The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben speaks to Premier Doug Ford about standing up to Donald Trump and Ripping up the deal with Elon Musk

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Ben speaks to Premier Doug Ford about standing up to Donald Trump and Ripping up the deal with Elon Musk Guest: Doug Ford, Premier of Ontario 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

At Desjardins, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do, business. 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 if you're a regular listener of the Ben Mulroney show Then you know that I like to say that I very much enjoy my job quote chirping from the cheap seats That's why I'm very pleased to have somebody who has been in the arena, somebody who has been fighting against these tariffs, fighting for the people of Ontario and the people of

Canada. Please welcome to the show, Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Premier, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us and congratulations on your third consecutive victory for the PC party. Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me on then. And I'm very, very grateful and humbled for the opportunity to serve the people again for the next four years. Now, you've said that until all these tariffs are dropped, Canada, Ontario needs to retaliate.

Who, Mr. Premier, is the last person you've spoken to inside the U.S. administration? And how did they receive that tough message? Well, Howard Lutnick was a person I talked to, a secretary of commerce, and we had a pretty strong conversation, let's put it that way. Yeah. Getting into details, but you know, who I absolutely loved are two people. One was President Ronald Reagan and one was Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, your father. And I'm reading a quote when your dad and President Reagan had such an incredible relationship. And, you know, I won't read the whole quote, but it was a radio address that, you know, President Reagan did on November 26th in 1988.

And I'll just quote it real quick. And this is President Reagan speaking. We too often talk about trade while using the vocabulary of war. In war for one side to win, the other side must lose. But in commerce, it's not warfare. Our peaceful trading partners are not our enemies. They're our allies. We

should be aware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends and weakening our economy, our national security and the entire free world, all while cynically waving the American flag. And you know, that's just part of the quote. But yeah, my point is, you know, your dad and President Reagan had an incredible relationship. And sadly, that's not the world we're living in right now, Mr. Premier, Mr. Premier. And now, you know, tariffs are not of provincial domain, but

you do have a lot of tools in your tool belt. One of them is the possibility of certain exit tax on electricity going to the United States, you've said that you're going to throw 25% on there to the electricity going to the states, when's that going to start? Monday, Monday, really, I think it'll be enacted on Tuesday, but we are moving forward with it. I feel terrible for the American people because it's not the American people. It's not even the elected

officials. It's one person and that's President Trump. It's totally unacceptable, but he's he's coming after his closest friends closest allies in the world and it's gonna it's gonna allies in the world. And it's gonna it's gonna absolutely devastate both economies. But did he did he underestimate the Canadian resolve and our willingness to fight and our appreciation that this was going to get hard and we were willing to live in that difficulty? He definitely underestimated the resolve of the Canadian people

the strength, the resilience. We've been on this for three months in Canadians. It's like we've been ready for this. And the American people just woke up a few days ago when all heck's breaking loose. The market dropped $3 trillion and bounced a little bit back, then it dropped again today. There's nothing more than the market hates and businesses hate and everyone hates is uncertainty. This is an unnecessary trade war that President Trump has created. The facts are that if we take the oil that we ship down that they desperately need, the 4.3 million barrels a day off the table, the Americans have a $56 billion trade surplus.

That's fine. Everything seems to be working. He just doesn't understand the supply chain with the auto sector. There's a lot of things he doesn't understand, but I believe in building an Amcan Fortress, two of the greatest countries in the world. And we put a, you know, a fence around around North America, and protect us against the people that are not friendly with us. And that's kind of undermined. Mr. Premier, I keep getting stuck on what is this really about? I mean, you can't negotiate if the person the the person on the other side table isn't negotiating good faith, if they're

not being honest. And I do not believe that this is about Fentanyl or the border, because we have addressed that. I believe that you gotta listen to what JD Vance said yesterday, which is, hey, if you don't want tariffs, move your businesses down here. That to me is what it's about. It's about hollowing out the Canadian economy and taking jobs that exist up here

and industries that exist up here and moving them to the United States. That's what he wants here. Well, what he wants is a trillion dollars or a couple trillion to put his tax cuts in. And if two congresspeople go sideways on them, then they aren't going to get it done. Yeah. So he wants to target his closest friends and, and try to get money off us, well, it's not gonna happen. We're gonna hold strong and we're gonna keep fighting

because what he's doing is unprecedented around the world. The world's watching two countries, best friends going at each other, but he's underestimated the will of the people of Canada and their resilience. Have you ripped up the Starlink deal with Elon Musk? And if so, how are you going to replace that need? How are you going to fulfill that need for people in northern communities who have difficulty

accessing the internet? So there's approximately about 15,000,000 people, but this is out of principle. We cannot support a person that actually got educated at Queen's University, Elon Musk, lived here in Toronto for a few years, coming after us. And he's fully on side with everything Trump's doing. I can't justify that. Yeah, is it going to take maybe a year or two years longer? We're going to come up with other solutions for those people up there. But we cannot sit back and support someone that's attacking our country, attacking our province. And that's exactly what Elon Musk is doing. President Trump asked Prime Minister Trudeau when we're going to be having an election in Canada. How important is it that we have a federal election as soon

as possible so that whoever is in charge has the mandate, a similar mandate to what you were asking for, that could outlast this president? Well, first of all, just our situation. I knew this was going to come forward. And that's why I needed that mandate. I'm very, very grateful for the people giving me that mandate so we have certainty here for the next four years.

Now federally, we need to call the election right away, immediately. Looks like Mr. Carney is going to get the nod and he needs to call within 10, 15 days. And let's get to the polls, let the people decide, let's get certainty and let's move forward. And I will work with anyone. I don't care if it's Poliev or Carney or anyone. As long as they have the best interest of Ontario at heart, then I'm gonna work with them.

And if they don't have the best interest at heart for Ontario, well, you know, I'm gonna be after them. I'll be all over them. And I don't give two hoots about political stripes. I really don't ever have. Mr. Premier, you said you needed a mandate to deal with Donald Trump, but also so that you could have the will to spend money

to help people and industries who may be affected by these tariffs. Have you given any idea, do you have any ideas to how that looks? And are we talking subsidies, direct subsidies? What are we looking at? Well, we've put over $40 billion to the side. And we're going to see how this rolls out. Hopefully it will end right away. But I can guarantee you one thing, I'm going to protect the

people, you know, protect businesses, protect jobs, retrain people, and refocus on new customers, even though we've been doing it for the last seven years. We've seen $70 billion of worldwide investment come to Ontario, a million more people, actually over a million more people are working today than seven years ago. And we're going to spare no expense to protect the people, very similar to the pandemic. The only difference with the pandemic, the whole world was feeling the crunch. Right now, it's just Canada and Mexico to a certain degree. Lastly, Mr. Premier, are you going to move ahead with the tunnel under the 401? And are you going to avoid working with Elon Musk's boring company very quickly? Very quickly?

Yes, yes, absolutely. We are. We need jobs., thank you very much Mr. Ford, really appreciate it. We know how busy you are. The stakes are very high these days and it means so much that you would spend time with us here on the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much and yes, your sister will be the president of the treasury. She's a champion.

I absolutely love her. Thank you very much Mr. Premier. That was Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario. Daniel Blanchard is no ordinary thief. His heists are ingenious. His escapes defy belief. And when he sees the dazzling diamond CC Star, he'll risk everything to steal it.

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