The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben asks are we finally ready for a real discussion about our Military

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Ben asks are we finally ready for a real discussion about our Military with Guest: Geoff Russ, Columnist for The National Post and The Spectator Australia If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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BenMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us on this Wednesday. The election campaign is in full swing. Lots of ammunition, lots of, lots of audio to share with you today and my take on a lot of it. Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the NDP, was on a chorus station earlier today and he told host Kevin Frankish what people are telling him is are the biggest issues in this election. People tell me the major things that they're worried about. They say one, the cost of groceries to the cost of my home and trying to find a place I can call my own.

And if you're a parent that's got a home, you're worried about your kids being able to find a place of their own. Those two things are really the major concerns that people tell me about when they talk about cost of living. What we can do on that is that we have the best plan on that. On the cost of groceries, instead of hoping one change will trickle down to another change, we wanna go at it directly

with a price cap on food essentials. This has been tried and tested and it works in other countries. And it's particularly important given that big corporate grocery stores have actively done things that ripped off Canadians, they engage in bread price fixing. So they jacked up the price of bread, and made massive amounts of profits doing that ripping

off Canadians. Uh, look, there's a there are a few things wrong with this that I see at first blush one yet okay housing, absolutely. We can talk about that another time. I really wanna talk about this idea of price controls, because that's what Jagmeet Singh is suggesting. Putting price controls in to stop the greedy corporate grocery giants from ripping you off.

Okay, we've talked about this before. At no point did he reference the carbon tax that he supported that put a price on every aspect of food from the moment it is it is taken out of the ground to the moment it's turned into food and to the moment it is sold to you and every at every point there's a carbon tax that is levied on that part of the product. That's now down to zero thanks to, thanks air quotes to Mark Carney. But okay, you wanna blame the big bad corporate grocery overlords, the cartel of,

I mean, it's a nonsense visual of these people. Listen, if you wanna make a ton of money, hand over fist, you don't get into the grocery game. You just don't. The margins don't bear it out. And he says, it's worked. It's worked in other jurisdictions. Where sir?

If I had the pleasure of speaking directly with Jagmeet Singh, I would ask him where what countries in what countries do this price fixing work? Just tell me because Venezuela had it. It didn't work there. The Soviets had it. It didn't work there. The Soviets had it. It didn't work there. I believe they've got it in North Korea. I ain't moving there. So just show me where it works. And if if you give me an example that is at least moderately analogous to Canada,

I as a firm believer in best practices, if there's a way to import that version here, then let's look at it. But simply saying, oh, it's worked other places. I need more details than that. Because every, every piece of documentation that I look at tells me that this is not a good idea. It may solve the problem for a few weeks, few months, but in the medium and long term, it leads to terrible outcomes. So that's sorry, not good enough. Another question a lot of people around this country have now that we are finally at the polls is what took so long, Mr. Singh, you had so many opportunities to bring down this government. Why didn't you do it? Why didn't you do it? Period. What we did, we sure absolutely could have

period. What we did, we sure absolutely could have pulled our support for in the agreement at any point in time. We always could have. We wouldn't have dental care. We wouldn't have had pharma care. Right now, millions of Canadians have been able to go and get their teeth fixed. I promised that.

I said I was gonna fight hard for seniors to be able to get, look after their teeth. Now millions of Canadians literally have been able to sign up to this program. Millions of Canadians have actually gotten help. Seniors tell me all the time, you've actually allowed me to get my dentures, to get my teeth cleaned, to get my teeth fixed up. I was living in pain before this, now I'm not. That's what New Democrats do. That's why I became a leader. I didn't want to just make noise in the corner. I wanted to make a difference.

I made that happen. Yeah, you did. And these are now, I call them cherished institutions, cherished programs to the point that Pierre Poliev has gone on the record saying he will not touch dental care. He will not touch pharmacare. He will not touch daycare, except to improve the outcomes of those programs.

In all the cases, at least the way he described them, all the outcomes have gotten worse despite throwing billions of dollars at these programs. There are fewer daycare slots available today. Pierre Poliev says he's going to fix that. So those aren't going anywhere. But what I would point out, Mr. Singh, if you want to thank you for those programs, I'll give you a thank you. But what I would point out is the Canada Dental Benefit was launched in December of 2022. And the Pharmacare Act became law on October 10, 2024. From the passage of the Pharmacare Act, you should the day after you should have been willing to take

down this government. And you had many opportunities, many opportunities, not one, not two, many opportunities to do so and you never did. And I think we would be in a far better position as a nation today. I think the Liberal Party might be in a better position than it is today. I think the NDP would be in a better position than it is today. Had you done what you should have done and held the government to account after you got these things passed, but you didn't. And so I think you're not telling the whole story in that answer.

But like I said, the invitation to not just Jagmeet Singh but Mark Carney, Pierre Poliev, and a number of their candidates running for in this election, there is always an open invitation for them to join us here on the Ben Mulroney show where I promise a good faith and respectful conversation. So Sean Fraser, the housing minister under Pierre, under Justin Trudeau, decided that he was going to retire and not seek reelection because he wanted to spend more time with his family. And so the, the writing association of Central Nova moved on with the business and they found themselves a new candidate.

And I guess Pierre Poliev, not Pierre Poliev, I think Mark Carney and Sean Fraser had a little conversation, decided, no, no, maybe he should come back. And so they turf the guy that the writing association wanted, brought Sean Fraser had a little conversation, decided, no, no, maybe he should come back. And so they turf the guy that the writing association wanted, brought Sean Fraser back. And on day one, he had some choice words for Pierre Poliev, who had just made his position clear

that he said he would maintain pharmacare and dental care. So I'm learning this in real time. And it's unbelievable to me that someone who has railed against these programs as wasteful, now that he realizes his position is unpopular, he shifts his principles altogether. You don't like my principles, look at my other principles, this is his essential approach here. I don't know what to do with that because if I hadn't told you that I was Sean Fraser,

you might have thought that that was a conservative railing against Mark Carney and the insane 180 that the party has made on virtually all of their policies and the hubris in believing that that is palatable to the majority of Canadians. And by the way, railing against a policy before it becomes policy doesn't preclude you to eventually say, you know what, it passed, it's now part of the conversation and we're not moving on it. Just like the Tories at one point pushed back on same sex marriage, it became law, and now you're

not going to find a whole lot of Tories that don't support same sex marriage. Just like the GST that the liberals said they were going to get rid of, just like free trade. Once it becomes law and you realize it's good, you stick with it. That is in no way hypocritical. What is hypocritical is trying to take credit for getting rid of the carbon tax when, A, in point of fact, you don't get rid of the carbon tax and, B, the whole carbon tax was your own goddamn idea. I'll take the fine if that was somehow beyond the pale. So, and lastly, I wanna touch on the language issue that Marc Carney is facing. Here's Yves-Francois Blanchet,

the head of the Bloc Québécois, ripping into Marc Carney for using the Green Party as an excuse to avoid a second francophone debate. Okay, so Mr. Carney suddenly finds out that what he didn't know he thought but what he did think was that he was not there because his close friends from the Green Party were not there so I thought oh that's over they will be invited and then we will have the debate and somebody will have to pay for someone I don't know who

will pay for who I believe mr. Poilier intends to pay for the liberals and then somebody might have to pay for the greens and the idea is that if everybody wants this debate to happen and it is very useful then let make things happen. It is traditional for there to be two French language debates one hosted by TVA the largest news organization in Canada in terms of raw numbers of people who get their news from them. For Mark Carney to do this, it says a heck of a lot more about him and his campaign and his French than it says about anything else. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show.

Canada is a big place. Can we agree? A very big place. Second largest landmass in the world. And I think the our our our borders are long and meandering, with the exception of of the border between Canada and the United States, especially to the West. It ain't a straight line. There's a lot to defend. And more and more we are looking to the north as our responsibility,

our duty and as well part of how we can secure this century as the Canadian century goes through the Arctic. And to join us to talk about this is Jeff Russ, columnist for the National Post, as well as the spectator in Australia. Jeff, welcome back to the show. Ben, it's great to be back. Thanks again for having me.

Now, you've written a great article that I wanna talk about. It gave me chills, to be honest. But before we do, I want to talk about some of the news that was made on the military front on the campaign trail. And I would love your assessment, because Mark Carney took to the microphones blaming Stephen Harper and Pierre Poliev for Canada's weakened military, lack of support for veterans, even though the Liberals have been in power for a decade. Let's listen to what he had to say.

And the first part of Canada strong. It means an armed forces that are well resourced and has those very resources at the ready. And we're here. I'm here to make that happen. Our military is still underfunded. Under the last Conservative government, when Pierre Pauliev was a minister, that government was spending less than 1% of GDP on defense. And Conservatives abandoned our armed forces forces and shamefully abandon our veterans closing area offices across Canada. Now I don't know enough about this, Jeff, but I do remember a video that kind of went

viral of Justin Trudeau kind of dressing down a veteran saying you're asking for too much. You're asking for more than we can afford. This feels disingenuous or perhaps a misinterpretation of the facts on the ground. But you tell me. Well, it doesn't help that Mark Carney sounds like AI. He was talking about the veterans there. But here's the thing. Yes, it's true. Trudeau did. I'm gonna say spit in the face, but I think it was pretty disrespectful to say more than we can give right now, considering how much we give in foreign aid. But wouldn't it should be clear? You can give money to the military, but if it just goes into more bureaucracy, and more red tape, and more things that don't actually improve our fighting capabilities,

then what's the point? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, yeah, that's a common theme. I think that the conservatives beat it. It's just too much bureaucracy. And so think that's, yeah, that's a common theme. I think that the conservatives beat it. It's just too much bureaucracy. And so a dollar brought in is not a dollar directly spent. And I think that I think more Canadians need to appreciate that. So I'm glad I got your take on that. But let's move on to what I think is an inspiring vision

that you have for Canada's Arctic Empire. And the title of the article, I know the writer doesn't necessarily write the title, but it's great. Canada needs an Arctic Empire, no matter the cost. Give me the thrust of your argument. So I did come up with the Arctic Empire title. That was a good on you, man.

Thank you, thank you. Well, I wanted to get eyeballs because if you don't frame it in what I would say is a perhaps a bit of flair, then people it's not going to enter the, you know, I want us to enter the popular consciousness and it's not going to happen if you keep going with, you know, make some more of a mundane title. But if you think about it as an Arctic Empire, I think it does catch more eyeballs. And this really does need to become a common theme in Canadian political culture and just

culture in general is thinking about the Arctic. It's dangerous that we don't. Well, and I love that you drew the parallel between the national imperative to build the Canadian Pacific Railroad and sort of this need to really focus our attention to the North. I mean, a lot of people think that the exercise in nation building ended once we were able

to go from coast to coast in this country. And that's just not the case. 100% 100% those made the first active nation building in the country. But this is the modern world and we have to look to the north. And to be quite frank, we built the Canadian Pacific Railroad to ward off American annexationism or annexationist threats, economic or otherwise. But in the North, we really do have to worry about China, Russia, and I hate to say it, the United States too has not acted like a friend. I don't think I need to, I don't think we need to belabor that point after just a few months of this presidency.

But Canada needs to have a strong presence in the Arctic. You look at the incursions, the Russians and the Chinese are doing bomber flights near Alaska just on drills But if you look at say the behavior of China in the South China Sea They're not afraid to you know go into other people's sovereign waters. Oh, yeah and cause trouble And what I know actually something I'm glad you're here for because it just occurred to me. I've never quite understood China's claims to the Arctic. Where is their footprint in the Arctic?

They don't have one. Okay. So how do they justify encroaching on other people's sovereign territory? Probably the same way they could justify their ghost fishing fleets off Argentina that overfishing destroy the ecological thing. I think they're just resources that they desire that are close enough, if not close, if not close on an on a map. And they want to secure valuable minerals and energy for their economy, especially you look at the EVs, and other things that China

produces now, they need stuff that comes out of the Arctic. Now, it's expensive to track resources from the Arctic, but I don't think we should leave that to chance. So listen, I don't want to forget the second part of the Arctic. Now, it's expensive to track resources from the Arctic, but I don't think we should leave that to chance. So listen, I don't want to forget the second part of the title, because the Arctic Empire great expression, but no matter the cost, there are a lot of Canadians out there who would balk at the idea of saying, damn, the cost, we have to do this. Justify that for me. Sure. So the one thing I would say is that nation building in Canada has never been led by libertarians. I think libertarians can create some great, don't get me wrong, I'm not here to bash libertarians, but they've never really done much in nation building. They're great for the brick

and mortar economy, they're great for the local economies, they're good for building of GDP and whatnot. But in terms of nation building, that's not something Canada has ever really left to market forces. So when you say no matter the cost, well, you can pay for it or you can lose it. And I assure you the latter option will be far more expensive for the country. Yeah, yeah. And I agree completely. Now, we've seen Pierre Poliev already go to the Arctic and make a pronouncement, an announcement of funding and additional resources and I believe a new base up there for the first time in generations. Mark Carney has made his announcements

made about bolster the military, including buying submarines and icebreakers. He did that, he did so in Halifax. He also was up in the Caliwit. But we as Canadians and our Canadian politicians were really good at making announcements and pronouncements, not so much with the follow through.

If there's one, one thing I'm always disappointed in is we, we stopped short on so many things and you make the argument that stopping short is not an option here. No, it's not. Um, there's other, that's what makes the point. You can use the Arctic or lose it. Yeah. I mean, I think it needs to be thought about as a race. And this is why it's important to get the Arctic

into the national consciousness on a more firmer level because then the politicians feel like they can get away with just making the promises and not following up. Well, let's assume, Jeff, that whoever forms the next government does put the pedal to the metal. What do you think the cost would be to get it to a place where we actually have a presence that would would make somebody else think twice about

about coming over the line? So how much would it cost and how long would it take? Oh, geez, in terms of pure numbers. Well, what do you think? We'll think about how much do they base at equal at cost. Let me just pull up the top steer. Do they have cost estimates for that? But I would assume it would be.

If we were pushing up defense spending to say 5% of GDP, then you're looking probably into the hundreds of billions. Yeah, I mean, think about how much it took to build the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. Yeah, yeah, that was 30 billion dollars. Think about what it's going to be in the Arctic. It's not going to be cheap. It's going to be cheap again.

But keep reminding that there are knock on benefits to this sort of thing. You're building out communities here. You're supporting business. You're you're you're you're able to sell and export those things. I mean, if we're building military equipment, we can then sell that military equipment, but it requires an investment from the jump. Yeah, but there's also the benefit of extracting the minerals and there's also oil and gas in the Arctic, too, and but there's also the benefit of extracting the

minerals and there's also oil and gas in the Arctic too. And there are in Inuit communities who do want to extract those, which is going to become increasingly easy to extract as the temperatures warm. Yes and no, it's become more unpredictable. So the warming of the Arctic has benefits, but it also has new problems have been presented, you know, there's more ice flowing in from Greenland as Greenland melts. Yeah. But for extracting resources in the more, how do I describe it?

More in the Canadian Shield region of the Arctic where there's less ice and more land. That's probably easier. And there's many. And as far as the minerals go, that's where the minerals go. Jeff, we're going to leave it there. But thank you so much. The article is Canada Needs an Arctic Empire's where the minerals. Jeff, we're going to leave it there, but thank you so much. The article is Canada Needs An Arctic Empire No Matter the Cost. I really appreciate it.

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