The Ben Mulroney Show - A great day for the Victoria Cross / Why Canada is operating at a loss

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

GUEST:   Vincent Geloso, senior economist at the MEI. 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 Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Life is about choices. How we decided we're going to attack the day is the glass half full or half empty. And are the Montreal Canadians still in contention for this Stanley Cup? Their backs are against the wall. They're down 3-1 against a very, very tough opponent that has been mopping the floor with them. But I choose to view this as the beginning of the greatest comeback that we have seen in a very long time. And that is how I am going to be entering watching the game tonight. And one of the reasons I have that hope is because every now and then something happens in Ottawa, courtesy of a liberal government, that makes me happy.

Yep. So if you fell off your chair when I said that, pick yourself on up because we got something really good to talk about right now. I want to remind you of the story of Jess LaReschel. Canadian soldier in October 2006, he held a remote outpost west of Kandahar during our war in Afghanistan when it came under heavy Taliban assault. He was severely wounded. He didn't even know how wounded he was. An RPG blast had killed two of his comrades. It got him too. He fought alone, firing his light machine gun, until it was destroyed and then switching to firing rockets.

And he kept the 40 enemy troop from overrunning the position. It was one guy protecting his two friends against 40 enemy combatants. So despite the serious back injuries, the shrapnel wounds, the hearing loss, he refused medical treatment until he could take part in the ramp ceremony in Kandahar, where he helped carry the casket of one of his friends. And I ask you if that story is not proof positive of the highest order of courage and bravery that a person is capable of. If you can show me a better example,

I would love to hear it. And the reason I tell you the story, which you have heard before probably, you certainly heard it on this show before, is because when Jess La Rochelle was honored by the military and by our country, he was honored with our second highest military honor, which is wonderful.

But again, I ask, If he doesn't get the top one, who does? And there has been a push using him as the example to honor our soldiers and their bravery with the establishment of an independent military honors review board. And it's been a long push. It has been a long campaign. And the announcement was made today that Ottawa is going to create this independent military honors. review board to reassess cases, including Afghanistan war actions, that may meet the criteria for the Canadian Victoria Cross.

And it has never been awarded. It's never been awarded since 1990. It was created in 1993, never been awarded. And just ask yourself the question. Since 1993, we haven't had a single soldier of the 40,000 deployed in Afghanistan, for example. Not one of them acquitted him or herself. to the highest degree that we as a country would expect or could imagine, find that rich.

I find that rich. And so, parliamentary secretary Sherri Romanado announced the decision today. And she saying the government agrees to review Afghanistan veteran files, quote, where new evidence may suggest that the criteria for the Victoria Cross may have been met. And intrepid, I can't let a story about Afghanistan go without talking. talking to you about your memories there. When you hear this, and you, you, you know better than most what life was like there.

And you know how, what high regard, Jess La Rochelle is held in by a lot of, a lot of his brothers and sisters in arms. So I was there at the time. Yeah. And I actually took pictures of the ramp ceremony that he was in. And I had a picture. He's in one of the pictures.

And I, but I had no idea what he had done at the time. But also, like, how, he stood there. So rather than get the medical attention he needed. So at first he's in this outpost, right? And he's shooting off. And he got hit by an RPG. Yeah.

Two of his buddies died. He got flown out of this thing, broke his back, had to crawl back up. But his gun had been damaged. He had no gun. He had nothing. But what they did have was all these rockets for some reason. And he used these rockets. And he was firing at the Taliban point blank range with rockets.

Yeah. Shoulder mount him. He has a broken back. His hearing is shot. He's got a concussion. He's got all these different issues. Like there's broken stuff in there too. Like when I heard that he participated in the ramp ceremony,

then he finds out later, like the doctor's like, you shouldn't have been able to do that. Yeah. But also not only that, though, when he left Afghanistan to go to get medical treatment in Germany, they put him in a plane. Yep. And in the middle seat.

Middle aisle. No. Yeah. What? And he flew commercial. Oh, Jesus. He was in, imagine the agony. And he just suffered immensely over the years.

And all the damage from those injuries just sort of accumulated. And he died a few years ago, which was tragic. They wanted this news. They wanted this news to come out before he died. And sadly, it did not. But this is a big deal. A huge deal. It's a huge deal.

For the group, they've been working for six years. This group called Valor in the Presence of the Enemy. Yeah. They got over 60,000 signatures. They ended up getting a number of provinces to say, to sign on to say, yes, we agree with this. I mean, on its face, like, we have to take these things seriously, right? This is, it's, if you create the, the Victoria Cross in 1993,

and you do nothing with it, then that is the height of performance. Like, come on. And when you hear stories like this, and there's no way that this is the only story worthy, of review. And I don't know whether it speaks to an institutional reticence to honor sort of the positive in war. I don't know if that's it. But this isn't what this is. This isn't about being saying, being say, yay to war. Nobody who went there wanted to be there. No, no, I know you don't. I know you don't. But I mean, some people, the argument is, well, you know, you're celebrating

war by, no, you're not. None of these people want to be there, but they are there. They are, they representing their country at a time when our country decided to do this. Country decided to do it. They, without question, followed their orders. And they went there and they did everything that they could in the pursuit of achieving the goals that the country set out. And then when you come back and you are broken and you are bruised and you are battered and you have demonstrated a level of courage and valor, the likes of which you wish everybody

could show in their lives. You represented the flag on your shoulder. Yeah. You represented it. Then you, then you is the country who sent him there in the first place have an obligation to come full circle and honor him with the high. So I'm glad they're doing it. And you know what? Even further than that, have the responsibility to respect them to be able to do the right thing.

And now what this, the problem with this thing was, was that they had asked for years. This group had asked for years. And I done did a number of stories when I was a reporter about this. We've done it a couple of times here on this thing, asking people to do it, to work. on this to be able to say, no, don't just hand him the Victoria Cross. You know what? If you hear what he did, once you hear what he did, obviously you say, wow, that's insane. He should be. The only thing anybody ever asked for was a review. How hard is that? Yeah. Yeah, well, then a review. Well, let's just trying to get, listen. Think about how many people get appeals

for criminal cases. I know. And you could not do a simple review. Yeah. Listen, I'm expecting pushback for this. You know those those silly dumdums out there who wear the white poppies on Remembrance Day because they don't want to glorify war? Well, neither do the people who actually had to live

through it. That's the freaking point. It is the point. So today, congratulations to Bruce Monkir and everybody at Valon in the presence of the enemy. Yes. You know, General Hillier, General Hillier worked hard on this. There's a lot of

who did and they deserve to be recognized for for getting pushing this through yes indeed uh and i'm very glad that you brought this to my attention so that we could tell the story to as many people as possible all right so that was the good news out of ottawa today staples preferred business membership built for busy business owners because you've got bigger things to think about with staples preferred get free delivery no minimums Staples Preferred unlocks up to 3% back Plus 10% savings on print And exclusive wireless offers

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I'll give you a gorty how elbow. Ah, yeah. I said that. You're no good. Anyway, it's going to happen. But that doesn't mean that the playing ice is even. The question is, do you wonder why it's so tough for Canadian teams to win a Stanley Cup? Well, according to our next guest at the McDonald's, I'm sorry, my brain wasn't, Montreal Economic Institute. I apologize.

It's taxes. It's taxes. So please welcome to the show, Vincent Joloso, senior economist. How are you, my friend, welcome. It's pleasure to be here. So it's not, you're not saying that it's because

the Americans are better at building hockey teams. You're saying it's the taxes that make it harder for us in Canada to keep the play. players, yeah? So they're not inherently better. It's just easier for them to use dollars to attract people. And the reason is very simple. Think about what athletes are. They're incredibly high-skilled people who are insanely in demand. They have low costs of moving relative to their income. So at 1% difference in tax rate means a lot of differences for just like it's big dollars that end up being on the table. So players, when they decide, especially when they're free agents, when they decide to go to play, where to go to play, well, teams with lower tax and states with lower tax rates or provinces with lower tax rates, they don't need to offer as much to match the net pay. It gives them an edge.

And I remember years ago, one of the knocks for Canadian teams in professional sports was our weak dollar versus the American. So it was easier for it to go out and pay more because we, we still have to pay everybody in American dollars up here. Does that play into it at all? Yes, it does, but it's not, it's independent from tax rate. You want to think that the exchange rate, what it does is it creates uncertainty over the value of a contract that a player pays. So let's say like you decide to sign.

I'm sure you'd love to play, let's say, for, I'll put you with the LA Kings, okay, just for, for the sake of argument, you sign at $5 million, at that $5 million. You expect five. You sign for five millions. And then there's an offer that comes in from the Maple Leaf. The Maple Leafs offer you $5 million, but that $5 million fluctuates. And then in reality, you're left with four. So players, when they have that uncertainty in terms of what the contract will pay up,

it does affect them. But that's independent of the tax rates. So this is something that's independent from it, even though it does matter. And so it's very interesting. I mean, it's kind of depressing when you say that over the last six NHL seasons, four Stanley Cups were won by teams based in Florida, a state with no personal income tax. And I guess if we zoom out beyond sports, this is a big problem as we try to attract talent that has similar to sports.

They are highly skilled, very much in demand. They are mobile. They can uproot very quickly. I'm talking like engineers and innovators and coders and AI leadership teams. All of that stuff, all of those people, if we're trying to attract them here, that tax system could be a barrier. And I remember back in the day, it wasn't that long ago. It was when in Toronto, we had attracted. Google to town.

And they were going to do a big project here. And I remember the discussions after we had declared victory, we said, yes, we have higher taxes than the Americans. But the way we described to Google was bring all your people up here. And you as a company don't have to worry about health care costs. And the houses are affordable. And we've got good. Our streets are safe.

And on and on and on. Most of that stuff has, the bloom has come off the rose to a certain extent, and all we're left with is the high taxes. So it's harder to make that pitch to global talent today than it was a few years ago. Yes. So I like the fact that you went exactly where what we were trying to do with this study that we put out, that hockey players, this talks to the heart of Canadians, like for sure. But it speaks to something bigger, which is research.

doctors, painters, professors, actors, inventors, musicians, managers, whoever you think you think is high skill, they work the same as athletes. They respond very, very well to tax rates because their high skills are highly in demand, which means big dollars and small differences in tax rate, end up amounting for large differences in terms of income.

And it does matter to attract people with high skills. In fact, I will point something out. It's not in our study, but it's worth mentioning. people like to diss the United States for lots of things. But the fact is if you look at the distribution globally of these high-skills people I mentioned, researchers, doctors, painters, like all this list, they go to the U.S. is proportionately well above what you would expect the U.S. to attract. Why is that?

Well, the tax rates. And they come in so much, they generate so much growth, so much innovations, that despite having a smaller government in terms of how big it is relative to the economy, the resources are so much larger as a pool of resources to spend on that if you look at social spending per head in the United States, they actually spend more than Canadian. If you think of poverty spending, Americans spend more than Canadian. So that means they do more efforts to fight poverty than Canadian. It's just a smaller effort proportionally.

But they can do that because they attract people who are high-skilled that generates economic growth. And we should want high-skills. We should have policies that encourage high-skills. And the best thing for Canadians are, it's not just those recent. researchers and there's inventors and these painters. It's athletes too. Vincent, I'm so glad you said that because I feel like I want to pull my hair out. When I hear people talking, you know, oh, well, let's, we're going to take the GST off of groceries.

And I was like, okay. And then somebody says, well, where are we going to recoup that tax, that loss of tax revenue from? And I keep thinking myself, like, never mind the fact that we could find billions upon billions of dollars of waste in the government if we just want to look for it. Never mind that. But if we grow the economy, then we can lower the taxes on people, which then attracts more people here because the taxes are lower. We have a bigger tax base. These people are opening businesses. Those businesses pay taxes.

The next thing you know, you've got more taxes coming in, more money coming in at a lower tax rate. I don't understand if we keep pursuing the path we have, it's destined to collapse under its own weight, no? Yes, I think it's impossible to keep high skills under high taxes, especially in a world where high skills are highly mobile. And I'll give you something as it looks like an anecdote, but it's not. You'll find more econ professors. So I'm an econ professor, and I'm originally from Quebec. You'll find more French-Canadian economists in American universities than you'll find in Quebec universities. Really?

Should give you an idea. Yeah, yeah. It's like in my department in Virginia. I'm at the university in Virginia. There are two Quebecers in the department, which is you, wouldn't expect to find that many Quebecers in Virginia, yet you do. And you can go through some of the top schools you'll always find in some of the top schools. You'll end up finding some Quebec economists and why they're not in Quebec? Well, if you talk to them most of the

time, they'll end up saying something like, yeah, the taxes are too high. It's not that we don't like Canada. It's like that if we don't like home. It's that, look, people value our skills and people are willing to pay us this much. And in fact, they don't need to pay us that much more for us to make the move. If we want to keep talent in Canada, we have to be competitive on tax rate. And hockey is one example of this, but it works for everything else as well. So I just wish you would come up out with this story after the Montreal Canadiens won the cup. You put this out there now and it just feels like bad juju. Ah, I'm sorry. I'm not.

I listen, I understand that we're doing the baseball thing where you don't talk to the pitcher and you don't talk. You don't mention that he's doing well. You don't do anything. You're jinxing it. I understand that it feels like I'm doing that. I'm not trying to jinx anything. I am hoping for the best like everybody else. But I just want to point out that we could hope much,

we wouldn't have to hold that hard. If the taxes were better. There you go. I get behind that completely. Vincent Jolosa, senior economist at MEI. Great conversation. Really appreciate. Come back anytime.

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