The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben asks Pierre Poilievre if Mark Carney has plagiarized Justin Trudeau's playbook

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Guests and Topics: Guest: Pierre Poilievre, Leader of the Official Opposition and Conservative Party of Canada 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

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show on this Thursday. Thank you so much for joining us across the Chorus Radio Network. We appreciate it. Well, more and more, we're getting closer and closer to what looks like the coronation of Mark Carney as the next liberal leader and ultimately as Canada's next prime minister. So it's time to speak to somebody who is hoping to be the prime minister after him. Pierre Poliev, the leader of the official opposition and Conservative Party of Canada.

Pierre, welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Great to be with you, Ben. Thanks for having me. So Mark Carney has been speaking a little bit more recently to the Canadian press, which is a nice change of pace from his conversations with Americans. But he recently laid out his vision of running deficits to spur investment, and ultimately balancing the operational budget of the country after three years, it Mr. Poliev, it sounds a lot like Justin Trudeau's modest

deficit line. Is this Carney just saying that Trudeau's playbook wasn't bad? I'm just smarter than him and I can run it better. No, it's exactly what you said, that we have here the reputation, maybe even the plagiarizing of the Justin Trudeau 2015 liberal promise of three modest deficits that we're going to one, stimulate growth to build infrastructure and three help the middle class. Remember that? Yeah. Well, those three deficits have turned into nine deficits.

The $25 billion in borrowing has turned into $700 billion of borrowing. And as for growth, it's the worst in the G7. As for investment, we've lost a half trillion investment to the United States. And as for the middle class, well, 80% of them are paying higher income tax. A hundred percent of them are paying a higher carbon tax and almost none of our

middle-class people can afford homes for the first time in our history. That is how that promise played out. The last time liberals made it. Now, Mark Carney is making exactly the same promises with exactly the same words, exactly the same time, timelines, exactly the same promises with exactly the same words, exactly the same timelines, exactly the same liberal strategists writing it, and exactly the same liberal MPs and ministers who would be expected to implement it. Why would you expect the result to be any different?

Pierre, I heard Mark Carney on the CBC with Rosemary Barton when he was explaining he is going to scrap the consumer facing carbon tax, but he's gonna create a new system of carbon credits. And I've listened to it a number of times. I don't think I'm that dumb, and yet I cannot make heads or tails of it as he tries to say these large emitters are gonna buy carbon credits,

but A, those things will not get passed on to the consumer. The cost won't get passed on to the consumer, and it will also make life less expensive for the large emitters. I can't square that circle in my head. Well, either can he, he started off by saying that his, his brand new carbon tax on Canadian industry won't affect you because for example, they'll pay the tax, but you don't use steel, do you? He said to to Todd Battis, the CTV reporter who was asking about it. He said when was the last time you used steel Todd? Well, I don't know Mark,

when you got into my car or when I used my appliance in the morning or when I went to the gym and used exercise equipment or perhaps when I got on the elevator in my apartment complex, all the, everything in modern civilization is made of steel. So you're taxing steel, you're taxing everything. And take away, you know, he loves this idea of a Canadian car, but on steel Donald J Trump, he is going to devour our steel industry because I'll tell you, stelco, DeFasco, uh, Al Al Goma, they're all going to leave.

They cannot pay this carny carbon tax. And then so will Canadians will pay the price through everything they buy. It's a trick. He's going to hide the tax for the duration of the election period. He's going to cancel, take it off gas for 60 days, just like they did with the GST for 60 days. But let me tell you, watch out if this guy is reelected, we are in for the mother of all liberal carbon taxes.

Well, I'm also not seeing a lot of meat on the bone for somebody who's going to be our prime minister in short order. He, he's giving these very high level broad bullet points of what he's going to do. And they're so broad, in fact, that they sound with respect, a lot like things I've heard you say in the past, he says that he's going to review federal spending, he's going to curb federal spending and all future

federal spending is going to be based on outcomes. He says he's going to use AI to drive down costs. These are all things AI I've heard from you months, weeks and months ago, but I personally think Canadians deserve a heck of a lot more specifics at this point, given that it's an inevitability that he is going to be in charge in a few weeks. I don't know why we haven't heard more from this guy who will be our prime minister. What we have is slogans that the only two policies he's proposed have been to rename the carbon tax, something else, and rename government spending something else. Other than that, there are no

specifics. I've laid out about 30 specific platform proposals, things like taking the GST off new homes to save you up to 50 grand buying it, um, bringing in a dollar for dollar law requiring that the government find a dollar of savings each time it makes another dollar of spending. Um, we, I've said that I would bring in life sentences for fentanyl, kingpins, but I'd hire 2000 more frontline VBSA officers to keep, to stop drugs, guns and stolen cars. And I would pay for it by getting rid of 2000 bureaucrats.

I said, we're going to cut foreign aid to pay for four new heavy icebreakers in the North and a brand new base up there. Those are real policy proposals with dollar costing with details and timelines. And there I put out literally dozens of these. And yet this guy who's supposedly some kind of policy genius, all he came up with are slogans and renaming existing failed liberal policies. Canadians will choose common sense. And that's why we're going gonna win this election.

Pierre, there's also a tale of two Mark Carney's. You've got Anglophone Mark Carney saying that he's going to do whatever it takes to use extraordinary powers to get pipelines built on it. And when he speaks in French, he says, oh, well, yes, yes, but I'm gonna respect Quebec's ability to essentially veto these things if they need to.

So who do we believe, Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Carney? I wish I thought of that one. I would believe neither of them. I mean, look, the guy, the guy spent the last 15 years of his life trying to defund our energy sector. He had a full on corporate initiative where he was telling Canadian banks and financial institutions don't invest in Canadian oil because it will hurt the environment. Meanwhile, his company, Brookfield, was buying pipelines in the Middle East and investing in coal in the United States of America.

They're moving a third of their investment to China, which is the most polluting country in the world. So he seems to be profiting off of shutting down Canadian industry and Canadian jobs to reduce competition for his foreign investments. We don't want a prime minister who's going to ship money out of our country, sell out our people for his own profit. Rather, we need a prime minister who will put Canada first and bring the money home. Pierre, I only have a short period of time left.

I'd love to get your take on this surprise announcement by our caretaker Prime Minister that we are gonna be building a high-speed rail. A lot of Canadians love that idea. Weird that it's coming from him at this point. He also said he wanted to make it harder for future leaders to cancel this project. If you were to become prime minister,

what do you do with this high-speed rail between Quebec City and Toronto? Well, there is no project to cancel. What he's announced is that he's going to spend billions of dollars and five years to come up with a plan. Yesterday, the consortium head, who's going to be leading this thing, said it will take

half a decade just to find a route and that there won't be a spike in the ground on this rail line for at least five years. So, you know, somebody emailed me yesterday and I confirmed it. It's true. And an S and C Lavellan report done for the federal government on this project. for the federal government on this project in 1995, 30 years ago, when the liberals were last promising this under Jean Gretchen. So now that we are right before an election, they say, Hey, everyone, look at us, we're going to suddenly build a national rail strategy of my friends. It's just another liberal promise that will go nowhere. I've been in conversation with Pierre Poliev,

the leader of the official opposition and the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Pierre, as always, we appreciate your time. We know how busy you are. Thank you very much and we hope you come back soon. Great to be with you, my friend. Many blessings to you. Hi, I'm Donna Friesen from Global National.

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