The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben is joined by an economist to break down both the Liberal and Conservative platforms

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Ben is joined by an economist to break down both the Liberal and Conservative platforms with Guest: Dr. Eric Kam, Economics Professor at Toronto Metropolitan University 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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We also have top table games like our incredible Super Spin Roulette, Blackjack, and a huge selection of slots. So there you have it. How can you match that? Check out Prize Matcher and see why it's never ordinary at bet 365. Must be 19 or older Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling visit connexontario.ca, T's and Z's apply. Well look, when a party leader puts out their costed platform, they have to field questions and they have to be it's a trial by fire. They are going to be asked every

question under the sun about the cost about the policies. And you have to be prepared to take those questions, because that is how you gain social acceptance. Mark Carney was asked about his platform and, well, this is what he had to say. So Trevor Toome is wrong, in your opinion. Yes, I have more experience than he does. And it's important to state that. I'd like to follow up on that. Just if you've got an economist like Trevor Toom saying that your plan is unsustainable, is just that, is there an argument that if Pierre Poliev is trying to bring down spending, bring down the deficit, that his plan is more fiscally responsible than yours? Okay.

There's one thing that you can write on a paper, there's another thing that will happen in the economy. Okay? So our plan, to be clear, is focused on investment in growing this economy. All of the spending, all of the investment in years three and four, are for growing the economy. Oh boy, Mark Carney is the smartest guy in Canada, and I know it's true because he tells us almost every day. I mean, he said it twice there in different ways, but my goodness, he does not like being criticized. But he's right. He's an economist. I'm not an economist.

So I brought an economist on so we can talk about it. Dr. Eric Kam from Toronto Metropolitan University. Welcome, sir. Thank you for being here. Benedict, thank you very much, and I'm just glad that I can pave the way for a superstar like Wendell Clark. Okay, so in that clip there was a reference to a gentleman by the name of Trevor Toome. Who's Trevor Toome? Trevor Toome is a macro economist who's at the University of Calgary. He does a lot of work both in the university, outside of the university. He does consulting work and

he's a very intelligent economist. Now, like every economist, I agree with some things he says and sometimes I don't, but I don't agree with anybody 100% of the time, not even my wife. But let me tell you, if you wanted to ask me who knows more right now about the functioning Canadian economy, would it be Dr. Toome or Dr. Carney? I would take Trevor Toome every day of the week. What is Trevor Toome's criticism of the liberal platform? His criticism is simple. His criticism is that they're lying. His criticism is that why don't you come out and admit that it's a complete platform shift.

You came out earlier, this is the same party, and you said that we were going to reduce the debt to GDP ratio and limit deficits to below 1% of GDP. They've thrown that in the ocean, right? Deficits are going to skyrocket way above 1%, and the debt to GDP ratio that's going to rise from 42% to God knows what. The fiscal anchors, right? That's the expression that we used to hear. Well, fiscal anchors is a cute expression but the liberals have no idea what it means because if you just look at what they're going to do, this is nothing more than tax and spend and of course bloat the deficit. And there's a

lot of economists out there that believe the deficit doesn't matter I'm not one of them because if nothing else even if you never pay back the principal it's like your credit card you got to pay back the interest and interest costs are going to rise and rise high debt levels Ben just mean that interest payments could hit around 70 to 75 billion by the time we get to 20 28 or 15 cents per tax dollar how does an economy ever want to dig out of a hole when it just keeps building a deeper hole? Well, tell me if I'm understanding this correctly, that the sort of the the reason that the engine of this platform is government spending to spur private sector spending.

Is that true? Is that what they're trying to do or they say they want to do? That's what they're trying to sell you. But as you and I have said pretty much on Thursdays for about a year now, spending is fine. Consumption is one thing and it will stabilize the short run business cycle, but it does nothing in terms of economic growth. What you've got to do is spur on productivity. We call it supply side growth. If you really want to increase the ability of the economy to produce more goods and services. And these are very questionable assumptions. I've read this liberal thing and he keeps coming back to $13 billion in productivity

gains. He's very, that's very proud. It's in there two or three times. Never does he say where that's going to come from. Where are these productivity gains going to come from? I've heard for nine and a half years they're going to start increasing productivity. Hasn't happened yet, so why does anybody think the same group of architects is going to bring it in now? They're kidding themselves. Well, because Mark Carney is the smartest

economist. He just told us. Come on, Eric. Come on. Well, I know one thing. I'm not the smartest economist, but I know someone when they're full of baloney and Mark Carney is trying to sell people a bill of goods. You know, I went through the Liberals and I went through the Conservatives and I went through and I looked at it and you know what, at least the Conservatives, at least they are not lying to us. They say balance budget, we're not going to balance the budget, right? We're going to cut 70 billion dollars in tax reductions, bring in 34 billion dollars of new spending. You don't have to be able to add,

you just have to be able to subtract. Well, we're gonna talk about the conservative plan in just a minute. I want you to drill down on a number of points for us. But before we do, let's hear what Mark Carney had to say about Pierre Poliev's numbers. Our tax cut compared to his plan, I'll give you one number, is four times larger this year.

Is four times larger. These numbers are a joke. We aren't in a joke. We are in the worst crisis of our lives. It takes a serious government. It takes a serious plan. It takes a plan that delivers today. It takes a plan that delivers investment. It takes a plan that grows this economy, stands up to Trump and moves forward with the brilliance of the workers here and across Quebec and across Canada. Eric, real quick, is this crisis that was brought on by Donald Trump bigger?

Is it greater than the pandemic that we just came through? It could potentially be if it went to the maximum when they brought in the 25% on everything and it lasted for years, but I think now we already see Trump is starting to waffle and that probably isn't the reality anymore. I think the biggest crisis would be another liberal government.

I really do. I don't understand how people can look at nine and a half years as direct hard evidence and say, I see enough to give them another four or five years, Ben. I just don't understand it. Well, we've talked about the liberal platform a little bit. Let's drill down into the most recent platform

that was unveiled, the conservative platform. So $110 billion in new measures, and it projects $31 billion in deficit, essentially over four years, they're going to have that that deficit. What do you make of that? I think that's being honest. I think we have sold out. I mean, since the pandemic and the massive monetization in the pandemic, I think we know that as a nation, we are going to be a deficit nation for a very long time. You can kiss surpluses goodbye. There's positives and negatives to being that type of an economy. It does help our multiplier effects.

And one thing I did like about their plan, as we said, $70 billion in tax reductions, $34 billion in new spending. I don't like the referendum thing because as you said, why do we need more inefficiency in government? But at least he's got numbers that add up. They're not fiction. He's looking at deficit predictions that they at least dropped to 15 billion by 2029. He says we're going to make some money off retaliatory tariffs, 72 billion in new revenue. That's basically carbon taxes that have been dropped but transferred to EV mandates. At least it's a plan. It's a plan that makes sense. And to me as an economist, there's causality. Even I know quickly when

he wants to reduce foreign aid and reduce federal consulting and streamline the public service. These are moves to decrease spending. And I see nowhere in the liberal plan to decrease spending anywhere. As I said, you're taking a hole and you're digging it deeper, Ben. Any question marks on the conservative platform? I don't have any question marks. I think it's actually well-costed. I've seen two or three different accounting firms that said, we stand by this. So it makes good sense to me. And at least it's not pie in the sky. Mr. Poliev is saying we are going to be in deficits. I can't fix them overnight, but maybe I can stimulate the economy and the liberals can't. And he's right.

Yeah, I'm looking at those deficit numbers and what it shows me is he's saying, look, this is a big problem that we have. It's a structural problem. It's going to take a long time, but I want you to see that over over four years, if you stick with us, we will, we'll get that down to a site, to a more manageable number with more to come in the future. I think it's a way of signaling. It's a, it's a priority without saying we're, we're going to burn the village down in order to save it. It's a really salient point is that there's a way of signaling it's a priority without saying we're going to burn the village down in order to save it. It's a really salient point is that there's two types of problems in the economy. There's frictional and there's structural.

And Mr. Poliev is saying we have structural issues we have to deal with. Mr. Carney is saying no, we have frictional issues that go away over time. And you know where that's gotten us for the last nine and a half years, Ben. Well, Dr. Eric Kam, this is a, so if you had to give them a grade, give the liberals a grade, give the Tories a grade. I would give the conservatives a B to a B plus, and I would give the liberals a 49%. I'd say they fail, but it can be redeemable

if they become the opposition and then take another whack at it maybe in five or 10 years. There's nothing on paper right now that says they pass. Dr. Eric Kemp thank you so much for making sense out of things that people like me cannot make sense of. Stay healthy Ben, it's always an honor. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us on this hump day edition of the show wherever we find you either on the radio, on a streaming app or on any podcast platform we say thank

you for lending us your ears and helping us build the Ben Mulroney show each and every day. We are marching towards probably the most important election of my lifetime. Without a doubt, this one feels different. This one feels like the stakes are very, very high and it feels like you Canadians agree with record voter turnout in advance polls ahead of the federal election. An independent organization has said that at least

7.3 million people cast a ballot between April 18th and 21st. Now, the previous record was held in 2021 when 5.8 million ballots were cast. I think a couple of caveats that we have to put on those numbers. One, this happened over a long weekend, the Easter long weekend. And so people had a lot of time and they made sure that they spent that time doing their civic duty

of voting for the party of their choice. And the second caveat, obviously, is that we've experienced an explosion in our population over the past few years. Not everybody who came to Canada is a citizen and is eligible to vote, but a lot of them are. And so obviously, with more people, more voters, higher turnout. But that doesn't change the fact that this is a very big deal.

And look, even though 5.8 million people cast their ballot in advance polls in 2021, the number of people who actually turned out overall was only 62.6%. That was down from 67% in 2019. I think that with this 7.3 million people who have voted thus far, I think we could blow past 70%. Without a doubt, we can blow past 70%. Now, can we knock on the door of 75%?

Maybe three out of every four, three out of four eligible voters took time out of their day to cast a ballot. That's a massive democratic exercise. And it's something that regardless of who wins, we as a country should be very, very proud. But that doesn't change the fact that there are two very different visions for this country.

There's the conservative vision and the liberal vision. And you can really break it down by age group. If you are 18 to 34, then you're probably in the 44% who want to vote for the conservatives. If you are 35 to 54, that drops to 41%. And if you're 55 and over, then you're only 35% of those people are voting conservative. It's a tale of two completely different visions for the country and completely different people

are responding differently. And who's going to get their vote out? Who's going to get the most people out to vote? That's going to be the question. I think voter turnout is going to be the thing that determines this thing. Yesterday on the show, we talked about a report that came out of the Privy Council Office of the federal government that projected what could be a reality in 2040 in Canada. And it is not good. It is it essentially describes a dystopian future, the likes that you normally see in a movie

where you have the haves and the have-nots, and the people who cannot afford a house probably can't afford to go to a grocery store and they're resorting to hunting and foraging for their food. And yesterday, Pierre Poliev talked about the grim numbers on the campaign trail. This is not a an interest group or an opinion columnist or even a think tank that has put

out this report. It is. And it is not even just a government department. It is the Prime Minister's personal department. I think somebody has to ask Mark Carney, has he seen this report? His department wrote it. And what they are anticipating on the

current trajectory is a total meltdown, a societal breakdown in Canada if we stay on the current track. Why the government? is a total meltdown, a societal breakdown in Canada if we stay on the current track. Why this isn't blazing the head, the front pages of every news outlet in the country right now is beyond me. It is a big deal.

It is a big deal. Listen, it's not what is projected. It's a worst case scenario. So I would dispute that characterization by Pierre Poliev. It's a worst case scenario of where we could go as a country. However, somebody pointed out on Twitter yesterday that there's no way that a report like this with this sort of outcome would have ever been written 10 years ago. It just wasn't on the roadmap.

So when you look at it that way, they are signaling the alarm. They are raising the red flag saying, beware, we could be going down a very dangerous path. And he's right, this isn't a think tank, it's not a political group, it is quite literally, the call is coming from within the house. The government itself is saying this. And the CBC did what

the CBC does. They try to minimize it. They tried to say, Oh, can you believe of the four questions that were asked, this, this was one of the questions. And they brought the global males, Laura Stone on to provide analysis. And she said, look, yeah, it might be a little hyperbolic, but the ideas in it are valid. Look, I think I think it's clearly over the top. But I think that the sentiments are valid that are part of this, right? I mean, you see things like, by 2040, no one will be able to afford a house and you have to have inherited wealth. Well, like welcome to right now, right? I mean, when we're talking about the issues affecting people, particularly young people today, it actually is true, right?

I mean, people cannot afford to live in this country right now. And maybe we won't be hunting and pillaging and foraging in 15 years for food, or maybe we will, but according to this document, but I think kind of some of the ideas, when you strip back some of the exaggerative language, I think are valid and sort of what the conservatives are trying to capture with their policy platform today, right? Their costed platform, which is life is really expensive and it doesn't really, there doesn't seem to be an out. Yeah, this is concerning. This is not the end of the world, although the Privy Council is saying that 2040 could look like the end of the world if we're not careful. And given the fact that this is coming from within the government that has been, that

the Liberal Party has occupied for 10 years, and Mark Carney is looking for a fourth Liberal term, I think it's incumbent on the press to ask him about this. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But we'll have to see if anybody does. On to an election of a different kind, the Oscars. Now in a previous life, I was on the Oscar red carpet for, I wanna say 15 or 16 years. I was on that carpet asking questions to stars as they were going in and directors. I was all over that thing.

Like a, I mean, like a bad rash for far too long. And I'm glad I did it. I'm glad I don't have to do it ever again. But I could not believe the story I read this morning, given the fact that I was quite literally in the belly of the beast for 15 years. I had no idea that up until now, Oscar voters who vote on Best Picture, for example, are not required to watch all the nominated movies.

It's only suggested. They were told you don't have to watch the movies. You don't have to watch the movies that are going to become the one that will be voted on for best picture. We're just suggesting that you watch them. Well, they changed that. Finally, they've finally changed it so that anybody who's voting for any of the categories has to watch the movies. I cannot believe that for 100 years it was not mandated. Look back when they didn't have DVDs and back when they didn't have screeners and back

when you couldn't watch a movie on your computer, yeah, you had to go to the theater and it was a big problem. I get that. But for the past 15 years you could watch these movies from wherever, whenever. And the fact that it was not mandated for this award show that is supposed to be the high watermark for excellence in film... Ah, that may be one of the reasons people don't watch anymore. If the people voting don't care, why should the people at home care? Those are Ben's two cents on the Oscar. We'll see you next time. Win for your chance to win big. Amazing! Ha! The small details are the difference between winning and losing.

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