The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 1 - Kevin O'Leary, Perrin Beatty, Dan Kelly

Episode Date: March 8, 2025

Best of the Week Part 1 - Kevin O'Leary, Perrin Beatty, Dan Kelly Guests: Kevin O'Leary, Regan Watts, Ian Lee, Perrin Beatty, Dan Kelly, Tony Chapman, Adam Zivo 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 to the Ben Mulroney Best of the Week podcast. We had so many great conversations this week, including a chat with Kevin O'Leary about our potential next prime minister. We teed up some specifics on the trade war with the US and some of the biggest promotional campaigns of all time and why they work. Enjoy. We're very happy to be joined now by a good friend of the show, Kevin O'Leary, chairman of all Lear Ventures and Shark Tanks, Mr. Wonderful.

Kevin, great to have you back on the Ben Mulroney show. Great to be here. Thanks. So let's talk have you back on the Ben Mulroney show. Great to be here, thanks. So let's talk about the tariffs of it all. They are scheduled to come in tomorrow. Donald Trump has said big day tomorrow. And none of us know what that means. I like to say that he wants every day to end like a cliffhanger from his show, The Apprentice.

And so that's what it feels like. The ax hangs, but it does not fall. If you were a betting man, what would you be betting on tomorrow? I think there's somewhere between a five and 10% chance that this whole thing gets punted to April 2nd, because there is a report that's going to be produced and issued on April 1st that really details the impact of tariffs on Mexico and Canada. It's not a huge probability, but as we speak, you know, we're in a difficult situation in Canada because we have no leadership at the federal level. And so one of the problems over the last 10 days

is this stuff that Trudeau has been putting out. He went to Europe and he poked a bear and a lot of anti-Trump sentiment there. It's true that Trudeau and Trump have a toxic relationship. So it's good when that's gone, but right now all we have at the table are the premiers. They are, as we speak in Washington with their teams or their teams are dealing directly with their counterparts trying to find out what it takes to get this at least punted or completely removed. And by the way, nowhere in those discussions is there a discussion of sovereignty.

I know the press is gone crazy in Canada with this idea we're changing the name of America, Canada, or Canadian. Oh, I love all that stuff, but it's kind of irrelevant because sovereignty has never been discussed at the table. What we're talking about here is a lot of what I would call NAFTA 3. And I've said this, we've talked about this every six weeks it seems, there's a huge opportunity here and it's drowned out by the noise that everybody's putting on this, you know, anti-American focus of sovereignty. We're

not selling Canada, that's never been a discussion. But the idea that's on the table and it's getting pretty clear because you saw what happened over the weekend in Europe, Trump is really concerned about Russia and China teaming up against the United States. And he would like to have some kind of a deal

with Canada on the North. That's really what they want. And I think that's coming up in the discussions that are occurring right now in Washington. Well, he should like the announcement that Pierre Poliev made, said, were I to become prime minister, this is my plan to defend Canada's Arctic sovereignty.

But it looks like before he gets a kick at the can, the liberals are going to pick their new leader who will become our prime minister. And it looks like that person right now is Mark Carney. Now he is a largely, if not completely untested front runner. I got to wonder, listen, you've been put through the paces of a leadership race, a real leadership race. And because you are running under theaces of a leadership race, a real leadership race. And, and because you were running under the banner of the conservative party, the press was given it to you, right?

They were challenging you, they were testing you. He is not being tested by most of the media in this country. What do you think is going to happen to a Mark Carney if he's put in front of Pierre Poliev on the debate stage? It'd be up to Carney to decide how quickly to post this election. I mean, if he thinks or his advisors think that getting it on the road

and trying to define himself quickly, which is really hard because Mark Carney may think Canadians know who he is, but the fact is I would bet eight out of 10 have no idea where he is. I think the last poll was 29% of people could not, only 29% of Canadians could identify a picture of him. Yeah. So he's got a huge challenge because he really hasn't been in Canada very long. I mean, this is an unusual situation. He didn't run a process in terms of leadership. Yeah.

The liberals were, you can blame Trudeau for that, but they're in a bad place. And so he'll be defined by Pierre That's in whatever if it's five weeks to an election or two weeks or whatever It's gonna be it could be all the way to October that will allow Here to run around saying this guy's a carbon tax guy Gerald Butts is in the background Look what he did to you with Trudeau. I mean, it's true. Most of the policies it turns out as we've all learned I hate to say this but it's true Trudeau was the, it turns out, as we've all learned, I hate to say this, but it's true. Trudeau was the idiot king. All of the policy came out of Gerald Butt,

who's been hiding in the shadows behind Carney's campaign. But Kevin, I want to jump in because look, in an election campaign, things change for Mark Carney. Right now, whenever he says something, he does a quick little scrum and then he walks away. In an election campaign, there is an entire team of media that is assigned to each leadership candidate. You cannot escape those questions. And he will have... So whenever he makes a mistake, he just disappears and he lets the press make excuses for him or explain away the lies. That can't happen in an election campaign. And the fact is, he showed that his

French was very lacking in the French debate surprised a lot of people disappointed even more who were following him. Part of me thinks he's gonna he's gonna kick the can down the the road and call an election later on, like you said, possibly in October, so he can bone up on his French. He needs he needs votes in Quebec without Quebec. I don't know how much support the liberal brand has across the country. Yeah, that may be his instinct. But I would suggest that's a bad idea. You know, it even even even if it was a snap election this morning, the divide has been narrowed. I mean, now that

Trudeau is gone, and we have a defined leader, or at least, you know, you believe it, so do I, that'll be Carney, he will get, the question is, how much of a mandate will conservatives get? Can they get a majority mandate? I don't know if you know that yet, but I don't think there's any scenario, and I'm just speculating here, where people, it doesn't matter what liberal you put in leadership, the brand is tainted for a cycle. People are tired of what happened to Canada. And if you trot out a Carney or a Freeland, it doesn't matter.

They're going to be in purgatory for at least four years as the opposition leader. Now in Canadian politics, you never know what's going to happen. But if I were betting man, and I am, it's Carney leading the Liberals as a minority. And in some ways, and I'm a little surprised he's doing it, but look, it's an interesting opportunity for him. That is a job definition of hell, because you really have no say in how the,

if it's a majority band, Dave's Concertors, he's just sitting there, it. It's my goodness, it's hell on earth. But you know, they've got to pay. I would prefer that destiny for freelance. She was horrible. And I wish he could spend purgatory as the opposition leader, but it looks like it's going to be Carney and he he did it to himself. What can you say? Kevin O'Leary, I've got to ask Elon Musk is finding wasteful spending with Doge. Is that something you think we could ever replicate here in Canada? Larry, I've got to ask Elon Musk is finding wasteful spending with Doge. Is that something you think we could ever replicate here in Canada? I don't think we have a choice but to do so. We

may not call it that. But you know, we're in trouble too. I mean, the amount of deficit and what's happened in capital leaving the country, policy changes that were policies that were put in place nine years ago that were a mistake and now proven by the economics, you know, economic outcome. You know, I think people, Canadians as well, think about, they sit at their kitchen table and they have to doze every day. They, they're, they're constantly saying, well, do we put the kid through, you know, university or what do we do with, you know, our debt or credit card debt and everything else? There's an intuitive feeling that this is a good idea. or what do we do with our debt or credit card debt and everything else,

there's an intuitive feeling that this is a good idea. We've never scrutinized government that way. And I think people wanna do it. It would be a popular mandate in Canada, regardless of who gets in. People know that the Canadian government drips with fat and there's a lot of waste. And I would think within the provincial systems, the same thing, Quebec is a very, look, I

get to say this, I was born in Montreal, it is the most corrupt government in Canada. And I think Canadians and Quebecers would like to see that cleaned up and all the tariffs between our own provinces that are stupid. All of that stuff could be examined. You know, $5 billion going from Alberta to Quebec dairy farmers and subsidies. Can you imagine how pissed you would be if you're in Alberta? I mean, that's the kind of thing they want to get rid of. Well, I would be pissed if I had the added sting of being told that under no circumstances

will any of your pipelines that take your crude to the East Coast go through the Quebec territory. pipelines that take your crew to the East Coast go through the Quebec territory? That's just stupid. I mean, that hurts the whole country. That's the kind of stupidity that a Canadian, you know, a beaver does. That would be what you call it. Beaver does. I love it. Kevin O'Leary, Chairman of O'Leary Ventures, Shark Tank's Mr. Wonderful, and the good friend of the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for being here. Take care. Bye-bye. Good friend of the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for being here. Take care, bye bye.

We've been talking, listen, until Mark Carney is anointed, the leader of the Liberal Party and eventually our Prime Minister, we're gonna follow this campaign. We were forced to follow it, so we're gonna follow it. And I'm noticing a little bit of frustration building up at some of the journalists for whom this is the journalists who for whom

this is their beat for whom this is, you know, people come to them for for thoughts on this. And one of those people is Bob Fife of the Globe and Mail. And he laid out on a television show recently how Mark Carney has not been upfront about his financial disclosures. He still hasn't told us what he's going to do. And we've been trying to get this information and what he's going to do and we've been trying to get this information. What you're going to do about putting your conflict of interest disclosures to the public. They have they have ducked that over and over again.

And there's a reason for this is that it takes 60 days to declare once you become prime minister, 60 days to declare your conflict and 120 days to declare it to the public. If he bides by that, then the election will be over before we even know what his financial interests are. So he's been ducking us a lot. He'll take two questions, maybe three, and then they run away from us. All right, so that you can hear the frustration in Bob Fife's voice. To talk more about that and a few more topics, we're joined by my friend Regan Watts, founder of Fratton Park, Inc.

and former senior aide to the Minister of Finance, Jim Flaherty. Regan, happy Monday to you. Happy Monday to you too, Ben. So I think Carney has enjoyed living in this world where he hasn't been quite political. So he's not subject to the disclosure rules. And I remember he was on

Vashi Kapilos's show a few weeks ago, where she said, are you going to subject yourself to these disclosure rules? And she says, well, he said, well, I've had no power. And my pushback to that is you may not have had official power, but you've had influence. And therefore, I think you owe it to people to let them know, you know, who's wet in your whistle. it to people to let them know, you know, who's who's wet in your whistle. So I don't know if that's a question or not, Ben. But it was more it's more I trailed off into sort of and and and your thoughts, Regan. Well, look, I think Mr. Carney and I've said on your show before, he's a smart man who has had considerable success both in the public and private sector.

However, this is a new arena for him in politics. And I think he is, at least what I interpret from his comments is he views that the rules don't necessarily apply to him in the same way that they apply to others. I mean, look, that long national nightmare that is Justin Trudeau is over in just over a week.

And it's wonderful. But Mr. Carney, who is going to win leadership next weekend for the Liberal Party, this coming weekend, pardon me, will be the prime minister and we will have no idea what his financial interests are. He has not made any effort to disclose these. And I'll remind your listeners that prior to seeking the leadership of the Liberal Party, Justin Trudeau to his credit, disclosed his assets, there was some questions about whether he had a trust

fund and how much he was worth. And to his credit, Mr. Trudeau disclosed his personal financial interests prior to the leadership. And I think that was a he didn't have to do that then. But that was a very wise move politically. And for the life of me, I can't figure out why Mr. Carney is running away from these attempts for transparency and disclosure, because there ought not to be anything to hide. That is one of the worrying worrisome fronts in the get to know Mark Carney journey that we're all on. The other one is he seems to play fast and loose with with the facts and

with timelines. And people who make memes for a living were having a field day over the past week after he sort of played fast and loose with the timeline on the Brookfield Asset Management, of which he was the chairman, moving their head office to New York. He said he had nothing to do with it, and of course he did. And so all of a sudden the memes were coming up

about all the other things that he could claim responsibility for, including landing on the moon and being the fifth beetle and you name it. And you had some choice words on Twitter for him on that front, didn't you? I did. And look, I know Mr. Carney, I worked with him and Prime Minister Harper and finance Mr. Flaherty during some time that I spent working for the government of Canada. And so my comments this weekend were

very, I thought relevant. And that is Mr. Carney as a central banker, as well as a public servant, as well as being an investment banker has had to be very precise with his language. Yeah, when you're the governor of the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, things you say can and do move markets. And so you have to be very, very careful about what you're saying. And by the way, that's that's also the brand he has been settling. He's been

peddling out there. I'm when I speak, I'm, I'm a serious person unlike my predecessor. So I don't call it adult. Yeah, I don't. I'm not theatrical. I don't speak for the sake of speaking when I speak. I mean what I say. Yeah, exactly. And Mr. Carney said he was he should have been more precise. But it is simply not in in some of his comments. It is simply not credible to believe Mark Carney was imprecise in language that he used. He tried to lie and he got caught. And he's had to backpedal and is doing all kinds of backpedaling. I thought the memes were hysterical. They were. If there's one thing that's for sure is the internet remains undefeated when it comes to memes and making fun of somebody.

But it also leads to a reasonable question is what else has he not been precise about? Yeah. I think Mr. Carney, like he claimed he was not chair of the board when the board meeting took place. And that is simply untrue. And so he was being very precise in his language. And he was he's been especially clear about what his plan is for Canada should he become prime minister, which is more of the same policies, if not doubling down on the same policies that Mr. Trudeau and his team that he has been advising for the last 10 years, give or take, were the same policies that got us in the mess where we are now.

And that's the thing. He's underplaying his role in the mess we're in, but he's overplaying or overstating his role in all sorts of other things, including taking credit for the financial crisis response that your boss was the primary driver of and Stephen Harper took actually voiced his displeasure with that recently. Yeah, look, I, Mr. Carney certainly would have been providing advice to decision makers during the economic crisis, but and Mr. Carney would have worked very closely with Mr. Flaherty and Mr. Harper during that time.

But make no mistake, Mr. Carney was not making decisions or the tough calls on economic policy or fiscal policy during that period. It was Mr. Flaherty and Prime Minister Harper who were making those tough calls. And so I have found it a bit egregious that Mr Carney is over indexing or maybe influencing or exaggerating his influence during that period. Was he at the table or was he in the room? Sure. But he wasn't making decisions, certainly not on economic and fiscal policy. And it is, for me, unconscionable that Mr. Carney would

make such claims, especially when Mr. Flaherty, God rest his soul, is no longer with us and is not here to correct the record. Mark Carney is also making claims that he is the guy to lead us through a crisis. He was in the pub and he essentially compared himself to Churchill. And he called himself a wartime leader. I wouldn't be here if we were in peacetime. That is a perplexing statement if I've ever heard one. Like I don't know what to make with that. So are you saying that if the tariffs weren't around, you wouldn't have presented yourself?

I don't understand what he's pitching. Well, I think he's being again, very precise in his language. He's commuting communicating to Canadians that the only reason he's doing this is for himself, which is the same type of language that former liberal leader Mike Lugnati have also used when he came back to Canada to seek the leadership of the Liberal Party and to run for prime minister.

You know, Mr. Carney doesn't make mistakes with language. I think it displays an incredible sense of arrogance that Mark Carney, who while a fine public servant, and I have no idea, but let's assume he was a pretty good investment banker, would compare himself to perhaps the greatest leader of the 20th century at a time like this. It's just crazy.

Regan, I want to thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. Love having you on the show. Have a great day, Ben. See ya. Tomorrow is supposed to be tariff day, right? What they're going to look like what where they're going to be applied. Could be as bad as 25% on everything. It could be more targeted than that. We do not know. But somebody who may be able to offer an educated guess is Ian Lee, Associate Professor at Carleton University at the Sprott School of Business.

Professor, thank you so much for being here. My pleasure, man. My real pleasure to speak with you. Okay, so we've got, let's take a quick listen to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who says that some good work's been done by Canada and Mexico, but he's as in the dark as the rest of us. We care about two things, right? The March 4th is about the border,

and both Mexico and Canada have done a reasonable job on the border. They're both working hard on the border. You know, we've had the lowest crossings ever, ever under Donald Trump because of his ability to negotiate with Canada and Mexico. But the fentanyl continues to come into this country and continues to murder our people. And the ingredients are made in China, they're sent to Mexico and Canada, and then they come and attack our country.

And that's got to end. So the president's been crystal clear on those two points. They have done a lot so he's sort of thinking about right now how exactly he wants to play with Mexico and Canada and that is a fluid situation. There are going to be tariffs on Tuesday on Mexico and Canada exactly what they are. We're going to leave that for the president and his team. I mean it's as if every day has to end on a cliffhanger, like an episode of The Apprentice. Yes. I mean, stay tuned.

Tune in tomorrow for more information on how we are going to destroy your economy. But that's sort of the world we're living in, isn't it, Professor? It is. It is. But I'm not, I know there's a lot of pessimism right now in Canada and there's people saying, you know, we're doomed and, you know, this is going to go on forever. I don't believe that. I've read the Stephen Morin paper, who's now his chief economist, and the comments by you

just played it shows that they see the terrorists as a tool to get us to change our behavior, our policies. Now, some people may say, I don't want to change our policies. That's a separate debate. Okay. But what I'm saying is this isn't random. I'm not here to defend Donald Trump. I don't agree with terrorists.

I don't agree with terrorists at all. What I'm trying to say is I'm trying to understand him. And I think it's they are trying to elicit a change in our policies. One of them is the border. But by no means is that the only one. We can debate whether there's as many drugs going across the border or not. The larger issue, instead of getting bogged down like a lot of people are, including our leaders in the weeds, they should be saying, look, they're concerned about the border.

Let's not get into a nitpicking debate of whether it's 2% or 1% or 17%. The border has had problems. We got to fix it yeah he's also talked about the digital service tax on the digital American digital giants like you know Google and and made a I mean there were a lot of Canadians I was one of them it was very critical of that tax when I was put in last year by the Trudeau government yeah and because it was unnecessary OECD is doing a huge study with all the major countries of the world, 150 countries, looking at a common tax down the road and they're making good progress. So we were precipitous and

jumped the gun in a process where we're in those negotiations. So there was no need for that digital service tax. So yeah, what I'm going is I think there's things we can do. Yeah. And we can got ward off these tariffs once we sit down and really have some conversations with him and I'm hoping we start to negotiate a new Kuzma. Right, but these, you just mentioned a few things that could have been dealt with if we had a parliament that was sitting and yet we don't. So listen, we don't have to get into the politics of it but this to me is almost by design by the liberals.

They know that fighting Trump is good for their brand and the longer they can keep this on the front burner. I mean, they could have dealt with a lot of this stuff instead. They were just kicking the ball down the field so that it can be an election issue. But that's me editorializing. Now, I have heard, Professor, that the president of Mexico has been sending up the trial balloon of mirroring the tariffs that America puts on China. So if China, if the United States puts 25% tariffs on China, Mexico will do the same.

And apparently it's getting really good feedback in Washington. Is this something that Canada should be paying attention to and maybe possibly parroting back? Absolutely, 1 million percent. Absolutely. Why? In that Marin paper that I keep quoting, and the only reason I'm quoting it is not to drop names. It's the only written document I can find anywhere that spells out the vision of the Trump administration. It's a very 41 pages, we may not agree with their vision, but there's a vision 41 pages, we may not agree with their vision,

but there's a vision, very clear. And he makes it crystal clear in this paper. They do not see Canada as enemy number one. In fact, they don't see Canada as an enemy. They even say they're an ally, but we want them to change some of their policies as we've already discussed. They very clearly in this paper see China

as their existential threat, their existential enemy. And they talk about, he's been talking about this literally since 2016 when he was campaigning for the presidency way back when. And so in fact they talk about how China has been cheating what they're doing now instead of going straight into the States because they can't because of various tariffs. They're going through countries like Canada and Mexico exporting to Canada or Mexico to then go through their membership in NAFTA to export to the states so we've got to get I believe get on board one first off there's a lot of people right the world better think that China has

been cheating I've been one of them since 2001 they've been cheating so this is not a secret. Donald Trump did not discover this. He's articulating it. He's pushing it. But we've known since 2001 that the Chinese government is cheating. So it's in our interest as well to do this because first off, it's really annoying the Americans and secondly, we don't want them to come in and harm our economy because of

the dumping that they're doing. You know, part of me thinks that the 25% blanket tariff is not gonna come into effect. What actually comes into effect, I don't know. You know, experts are saying Trump wants a quote unquote win. You know, I think he'd already claimed victory on the border, which is, to me, should be a big enough win to sidestep these tariffs. But one thing I keep going back to is data

that his cabinet secretaries were tasked with going back and going through the data to come back and tell him what sort of impact these tariffs would have to their respective departments. And I gotta believe that the totality of that data is going to tell him that on a cost-benefit analysis, it's going to cost America more than they're going to gain by tariffing Canada. I agree that we have to be evidence-based.

I've been saying that for years. I've been teaching this in my classes, and I'm glad that they are doing that internal study in the Department of Commerce commerce and they'll have their public servants econometricians and so forth crunch the numbers and they'll come up with it whether or not it could be more harmful to our i'm i'm more skeptical to be honest because simply because of the scale the uh... asymmetry problem we're only two and a half trillion they're between twenty five and thirty trillion depending on which way you measure gdp i won't get into that one and i thought i

mean they're just so much larger at At the same time, that does not mean that tariffs won't hurt the United States. I argue tariffs hurt everybody everywhere in the world. This has been studied since Adam Smith 250 years ago. Nobel Prizes have been awarded on this. But Professor, weren't they? Someone was floating the idea that he wanted, you know, he wanted to reinvent the American economy in the vein of James Monroe, where he was going to get rid of all the taxes and instead it was going to be a tariff-based economy. And indeed, right up until the beginning of the 20th century, that was the case. Tariffs

were the principal source of income, you're right. And then they came up with the income tax. I know we all dislike income tax but income tax corporate and individual are if it's priced right and not too high to discourage effort and investment they are it's a much more efficacious tax and I've seen studies on that so you know where's the the the tariffs are they really do hurt competitiveness of that country so the point I'm getting at is I'm sure that the CEO, the former CEO of a counterfeits Gerald, who's now the commerce secretary, Lutnick, who's a very smart guy, by the way. I'm sure he's having conversations with Trump behind the scenes. He's never going

to really leak it out loud. And they're going to be, I think, much more strategic and targeted with those tariffs to make sure it doesn't hurt the Americans that much. Professor, we're going to have to leave it there't hurt the Americans that much. Professor we're gonna we're gonna have to leave it there but thank you so much I appreciate it. My great pleasure thanks very much. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and if the worst version of Donald Trump's tariffs come into effect tomorrow if the blanket 25% tariffs on all goods crossing the border from Canada into the United States becomes a thing tomorrow it could it could have devastating effects. It will

have devastating effects on our economy, on small business, on your pocketbook, on inflation, like you name it, it's gonna be a bad bad day. And so to talk a little bit more about it and to get be a little more informed, we're joined by two people who have a stake in all of this and who know a heck of a lot more about it and to get be a little more informed. We're joined by two people who have a stake in all of this and who know a heck of a lot more about this than me. Perrin Beatty, former MP and cabinet minister and former president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. To both of you gentlemen, I say hello and welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Hi Ben. And hi Ben. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning.

Before we start, I want to spend just a quick second listening to the US on our China tariffs. I think it'd be a nice gesture if the Canadians did it also. So in a way we could have fortress North America from the flood of Chinese imports that's coming out of the most unbalanced economy in the history of modern times. Perrin Beatty, when you hear something like that, you gotta wonder how much of this is actually you've got to wonder how much of this

is actually about fentanyl, and how much of this is Trump trying to angle for a better situation for the U.S. vis-a-vis China? What do you think Trump's motives are here? And does he actually think tariffs are a good way to generate revenue for his country? I mean, a lot of questions there for you, but I hand the mic to you.

None of us knows for sure what his motives are but it's clear that revenue generation is a key part of it. He says that tariffs are the most lovely word in the English language and he needs to generate hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for his tax cuts and for the election promises that he made. The Canadian government has indicated that it's open to discussing a common approach in dealing with with China for example, but it's got to be more than a nice gesture on Canada's part. We need to know what Donald Trump's bottom line is. What in fact is he looking for here? And at this

point we simply don't know. Yeah, he changed, he changes his tune from day to day. It's very, I mean- He changes with the winds. We're trying to build a new relationship on shifting sands. Dan Kelly, a lot of us believe that the tariffs are coming. Trump says the tariffs are coming tomorrow, but Howard Lutnick, who's part of his administration, says they may not be 25%.

What do you think they're gonna be, and how bad do you think this is going to be for business in Canada and how long before we feel the brunt of it? Gosh, you know, it is so hard to know. But you know, just more and more I'm of the view that this uncertainty, ongoing uncertainty is kind of the end goal. And it is in fact having, I think some of its desired effect because it is causing Canadian businesses to stand still, wait, hold off, and reconsider whether they wish to expand their operations

in the US rather than in Canada. I feel like regardless of whether there is a small step, big step taken on tariffs or no step at all, which I still think is a possibility, that that we will still be living with massive amounts of uncertainty with respect to tariffs, potentially for four straight years, and that we're gonna have to sleep with one eye open. Perrin Beatty, what are the best practices here for a country like Canada, we've got these, let's assume we're living in a

world where he drops, let's call it 10 to 15% tariffs across the board in Canada. What are best practices that we can adopt in Canada so that we can diminish the effect in the near term on Canadians? First, we have to recognize the fact that Canada will have no choice but to respond. And that will also add a cost for Canadians as we do that. But we need to focus on the fundamentals. What we haven't done over the last decade is to get our economic house in order, focus on productivity, on taking down inter-provincial barriers, on making our tax system competitive, on rewarding entrepreneurship and encouraging and celebrating successful businesses instead

of disparaging them in Canada. There are all sorts of measures that we can take that will make us more resilient, stronger and more sovereign. Yeah, if only we had a functioning parliament so that these things could get debated in and legislated. Dan, given that we're short on details, which industries do you think are most at risk in a world of tariffs? Because to me, in conversations, the automotive sector keeps popping up. Yeah, and look, a lot of attention is being paid, as it should, to Canada's major exporters, energy producers, the auto industry, agricultural commodities, and lumber, for example.

But you know, my members are all small and medium-sized companies. I've got a hundred thousand of them as members of CFIB. Sixteen percent of them export directly to the United States, but 49 percent of them import directly from the United States. And what often gets forgotten, Perrin mentioned it just a second ago, but that when we retaliate as we must, it is those retaliatory tariffs that are going to have the broad side to the Canadian economy, even on a greater level for many of us, than the export tariffs to send goods into the United

States. And it's those import tariffs that I'm super worried about because they hit so many small businesses and ultimately will find their way into consumer pricing. I mean, retaliatory tariffs, absolutely necessary, but it is like chemotherapy. It's poison that we take to fight the larger battle. I've got to worry. I want to go back to essentially the beginning of our conversation.

Could this entire thing have always been about China? When you hear that the president of Mexico is considering parroting back, mirroring tariffs on China that America places on China, and apparently it's being very well received in Washington. I mean, could this be about creating a new world order as it relates to China? We can go back to what's going on with him cozying up with Russia,

looking to create a schism between Russia and Moscow and Beijing. Perrin, could it all be about that? I don't believe so, Ben. When you look at the threatened tariffs, where he was talking about 10% on China and 25% on Mexico and on Canada. It simply makes no sense. If the target was China, you would put the heavy duties on China, not on Canada or Mexico. Canada was always open because Canada is threatened by uncompetitive trading practices by China. Canada was always open to looking at a common approach for how to deal with China.

Instead, what he was talking about was whacking Canada. Yeah. My brother is very worried, given his business, there's a lot of back and forth between the United States and Canada, he sells a lot to the United States, he's very concerned for a future with tariffs. Perrin, you've been through this, you've been a part of government before.

If the tariffs are a tool for Donald Trump, then it feels to me like they would be temporary. Is that your feeling right now? If they're just a tool. As Dan was mentioning, that may not be the goal. The goal may be the tariffs are the end rather than simply just a tool to use to plunge in other countries, to bend them to the Americans' will. He needs to generate massive amounts of money to pay for his election promises. And he sees tariffs as a way of doing

that. And he tries to explain them as being a tax that's paid by foreigners, as opposed to being paid by Americans. It's totally untrue. But that's how he attempts to spin it. Dan, I have to assume that with your membership being subject to the whims of this president, that you've probably got some data to tell you like how in danger are some of your business some of your members in terms of how much of an existential threat is this to your membership? It is giant. And if these tariffs go into effect, even the uncertainty associated with the tariffs, it has caused one in

five small businesses to question whether they have a future. That's how great this is. And we have to keep in mind, and Perrin touched on this a second ago, so we're not starting off on a great spot. We are already super weak. The small business community has not even recovered from COVID. The average member of mine is $100,000 in debt left over from the pandemic. So these businesses,

gosh, a strong wind could blow some of them down. Oh, gosh. No, I don't mean to laugh because otherwise I'll just cry. Hey, I want to thank you, Dan, Kelly and Perrin Beatty. Two important voices to have on the eve of these tariffs. I want to thank you so much for taking time out of your busy days. But tomorrow is people are we're on a razor's edge and I really appreciate you coming into the conversation. We got so many fun sort of marketing stories. And I'm so glad that once a week, I get to talk to somebody who knows so much more about this than me, but we can I love that my conversations with

our next guest. And so let's just welcome back to the show Tony Chapman, the host of the award-winning podcast, Chatter That Matters, and founder of Chatter AI. Tony, how are you today? Fantastic. I'm right back at you. I continue to follow you now that we're doing the show together.

And I admire, and I know you're very modest, but some of the things that you take on to help society, including your recent embattled ship, I just wanted to give you kudos, because you're often giving us kudos. Well, thank you very much, my friend. Let's go to what some people have been waiting for, for, well, hoping would come

back. They didn't know it was going to come back, but the actual physical rolling up of the rims in the Roll Up to Win Tim Horton's campaign that's back with the physical cups. It's not necessarily on the app anymore. Talk to me about, let's talk about the campaign writ large and how successful it's been.

Well, listen, it's one of the most successful promotions because it does a couple of things. One, it drives new traffic into the stores because everybody's curious if somebody's come in and won. Also rewards your loyal users, convinces them to try a new product because they got it for free. And the physicality of rolling up your rim

is something they missed with the digital game. And I think that today, when we spend so much of our time on screens and the cloud, on our mobile phones, that physicality actually doing something with your hands, I think is the magic of it. And they should never have moved away from it. I wouldn't have a digital component. I'd say you wanna play, you come in and play with our cups.

But I congratulate them for bringing it back. I'm glad they did too. I had some people giving some pushback at some point when we first announced it. And I said, look, nobody forced you to come up with this campaign in the first place, but you gotta dance with the one that brung you. And if you decided that you were gonna get rich off of rolling up rims, well, then you got to, you got, you got to own it.

Yeah, I agree. And you know, the interesting thing that most consumers don't realize is it's all based on probability. They know a lot of slippage. You might win and never go after your prize. You might, you might not even bother rolling up the rim. So they can, they can pronounce, they can announce a much bigger prize pool than they know they'll give away. In fact, they even ensure that. And so it gives us a chance to really dream big. And I think when you look at lotteries,

you look at promotions like that, it's as much about hope, wouldn't it be great to win, as it also inside, you know, the chances of winning that big prize is in there, but it's still fun to play. That to me is sort of a brand that's connecting and engaging with their consumer. And I think Tim Hortons does it as well as most. Tony, roll up the rim and Monopoly, McDonald's, those are gangbusters, successful people wait

for them every year. But talk to me about why marketing campaigns fail. Marketing campaigns fail because number one, they're too complicated. But the biggest problem, marketers get bored of them before consumers do. And I can tell you, we created Kraft Hockeyville. 15 years ago, Kraft continues to put their shoulder into it. We created promotions at similar magnitude, has magic. Bring home a Stanley Cup for Pepsi where Messi would show up with a Stanley Cup and watch a hockey game with you.

And they gave up after a couple years, not because the consumer, because new marketers came in and they got bored with it. So the biggest problem, I think, with a lot of big ideas is not fatigue with the consumers, fatigue with the marketers, because they always want, they always have an itch to try new things. So what could have been a niche story ended up being making national and indeed international news that a couple of McDonald's franchises one in Edmonton and one in Newmarket, Ontario Temporarily changed their name from McDonald's to McDavid to reflect the star power of Connor McDavid

both where he plays and where he's from and There's there's certain people who would say, don't mess with your brand. If you're McDonald's, don't mess with your brand. What do you say to those people? I say they're crazy. Play with your brand, have fun with it. Consumers gone from being a consumer of content

to now creators of their own content. You have to march in step with them and say, hey, we can have fun with this. And listen, I thought it was such a brilliant move on their part because the oxygen of all marketing, the only thing that breathes life into your brand is attention. And they got attention. Yeah. And because you're talking about it and I'm talking about it and thousands of others are

talking about it. You get full code of kudos of McDonald's and I hope head office was angry and they threatened legal action and that only puts fuel on the fire and all of that to me is when you say you know what let's not take life so seriously let's have some fun and honestly, McDavid, given what he just did for Team Canada. Yeah, that's scoring that's scoring. That's a hat trick. Hey, over time. Well, it's a huge deal. But it also it also speaks. I mean, you've got to be bullish on your brand. You've got to be really, you've got to appreciate

the resilience and the strength of your brand to know that it can, that if you change the name of your, of your business for a few days, it's your brand is not going to suffer. In fact, it'll probably get stronger. That's called elasticity. And that's what you can stretch it out and know it'll come back to where it was and maybe even be better because people are gonna smile when they drive by that franchise because you made that book. Yeah well I remember a few years ago the International House of Pancakes, IHOP, changed their name to IHOP the International House of Burgers. They suggested it was going to be a permanent change. It certainly wasn't. It was a promotion for this new line of

burgers that they wanted to put on the menu and they they went viral for weeks at a time. And you had the uprising the consumers I can't believe it what how dare you and you know what again attention yeah we were talking about a brand we weren't talking about yesterday listen it can blow up in your face if you take it too far yeah but if it within that what if your brand is sent like pizza pizza is a great example with the tariffs and stuff They know the brand is in that serious. So don't take yourself that serious Humor is always attention worthy and making moves like that

I think especially when you create a for and against but really the outcome doesn't matter that to me is a brilliant chess move on the marketing board Hey if the if the next headline that inter Miami the the the team in Miami, one of the two soccer teams in Miami, when you find out that it's now worth more than the Miami Marlins, what's the takeaway from that for you? Well, number one, it just shows you how soccer, you just have to look at new people coming into this country and coming into the United States. They either have a basketball or a soccer ball under their arms. They don't necessarily have a baseball. And so that's the future demographically. But the other inside story is so brilliant.

Beckham, when he showed up and agreed to play, he said, part of my contract is I get to buy a franchise for $25 million, way under the accident price. He then parlayed it in getting partners to pay for everything, including the stadium. He retains 10%. So that $180 million in counting of value for him coming and kicking a soccer ball for a few years in

North America. Yeah, yeah. Much of an inside story is the fact that soccer is going to become, I think, and I've said this for a long time, it's going to surpass hockey and basketball in our lifetime. And people get so angry with me, but you just have to look at what's happening in the schoolyards. Parents, only 8% of people are paying organized hockey. Look at the soccer fields in the summer because mums feel it's safer, it's a lot more affordable and you know what it's within the DNA of a lot of the people coming into Canada so it's our future. Tony, we only about two minutes left but I want to talk about this streaming app that never came to pass called Venue. It was Fox, Disney, Warner Brothers.

They were going to go it alone on, they were going to work together on sports streaming, and the whole thing fell apart. Break this down for me real quick. Well, it fell apart in the courts because they thought it was too much power and too few hands, but here's the real thing that all of those the day of a standalone sports streaming service They have to fill that 24 hours a day Netflix and Amazon shows up and says we're gonna pick the cherries off the tree that people really want because we can afford it And guess what if you're subscriber to Amazon Prime or Netflix you're gonna get your NFL and if that happens

What happens to that standalone streaming service? Yeah, what are they gonna do softball? That's the day happens? What happens to that standalone streaming service? What are they going to do? Softball? So the issue is I think standalone streaming for as much as the courts thought it was a concentration of power, the concentration of power they should be looking at is Netflix and Amazon, because they're going to be the only games in town. Maybe, maybe Apple's going to be in there, I think, but I think it's going to be just the two lions just absolutely. Yeah. Is this so is this the death rattle of sports on traditional media? but I think it's gonna be just the two lions, just absolutely eating up all the content. Is this, so is this the death rattle of sports on traditional media?

Absolutely, without question. There's no way they can show up with the poker chips of a Netflix or an Amazon, nor can they get the data. That's the data, we talked about it last week. Yeah. The data of what you're looking at. Are you a sports camp? Boom, I'm gonna take you there.

Oh, you love merchandise? I'm gonna take you there. The ability to monetize when you own the data is, you can't even put a number on it. And that's what the NFL knows. And that's why they're going to shore up to the people that have the data. Yeah. The only thing that is, should be of concern is how much Netflix is ultimately going to cost the consumer. Because I could see it going upwards of 50, 60, 70 bucks a month with all these add-ons

that are costing so much, but I want to thank you so much Tony Chapman. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you. I love these conversations and I appreciate you. Thank you. All right, appreciate it. We'll see you next week. I'm joined now by a friend of the show and friend of mine, Adam Zivow, national post columnist and I'm joined now by a friend of the show and friend of mine, Adam Zivow, national post columnist and executive director for the Center for Responsible Drug Policy. Adam, no better person to chat with on the subject of Ukraine than you. You have a personal attachment there as well as just being one of the most well-rounded people I've ever met. Yeah, I mean, I spent basically a year and a half living there at the beginning of the war. You know, I just got engaged to Ukrainian.

I'm very familiar with what with what life is like in Ukraine and what Ukrainians actually believe. Well, I didn't know that you got engaged. Congratulations. Thank you. Who popped the question? I did, but we kind of just talked it over on the couch and agreed to make it a thing. And you know, we're a gay couple.

So it's a bit different from normal. We looked up on Google and now we are engaged. Congratulations to both of you. Very, very happy for you. Hey, let's talk about let's let's listen in before we get into to everything. Let's hear what Pierre Poliev said how he reacted to the rush Ukraine Russia Trump dynamic. The aggressor in this conflict is Russia. Russia carried out an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, an invasion that has been mercilessly prosecuting for the last three years, and Ukraine has been the victim of that invasion. All democracies need to stand with Ukrainians and their right to defend themselves and reclaim their territory.

And any suggestion to the contrary is wrong. I would further add that Canada could have helped defund Putin. We could have approved the Energy East pipeline, which would have sent a million barrels of Western Canadian oil to the Atlantic, where it could have been shipped to Europe. We could have approved LNG projects in Quebec and Atlantic Canada, as the Germans, the Ukrainians, the Greeks, and others pleaded with us to do. All of that would have broken dependence on Putin. So I subscribe to almost everything he said.

The one thing I probably would take issue with, Adam, is I don't believe there's a scenario or a path for Ukraine to reclaim any of its lost territory. The one thing I probably would take issue with Adam is I don't believe there's a scenario or a path for Ukraine to reclaim any of its lost territory. I just I don't I don't see that in the offing. What do you think? Well, I think that under the current level of support that they're receiving, that's impossible because under the Biden administration, Ukraine received just enough weapons to survive, but not to actually win.

And what I really want to emphasize is that the amount of aid being sent to Ukraine is constantly exaggerated. The US provided only about, you know, 5% of its annual defense budget to Ukraine. Predominantly they provided old weapons from the 80s and 90s and then spent money replacing those weapons with newer items and essentially stimulated, you know, American manufacturing. So Ukraine was getting old stuff. And even with that, he was able to reclaim large swaths of its territory. Let's not forget that northern Ukraine was mostly occupied. The Northeast was occupied.

I think retaking Crimea is impossible. But I think that if the US had taken this more seriously, that we could have seen a liberated Donbass by now. Yeah. What do you make, Adam, of what we witnessed in the Oval Office on Friday? I mean, it seemed like a premeditated ambush. You know, I watched the entire 45 minute conversation and for the first 35 minutes, everything was amicable. Each president was complimenting the other. They obviously had divergent understandings of the war. So Zelensky often emphasized the suffering of his people. He talked about Ukrainian soldiers who were being

beaten and starved in Russia because they're POWs. He talked about the 20,000 Ukrainian children that were kidnapped by Russian forces at the beginning of the conflict and who are now being forcibly russified. And he talked about how there needs to be security guarantees for Ukraine going forward. Because since 2014, you know, when Russia launched its initial shadow invasion of Eastern Ukraine, there have been no, there's been no shortage of ceasefires, right? So the Ukrainians have signed ceasefire after ceasefire after ceasefire with the Russians only for the Russians to Break those agreements time and time again leading up to this invasion But towards the very end, you know

Trump so a journalist asked Trump are you on either side and Trump said no, I'm not on either side You know you have to be neutral to make a deal and then then he immediately segwayed into vilifying Zelensky. Yeah. Yeah. He said, oh, you know, Zelensky got so much hatred for Putin. How can you deal with someone with so much hatred? But world leaders aren't supposed to be stoic when their people are being killed and their women are being raped. Yeah, I am. I will forever be perplexed by this this president's specific interpretation of of the history of the of this war and the fact that he has called Zelensky a dictator. The fact that he restored normal diplomatic relations with Russia with no preconditions. The fact that he started talking about a negotiated peace with Putin and Zelensky wasn't even

at the table. These are things that I shake my head at. They do not make any sense. Is there a logic in this that you can see? No, because I think that, look, I think that the way they're trying to sell this is they're trying to forge an alliance with Russia to team up against China, basically reversal of the policy that we saw in the United States in the 1970s, where they unexpectedly allied with China to contain the Soviet Union. But I think that's deeply unrealistic and betrays the foreign

policy naivety of the Trump administration. But the way that they kind of look at this, they say, oh, we've tried war. Therefore we need to have a diplomatic solution. We need to negotiate peace. That's what Vance said at the very end, but they're not actually offering a sustainable peace because they don't want to guarantee providing any security guarantees to Ukrainians. And so JD Vance said, you know, we're going to try a diplomatic solution. And Zelensky calmly and reasonably pointed out that that might not be realistic if the Russians keep on breaking every single ceasefire they've ever signed.

So if you want that ceasefire to stay in place, you need security guarantees for Ukraine. Otherwise the Russians are just going to attack again. And then Zelensky, sorry, uh, Vance's mood really soured. Yeah. And he started condescendingly Hector, the Ukrainian president saying it was disrespectful to bring up that point, even though it's a very reasonable point. Uh, you know, he, he said that, uh, Ukraine doesn't have enough manpower, which is absurd. There are millions and millions and millions of men in Ukraine. And Zelensky said, well, have you, have you been to Ukraine? And Dan said, no, you know, I watched

basically online. And he said that any visit to Ukraine would be a propaganda tour, which is which is insane. Well, yeah, he wouldn't be just an average journalist on the street who's been you'd be going there as the vice president, you go wherever you want. Yeah, you can go wherever you want. Yeah. And that's the thing. You know, I've been a journalist on the ground. I know tons of journalists who work on the ground on the grassroots level. You can basically go wherever you want. And you can see the realities and the realities correspond to what what Zelensky is saying, which is that Ukrainians want the weapons needed to protect themselves. And Russia has been aggressively destroying Ukrainian cities and taking Ukrainian lives away. And I get really annoyed with all of these people

who say, oh, you're a warmongerer. Most of the people who say that have never stepped foot inside Ukraine. They have no clue what Ukrainians think. This is all just a video game to them. And when you actually talk to Ukrainians, you see that the reality is entirely different. Really quickly, because we're running out of time, but there's there's talk of a the president is going to be giving a speech to the joint joint session of Congress tomorrow. And there is speculation all we can do is speculate with Donald Trump because we don't know what he's going to do. But there's speculation that he's going to lay out a plan for for the United States to possibly leave NATO.

Now let's live in a world where that's a possibility. How does that play into this? Well, the world becomes incredibly more dangerous because the reason why there hasn't been widespread nuclear proliferation is that most states trust that they will be safe under NATO's nuclear umbrella, right? Or the United States is nuclear umbrella. So if the US leads NATO, that means nuclearization in Germany, potentially Poland, likely South Korea and Japan. And once that gets started, no one's going to get their nuclear weapons away because Ukraine did that in 1994. And we saw what happened there. And they did so at the at the behest of the United States who said we will be there for you. And they gave away the third largest stockpile of nuclear weapons on the planet voluntarily, because they believe the United States would always be an ally. Exactly. So if the United States becomes isolationist, if it leaves NATO, we're going

to see a more dangerous world with more nuclear armed middle powers that do not trust their superpower allies. And that's going to increase the risk of a catastrophic world war that will leave us all vaporized. And this is what I'm deeply concerned about. Adam Zivow, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Important topic. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for listening to the Ben Mulrady Show podcast. We're live every day nationwide on the Chorus Radio Network and you can listen online to the Radio Canada player and the iHeart Radio Canada apps and make sure to follow and subscribe on Apple Podcasts,

Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your streaming audio. We release new podcasts every day. Thanks for listening. 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. His exploits set off an intercontinental manhunt. But how long can CC Star stay lucky for Daniel?

I'm Seren Jones, and this is a most audacious heist. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.