The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben speaks with someone who worked on Mark Carney's Liberal Leadership Campaign

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

Guests and Topics: -The Emperor Has No Team with Guest: Emerson Csorba, Business executive, previously working in geopolitics and Author of this Article in the Globe and Mail -Conservative candidate targeted by election interference from China, watchdog says with Guest: Steven Chase, Globe and Mail Senior parliamentary reporter 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

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show and earlier during the show we played a clip of Mark Carney saying trying to explain to a journalist how different his government would be from the previous government. He said it's a completely different government, completely different, and I take issue with that. I take issue with that because from my perspective on the outside looking in I see a lot of the same people lining up behind Mark Carney. I see the same cabinet. I see a lot of the same candidates. And by my personal estimation, it feels like the people behind the scenes are very much the people who were pulling the strings

during the 10 years of Justin Trudeau. So changing the guy at the top, yes, it's a change, but it's not the meaningful change that everybody thinks. Again, that's from the outside looking in. I'm very glad to welcome somebody who's been on the inside of the tent who can tell us his assessment of the situation. Please welcome to the show, Emerson Sorba, business executive previously working in geopolitics, and he's the author of the article, an article that we're going to be discussing called The Emperor Has No Team. Welcome to the

show, Emerson. Welcome, welcome back to the show, I should say, because you've been on the Ben Mulroney show before, but not with Ben Mulroney as host. Exactly, well, great to be back on. I think you were caught in a snowstorm. Yes, indeed. It was two months ago. It feels like a very long time ago.

And I was in- Minus 20, terrible, yeah. I was in Montreal, but that's apparently where you're based as well. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So born and raised in Alberta in Montreal now and spent the last 10 years or so in England. And I've been back for two and a half months and got back right for that first snowstorm. So your experience with regard to the introduction of Mark Carney to Canadian politics and being brought into the tent, so to speak, is I think really insightful. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your experience?

Great. So first, I crossed paths with the Carnies over the course of a decade in the UK, especially Mark's time at the Bank of England. And like Mark, I did a PhD at Oxford and worked in geopolitics and renewables. And I've always respected Mark. He's a great Canadian, and he has an impressive career. And when I got back two months ago, I was asked to help on policy during the leadership phase. And over the course of about four weeks, I helped drive the development of a lot of the platform that's now public. Things like the CBC, Hideo Canada policy, they're creating one at Canadian Economy, internal trade policy. I co-authored the foreign policy platform

and a large portion of what's in the campaign today stems from that work. So that was my brief experience being a non-liberal part of that leadership team. But you say your brief time and I've got to ask why was it brief? Well, it was brief. One one because my focus was trying trying to bring the liberals back towards the center with a more pragmatic policy, which I think, you know, Canadians understand we

need after 10 years of Trudeau, we need more pragmatism in politics in general. So that was one reason for it being brief is this is a short-term opportunity. The other piece, and this is the more important piece, is because I realized during this period that unfortunately the team that is behind Mark is the Trudeau team. There's no difference. Yeah, and that's what I was sort of alluding to from my perspective from the outside. You're saying on the inside that's exactly the assessment. Exactly. Yeah. And so all the things that you

would expect and Canadians would expect, whether you're living in, you know, BC or Ontario or Quebec, things like a lack of detail, a lack of rigor, a lack of urgency, the work ethic just not being there, a focus on vibes rather than sound analysis. These were these are all things that are a part of the current carny team, unfortunately, which is that the Trudeau team, the the carny team is is the Trudeau team. But Emerson, how do you how, how do you square the circle?

I take you at your word that he is, the current liberal leader is a thoughtful, intelligent man of strong principle. How does that make any sense to you, that somebody who comes with his own vision and his own version of of what he wants to do with the future that he would simply allow a team that's been there for 10 years to remain intact. I think the honest answer is because it's the easy way in. It's the easiest ticket into power. The Trudeau people are the people who run the party. And they have certain agendas. And Mark helps to serve their agenda to extend the Trudeau policy from the last 10 years. But you've known him. So you know him to be somebody who probably is more of

a centrist, correct? And so I think. I think, yes. No, go on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has centrist instincts, certainly, but I think in this case, we have seen unfortunately, power come before principle. And what is the principle that you would like to have seen from him, translated into policy? Well, when you saw the platform come out,

what is it, what would you have rather seen? A big focus on energy security. That's a key one, pipelines as a key example. We're facing a geopolitical crisis and we need to improve our energy security. That is a key element. That would be one example. And then the second-

Oh, go on. Yeah, go on. I wanna hear the second one. And then the second one would be bringing more eclectic and independent voices into the team because personnel is also policy. So, you have to keep some people from the Trudeau era because that is the current party.

You know, that is unavoidable. Yeah. But if you are an outsider candidate and are going to be a person who's focused on change, which Canadians certainly want, whatever the government, we want change, you need to diversify the team. And that can't just be candidates. So and yeah, that just wasn't there. Emerson, a lot of us are scratching our heads because we're having this moment.

Mark Carney is telling us incessantly that we are in a crisis and it's the worst crisis ever. I challenge that and I would say that the COVID crisis was worse than a Donald Trump induced crisis, but it is what it is. We're living in a time where because of that, there's this galvanizing effect. There's this, we're having this moment

where a lot of people are singing from the same hymn book in a way we haven't before, specifically as it relates to energy independence and our need for pipelines. And yet you would think it would be a layup for this liberal government to give a full throated endorsement of a national unity project such as pipelines and yet we're

getting a lot of hedging, we're getting a lot of saying one thing in one part of the country and something different in another, something in English, something in French. Do you attribute that to the ideology of the institutional ideology of the people who are running the party? I think some of that, certainly. So on the on the energy security front, as you say, that is a that is a layup. And that is something if for serious as Canadians about geopolitical independence, about sovereignty,

that's something that we're going to focus on. But the issue is that a lot of the Trudeau people are still pretty strong on the climate agenda. And climate is obviously very important. I worked in the, in the renewable space previously. Uh, but those people are going to be pretty partisan, pretty purist on those points. And that's going to make it really difficult for

Mark, even if Mark's, you know, wants a more pragmatic approach, but again, it comes back to the team point is the team matters more than policy, because the team is the team that is advising the prime minister. That is, effectively running the show on a daily basis, writing the policy, etc, etc. And if that team doesn't change, then that's going to put the prime minister in a very challenging spot. And that, I think, is what Canadians need to really be considering over this next week. If they're undecided, and if they're insane, Ontario or Quebec as key, key, key parts of

the country for this vote is who are you voting is is what team are you voting for? The question shouldn't be, are you voting for Mark? Or are you voting for Pia? It should be, are you voting for the team or are you voting for quality of team or the Carney team? And I can tell you without question, a vote, unfortunately for Mark Carney, despite his great career is a vote for Team Trudeau. And I've got a simple and in about 30 seconds, have you given any thought to the type of government that we would have under Mark Carney? Were he to win a majority versus a minority?

If it's a, well, yeah, definitely. If it's a minority, there might be more focus on balance because the result isn't what the liberals are probably expecting. So there'd be some change. If it's a majority government, it is going to be a full-fledged Team Trudeau government, unfortunately.

And it's gonna be the same focus on the last 10 years, cost of living crisis, one of the least competitive economies in the developed world and a damaged international reputation. I can guarantee you, that will be the problem. Emerson Zorba, thank you so much. Your insights, I think, invaluable, and I hope a lot of people heard them. I can guarantee you that will be the problem. Emerson Zorba, thank you so much. Your insights, I think, invaluable. And I hope a lot of people heard them.

I appreciate it. Thank you so much. It's been a really busy day already. We knew that Pierre Poliev and the conservatives would be unveiling, finally unveiling, their costed platform. And to discuss that, but more importantly, we've got another story to talk to him about.

We've got Stephen Chase from the Globe and Mail joining us. Stephen, thank you so much for being here. Oh, glad to glad to be here. Okay, so before we talk about the reason you are here, I want to talk about because you wrote about this already. Give me in just a couple of minutes, your high level thoughts on this costed platform. Well, we're still assessing it because they just released it like an hour ago. It's an awful lot of spending cuts and an awful lot of tax cuts. So, 75 billion tax cuts over four years.

We're adding up the cumulative, you know, cuts over four years. 56 billion spending reductions over the same period. 34 billion new spending. They're not going to balance the budget in the first term. They're going to obviously as they promised get rid of the English language CBC and they are promising to hike defense spending to 2% the 2% NATO guideline which is that every country must spend enough sufficient amount of defense to equal this or 2% of annual economic output.

There are lots of tax cuts. This is a far more tax cut heavy platform than the Liberals yet it also does not balance the budget. It also relies on growth. They're betting that they're going to get $20 billion over the next four years in economic growth, too, which is always a risky bet. But they made that one. Well, I mean, it would be risky, risky given the fact that we've had almost no growth in 10 years. So I think we've come to expect that. I kind of like someone who's a little bullish on the economy, but that's me editorializing. But now and thank you very much for that. And of course, I'm going to be discussing that in depth with my this week in politics panel on the other side of the break.

But in the meantime, the reason we wanted to have you on the show today is because you've taken a look at and you've asked the question, why why does the Communist Party of China seem so focused on one particular conservative candidate in this election. Yeah. So there's a fellow running in the federal writing of Don Valley North, which is in Toronto, and his name is Joe Tay. He is a former Hong Kong actor. In fact, he emigrated here in 2020. He is also a harsh critic of the Chinese government's crackdown on Hong Kong, the former British colony, where Beijing has basically destroyed civil rights and eliminated dissent and jailed opponents and jailed journalists and so on. It's completely remade that place from what it had promised. Yeah, well, I remember the promise. It was going to be one China, two systems.

That was their little mantra. Yeah, it was 2049, but they acted 20 years too early. So Mr. Tay moved here, started a new life, but he still has a YouTube channel where he criticizes the Hong Kong, the crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong. The Chinese don't like that. They issued a bounty on his head last December, which is very serious. So then when he

decided to run for the Conservative Party, lo and behold, all of a sudden on Chinese language social media, whether we're talking about WeChat or the Chinese Facebook or Red Note or any other of these apps. Suddenly he's a public enemy number one. They have got someone, in this case the Canadian government has told us it's connected to the Chinese Communist Party, is circulating wanted ad posters and disparaging Mr. Tay. And basically what the government told us on Monday is that the Chinese government is making a big deal out of this trying to disparage him among Chinese speaking Canadians in hopes that they don't vote for him and of course that they vote for someone else. And this is completely wrong. This is completely deplorable.

So the government called it out yesterday in the hopes of making people aware of what's going on, sort of naming and shaming. Yeah, it's so it's so clear that it's happening. And you've got government agencies and government groups that are pointing this out. But it doesn't feel like we can do anything except as you said, name and shame. Yeah, that's the problem. Because, for instance, these Chinese apps like WeChat, which is owned by Tencent, they're in China, and they don't give a damn what we say, and they're

not going to make any changes. They are partially controlled apps. I mean, even at one point one point you know the emoji of a candle was banned when a famous Chinese dissident died a few years ago. So they are very good at controlling these things and they have no interest in helping us out. So the government has talked to the Chinese companies that own Red Note and Douyin. Dou you is like the Chinese version of tik-tok yeah and then and we but you know no no sense that they're cooperating so their resort to naming and shaming and that's what they did yesterday and and they haven't confirmed it exactly but I also think they've

given mr. taste of extra security right now now I don't know enough about enough Stephen but it would seem to me that if you were somebody with of Chinese extraction living in Canada, that you may not be particularly enamored with the Communist, the Chinese Communist Party. And so so who exactly is being targeted? Like, who's the who's the target? Where's the target rich environment for the Communist Party to go after in order to sway votes in this country? That's a great question. That's a great question.

If you move to Canada to build a new life outside of the reach of the Communist Party, you still have relatives back home. You may have business investments back home. They've still got you. They can still make life difficult for you. So what this is really saying is all you people out there who still need to go back to China who still have? Relatives or maybe a business business interest Joe Tay is a troublemaker Don't vote for a troublemaker troublemakers get in trouble troublemakers get jailed

And so it's a very nice message. They want to they want to make them a pariah, right? My goodness. This is, and look, I don't wanna make this about, you know, one politician or another, but you know, that entire writing has been a soap opera since that very first story that we heard about Paul Chang volunteering to rendition this guy on bounty to back to China.

And then the silence and the strange position that Mark Carney and liberals took in keeping him. And because we never got fulsome answers as to why that happened, people like myself were forced to ask some really uncomfortable questions that I really didn't want to answer or ask. But in the absence of answers,

the questions lingered in the air mm-hmm yeah and man mr. Tay is obviously fighting this I think we're only seeing the tip of it he's also getting it and in other ways he's been a target of the Chinese government for years and so you, this sort of thing is really insidious because it sends messages to people and people just wanna, nobody wants trouble. So people wanna avoid trouble. And so they avoid trouble by not taking risks,

by not supporting somebody who's hated in China. There's a cascading series of consequences that flow from this. Are there other international bad actors who might be looking at the model of the Communist Party of China and saying, okay, well, if they can do it, maybe we can do it with our own cultural community. And you know, it's interesting because during the Foreign Interference Inquiry, nobody comes close to China.

Russia's attitude is not so much election specific. They just, for instance, their efforts to sow disinformation, misinformation, are mostly to sort of destroy your will to to care about anything. I think that everybody's a bad actor and why bother? So the Iranians, you know, the Iranians would be another group that we'd be worried about, but we don't see that kind of activity. Of course, let's be clear, we also don't have big diasporas from these other communities that are quite as significant as the Chinese community. We've been blessed with a lot of Chinese immigrants over the years, and so they are now, they have significant sizes, and I would say about 16 or 17 ridings. It's hard to approximate that

for other diasporas. And I got to think if he does not succeed in winning his seat, that could send a quite a chilling message to anyone. Not because he's a conservative, I'm keeping that out of it, but if somebody's being targeted by the Communist Party of China and they lose their seat, I mean, if you're somebody who wants to follow in his footsteps in the future, you may think twice. Steven Chase, I want to thank you so much. It's an important story. It's an important story, not for the partisan politics that we're currently fighting right now, but because of the health of our democracy. It's really important.

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