The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben digs into Mark Carney's economic plan for Canada

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

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So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much for spending a little bit of your Tuesday with us. And we learned a little bit more about Mark Carney recently. Earlier during the Ben Mulroney show, we broke down the new position of Pierre Poliev, the pivot of his campaign, if you will, from Axe the Tax to Canada First.

And we're gonna do the same thing with an interview that Mark Carney gave, the front runner for the liberal leadership gave to Rosemary Barton on the CBC.BC first of all noteworthy because he was speaking with the Canadian press He's doing that more now. That's an old and tired joke He is speaking to the Canadian press a little bit more now than he used to but that also means that the scrutiny should be Raised as well. And so but it was a wide range in conversation Some of it good which will give him credit for and some of it good, which we'll give him credit for, and some of it gobbledygook, if you will. Let's start with the iceberg in front of the liberals,

which is how they view their seminal big ticket policy item over the last nine years, the carbon tax. And Pierre Poliev is suggesting that if you elect a carny liberal government, he's going to hide the tax temporarily and then bring it back in an even bigger fashion. Let's go to the horse's mouth himself and see what he had to say about his plans on how he plans to change the liberal carbon tax system. So there's a couple of things. First, and just to be clear, in terms of removing the consumer carbon tax, that also means we're removing the carbon tax for small, medium-sized enterprises, for farms and others, basically everyone up to 50 kilotons of emissions.

So it's the large polluters that pay. Now, those large polluters today, what they try to do is reduce their own emissions. If they don't get to certain levels, depending on the sector, they pay the producer carbon tax, the OPBS system as a whole, as you know. They have an option to buy carbon credits, which reduces the tax they pay. That market doesn't function very well. That carbon credit market doesn't function very well. So what we're actually doing here is improving the market, improving how it functions, adding additional credits, so additional options for those large polluters. They could buy these credits, this federal government will

stand in between, and what's going to be new is a series of new incentives for households to reduce those emissions. So listen, I think I'm a pretty smart guy. I think I'm a pretty well-read guy. I didn't understand anything of what he just said. I'm sure that that makes sense to a certain type of person who understands the carbon credit exchanges. That made no sense to me. And I guarantee you it made no sense to anybody who understood it. And I keep going back to this notion that we are handcuffed by the Paris Agreement,

where we have to take care of our own backyard as opposed to exporting Canadian technologies to the largest emitters in the world, the Chinas, the Indias, the Brazils, the Russians, America, exporting our technology, which would help them lower their carbon footprints. And then we as Canada could get credit for that. Apparently, according to the Paris agreement that we signed on to, that's not how it works. And so rather than actually be able to contribute to the lowering of global emissions in a meaningful way, we have to do things like this. It cost us money and do nothing to truly lower global emissions. But this is Mark Carney's sort of hill he wants to die on.

But he then gets a credit where credit is due. Rosemary Barton of the CBC pressed Mark Carney about, look, if you're going to create this system, what stops the large emitters from passing this on ultimately, the cost ultimately on to the consumer? Here's what he said. Just to be clear, them buying credits reduces their costs. It helps Canadians reduce their own emissions. Now, take a big step back and look at the overall producer carbon price. And let's take the example of the steel industry. So there's a carbon price on steel. To the

extent to which that's paid, yes, that does show up in the cost, for example, of an automobile. Now, let's put this into proportions. If you look at a $25,000 or less car, the cost, if you replaced all the steel and it became green steel, so no carbon steel, which is an extreme version of what we're talking about here, it's less than $200 additional price. So it's something but it's not much. Okay, look, yes. Mark Carney is not Justin Trudeau. Mark Carney is a well-read, deep thinker with deep expertise in a number of fields, as opposed to Justin, who really leads with the theatrics, right? But yet again, it seems like we are being, they're trying to sell us a bill of goods.

I'm trying to square the circle of what he first said there, where he said, yes, when they buy carbon credits, that lowers their overall costs. I'm sorry, when you buy something, that doesn't put more money in your pocket. If the government forces you to buy something that you otherwise wouldn't have to buy in the form of a carbon credit, you are spending money, not saving money. You cannot convince me otherwise, just like you can't convince me that paying Justin Trudeau's carbon tax made me richer. That will not happen. You will not convince me of it. I don't care how many times you repeated in the House of

Commons. And this to me feels like that. He goes on and he's asked very bluntly about his how his approach to the balancing the budget. Is he going to be able to balance the budget? Let's listen. One of the things we're gonna do later this week is go through our new fiscal, what I would propose is our fiscal rules. Core to that is to reduce spending of the government, so to balance our operational spending over the course of the next three years,

to be absolutely clear what that means in terms of operational spending. It is all the programs that the government runs. It is the transfers to provinces, which is health and education transfers. It's transfers to individuals. It's debt service, which continues to increase as government goes on. So we will balance that over three years. Where we are willing to borrow is to invest and grow this economy. That is an absolute crucial point. So there'll be a deficit. It is a fundamental difference between the approach the government has taken up until now. It is a fundamental difference between the

approach of Pierre Pauliev, which is a trickle-down, let thousand flowers... But there will be a deficit it'll just be you'll justify it because it's investing in the economy is that investing the economy at a time when we absolutely have to build as a country. I'm not convinced when he says that that this is any different from the current liberal government but if I'm being honest if I'm being a good faith representative here, I can see how his voice and his measured tone and his experience in a moment like this could give certain people who otherwise have given up on the liberal brand to look at it

again. I think he's finding his footing in terms of what he can offer that is a different path from Justin Trudeau, or at least the appearance of a different path. He then goes on to explain what quote unquote investing in the economy means. Let me be clear about what investing in the economy means. It means precious taxpayers' dollars catalyzing many multiples of private dollars to build homes, to build the new energy infrastructure, both conventional oil and gas, clean energy, to build out our new AI systems and to build out new trade corridors, all of which are fundamentally necessary if we are going to grow this economy irrespective of how President

Trump is feeling on one day or another. Yeah. I'm not going to grow this economy, irrespective of how President Trump is feeling on one day or another. Yeah, I'm not going to lie. That sounds like something that could resonate with disillusioned liberals who are looking for anything to stay within the liberal camp. I don't know if that translates into real change, or whether this is just the artifice of the liberal machine trying to get reelected, but it could move the needle. And lastly, he dropped a pretty big bomb

here about becoming finance minister to Stephen Harper. I have been offered positions in the past. I was offered, for example, Prime Mr. Harper asked me if I would be his finance minister in 2012. It wasn't appropriate to proceed with that. I didn't. It wasn't appropriate to proceed with that. I didn't. It has been very... Why wasn't it appropriate to proceed with that? Well, I was governor of the central bank at the time, and I didn't feel that it was appropriate

to go directly from being governor into elected politics. We're in a different...and there's been opportunities over time to join the Liberal Party. And Ron, why am I here now? Because we're in a crisis. This, for better or worse, my career, my experience prepares me for this moment. Stephen Harper, paging Stephen Harper, we'd like your response to what he just said there. This is Carry the Fire. I'm your host, Lisa LaFlamme. Carry the Fire, a podcast by the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation featuring inspiring

personal stories about what happens when world-leading doctors, nurses, researchers, and their patients come together to ignite breakthroughs. Carry the Fire launches Monday January 27th wherever you get your podcasts.