes on at this, I genuinely do feel for you. Like, if you're going through ptsd, I understand there's. We can't control it. You can't control it. I feel for you. [00:12:42] Speaker D: Hey, guys, I'm a bit late to the game, to this. The producer, Nick here, the resident lefty. I kind of wanted to play devil's elf. [00:12:50] Speaker A: Okay, go ahead, Nick. [00:12:50] Speaker D: No, I'm personally not offended by the air show, or I'm not necessarily. [00:12:55] Speaker B: Thank you for representing the left, Nick. [00:12:56] Speaker A: Yes. [00:12:56] Speaker D: Oh, I'm not necessarily aligned with this, with this journalist, but there's an argument made that these air shows, now we have a policy in Canada and the U.S. of not doing military parades. And with Trump's military parade, that was a big controversy. And I agree with that regard. But these air shows are often seen as almost a proxy for a military parade. It's like, we can't do a military parade, but we can do this air show to show off our might, so to speak. This is often the argument against air shows. [00:13:31] Speaker B: I get it. I mean, I get the words. I understand all the words and so sorry, I have a gut level reaction to that. What? It's an international air show. It's not just our planes, it's planes from all around. Are you kidding me right now? This is not even close to true. And by the way, I would love for a little, just a little bit, maybe I'm the only one. I would love for us to see our military in uniform so that we could say, wow, we are proud of you. You represent us so beautifully in the world. We respect what you do. There's a million parades I would get rid of to have that parade. [00:14:16] Speaker A: So, Nick, and to your point, we have to realize Top Gun Maverick did more to promote the military to the masses than any air show. [00:14:26] Speaker C: An FBI funded film. How many films are actually funded by the FBI? You can actually look it up. [00:14:31] Speaker B: This podcast is actually funded by the FBI? I believe so. [00:14:35] Speaker A: The scenes with Tom Cruise in the jets, with the pilots on the aircraft carrier is the greatest display of US Military might in a movie. Like, look how much money it made around the world. It is one of the biggest box office hits we've seen in recent memory. And the whole thing, from start to finish, was a sort of an anthem, a celebration of US Military might. [00:15:01] Speaker B: We need some context. Nick, join me on this does that context make any sense to anybody? That because Trump went out there and he was like, oh, I'm gonna have a military parade on my birthday. He's a big jackass. He's this flatulent, arrogant dude. And. And he's out there standing in front of fat ankles, thick ankles. He's gentleman. [00:15:25] Speaker C: Come on. [00:15:27] Speaker B: I don't mean to, but, you know. [00:15:28] Speaker C: I'm getting a froth. [00:15:29] Speaker B: And here's what he is. He. He set the tone. Maybe I'm wrong about this, Nick. For what that military parade was. What I'm talking about here and what I think most people think that they're participating in is Canadian ingenuity, Canadian skill. The pride that we have as a nation that we can come together and actually be together physically. And not that we're actually out there saluting mother Russia. [00:15:59] Speaker A: I think still, people of all ages, all generations, there's something cool about being close. When you see a plane take off and land. [00:16:07] Speaker B: What, are you kidding me? We used to park by the. Yes, look at Philadelphia. At Philadelphia, they boo. Safe landings at the airport. I'm sorry, I don't know why I. [00:16:16] Speaker A: Said that, but they do. But no. Yeah, you park every airport in the world. There's an area where people park and watch it and take photos because we. [00:16:25] Speaker C: Used to go sit at the window. Wendy's. [00:16:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:27] Speaker C: Okay, so everybody on Airport Wendy's and get some Frosties and some nuggets and. And watch the planes come in. [00:16:34] Speaker A: I think that's. And I understand. Or some people think, hey, it's. It's a quasi military parade. My argument to that is. Wait a second. It's more a fascination of flight. They're not all military planes. That's only a part of it. [00:16:48] Speaker C: It's true fascination of flight. [00:16:50] Speaker A: How did they do that? And how much skill and how much training. And I know what I do in my little world and how unskilled I am. I can't believe how skilled they are. [00:17:00] Speaker B: I look at the sky and I see our military ingenuity. And I think to myself, we could have so much more of this if we didn't just keep giving it away to other countries around the world. [00:17:11] Speaker C: It wasn't stations. So here's. [00:17:13] Speaker A: And here's the thing that people forget, too. Anti lock breaks in a car that comes from the military, Right? Because my dad was in the air force and they got jets. When the pilots landed, they put the brakes on, but the landing speed was so much faster than old propeller planes. They were blowing out the brakes and tires. So they Invented anti lock brakes so they wouldn't blow up the tires and the trails. [00:17:34] Speaker B: We all benefit from that every day. [00:17:36] Speaker C: Biggest form of entertainment in the world is video games. How did that start? Radar machines and flight simulators. [00:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah, well, no, but they had, they had flight simulators to train pilots. And someone had the idea, why don't we make a home version for people? Have you seen some of the home. [00:17:53] Speaker C: Setups for these brothers? Got a whole setup. [00:17:56] Speaker A: It looks like a cockpit of an airplane. [00:17:58] Speaker C: Yeah, it's nuts. [00:17:59] Speaker B: You know, as the planes come around the CN tower, I'm sure that triggers many people for many things, but what I think is I can't wait for the, for the next air show. [00:18:10] Speaker A: I know the one thing about the air show that I think endures is our fascination. Humankind's fascination with powered flight has not changed since the Wright brothers. To this day we're like, wow, you know what? Like they just landed a plane. So I know part of my dad started in the military. They would fly supplies and humanitarian aid to other countries from Canadian military bases. And a C130 Hercules would open up and ramp and they'd pull out all this food and medicine for countries around the world. Huge pallets that would fill multi track to trailers. [00:18:48] Speaker C: Does this fill that, does that fill that void of human beings? We all just want to fly. We always have. Every philosopher has always stared at the birds and or stared at the stars and been like, I want to travel through space and fly. [00:18:58] Speaker A: Okay. Luke Skywalker in the first Star wars we had this little machine that's like two feet off the ground flying like everyone's. [00:19:04] Speaker B: Oh man, I wanted one of those so bad. It's just a little bit. [00:19:08] Speaker C: But it's flying. [00:19:09] Speaker A: But it's flying. And years ago they thought, well, one day we won't even be stuck in traffic in the 401. Or the sea to span highway or Highway 101, Nova Scotia or the Transcanna highway, Quebec. We're going to be flying to work. [00:19:21] Speaker B: And by the way, if you want to complain about the air show, let's complain about this. It clogs the highways, byways and every road around it. We need to come up with a solution for that. There is no place for you to sit once the lawn is taken up. Could we find another seating arrangement for this thing? I don't think anybody can order beers to where they're sitting. We could probably work that out. We do have gps, all of these things that could be complained about. [00:19:49] Speaker A: Nobody is complaining about GPS airplane technology. [00:19:53] Speaker B: There you go head up. [00:19:54] Speaker A: Display airplane technology, which is standard in every new car now. Yeah, that's all Airplane technology's got a fancy car. Well, I don't. My wife does. But it's been translated to every day. So a lot of the stuff we take for granted on our cars, driving families and friends around are all have sort of the evolution of flight and saying, let's translate this because we use it in commercial airplanes and military airplanes. Let's put it on passenger vehicles. And we do. [00:20:22] Speaker B: And let's not forget this probably inspired balloon boy. So, you know. [00:20:26] Speaker A: Well, yeah, at least that he's Brady, He's Mike. We just solve the world's problems, player.