The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben goes off on the Soap Opera of Canadian Politics

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

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It's normally the weekend, it's quiet, not not these days, not with a liberal leadership race, not with Trump tariffs and an incoming Trump administration. It's gonna be busy on the weekends and we are chock full of news today. And one of the people making news is somebody we don't often hear from former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. He spoke to CTV News and Vashe Kapilous about the need for his party, the Liberal Party of Canada, to return to their roots. Do you think that the party should in this next election move more to the center? There's

a lot of MPs talking about that. I'm sure they will. Why is, why are you sure? Because I've talked to all the candidates candidates and it is a fundamental condition for the party to come back, to be the radical center, as I used to say. Because it is what has been the Liberal Party all along. When I was leader, I was traveling the world and they would ask me because if you're in Europe, a liberal tend to be center right, but strong on human rights.

Yeah, listen, he makes a good point that I've been saying for months, that when people come at me on social media, and they say, Oh, gosh, your father wouldn't recognize this conservative party, maybe, but the difference between the today's conservative party, and my dad's progressive conservative party is nothing compared to the difference between Jean Chr's conservative party and my dad's progressive conservative party is nothing compared to the difference between Jean Chrétien's liberal party and today's liberal party. That chasm is far wider, far wider. And that is that's just a fact. It's unrecognizable to people who supported Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, unrecognizable. And the biggest problem I see, I appreciate the need to return to the center. But how do you return to the center without also conveying the message that, oh, we as a party,

really effed up for nine years. Boy, did we mess up. The last nine years have caused so much pain and have cost so much money and so much lost productivity. It's a lost generation. And for them to simply tack back to the center and say, this is who we are now is I don't know how you can message that without coming across as opportunistic to the nth degree to the highest order. Simply say, oh, if that's where the votes are, well, that's who we are now. What happened to your principles? What happened to your vision for Canada?

What happened for pushing your agenda, pushing your vision, your progressive vision of Canada, pushing climate change above all else at the expense of all else? What happens to that? How do you explain the about face? How do you explain the about face? How do you explain the last nine years without simply saying, well, the votes are over there, so that's where we're going to go.

And I concede that Jean Chrétien has far more connections in the Liberal Party than I. I take him absolutely at his word when he says he has spoken to all of the leadership contenders. But when you read that Trudeau's team has gone all in on Mark Carney, meaning sort of the brain trust that helped get him elected, the his top advisors are all joining Mark Carney's team. Katie Telford, Gerald Butts. And a few others, when you see that the people who helped him become the leader that he became, when they helped craft the vision that got him elected in 2015 and that continued getting elected, albeit minority circumstances, twice thereafter.

I don't understand how those people, unless they are driven entirely by base opportunism, can take Mark Carney and help him tack the party back to the center. I don't think that is where their values are. I don't see that happening. And while we're on the subject, when Pierre Paulyev stood in front of a microphone

last week and said, I'm running against Justin Trudeau in the next election because all the candidates are Justin Trudeau. They all stood by him. Having Mark Carney and his leadership race be supported by and driven by and pushed forward by some of the people who were definitional in this new iteration of the Liberal Party. It's really hard to make the argument that he's not Justin Trudeau. Like it's really hard.

And I don't know that having them behind him is the right tactical decision by Mark Carney. I don't think they're an albatross around his neck. I don't know that most Canadians know who Gerald Butz is or Katie Telford is. I think I'm in a little bit of a political bubble, as are some of the people listening. But I don't think everybody knows who they are. And I don't think everybody, even if they know their names, know who they are and what they've done. But journalists do. Journalists will be telling that story. I also don't think that Mark Carney had a particularly good weekend because

yet again, last week, there were pictures of him with Gillen Maxwell, the sex trafficker. And then I guess more pictures came out of him with Prince Andrew who had his own issues with underage sex allegations. And even that if you want, you can put that in a box. The fact is he was seen rubbing shoulders with royalty and people in the upper echelons of society.

It doesn't it doesn't fit with the narrative that he's trying to put out there that he is just like us. He's just like you. I believe on Twitter over the weekend, he he posted a picture of himself skating on the on the the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, saying something like, oh, it's nothing better than starting a day with a good skate or something like that.

It just doesn't it didn't land with for me. I don't know that it landed for anybody. That's just a it just it doesn't work. That's not who he is. And I think the conservatives have been very good at framing who he is already. I don't know if it's baked in. I don't know if he can change it,

but it's going to be an uphill battle for sure. For sure. That was not, it was not a good weekend for Mark Carney. It was also not a good weekend for one of the other apparent frontrunners, former BC Premier Christy Clark, who was, I mean, there's no other way to say it. She was caught lying on the CBC. Do we have the audio of that?

Let's listen. You have called yourself a lifelong liberal, but you voted in the last federal conservative leadership race. That would have required you to cancel your Liberal Party membership in order to join the Conservative Party. How long were you a member of the Conservative Party, Christy Clark? Never. But you voted in the race, did you not? No I didn't.

I didn't. And I never got a membership and I never got a ballot. What I did though is... I will say, Christy Clark, we reached out to the Conservative Party, who told us, in fact, that your membership was cancelled It has got to be a big step for you to join the Conservatives. Why did you do it? Because I think that we need a leader is only one leader who's running for office right now Who is going to be able to unite the country?

I think and it was going to bring a moderation and a willingness to talk to the people with whom he disagrees. And that's just right. I'm joining the party so that I could support my friend. Mr. Shirey. Yeah, so she got hoisted on her own petard. That I mean, look, and that was two and a half years ago. This is not 20 years ago, you might, you could be forgiven. If something happened 20 years ago, and you're misremembering it. This

happened two and a half years ago, in the last conservative leadership race. And she came out so forcefully against the conservatives saying they were lying. They were lying. And then she's, she's quite literally caught with her own words on television saying the exact opposite thing that she was professing. And there was a there's a perfectly valid justification for what she did. She could say the most liberal thing that I could do as a private citizen was join the conservatives and try to ensure that the most moderate voice that I believed in won that leadership.

I was exercising my democratic right to have the most sensible conservative elected to the leadership of that party. I was not a you know, I was an active member of a parliament for the Liberal Party. I was a private citizen. And I was I was doing what I could as a liberal to ensure that the person opposite me in the House of Commons one day would be Jean Charest, who's a friend of mine. She could have said that. Instead, she went all attack dog and claimed that one side was lying when it was in fact her. It's not a good look.

So Clark had a bad weekend and so did Carney, which means I guess the winner of the weekend was the person with no bad news and that was Christia Freeland. I called it the second I heard it when incoming president Donald Trump threatened to levy a 25% tariff on every single good coming across the border into the United States from Canada.

It said all stories, every story that we do from now on, that's political, will be, we'll have that as a backdrop. And sure enough, today, a few months after we started talking that way, it continues. And most notably, Premier Danielle Smith met with Donald Trump down at Mar-a-Lago. And by all accounts, she says it was a friendly and constructive conversation. There are pictures of her shaking his hand. There's a picture of her with Kevin O'Leary, who is dressed in a white suit

that can only be described as the fantasy island starter kit. And, but they, according to Premier Smith, we had a quote, "'We had a friendly and constructive conversation during which I emphasize the mutual importance of the U.S.-Canadian energy relationship, and specifically how hundreds of thousands of American jobs are supported by energy exports from Alberta.'"

She goes on to say, "'I was also able to have similar discussions with several key allies of the incoming administration was encouraged to hear their support for a strong energy and security relationship with Canada. And I've got to think conversations like this one and conversations like the ones that Premier Doug Ford of Ontario have had by way of American television, by way of his interviews on Fox News and Fox Business and CNBC. I have to believe that they are helpful in informing the president about this vital relationship between Canada and the United States. Will it stave off the tariffs completely? Probably not. He has said he's going to do something and he set the bar pretty high at 25%. So, you know, he may come in and come in with a 10% tariff and

that way he looks magnanimous and benevolent and he can say, look, I got the Canadians to start moving the needle, but I'm America first, so here's a 10% tariff on everything. Or maybe he might select more targeted tariffs. I have no idea. To me, there's no rhyme or reason to any of this, except for the fact that just by virtue of saying he was going to drop a tariff, he finally got the Canadian government to start moving on some very serious files as they relate to border security, military

commitment, drugs and human and human migration. I mean, these are issues that have been very important to a number of Canadians for a number of years. We don't believe that the liberal government has been taking them seriously. And if it takes Donald Trump and his threats for our government to take them seriously, then you know, it is what it is. It is what it is. Melanie Jolie, who is part of Trudeau's inner circle, she's our foreign minister, went on television or actually tweeted that she was not going to be running to become the next liberal leader. She also went on television to say that she's not ruling off ruling out cutting off Alberta's oil exports to the US in response to these planned tariffs.

Is your government prepared to cut off supplies of energy, for example, to the United States? What I can tell you is everything is on the table. And that's the conversation we will have the Prime Minister, Minister LeBlanc and myself with the premiers next week and that's a conversation also I'll take to Republican senators and key Republican decision-makers in Washington next week You know, I like talking tough that's fine. That's good. I guess. But these, she's gonna have that conversation with the premiers next week. She's gonna talk about that in Washington

next week. I have had conversations on this show with the Premier of Ontario, with the Premier of Alberta, with the Premier of British Columbia, and today with the Premier of Saskatchewan and all four of them say the same thing there has been an absence of leadership at the top at the federal level the tip of the team Canada sword is absent according to them and by the way I'll remind you that David Eby the premier of British Columbia represents the NDP.

So this is not about left versus right. This is not about liberal versus conservative. All four of them represent divergent views and have divergent priorities, representing different people from different regions. And they all say the same thing, that the liberal government is absent. There has been a vacuum at the top and nature and politics abhor a vacuum, which is why I believe we are seeing Danielle

Smith down at Mar-a-Lago. She's been invited to the inauguration, which is why we see Doug Ford on television, which is why we see them working so actively in files that probably aren't necessarily their lane. You know, our premieres talking border security, that's not their job. But they have to because somebody has to be speaking. Somebody has to be standing up for Canadians. Somebody has to be projecting a vision of some sort of continental partnership between Canada and the United States, whatever that looks like. Donald Trump is projecting strength at all cost, strength at the risk of a relationship like the one he has with Canada.

He's a strong man. He's a democratically elected strong man. Strong man doesn't necessarily mean an authoritarian, but he is a strong man. And I can tell you that certainly diverges from the perspective that George W. Bush had in 2000. So 20, almost 25 years ago about the strength that America should be projecting. Well, I think they'll look at us

as a country that understands freedom, where it doesn't matter who you are or how you're raised or where you're from, that you can succeed. I don't think they'll look at us with envy. It really depends upon how our nation conducts itself in foreign policy. If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us. If we're a humble nation but strong, they'll welcome us. And our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power, and that's why we've gotta be humble. And yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom.

So I don't think they'll look at us in any way other than what we are. We're a freedom-loving nation, and if we're an arrogant nation, they'll view us that way. But if we're a humble nation, they'll respect us. Yeah, I don't know that that perspective followed 9-11. I think the justification for invading Iraq was not a humble justification. But it certainly is a perspective that a lot of

people in Canada wish was prevalent in Washington today with the incoming Trump administration, but you gotta take the world as it is, not as you want it. As we all remember, Michael Cohen, who is routinely referred to as Donald Trump's fixer, who ended up going to jail and then becoming a very staunch voice against the president is very much worried about his future in the United States with a guy like Donald Trump coming back in saying he's going

to go after his enemies. And so Michael Cohen essentially went on television begging Joe Biden for a pardon. Regarding the pardon? Yeah, I put in the application for a presidential pardon because I believe that Joe Biden has the same responsibility to me that he had to his own son. And I would expect that the same exact pardon that he gave his son has to go to me and to anybody else that's on that enemies list, whether they want it or not. Because I assure you, solitary confinement

where I did 51 days, sucks. He's not wrong. If you open up Pandora's box and you start giving out pardons to your family because you're worried that Donald Trump's going to come after them, well, then what's good for the goose is good for the gander. I think Michael Cohen's got a pretty good case. She has partial retrograde amnesia. She can't remember the last eight years. Tuesdays. case. But I will be a doctor again. Emmy nominee Molly Parker. I will do everything I can to get my life back.

DOC, new series Tuesdays on Global. Stream on STAC TV.