The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben asks why is China interfering in our election?

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Why is China interfering in our election? with Guest: Kevin Vuong, Independent MP 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

So another day on the campaign trail and another record-breaking rally in terms of the people and the turnout for Pierre Poliev. Now let me preface, the polls are putting him in a different place than what appears to be happening on the ground, at least to this humble radio show host. But in doing so, in having this record-breaking 15,000 person strong rally, Pierre Poliev brought out the big guns. He brought out a big endorser, somebody who believes in him, a former economist, I might add, who was prime minister. And so let's listen to former prime minister Stephen Harper praising Pierre Poliev's experience

at the rally last night. We will only get there with leadership from a person who has an actual policy plan, from a person who has been right on all the big issues for a decade, and a person who has the energy and, yes, the youth to take us forward into a better, stronger, and more united future. That person, that person has been my colleague, he is my friend, he is our leader, and he is the next Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre-Paul Liev and Anna. Yeah, listen, I can't find anything he said that was wrong there. He does have a plan. He's the only one who's thus far released anything that looks like a plan.

When he speaks and he's asked questions, Pierre Poliev answers with policy initiatives. Yes, here's the problem. And here's how I think I can solve it. Anytime I hear Mark Carney, no, not anytime, that's not true, he oftentimes will put something in the window. But more often than not, in what I see, he just says, oh there's a problem and we're gonna fix it because Canada is

strong and we are stronger together and elbows up and all that nonsense. Earlier in the day, Pierre Poliev was at a podium and he took issue with this fiction that Mark Carney, because of his resume, somehow gets it right anytime he's, there's a fork in the road, anytime he's asked to make a choice, we're being fed this diet that Mark Carney has a bigger brain than anybody else and that bigger brain makes better choices. Let's listen. Mark Carney has been wrong about every major economic issue of our time. He was wrong to support carbon taxes. He was wrong to oppose pipelines. He was wrong four years ago when

he said the biggest risk to the world was deflation and proposed hundreds of billions of dollars of money printing. He was wrong when he caused the inflation crisis in Great Britain and the housing crisis in that country. He's been universally condemned by the British media, even though back here in Canada, the media covers up his failed record and his terrible reputation in the United Kingdom. Look, there are elements of that that you could say, you could argue if you wanted.

I disagree that it was a failure. I disagree that he was responsible. But that's an argument against Mark Carney. Now, Matt Gurney is a tremendous Canadian journalist, and he is the co-founder of The Hub, which is an online news space as well as a podcast. And he said something that popped up on my newsfeed a couple of days ago, no, maybe last week,

where he was on his podcast and he said, listen, I'm gonna ask people to do something that is very hard for them to do. I'm gonna ask them to put tone away, forgive tone, forget tone. You don't like Pierre's tone, forget that for a moment. If you look at what he's been advocating for the past 10 years in terms of economics

and economic policy in this country, there is absolutely no denying, no denying that we would be in a better economic position today than we are. And that's not coming from me, that's coming from someone I trust on these matters, someone who's level headed, fair, not nearly as partisan as I am. And so on one side, you've got somebody who really should be answering questions on the positions that they've held for the better part of their adult life. And then you've got a guy who any rational person would say,

had we listened to him more times than we ignored him, we wouldn't be in the position we are in today. Those to me are the choices. You've got a resume and you've got a plan. You've got a guy who's been wrong a lot, likes to say he was right. And then you've got a guy who had we listened to him, we would not be facing the headwinds we are today. And yes, the Trump of it all, we would be in a stronger position today to deal with

Donald Trump. That to me is the choice before voters. And I don't care about tone. If you're somebody who's going to vote because you don't like somebody's tone, I would rather somebody be mean that makes the country rich than somebody who speaks really nicely and makes the country poor. We had somebody who spoke nicely and look where we are. I don't care if he's the nicest guy on the block.

I don't care if you think, oh, I don't wanna have a beer with the guy. I don't wanna have a beer with my prime minister. I want him to lead. And I don't care about the tone he takes. We're past that. That's a nice to have. I'm looking at what is essential. And a plan is essential and a vision is essential.

And I don't see that from the liberals. I do not see that from the liberals. And if I, by the way, if I did see it from them, I wouldn't trust them to enact it. That's just one man's opinion. On the CBC, I saw something that we don't often see, which is why we're gonna highlight it here. I saw a conservative make an excellent point and she didn't get shut down by David Cochran, the host. Let's listen to former advisor to Stephen Harper,

Amanda Galbraith, talk about the hubris of the liberals believing that they have any right to lead a discussion on writing the ship regarding the economy. I do candidly just want to take a little bit of exception to the Kerling's assertion that conservatives can no longer position themselves as defenders or in any way an edge on the economy. That is insane to me, given the record of the Liberal government, which has had record deficits, overspending the budget will balance itself over the last three terms. So no, I don't think all of a sudden this 11th hour conversion to all of a sudden we are economists is going to be changing Canadians' minds about how liberal manage the economy. Wow, but public opinion would suggest otherwise, in terms of where they're coming from. Well, no, public opinion is very interested, and I think Mark Kearney, because you guys

hide him behind whatever and they're just campaigning on his resume, sounds great. But the reality of what he may or may not be as PM is a very different thing. We haven't really had an opportunity to vet him and he continues not to be fulsomely vetted in my mind. But I don't think that conservatives at any stretch of the imagination have seeded a single piece of ground on the economic management, nor has Pierre Poliev around how that's happened. If anything, you could argue it's a dead heat. But this is not advantage liberal. And I think that's an important context for folks to have. Yeah, and it's hubris to believe that you can pull a bait and

switch and say, Oh, everything that happened 1010 for the last 10 years, don't worry about who caused it. Let's focus on the guy who's going to solve it nonsense. And you'll remember a couple of days ago on the campaign trail, Mark Carney went a little off brand trying to tell some jokes. I would recommend he not do that. He tried to tell some jokes where he poo-pooed the idea of Danielle Smith standing up for Canada and standing up for Alberta.

Here's what she had to say in response to those comments. Well, I've noticed this with progressive men, how much they talk about how much they support women until they meet a strong conservative woman. And so this is a pretty consistent type of approach that I've seen not only from the current prime minister, but the former one as well. And the attitude is, sit down and shut up. Well, I don't shut up. I make sure that Albertans know exactly how I feel about issues. And I'm going to continue advocating on behalf of my province, whether he likes it or not. There is evidence to suggest that Mark Carney does have a problem with strong women. We saw it with strong journalists who pushed back on him. We see it with Danielle Smith. I mean, that's something that Donald Trump doesn't like either. They both like to make pageantry out of signing away laws they don't like. They both have a problem with the truth.

They are both really good at tax avoidance. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that the Donald Trump of Canada is not Pierre Poliev. It's the guy on the other side. My next guest is someone I love talking to. This is a man whose career in federal politics started in a way that he probably did not expect, and it's ending, I believe, with honor and distinction. He is someone who has stood up for the truth

and to hold people accountable. He's an honest broker, and so let's welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show, Kevin Vong, independent MP. Kevin, welcome. Thanks for having me, Ben. All right, so let's talk about something that, I mean, it's a story within a story, right?

There was a story that came up that there was a WeChat group, and WeChat is like an Asian WhatsApp. And in this, there was talk in the news that Mark Carney was being quote unquote, targeted. That was the story. Anywhere you looked online, you believed that he was being quote unquote targeted. That was the story. Anywhere you looked online, you believed that he was being targeted.

Target has a negative connotation to it. So you would assume that they were making his life harder. If you actually read the story, it's the exact opposite. They are amplifying him. The United States is facing a tough prime minister from Canada. He's quick and effective. He is a rockstar economist.

He's the adult in the room. And so a there's the story of what seems looks like Chinese party interference. Oh, I should say that this group is absolutely linked provably to the Communist Party of China. So that's one story. And then you've got the story of the press trying to gaslight us into believing it's a story, it's the opposite of what it is. Yeah, it's insane. And you got to put this in contact, Ben, with some of the stuff that happened last week where they had a liberal party candidate advocate for the execution of a bounty on a conservative opponent. Oh, Kevin, I think it's worse than that. So yes, you've got that story, the four days where he did nothing.

And then when he finally did come out, he did what no sane person would suggest he did, which was stand by his man. We haven't heard a single word from him on the 100% canola tariffs that are crippling the Canadian industry. We have looked long and hard online. I can't find any documented proof

of him ever being critical of the Chinese government ever. Now I may be wrong, I can't find it. So you put all of this stuff together in a blender and I think it's fair to say certain questions need to be answered. I'm not gonna go so far as to call him the Mark Churian candidate, but I kinda think that if he doesn't answer the questions,

that's gonna linger in the air. That's right. Every time he's been given the opportunity to stand up for Canada in defense of our values and Canadian citizens, he's failed. And now we're seeing, after he was finally dragged into replacing Paul Cheung, who does he replace him with? He replaced him with an individual

who was on the board of a school that was flagged by CSIS as having brought in busloads of students to help the Don Valley North liberal candidate, Han Dong. This was in CSIS. This same leader, the CEO of that school, was parting it up with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And so you point all these things out and you start, you don't need to be an expert then in public safety

or foreign intelligence to realize that this smells funny. Yeah, it smells funny. And, but the fact is when I see the coverage that this WeChat story got, and I see the spin, that's almost universal spin that was applied to it, I think to myself, I don't know that the fifth estate is going to do their job on this. Yeah. And even for those who do cover the story, who provide a little bit more, I think, balanced

coverage, then they find ways to sneak in. Oh, and by the way, you know, there were five conservative candidates who were tossed. They had nothing to do with Ford Interference, but it's just like, why did you need to sneak that in? Why is it that I can only have to look to 640 and voices like yours to get the real truth behind everything. But that's the thing. I don't know what the truth is.

If there's nothing there, I want to know in my bones there's nothing there. And if you're not, if you don't have anything to hide, then show it to us. Show us the receipts. Show me that you're clean. Because one thing I learned in law school, Kevin, is the appearance of propriety is as important as propriety itself. It's not just essential that something be clean. You have to believe that it's clean. It has to look clean.

Otherwise it might as well be dirty. And they're not taking the steps to ensure that we all believe that this is clean. And by the way, I'm not the only one saying this. An economist on the CBC yesterday, Rob Russo had something to say as well. Yeah, on balance, it looks like they were trying to put a thumb on the scale for the liberals and for Mark Carney.

And we should all be concerned about that. Everybody should be concerned about that. I've seen no evidence that he sought their backing. We all know that he was in China last year as part of a delegation of financiers and that he met with President Xi. But this is something that should concern all of us. But I just I don't feel that we are I don't think that our media and I don't think that I don't think our media is rising to the level we require of them in this election campaign as it applies to these very big question marks we have about somebody who has already been our prime minister and wants to be it again.

Yeah, you know, and what whatever happened to Elbows Up? What does it not apply to China? Does it not apply to their foreign interference in our democracy. Whatever happened to the elbows up crowd and why aren't they showing the same level of passion that you and I have for defending our democracy? Yeah, and before anybody accuses me of peddling misinformation or conspiracy theories, I don't wanna peddle anything but fact,

but I have none right now. I'm being given nothing that fills the void left by these unanswered questions. And until somebody does, I am left to speculate. And that is not on me. It is not my burden. The burden is on them. There's too much suggestion out there that something is awry and they need to right the ship so that people like me do not speculate but

It's a fact Ben that they had a candidate that advocated for a communist bounty They it's a fact they replaced that person With another person who's affiliated with a school that's been flagged by thesis. It's a fact that Carney was in Beijing. It's a fact that Brookfield has had various relations investments in China. And it's a fact that Carney was the chairman of the board of Brookfield. These are all facts. And like you said, until they address these, we have no choice but to ask these questions. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's look at something that actually did happen that we have some answers to. And let me just tell our listeners

who aren't familiar with Kevin Vong, he has been one of the most staunch and clear voices in defense of the Jewish people of Canada in the face of threats and intimidation that have been happening since October 7th of last year, or two years ago, I should say. And I'm so proud that he exists and that he champions the right side of history.

So what do you make of McGill cutting its contractual relationship with its student union following sort of its role and its voice in the pro-Palestinian protests? About time, Ben. About time McGill start stepping up and doing their job. And by the way, simply upholding their own rules and code of conduct. Yeah, you know, the president has failed for the longest time in executing their duty. If you're going to sit in the big chair, you're the

one who makes the hard decisions. And that means standing up for all students, right, and having a consistent application of your own rules on everybody. I would take it one step further. I keep calling on a rich alumni who've been pumping money into these institutions to sue these schools, where anti semitism is running unabated and unchecked, suing the schools for all the money that they sent to them in donations for misuse of funds. I would say if when I gave you a million bucks, I didn't give it to you with the intent of turning the kids into anti-Semites.

So I want my money back with interest. Yeah, and it's such a abject failure that we've had to leave it to Jewish students to stand up for themselves. I had a constituent who in OCAD University, just to bring it back to Toronto, she has a lawsuit against the school for failing to protect her from the threats,

the threats of rape against her mother that were etched onto the walls of that school. Yeah. Kevin, I want to thank you so much for everything that you do and the voice that you lend to the important causes. And thank you so much for lending your voice to the Ben Mulroney show today. Thanks for having me, Ben.

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