The Ben Mulroney Show - A baseball betting scandal! And why are Gen Z addicted to location sharing?

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

GUEST:   Hannah Alper - Toronto Based Journalist  GUEST: Tony chapman /  Host of the award winning podcast Chatter that Matters, Founding Partner of Chatter AI If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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BlueJ. AI for tax experts. Welcome, welcome, welcome. 10. Thank you so much for joining us. And welcome to Mike Troulet, Dave Spargal, and Amy Siegel, the three other people that make the Ben Mulroney show possible. Uh, and welcome to you. Thank you for joining us wherever you may find this show. Back in the day, it would be a radio show full stop, but we are so much more than that. We are a podcast. We're on streaming networks. We are on, um, uh, social media. We're on YouTube. We're everywhere you are. So thank you so

much for joining us. It is, uh, deeply, deeply appreciated. You know, last, was it last week, Mike Droulet, that we heard the story of the cheating scandal in basketball? Yeah, it was just, it was last week. It was last week. Yeah, that would a, what a, that's a, that's a black eye for that sport. And then coming right, coming off of this wildly popular World Series, sad to hear that there's a cheating scandal in baseball that we'll get to about. I think a lot of people were all, the general consensus, the conventional wisdom that we were always told was it was bad for baseball to have small market teams or the Blue Jays in the World Series because the ratings would take a hit, right?

That was the conventional wisdom that we all heard. The American media just loves pushing that. American media love pushing that. So explain to me that game seven of the World Series averaged a combined 51 million viewers. in the U.S., Canada, and Japan, making it the most watched Major League Baseball game since Game 7 of 1991 World Series. That's more than any of the games with Los Angeles and New York Yankees last year. The two biggest teams.

It's more than every other world season. Since 1991, there were two World Series that included the Blue Jays, right? 92, 93. Every other one was just American teams. And that game with a Canadian team, beat out all those other ones.

So let's throw out that false premise once and for all. If you put a great team and you put great baseball on the field, people will tune in, right? Absolutely. And the stories around the Blue Jays were tremendous.

We're going to talk about that a little bit later about how they're really marketing. They're not marketing the stats. They're not marketing the home runs. They're marketing the players as people. and the emotion that comes from people connecting with them, yes, for what they do on the field and what they make us feel. But the stories that we learned,

that was one of the privileges that I felt as somebody whose passion for baseball was reignited over that incredible run near the end of the season and through the playoffs, getting to know those players and the stories that made them who they were was tremendous. And that's, you know, that happens a lot in football, right? happens a lot in football where you hear the story of the sacrifice made by the one player and they do a really good job because they play games

once a week. So every day they've got to populate, you know, the newspapers and the television shows with stories about the players. They only play 16, 17, and you get to know them as the people that became the players that became your heroes.

And I think that's something that the Js have gotten really, really good at. But so that's, you got to take the good with the bad and the sweet ain't as sweet. unless you've got the sour. Here's the sour. That the Cleveland Guardians had two pitchers, Emmanuel Classet and Luis Ortiz. They've been indicted in Brooklyn on a host of charges related to a scheme

to rig bets on pitches thrown in Major League Baseball games. That's specific pitches. Yeah. And so you were explaining to me that baseball, unlike a lot of other sports, have these, I mean, you can bet on absolutely anything. With every sport you can. They have these parlayes. It's crazy what you can bet on.

But it's so specific. Like in baseball, you're saying like, you can bet that the first pitch of the game will be a split-finger fastball thrown at more than 95 miles an hour. Yeah. Right? Like, you can bet on that.

And that's what they were doing. And that's what they were doing. They were rigging. They were deliberately choosing. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly doing those things. And were they getting paid for it?

Yeah. Well, apparently they were the ones funding. according to the complaint and like there would be a pitch the one guy was known for throwing a splitter his first pitch all the time instead they bet on the fact that he would throw a slider underneath under 95 miles an hour

and then he would bounce the ball 10 feet in front of the plate I mean that's that's no bueno for them it's no bueno for the integrity of the sport this to me feels worse than Pete Rose well these guys are playing in the game Pete Rose wasn't betting while he was playing. No, no. And when Pete Rose played, he played hard.

Yeah, nobody would ever argue against him playing hard. Exactly. Anyway, so I do hope they throw the book at these guys. If, in fact, they're found guilty, I hope they throw the book at them because I want, I do believe that harsh punishment for certain crimes will make others think twice before doing it. And actually, one of those guys, there were rumors that the Blue Jays were going to trade for him in the trade deadline Could you imagine if you know that storied run

ended in heartbreak but still we've got so much pride in that team could you imagine if we then had to deal with the fallout of something like this with one of those guys wearing out could you imagine they found out that he did that in the World Series? Oh man.

My God. So yeah dodged a bullet there but yeah that's not a good look and like I said if they are found guilty throw the book at these guys so nobody else in baseball thinks to do it. Frankly no one in sports should think to do it because they're going to find you. AI will definitely look at what

I'm sure there are technologies out there that leverage AI that crunch the numbers of every game and they'll tell you if you are behaving it if your pattern of behavior is an outlier from what you typically do and then they're going to come for you.

Good luck. Good luck. You deserve what you get if you mess with it. You're already lucky enough to get paid millions of dollars to play a child's game for a living. If that's not enough for you, that you need to break the rules to make more money on the side, you don't deserve to be there, man. You don't deserve to be there.

Look, I've been describing recently in conversations with people that there's this push-pull for certain types of Canadians about how we feel about Donald Trump. For example, myself as a supporter of Israel, really very much love the fact that he was able to push a peace plan that has a chance, however small, of surviving and holding, but the way he treats Canada really upsets me, right? So there's the push-pull. There are people out there, I'm sure, who support him greatly domestically within the United States for his agenda and what he's doing.

But then you read this new story, and I have to believe that there are even supporters of his that don't like this. To learn that he issued a blanket pardon for prominent figures who were involved in the legal efforts. Remember the fake electors? Remember when they challenged the election that led to January 6th? His personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff,

Sidney Powell, John Eastman. Those were the lawyers. The Giuliani ones, the big one. And the pardons apply only to federal crimes. I know that there are issues in Georgia that are still ongoing. But the election interference, the fact that he did that now,

and I believe he or people in his orbit, would love to suggest that if you give someone a, you don't give someone a preemptive pardon unless they've done something wrong, right? And so, uh, what do you do here? And I used to remember, and I could be wrong, I didn't pay a lot of attention to it, but I always assumed that those pardons were the things that a president did on his way out. Yeah. And nobody expected this to happen. It came out of nowhere. Yeah. So it's always weird. I just assumed that that was what you did on your last day in office. Yeah.

And it seems more commonplace these days. You're talking push-pull, though. I mean, in terms of stories, that when they're issuing the pardon is like, but then there's also the story about with the BBC, which is huge news. Well, yeah. So the BBC has admitted to doctoring Donald Trump's speech that he gave on January 6th before the violence erupted. And I think we've got the clip of the first clip you'll hear is what they aired.

and then the second is what it actually was. Let's listen. We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell. We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women. Yeah, that's, that is, that's, that's, that's either incompetence or it's deliberately manipulative. either case, it's certainly not journalism. And this caused a big shakeup at the BBC. Both the director general and the head of news have resigned. And there was a leaked internal memo from a former insider that accused the broadcaster of this editing that we just aired for you. But they've

also been downplaying Hamas violence and skewing reporting on race and gender over the course of years. Oh, we're running out of time here. All right. Listen, that's an F around and find out sort of situation and hopefully better days ahead for the BBC. Up next. I want privacy. Do you want privacy? Apparently, Gen Z doesn't. Welcome to the Ben Mulruni show. My dad said something really interesting to me.

Well, he made this joke all the time. He joke around, say, hey, you know the only thing better than being rich and famous? And we all knew. We just waited from them to give the punchline. Just being rich. what he appreciated that a lot of people of younger generations don't is in most cases celebrity fame and that accountability of people knowing who you are wherever you go that is a cost that you pay for the money that you make right there's that you're losing

freedom you are losing uh the ability to do things uh and behave in any way that you want without people paying attention to you. Some people strive for fame and they don't realize fame is a cost associated with the money that you may get. And I kind of subscribe to that. Being famous is not freedom. It's in a lot of ways can be a cage. And there's a generation out there that seems to have, that seems to be willing to give away

something that people like myself, really, and I say this as somebody who's kind of visible, that we covet privacy. And so we're joined now by Hannah Alper, Toronto-based journalist on why. And we're going to talk about why Gen Z is addicted to location sharing. Hannah, welcome back to the show. Hi, Ben. It's so great to talk to you like this. Yeah, okay.

So let's unpack this. Your generation seems to have embraced sharing your location at all times through various apps, Snapchat being one of them, right? And so for those people who are not on Snapchat, tell us what, tell us what this is. I'm shocked that you and your listeners might not have a Snapchat account. So I'll definitely explain for those that don't. Yeah. So I have my locations here with 15 other people.

And that's just on my Apple iPhone. So whenever you turn your phone on, people can see wherever I am. They can know that I'm at my soon newspaper in London, Ontario, but also that I stopped for Starbucks along the way. and that when I was on the bus coming from my apartment. And so there's Snapchat maps with location sharing. And now, Hannah. Instagram also recently introduced a location share feature. Okay, okay.

So hold on. So you got, can you hear me. Yes, I can. So you share your location with 15 people, right? So the first question is, why do you? Okay, so two questions, two-parter. Why do you share your location at all? And two, who makes the cut?

Who are the 15 people? It's honestly become completely normal for everyone in my generation or most to share locations with each other, that it's become a social norm, a phenomenon even. And it can happen if you're close friends, but that can mean so many different things in this generation, kind of like what you were saying. And we've lost the right of privacy. And I don't even know what privacy looks like anymore.

We're so used to being seen online that posting everything that we eat, who we hang out with, where we are, that just being able for people to see exactly where we are 24-7 just felt like the natural next step. But I have to say that after considering it, it's definitely become a lot more creepy in my mind and I understand other people's shock to it. Yeah. So just a couple of things. I don't believe that you've lost it. You don't lose it if you voluntarily give it away. And so that was a voluntary thing. But Hannah, what would happen, and you're a journalist,

what would happen if instead of you voluntarily doing this over Snapchat, the government came and just decided everybody needed to turn this on, the location status? Something tells me you would have a problem with the government wanting to know where you are. And yet you're voluntarily, and when I say you, I'm talking more generally about a particular type of person. I don't want to single you out. But something tells me that those same people who are giving it away for free

would have a tough time swallowing the pill of the government wanting to know where you are. For sure. Big Brother used to be the government watching us and now it's our friends. And we kind of will fool ourselves by saying it's for safety, it's for convenience of tracking the bus that your friends are on or tracking the ETA so you and your friends can meet up. but really people are keeping tabs and jokingly stalking all of their friends but you're right we've completely voluntarily given that away but as more and more of our friends have done it

it's become a social norm and expectation and once you turn it on it's a lot harder to turn off well that's yeah Hannah what happens if you're in a relationship with somebody and you're sharing your location all the time and then you go you move on to the next relationship and in this that one you decide you're going to draw a line in the sand you're not going to share your location. If I'm the next person to be in that relationship, I'm like, why doesn't she want me to know where she is, where she let everybody else know? Why aren't I let into the tent? And so the trust issues would build up. Now look, Hannah, I completely subscribe to the idea that there is real value in this, especially with groups of women being able to keep each

other safe by like especially when a woman gets into an Uber or a taxi or she goes to a party right that absolutely makes a lot of sense and there's not only value in it I would say for a certain type of person and a certain type of lifestyle it is essential for somebody to always be able to find you if you if you're not if you're an hour late showing up somewhere you would want your friends to be able to know where you were and come find you exactly but now exactly what you said we know every good and bad thing that happens in the world unlike maybe you and my parents, you could be unfindable. You could go off from home, all hours of the day and night, come back, and no one would know where you are. And I have no idea what that's like.

So you can go off for hours and, but now everyone will know exactly where you are. And it's totally a safety thing. At least that's what we kind of fool ourselves to think at the beginning. But then it transitions into people checking your location during the daytime or when it is safe. So now I can't even go to the places that I just want to retreat to when I want to be alone. There is no sense of privacy when this has become a social norm. And I could, and I have completely turn it off for so many of the people that are in my contacts. But it's also not that simple.

We're so used to being seen. But now it's kind of transitioned into being watched all the time. But there's a difference, I believe, between being seen and being watched. You know, thank you for saying that because I was just trying to imagine a scenario where I, you let me put myself in the shoes of someone in your social circle and I would want to I'm doing something really special for me and I don't know whatever that would mean to you but something is really special and really intimate really personal and then if I were oh here I'll give you an example if from my life if I were to go visit my dad's gravesite and I'm and I'm spending time

deep in thought and trying to connect with my father at his grave site. All of a sudden my phone started buzzing and the people in my social circle say, so nice that you're with your father. Their intention would be nice, but I would not, I would really not appreciate being interrupted in that moment, but I could see it happening. And they would think they were doing me a kindness by connecting with me.

But I'm not trying to connect with anyone but my dad in that moment. That to me would just be a bridge too far. are right it's invasive disguised as intimate when you're at your father's grave site when you're at the hospital when you're in the places that you just want to disappear everyone will know exactly exactly where you are if you go to the jays game people won't just know that you're at the jays game but that you stopped for thrifting along the way hannah i want i only have about a minute left so i do want to talk about what do you think the next iteration of this is for your generation i think that for people even younger than me, it's really scary because then they'll turn their locations on

for even maybe more people than they're close friends with. And I think that it's up to adult parents to do that media literacy and educate their kids on what's safe and to maybe in the dangers of sharing your location with everybody and that it's okay to just be private. Yeah. Well, Hannah, I want to thank you so much for joining us. It's, uh, and I hope you do come back. I know we're talking about this specifically, but anytime, uh, that we talk about, what are the young people thinking. I want Hannah Alper to join us. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ben. Have a great day. Mike Droulet. Do you let anybody follow you? I mean, are you, does anyone track you? No. I track my luggage when I travel. I think that I kind of need to keep tabs on that.

And I ask my, I trust my kids too. I don't have their location status on. Maybe I should, but I have the location status on from my daughter. Yeah. Well, yeah, of course. And my, but my daughter is still someone who just stays very close to home. But one day when she gets a little older and starts going out, I'm going to want to know. It's a safety thing. It is a safe. But, you know, for us, it's beyond that. Yeah.

It's a, there's a privacy element. There's an ick factor of somebody. Oh, I see what you did. You used that parlance of the kids there. Hey, up next. Don't be delulu. Team Canada, Olympic jerseys are out. Are they a gold or perhaps a bronze?

We'll discuss next. Don't go anywhere. This is the Ben Mulroney show. With most Subaru models, all-wheel drive come standard. Heated front seats, high ground clearance, Apple Car Play, standard. Eye-sight driver assists to help when you're distracted by fall foliage? Standard. Guy announcing the radio ad now wanting a Subaru?

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Let's face it, finding your next favorite podcast can be tough. But that's about to change. Curious Cast Discovery is the destination for award-winning podcasts from true crime and history, like crime beat. Documentaries like Stop, Rewind, The Lost Boy, music with Uncharted, and even the paranormal, like Dead Man's Curse. All 100% ad-free for less than the price of a coffee. Curious Cast Discovery. Available now on Apple Podcasts for just $4 a month. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show.

Really appreciate the fact that so many of you join us each and every day. I hear for people who listen sometimes, listen to the entire show, which is really such a gift to hear that there are people who want to hear every aspect of every part of every conversation we have. And one of the conversations we have every week is with our next guest, Tony Chapman. He's the host of the award-winning podcast, Chatter That Matters, founding partner of Chatter AI,

love talking, branding, messaging, all sorts of stuff with him. And welcome to the show, Tony. Always a pleasure. By the way, I actually had a conversation about you on the weekend. Oh, no. Somebody was saying that without question, you're the best host on radio that they've ever heard. And they've been a very loyal listener to both 1010 and 640.

And they just find that your passion and context is something that's very refreshing and needed. So kudos to you, Ben. Well, thank you. You really are making a mark. Well, thank you very much. I'm looking forward to our fireside chat that we're going to have as well near the end of this month. Sold out fireside chat, the high club. You are quite, you're quite the draw.

Well, let me just say if the question is being posed beef or chicken, I will have the beef, please. All right. Okay. Let's talk. Everyone gets really excited this time of year because the Olympics are coming up and everyone wants to know what are the Canadian hockey jersey is going to look like for Team Canada. And look, there's three of them. There's a red and white.

There is a red one with a black maple leaf. And then there's a black on black. And some people are thinking that what's the black doing there when our colors are red and white? I kind of like the black on black. I'm not going to lie. What do you think? Well, there's two things. First of all, what's going to sell?

And black on black, we know, is a very popular sports uniform. People love to wear it. So as a way to monetize, there's no question they've really hit a home run with this design. I do think, though, the Canada, Canadians are searching for ways to wear their maple leaf on their sleeve and to really show their colors. And so I wonder why we didn't have a red on white and a white on red as two options, really bringing out the Canadian flag. So I'm not against the black and black, but I do think that we could have done a better job. of using our core colors and our flag and providing a home and away sweater with them. Well, I think, listen, the proof is going to be in the sales, right? And if this,

if this makes them money, then they're going to, they're going to stick with that stream. They're going to keep, they'll double down next time. But, you know, I think these Olympics snuck up on me. So I didn't even. I think, no, they're going to do well. And listen, a hoodie and a t-shirt, all sorts of other ways. The black-and-black's going to do really well. So don't get me wrong. By the way, the raised ridges of the maple leaf are not lost on me either. It's not a flat maple leaf. There's actually some texture to it. I try to do a little bit of work to see who designed it. I hope it was Canadians and I hope they're producing those sweaters in Canada. And then if that's the case,

then I'm going to give this an absolute hatchet. Oh, there you go. Perfect. All right, let's move on. You know, universities and schools changing their names. Sometimes it's an eye roll. Sometimes it's a necessity. What do you make of George Brown College becoming George Brown Polytechnic? An act of desperation, and not so much to do with George Brown, but just the fact that colleges are losing their cachet unless they're providing you with skills that you can apply into the workforce. And I think what George Brown is signaling, but with Polytechnic is, if you come to our

school, you invest your time and your money, you're going to come out with technical skills in a world where AI is populating every corner of the marketplace, you'll have skills that you can use to build a career. So I totally understand what they're doing. The question for me is ultimately, can they reinvent the entire educational experience to prepare our youth for the future of no work? I know. I mean, to me it feels like a difference without a distinction or a distinction without

difference. Like it's if people were not, if the college wasn't resonating, I don't know what the polytechnic is. I mean, I appreciate the difference when what was Ryerson Polytechnic became Ryerson University, right? That allows you to play on a different level. And then, of course, they threw away the name and gave themselves the single most generic name in the history of universities, TMU, Toronto Metropolitan University. But to go from a college to a polytechnic, I mean, to me, they feel so close to one another. I don't see how that's going to move the needle. I think if they reposition the type of education, they bring in more co-op,

they bring in more hands-on experience, then I'd say polytechnic plays better to that. If it's the same school with a different coat of paint, I agree with you. It's a waste of time and effort. But if this is a signal that reinventing education and people are going to be prepared to work and are going to work throughout your educational experience, then I celebrate the fact that they need that point of distinction and therefore a name change. It really depends on what is the bones of the organization changing or just the skin on top. Well, let's move on to the Blue Jays.

And I've been saying for a long time that I'm so thankful that they had that storied end to their season and an incredible postseason, ending in heartbreak. But I think the net the net result has been new fans, old fans that have renewed passion, but also a connection to the team that I think a lot. of people found surprising because a lot of us connected with the team not because of the minutia of the statistics or the number of home runs but the fact that we it felt like we got to know these players as people and and then to watch those people that we know succeed in such a wonderful way and to see the affection that those people have for each other as a team was unlike anything i've seen in sport in my experience and it really feels like the jays are doubling down on that by by highlighting that wonderful story of Addison Barger sleeping on a couch and then the

next day I have an incredible game. And then allowing people to witness the couch with their own eyes really seems like they've found a way to market this team differently than I've ever seen before. Yeah, listen, great insights in a lot to unpack. First of all, I agree. They struck an emotional chord at a time when there's a vacuum in our culture, which is positivity, possibility, the little guy can win. And even though these are high paid athletes, they came across with humility. So I totally agree with what you're saying.

The couch is interesting because TDs are biggest sponsor. They have the green chair. It must be driving them crazy that they couldn't have the green couch. But I love the fact that Toronto Blue Jays are doing that, and I would do a lot more. I would be bringing that ability to access the team across Canada. One of the ideas that I had I put on LinkedIn was that, you know,

Rogers should sponsor a contest where, A small town can win a Roger's stadium complete with home run fans, Roger's scoreboard, and really get this sense of that baseball belongs to all of us. It's really about a glove and a ball and a bat. Yeah. And really bring this out and bring the sense that. So like hometown hockey.

So like hometown hockey. Right. You know what? That's not a bad idea. You could compete and Rogers would come and refurbish sort of a small community baseball diamond, you know, give them a, you know, for a few, a few thousand dollars, really doing it up well. And then one of the players comes and does a home run derby or something like that.

I'm actually getting chills thinking about that. That would be cool. You know, not only a home run journey, I'd have them capped in the teams. And, you know, like just, we brought with hockey, craft hockeyville, idea I had 20 years ago, we brought pro hockey to small towns of Canada. That's fine. And this is what we need, civic pride. We need to say that this team isn't, it's not exclusive, it's inclusive.

And I think this coach is a great example. I think, honestly, Ed Rogers gets it, and he really understands that he's got something special here. And I think as long as they can keep this team and culture together and they don't start, you know, falling apart with egos, I think they embody what the Canadian values are all about. Well, listen, I just want to follow up on what you were talking about before about the jerseys and where they're made. My intrepid producer, Mike Droulet, just dropped this knowledge. Nike designed Canada's hockey jerseys for these Olympics and Paralympic Winter Games. The authentic on-ice jerseys are made by SP apparel from St. Hyacinth, Quebec. However, the replicas that we will all be buying, those are manufactured outside of Canada.

So now that you know, the athletes will be wearing Canadian made, but if we want to buy the replicas, those are going to be made outside the country. How do you feel? What a loss. I mean, first of all, Nike should be, I hope they're using Canadian designers. It's not shame on you. And we should be manufacturing these jerseys in Canada. And even if they cost a few dollars more, we're wearing jobs in our sleep.

And so to bring these things in, you know, from China or Vietnam to make a few extra dollars is to me no different than sending ferry business over to China. Yeah, but real quick, in about 10 seconds, real quick, what if, I don't know how much a cost to make a jersey here versus making one in China, but clearly isn't the point to get as many people wearing them as possible? I mean, are we talking a difference of five bucks or 50 bucks? I don't know. given the margin that they're selling these shirts or if they just cut back their margin a little bit, I'm sure they could be very competitive with jerseys and more importantly be very proud that Team Canada is wearing and selling jerseys made and design a Canada. It's tough because the money, then if you tighten the margin, that's less money going back to Team Canada. Anyway, thank you very much, my friend. I appreciate it. We'll talk to you soon.

Always a pleasure. Up next, Canada's finance minister explains why he thinks Canada needs to follow Germany's lead. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. On top of hosting the Ben Mulroney show, I'm also the interim host for the West Block, which is Canada's number one political news show that airs every Sunday on global news. And this weekend, we had a number of interviews

that I thought would be beneficial to share with our audience here. David Aiken was able to speak with our finance minister Francois Philippe Champagne about the budget and why he believes it is good for Canada. Canada. So let's take a listen. I want to dive right in on the affordability issue. You've been asked about this all week long. Your budget has a lot of spending on transformational initiatives. Those are big ticket items, business investment. But the Canadians who are having problems right now making ants meet, what is in the budget that addresses affordability issues right now?

Sure. And I said that's a great question. Because when we frame the budget was the issues about the end of the week, the end of the month, and then, like you said, building the future that we want as a nation. The first thing we did was the tax cut, which was 22 million Canadians. This was the tax cut earlier this year. Because we didn't wait. Because, you know, the needs of the people were immediate. And this was a measure we announced. We didn't wait for the budget to announce it. But I would say if you look at the amount of money that we have somehow left in the pocket of Canadians, if you look over time, this is billions in the pockets of Canadians. So that was the first measure. Then was to help first time home buyers. Then you had

the fuel charge obviously. And the one which I would say, which is the, you know, you would say, okay, what's in this budget? I would say Bill Canada homes. Because I think when you talk about affordability, at least when I talk to people, being able to afford a home is usually central. Let me zero in specifically on the price of groceries. The opposition all week long has been saying that growth is too high, food inflation is still too strong. Or there's specific measures that you can point to that say this is going to help bring down the cost of food, going to help farmers, going to help agri-food producers. Well, there's a number of measures with respect to our farmers.

I can think of our canola farmers, for example. There's a number of things to make sure it's very tough because now there's a number of tariffs which make the export, you know, have closed certain export market. Right. But the investments we're making to open up and expand the markets is going to make a difference for them. I would say the measure which is addressing what you just said about grocery, I think first and foremost is if you leave more money in the pockets of people, then that's the, if you ask the flagship affordability measure is that you could do two things.

You can start by leaving more money in the pockets of people. But make sure also that you invest because, you know, the investment we said of in the budget would generate a trillion dollar would enable a trillion dollar of growth in the country but that's the equivalent of like $3,000 for each Canadian and the last thing I'd say but you need to put the house in order so the 60 billion order of savings because Canadians have been tightening their belts and they say it's about time that you do the same so the 60 billion of savings give us the credibility to do these investments because people see that we're putting the house in order at the same time and we say we'll help you for now the end of the week

the end of the month, but at the same time, we're going to invest, so your kids and my kids will be able to have a more prosperous Canada. One thing that, I mean, you and I are about the same age that we've been talking for decades in this country was the lack of productivity in competitors, which has been hurting. Going back to Prime Minister Martin and even beyond. You go back to 1945, we were a big industrial powerhouse, and then over time, we've let that decrease, and now our standard of living would go down if we don't course correct.

For me, it's like a ship. Now we do this course correction. And if I compare what we've done, you know, sometime in the G7, you have to benchmark. I look at what Germany did, $500 billion over 12 years. That's their kind of generational plan. Canada, $450 billion over five years. And this is the largest economy in Europe.

So Canada, when you compare to the G7, you really say, there's really two countries who say, okay, we get it, the world has changed, how can I make sure that I compete, how can make sure I succeed? And you know why I'm confident because Canada is a magnet for talent. Canada knows how to build ship, we build planes, we build cars. We have critical minerals which are going to be essential. We have energy, which is essential as well to grow the economy.

And we're the only country in the G7 with the free trade with all the other G7 countries. So, you know, when I go to these meetings, you know, when you compare, that's where you see that, you know what, there's a headwind, but we're going to be fine because we have the basis are strong in Canada and we're going to do it together. That's why I'm optimistic. All right, that's the optimistic perspective of the government. Now let's hear from Andrew Shear, the House Leader of the Conservatives, for a counterpoint. Now, you've said that the Liberals have used undemocratic actions in order to get a majority. This was after one conservative MP crossed the floor to the liberals and another announced he's resigning. What do you feel were undemographic about those actions? Well, Canadians clearly voted for a minority government. They wanted Mark Carney to have a a strong opposition. They did not want to give him the unfettered runway that a majority

government might give a government. They wanted strong controls on that. If Mark Carney doesn't like the results of that, he can take that up with the Canadian people. But what he shouldn't be doing is any kind of pressure tactics or backroom deals to try to get the majority that Canadians denied him. So, you know, that's what we're saying about the developments this week that are undemocratic to make these kinds of deals and backrooms without any kind of transparency or accountability for Canadians to change the results of the last election. We believe that what Canadians vote for at the ballot box is so important that when they elect a certain kind of government that trying to undo that through these kinds of means

is undemocratic, precisely because there is no democratic activity that would lead to Mark Carney getting what he wanted. So if you were to sum up the Conservatives' key objections to this budget in a simple, manageable, snackable thing, what would you tell Canadians? We would tell Canadians, there's nothing in this budget that will bring down prices, and all the inflationary deficits will just mean things will cost more. The budget says that it's going to increase the industrial carbon tax. Farmers pay that industrial carbon tax when they buy equipment and fertilizer. The fuel service standards tax is still in place. That's 17 cents a liter.

Every piece of food that needs to be trucked from the farm to the food processing center to the grocery store, all of that gets, all of those costs get passed on to the consumers. So that extra 17 cents a leader will have a major impact on driving up food prices. There's nothing in here that will bring down development charges so that we can build homes at a more affordable rate. And Marc Cardi himself gave a very gloomy speech telling young Canadians they're going to have to sacrifice even more. So the fact that prices will go up and there's nothing in here to be price. Oh, I should correct myself, though. There is one measure to help bring prices down. Mark Hardy brought in a private jet tax cut.

So he heard from all the people that were lined up at food banks and young people not being able to afford a home. And his answer to all of that was to eliminate the luxury tax on private jets and yachts. That just shows how out of touch Mark Carney is that he thinks that that's going to help working class Canadians. I have heard you go on the record as well as other colleagues of yours that the government has been trying by way of this budget to trigger a snap election. Do you still feel the same way? Well, I believe that that's what they'd like. You know, after if this budget ends up passing, then everything in Canada will be exactly like Mark Carney wants it. Because, as you

know, Ben, the government can put almost anything they want into a budget bill. That means that every tax rate, every regulation, every piece of red tape will be exactly how Mark Carney wants it. And I think Mark Cardi knows that the consequences of all his broken promises, you know, the fact that he couldn't get a win on tariffs, the fact that he's increasing that industrial carbon tax, the fact that there's nothing there for affordability and inflation's already up on the rise. I believe his preferred course of action was to have a big distraction with a costly election to distract from the attention of the terrible consequences of his policies. So we'll see what happens in the days ahead.

The fact is more of their tax dollar going to pay bankers and bondholders on the interest, nothing on affordability and no relief in sight on tariffs. In fact, the government's own budget documents say that under Mark Carney as prime minister, investment in Canada will continue to decline way out into the future. So it's a very bleak budget if you actually look at the actual numbers. So on one side, we have Francois Philippe Champagne, our minister of financing, he's very optimistic that this is a generational budget. The conservatives say it is anything but. And, you know, as I like to say, look, you go find your information from as many. sources as you trust and if you can't trust the Tories to give it to you straight and you can't

trust the liberals to give it to you straight then get it from both of them and other sources as well and then make your decision up for yourself look I have no say over what the budget's going to look like I choose to view it as glass half full that they're getting some of the stuff right certainly not everything I would like them to get right but fingers crossed this leads to what Mark Carney said is going to lead to the fastest growing economy in the G7. All right. Up next,

make sure you tune in to the West Block every Sunday.