The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben says it's clear the CBC wants Mark Carney to be the next Prime Minister of Canada

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

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We'd love to talk business. Well, yesterday was a doozy, should have been a doozy for Mark Carney. Following his debate performance, he was asked about the moving of Brookfield, the office of the company that he was the chair of the board of, from Toronto to New York City. And he, he was asked about the moving of Brookfield, the office of Brookfield, the company that he was the chair of the board of from Toronto to New York City. And he essentially was caught in a lie. See, he said that the decision was made long after he had left the board. Not only did it not happen after he left the board, he was still the chairman of the board and had written a letter to shareholders explaining why this was a unanimous decision by the board and it made sense for shareholders.

Okay, so that's the lay of the land. That's a big lie. It's a big, big lie. It's not a misremembering. It's a lie. Here's David Cochran from the CBC explaining in his words what happened. Yeah, the controversy here really stems from the answer that Mark Carney gave last night after the Liberal leadership debate in the scrum with reporters when he was asked about what role he played in the relocation of the headquarters from Brookfield Assets Management from Toronto to the United States. And his answer, this was the company that Brookfield Assets Management, of which Mark Carney was the chair, until he resigned in January to seek the liberal leadership

And when he was asked about this relocation, he said this was formally approved After I had left and kind of left it there But if you go back and look at it all Ian, this was something that was started proposed announced Formalized and then broadly put to shareholders while Mark Carney was the chair of the board and he wrote a letter endorsing the move and in fact the official re-registration of the corporate headquarters from Toronto to the United States happened in October of last year before Donald Trump was re-elected,

before Krischer Freeland had resigned, before any of the big seismic political events had happened. So he was there. I mean, he was a big part of this, the timeline and the paper trail shows that he advocated for this and he pushed for it. Okay. So David Cochran and I agree on the facts.

Let's listen to Mark Carney in his own words now that you know the facts. I was chair of Brookfield Asset Management. I ceased to be chair on the 15th, I think of January, the decision, the formal decision of the board happened after I ceased to be on the board. Okay, so he lied. They mean he lied. Mark Carney's brand is built on being the adult in the room,

being the data-driven serious person who is going to fix the problems that we have. Mark Carney sounds like somebody who uses words deliberately. He is not somebody who speaks in flourishes. He is not somebody who speaks in theatrics. He's not prone to histrionics. His voice is always very monotone. He's a central banker. Words matter. The words of

a central banker can shake the stock market. So this is a man who chooses his words carefully. And in this moment, he chose words that not only did not reflect reality, but were completely anathema to reality, which makes it a lie. It makes it a lie. It's not, they happened a few months ago. His fingerprints are all over it. There was a lot of stuff Mark Carney needed to do in order to make this happen. He was an active participant in it. You cannot tell me that he forgot that he made this decision. I will not buy it because I'm not an idiot and neither are you. So that should be the end of it. Now Mark Carney should have to come out and explain why he lied or maybe he doesn't because David Cochran does it for him. Let's listen. Now the reason for this

it's not necessarily corporate flight from Canada and a reflection of the Canadian economy, is that Brookfield Assets Management, as part of its growth strategy, it's a subsidiary of the larger Brookfield Corporation, which is a major company here in Canada. It needs to be headquartered in New York to get access to shareholders in the United States, or it needs to be headquartered in the United States, and they get access access to stock indexes and ultimately it wants to be on the standard of poor's 500. You have to be registered in the U.S. to do that, whether Donald Trump is president, whether

Kamala Harris or Joe Biden had won the last election. So it is the move seen as moving a very important company in Canada out of Canada to the United States and the very fine parsing of the answer last night from Kearney that liberals see as a sign of maybe his developing political communication skills and as you heard from the liberals there Ian they call it a flat out or sorry the conservatives they call it a flat out lie. It is a flat out lie David David. It's a effing lie. Gotta go, I have to catch myself there. Okay, David Cochran, who works seemingly for the press who are supposed to hold these guys to account

and call them out when they lie, he's not reading a press release. He's not reading a justification from David, from Mark Carney's camp. He is making the justification for Mark Carney. He is acting as a de facto press agent for Mark Carney. That is not your job, sir. Or maybe it is.

Maybe it is because David Cochran then goes one step further and tries to put himself, tries to put us all in the minds of the people in the boardroom who made this decision. Well, the implications on two things is Mark Carney is gonna continue to be tested on these issues, going back through his wealth, his experience and his connections.

Can he answer these things well enough to survive the leadership campaign and the election campaign without casting doubt in his credibility and his honesty? And what is less clear to me are the implications of what this Brookfield move means. Yes, it gives him access to this U.S. stock indexes, but is it more than just a paper transaction? There's no obvious sign of meaningful job losses or any job losses. It isn't clear that there's a loss of tax revenue to the Canadian government with this, that if this is just something that opens up avenues for growth, as one expert told us today,

this is normal corporate practice. He was the chair of a board. He has a responsibility to his shareholders. There's nothing here that's outside the norms of normal corporate behavior, but politics and normal corporate behavior and don't always mix that well. The irony is you, sir, and your editors, and the people who've made the decision to allow you to say this,

you are operating outside the norms of responsible journalism. You're talking about working outside the norms? What you have just done in this moment is carried the water of somebody who will become the prime minister without ever having been elected. We have said it on this show before that he is not being tested by the media who test everybody on everything on the other side of the political spectrum. It is so plain. It is so plain to see for everybody to see in this moment that the I'll say it. I don't I have the proof in front of me. I've given you the proof.

The CBC wants Mark Carney to be prime minister. And you gotta ask yourself why. Well, a week ago, two weeks ago, was it two weeks ago? Minister St. Onge, the outgoing minister of heritage, put forth a plan, the Liberal Party plan, for the CBC, in contrast to the defund the CBC of the Conservatives under Pierre Poliev. And Minister St. Onge said that the answer is to throw more money at the CBC. And I wondered, why would you put this in the window when you're a prorogued parliament? Well, I'm going to make the educated leap and suggest that Mark Carney has every intention of

adopting St. Onge's plan and the CBC is betting that if they get them elected, they get the funding. Does anybody see how perverse this is? And look, I could be wrong. I could absolutely be wrong. I have no facts. Just what I see on the ground. I'm inferring this. But I learned a lot in law school. And one of the things I learned in law school is the appearance of propriety is as important as propriety itself. If something doesn't look like it's above board, it doesn't matter if it is above board. If it looks like garbage, it is garbage. This looks

like garbage. This is anti-democratic. This is a perversion of the free press and it is disgusting. It is beneath us as a country. When people say Canada is a banana republic, I normally scoff at it. I look at this and I start to think maybe we are. This stinks to high heaven and we deserve answers. This is... Look, I have time for David Cochrane. He's been nice to me in the past, but this is beneath him. He's been nice to me in the past, but this is beneath him.

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