The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben's not so sure we're getting the immediate Federal Election we're all hoping for

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Ben's not so sure we're getting the immediate Federal Election we're all hoping for -Trump or no Trump, we need to unilaterally drop non-tariff trade barriers with Guest: Vincent Geloso, Economics professor at George Mason University, and author of this Study -We go back to the year 1890... when Tariffs were put on Canada in hopes of annexing us. with Guest: Craig Baird, Host of Canadian History Ehx 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

Ladies and gentlemen of Canada, welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And some of you know, many of you don't, that I went to law school. I know you can't imagine me as a lawyer, I'm far too charming. But I learned a few things in law school. My mind was sort of retrained to think critically, analytically, in a way that it wasn't prior to law school And so I'm looking at the lay of the land ladies and gentlemen I'm reading the tea leaves as they say and

I have noticed some significant evidence that has led me to a pretty An opinion that some may view as a hot take, as the kids would say, a hot take. I believe that we are girding for a pretty significant time before we see an election in this country. There are many people who think

that Mark Carney will be elected leader of the Liberal Party. He will be anointed our Prime Minister and then he's just going to trigger an election. I think the evidence is significant that suggests otherwise. So without further ado, if it pleases the court, I would like to present my evidence. Exhibit A. Prime Minister Trudeau has vowed to support Canadian workers and businesses through this trade war. Let's hear the Prime Minister in his own words. And now to my fellow Canadians. I won't sugarcoat it. This is going to be tough, even though

we're all going to pull together, because that's what we do. We will use every tool at our disposal so Canadian workers and businesses can weather this storm. From expanding EI benefits and making them more flexible, to providing direct supports to businesses, we will be there as needed to help. But Canada, make no mistake, no matter how long this lasts, no matter what the cost, the federal government and other orders of

government will be there for you. We will defend Canadian jobs. We will take measures to prevent predatory behaviour that threatens Canadian companies because of the impacts of this trade war, leaving them open to takeovers. All right. Prime Minister, sounding strong, projecting strength. Canadian people, Canadian businesses, you can rely on the federal government for as long as it takes to weather this storm. But I ask you, how do you expand EI benefits? How do you make them more flexible? You don't do that from a podium at a press conference.

That is done in the House of Commons. In a vote in the House of Commons, that's how you get these things moving. But then you say to yourself, but surely if Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party open up the House of Commons following prorogation, there will be a confidence vote because Jagmeet Singh has promised that he will tear down this government at the first available moment because there is no faith in this government anymore. He has lost a mandate from the people and Jagmeet Singh is going to bring this government down. He's going to topple it and we are going to go into an election.

Surely he is a man of his word. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Exhibit B. Jagmeet Singh was asked point blank if he would call for an election right away. Here's what he had to say. Yeah, I don't want just a lip service. I want protections in place for workers, passed and implemented, helping out people.

We literally have a dire situation. 25% tariffs on our country will mean potentially hundreds and thousands of workers lose their jobs. So to Canadians listening, my commitment to you is I promise I'm gonna fight to protect your jobs. I promise I'm gonna fight to make sure workers impacted get help. I promise that I'm gonna put in place supports that I can do so that people who are worried about the cost of living that's already so high going up, I'm going to fight to make sure life is more affordable.

So he was asked point blank if he would bring down the government. And that's what he said. So on the same questions for him that I would have for Justin Trudeau, how do you do all the things that you just promised Canadians? You looked them in the eye. I'm going to stand up for you. I'm going to bring in these protections. You don't do that from an election campaign from the campaign trail. You do that from inside the House of Commons, which means the evidence suggests that Jagmeet Singh has no intention of bringing this government down, which means, all right, that means it can continue going. Justin Trudeau, Justin Trudeau, however, is supposed to resign on March 9th, following the Ascension, the coronation of Mark Carney, right?

I give you, Canada, Exhibit C. Justin Trudeau has said that he would stick around as long as his successor is comfortable, as long as he needs him to be there to weather this very tricky storm. Laurie Goldstein confirmed what I believe sounds as if Justin Trudeau plans to remain prime minister past March 9th. Justin Trudeau will stay as prime minister for the transition, but the timeline is up to his successor. That's according to the National Post. MP Kevin Vong says this lends credence to the theory

that Carney will run in the Halifax by-election on April 14th, which liberals are projected to win. It will give Carney a seat in the House of Commons and have Justin Trudeau staying on past March 9th. If we go past March, I believe the NDP liberals will run out the clock. So that's the lay of the land right now. I will give you, however, two pieces of evidence that reinforce what Kevin Vong, what Laurie Goldstein, and what I

believe, that we are not going to an election anytime soon. I give you exhibit D. In my entire life, I cannot remember a liberal leader with a less proficient handle on the French language. Mark Carney, in his French debate demonstrated such a low proficiency in French that were he to present himself as the liberal leader with his level of French today, there is no way, zero way he would hold on to the number of seats in Quebec that he could were he fluent. There is something that conservative leaders can get away with knowing French or learning French.

NDP, same thing, but in Quebec and the liberal party, if you are not perfectly bilingual, you cannot hold on to the seats that you need. But surely, Ben, given the Mark Carney's rise in the polls to the point that a cabinet minister, Anita Anand, said that she was going to retire only to come out of retirement upon learning that the Liberals were competitive again, surely this means that Mark Carney can go out there and appeal to everyone across the nation. Well, I give you Exhibit E. The Conservatives have apparently rebounded with voters, regaining a double-digit lead as the Liberals have slid. The Conservatives are at 43%, 5% higher than last week, and the Liberals slid to 30%, losing 5% support across the board. The NDP slipped one point over the week to 13%.

So we're back to a reality that makes sense for most of us, which means the liberals are underwater clear across the country with the exception of Quebec where they are competitive. Do you think that it, Mark Carney, with his understanding of French as it is today, can be as competitive as he needs to retain some semblance of relevancy for the Liberal Party in the next election. The answer is no, which means they are going to run out this clock. Mark Carney is going to learn French. Justin Trudeau and the NDP are going to claim that this is an emergency that doesn't warrant an election. We have to be in the House of Commons. They will retain power as long as they

possibly can, which means we are not going to the polls until October. Ladies and gentlemen of the court, I rest my case. This moment in time, this crisis that we as a nation are enduring in these 25% tariffs that are sowing chaos and making us worry about the future of our economy and our country should be viewed simultaneously as an opportunity, an opportunity to find ways to make our country stronger, more resilient, more prosperous. And there is a think tank that is calling for Canada to unilaterally drop non-tariff trade barriers,

whether Donald Trump is in the picture or not. Here to discuss it is the author of the call, is Vincent Jeloso, economics professor at George Mason University. He's the author of the study. Vincent, thank you so much for being here. It's a pleasure to be here. So tell me what you mean by non-tariff trade barriers and why Canada should be dropping them unilaterally. So we have to understand one thing that's super important. Protectionism is economic poison. Doing counter tariffs is doubling the dosage of poison.

So it's not, you can't treat poison with more poison. It doesn't work this way. The antidote is free trade. And Canada, yes, has low tariffs, but Canada's really high non-tariff barriers. That means that we prevent, for example, foreign airlines from providing services between Canadian airports, which brings prices up.

We prevent foreign companies from providing cell phone services, which brings prices up. We prevent foreign companies from providing cell phone services, which pushes prices up. And we do this in multiple sector, the dairy sector, the chicken poultry sector. We do it in transportation. We do it in mining. We do it in so many sectors that essentially we've

raised protectionist barriers around roughly a third of the Canadian economy. And Vincent, I think a lot of Canadians, I think, given the world of free trade that we've been living in since the late 80s, there is this misconception, I think, that we are, our economy is as liberalized as it possibly can be, but that's not the case.

That's not the case at all. The Canadian economy is relatively liberal by world standard, but it's not that liberal. And there's still a lot of room to do it. And I'll give you an analogy that's the choice that we have right now as Canadians. In 1900, Canada and Argentina were deemed to be the 20th century's potential champions. And both of them had a choice to make at that point. Canada made the choice of free trade, and Argentina made the choice of protectionism. And the difference is Argentina is a poor country today and Canada is a G8 country member because it's a prosperous nation. The choice is

the same again. Do we want to take more of the poison which would lead us the path to Argentina or good times are bad we take the best policy possible and that means opening up our markets, creating situations where we reduce costs for consumers, that we create situations that make businesses make investments, that raise productivity and raise wages and make us a nation so prosperous, so prosperous and productive, that we can even ignore the threats of foreign nations

to engage in protectionism, because our productivity is our vaccine against future retaliatory threats from foreign nations. And well, Vincent, what do you say? What do you say? What do you say to those who push back and say, Okay, you want to open up our country to competition in say, the airline sector, that would sign the that would be a death blow to Air Canada to

Porter, and and to WestJet and therefore we would be weakened as a nation because we wouldn't have our own airlines. People who are doing this are only looking at one side of the coin. Maybe Air Canada falls a little bit of business, maybe it changes. But that's not the right standard. The right standard is consumer welfare. If Canadians have more money in their pocket because they're paying less, this is more money they can spend in other industries. Maybe we lose Air Canada,

but maybe we get a champion of technological innovation in sectors that we do not yet understand. I'm glad you said that because I've sort of been beating this drum for a little bit myself as well. The health of a nation isn't determined by whether or not we have an airline that has a maple leaf on it. And no disrespect to Air Canada. I use Air Canada all the time. I'm just singling them out by way of example. But a few months ago, I had to fly from Ottawa, from Toronto to Ottawa. And I had to buy a last minute plane ticket. It cost me $700 to go from the national capital to the financial capital. And then a couple of weeks ago

I had to buy a last-minute ticket from South Florida to Toronto and I bought that ticket on an American airline It cost me the Canadian equivalent of 250 bucks So if we could make air travel if we could make cell phones if we could make so many aspects of life in Canada Cheaper then that money could go towards building the economy. That disposable income would go towards building a stronger country. That's what matters to me, not whether or not we've got these mascots that have the maple leaf on them.

Listen, I want to trade jobs with you. You've said everything I'm saying in my own job, so I'm willing. It seems you're saying exactly what I'm saying. I would have no disagreement with anything you've said. Full agreement. Yes, free trade is the guarantee of prosperity for a nation. And there is no other way around. And just to pile on to what you're saying, there's a famous paper in economics that says

what are the three things that guarantee a nation poverty? One of them is war and destruction. The second one is socialism. The last one is protectionism. These are the three guaranteed ways to be a poor nation. Right now, what we have as a choice is, do we wanna get one third of the way towards poverty? And the answer is no, we shouldn't.

And our answer is to commit more hardly, as we have had in the past, commit to the ideal of free trade, of open markets, which are to guarantee of a prosperous and productive nation. And that productivity is also our shield for sovereignty, that we can exert our sovereignty. No poor nation can assert its sovereignty as effectively as a rich one. I'm speaking with Vincent Joloso, the economics professor at George Mason University, authored the study that says that we as Canada, as a country should unilaterally drop our non-tariff trade barriers as a way to inoculate ourselves

against some of the chaos that we're dealing with because of these tariffs. Vincent, people might listen to you and say, all of this makes sense to me. I'm a big fan of all of these ideas, but the idea of doing making these massive structural changes to the Canadian economy unilaterally with nothing coming back to us from other countries seems like a massive leap of faith. We'd have to have a heck of a lot of confidence in the outcome. Well, the reason why I have confidence in the outcome is we have the weight of history behind us.

Nations that pick free trade constantly enjoy faster economic growth. And the reason why is protectionism is a thing that people do to hurt themselves. There's an old quote that says, protectionism is what we do to ourselves and is what enemies would have wished to do to us in wars. So protectionism is self-destruction. Doing the same thing as Americans is not a good idea. Obviously, we would like to liberalize altogether. The ideal world is we liberalize altogether. The second best world is we do it on our own. If they want to reciprocate, they can do it. But doing it on our own is our only way forward. And they want to reciprocate, they can do it. But doing it on our own is

our only way forward. And I want to reiterate that I understand the imperative of doing something now. But the best something we can do by opening up our market, we also attract investment. And that means capital moves to Canada, and it moves away from the United States. And there is a large empirical literature in economics showing that governments are far more responsive to capital mobility than they are to goods mobility. Allowing investment to Canada would probably put more pressure upon the US government than counter tariffs.

Vincent, I only have a minute left, so I'd love your answer on this final question quickly. But where do we land in this conversation on cultural institutions? And we as a country have always viewed, we haven't viewed our artistic community as a commodity like Hollywood. It's something that needed protection for fear that it would be subsumed and consumed by the American behemoth south of the border.

Protectionism and cultural matters is the equivalent to culture, to what taxidermy is to animals. You're not creating any dynamism inside cultural innovation. The reality is culture and cultural vibrancy requires markets as well. It requires rich collectivities that can invest through philanthropy. It requires the ability to expose ourselves to different ways of thinking and where we can remix ideas. Cultural protectionism is as bad as all other types of protectionism. No nation is culturally strong by being poor.

All right. Vincent Jaloso, thank you so much for coming on. I think you've made a hell of a pitch. And as you can see, you and I see eye to eye on a number of points. So thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it. It's a pleasure and I'm very happy to hear at least I'm not alone in the universe. Earlier this week I was on Twitter and I followed Craig Baird from Canadian History X. He's our regular guest on Wednesdays and he had a whole thing about a moment in time from years ago where tariffs were looming from the Americans. And I thought, I know we're gonna talk about something else as well, but we couldn't miss the opportunity

to drill down on this moment in time in 1890 with Craig Baird. So let's welcome to the show, the host of Canadian History X, Craig Baird. Hello. How are you, sir? I'm doing well, how are you? I'm well, so take are you? I'm well.

So take me back in time to 1890. Yeah. So 1890, William McKinley in the United States, at the time he was a congressman, he brought in tariffs that actually put tariffs of about 38 to 49% on Canada. And the reason they did that, they said, was because they wanted to help the economy in the United States and things like that but there was another side to it and part of it was the annexation of Canada and turning Canada at the time into the 45th state. The 45th state okay so certainly echoes from the past are reverberating today okay and but you say it obviously backfired

we didn't become the 45th state but but in the immediate term, what happened? Well, yeah, it backfired quite heavily. So what actually happened was that Canada started to become more nationalistic, kind of like what we're seeing now, and we turned more to Britain than the United States. So our exports to the United Kingdom increased immensely, and then it went down in the United States.

In the United States, people actually suffered, farmers suffered because of these high tariffs. And then in 1892, the Republicans lost the presidency, the house and the Senate. So it was a disastrous decision for them and it failed horribly. Oh my God. How long did this last? How long were these tariffs in place? They were in place for four years total, but they were, you know, tariffs were part of

just policy at that point. And the United States actually lowered the tariffs in 1894 back down to relatively normal levels. I've got to ask, were we as a nation, did I have to assume it hurt us economically? It did a little bit at first, but once we started shifting our trade to the, uh, to Britain, we, we actually fared pretty well. So we, we pivoted quickly. The ones who were hurt the most was the United States. But the fact that, uh, that McKinley kept them in for four years, despite the fact that they, they weren't giving him the outcome that he saw, that, that, I mean, it was a pretty, pretty big swing, right? Like the, you know, he wanted to weaken the country, wanted to annex the country.

pretty big swing, right? Like, you know, he wanted to weaken the country, he wanted to annex the country, and after four, I mean, the fact that he didn't get that result after one year, two years, three years, and they still stayed in place, I don't know what that speaks to. Yeah, I mean, he was known as the Napoleon of protectionism, and he very much felt like the United States and Canada should be one country, and it cost him, although he did become president a few years later, but then that didn't end well for him either. And at what point in our history did we resume

more friendly relations with the states? I would say we started to by the 1900s, the early 1900s, because by about 1911, we were actually looking at free trade, which wasn't popular at the time, and actually led to the liberals losing the 1911 election. Gotcha.

Gotcha. Well, this week on Canadian History X, you're taking a look at the Empress of Ireland, a beautiful name. What does it, what's it all about? Yeah, the Empress of Ireland is a very famous shipwreck that nobody seems to know about. I mean, it happened right in the St. Lawrence River and there was 1400 people on the ship and over a thousand died. It was this horrible tragedy.

What? But yeah, exactly. But because it happened two years after the Titanic and a few months before the First World War, it kind of just got forgotten about even though it was like it was within shore of Quebec. It was so close to Canada and it was just this terrible tragedy. The ship was struck by the store, Ststad in heavy fog and sank within 14 minutes. So it had more than enough lifeboats because the Titanic had happened two years earlier.

We kind of learned our lesson with that. But it sank so fast that people just couldn't even get out of their bunks in time. And how far was it from shore? Because I lived, I lived right on, I was one block away from the St. Lawrence River in the old town in Quebec City when I was in law school. It was only about maybe a kilometer away from shore. It's only 40 meters below the waves. Like it's not that deep. You know, if you're an advanced diver, you can definitely explore that wreck. Was the Empress of Ireland sort of an elegant ship? Oh, absolutely. It was a beautiful ship. It was used to bring immigrants from the United Kingdom to Canada, but then also take people to the United Kingdom for visits. So when it was sailing on its

last voyage, which was its 96th voyage, it had the entire second class was pretty much the Salvation Army who were going to this big event in the United Kingdom. So it was a very beautiful ship. It was called the world's greatest transportation system. Really? And the numbers are stark. 1,477 people on board, over 1,000 were killed, 138 children were on board, only 4 survived. Of the 310 women on board, only 41 survived. This is, what a tragedy.

I can't believe nobody knows about it. Why don't we listen to a little bit of the Empress of Ireland on Canadian History X. Throughout the Empress, passengers were sitting in their rooms trying to figure out what happened. Some poured into hallways to talk to fellow passengers who were just as oblivious as to

what that monstrous noise was. On the bridge of the Empress, the crew tried desperately to keep the ship with the store stead, which was fast moving away with the current. And within seconds, the two ships were meters apart. The storestead was still afloat. All of its damage was in the front of the ship and there was little danger of it sinking. But it was a completely different story for the Empress. The 5-meter gash in the starboard side of the ship was now open to the water. A thunderous 60,000 gallons of water per second began rushing into the ship that is nearly

as much water as goes over the American side of Niagara Falls every second. There was nothing that could be done. The ship was going to sink, and it was going to do it fast. Captain Kendall sent out a message on the wireless. Empress of Ireland, stopped by dense fog, struck amidst ship in a vital spot by Storstad. At Father's Point Marconi Station, the telegraph operator picked up the message and then immediately lost contact with the ship. He didn't know it in his quiet telegraph station on dry land, but the telegraph room on the Empress was already filling with water as the operators

fled for their lives. Craig, it's so fascinating, but I want to zoom out a little bit and ask you, what are we doing wrong in this country that stories like this aren't taught or we just don't know about, we don't learn about them? What are we doing wrong in terms of building our history and learning our history and sharing our history? I think a big thing is we just don't seem to share our history as much as we should and whether that's we want to distance ourselves from the Americans who share a lot of their history or not I don't quite know but I think a lot of it is also regional. I mean I grew up in Alberta and I learned nothing about eastern Canada and the history there and I think it's very much the case in eastern Canada not learning much about Western Canada.

So I think that plays a lot into it. And things like this, you know, when it happened was just an unfortunate time. It was between two huge historical events and kind of just was completely forgotten because of that. But we're past that now. And the fact that, I mean, listen, you're doing God's work here by sharing this stuff, but it shouldn't have to rest on your shoulders to educate us.

These are the sort of the cultural touchstones that bind a country together. The learning about a tragedy like this should have as much importance out west as it does in Quebec City, where the tragedy actually happened. Just like, you know, the Halifax explosion is something that every, every Canadian should learn about. If we all know that, then there's a shared identity that we have that is tightened up, that is, comes more into focus. Absolutely. We definitely need to do more to protect our history and learn from our history. I mean, the site of the Empress of Ireland, where it's, where it is, that was only protected in 1999. And by then it had been, you know, almost stripped clean by treasure hunters and things like that.

So yeah, there is definitely an issue with not protecting our sites and also not learning about a lot of the aspects of our history beyond things like Vimy Ridge and, you know, the Summit Series and these big events that everybody knows about. Yeah, but it does have to be big for it to be important. I mean, Canada's economy isn't big, but we like to think it's important. And look, I'm going to just put this out there. I think manifesting is a thing. I think whoever opens the next, runs the next government should hire you as our Canadian history czar.

This is now a thing that we're doing with czars. You should be our Canadian history czar, working in conjunction with all the provinces to make sure that we are sharing a national story and a national history. Craig, where can people find the show? You can find the show on all podcast platforms and then on the weekend you can listen across the chorus radio network, just check your local times. Craig Baird, host of Canadian History X and the future Canadian history czar. Appreciate it. Thank you so much, my friend.

Thank you. and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. 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.