The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 1 - Tony Chapman, Gordon Giffin, Arlene Dickinson

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

Best of the Week Part 1 - Tony Chapman, Gordon Giffin, Arlene Dickinson Guests: Tony Chapman, Gordon Giffin, Warren Kinsella, Anthony Koch, Arlene Dickinson, Robyn Urback, 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

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Welcome to the Ben Mulrooney Best of the Week podcast. We had so many great interviews this week, including a conversation with Tony Chapman about reimagining Canada's potential. Arlene Dickinson joins me to discuss negotiating with someone like Donald Trump and former US ambassador to Canada, Gordon Giffin joins me while we were staring down the barrel of a tariff war. Enjoy. Where is your worry? What are you losing sleep over? So in our previous segment, I referenced BC Premier Eby, who went on a Fox News to explain what he how he wants to see these tariffs, these retaliatory tariffs by Canada to be rolled out. He he wants to boycott goods from red states. Here's his explanation.

We understand here in Canada, and I certainly understand here in British Columbia, we're tiny compared to the United States. You guys are huge. When, when an action like this is taken against our country, we have to fight smarter. We and, and when we target specifically the decision makers that are supporting this trade action against Canada, despite our shared history, despite our many ties, despite the fact that businesses on both sides and consumers, families on both sides, rely on the low prices that our relationship brings, we have to take action. We don't want this fight. We didn't sign up for this. In fact, I want to work with the president on fighting transnational organized crime. Let's get back to that. Let's get back to our shared relationship

that delivers affordable prices for families. Your house prices are going to go up. Your fuel prices are going to go up. Your electricity prices are going to go up. Your grocery prices. Pasta is made out of Canadian wheat. For Pete's sake, why are we doing this? Yeah, that is a narrative that is being echoed through all levels of government that are dealing with this, where we say we're going to fight back, but we don't want to we didn't want this fight. So there's this push pull, where we say we're your best friends, but if you punch us, we're going to punch you back. And our next guest suggests that that's not the case that Canada and America are no longer partners. Please welcome back to the show Tony Chapman, host of the award-winning podcast Chatter That Matters and the founder of Chatter AI. Tony, welcome back to the show.

Man, always a pleasure to be with you. So you wrote a really great piece on LinkedIn and why don't you tell our listeners what the thesis is? Well, the thesis is that, I mean, if you follow what Donald Trump said in his text, basically, it's one of two ways. Either we're going to bankrupt you or join Canada. I mean, this was, to me, is close to a declaration of economic war that I've witnessed. It wasn't from some third world person in desperation. This is from somebody that holds the highest office in the world.

And I think as Canadians, we have to wake up to this, that the days of being dependent on United States, counting on United States, doing what we feel is right, uh, are over. Uh, America's created a moat. Uh, it's, it wants to set up a toll booth at every port, and Canada's gonna pay a horrific price. So how do we turn this into something that will turn the corner for the country in the short term and long term? Might be the wake up call that we desperately need. Yeah, Tony, you're absolutely right.

Great leaders will take a crisis and turn it into an opportunity for betterment for the country. And you've got a few suggestions on what we can do, how we can turn this moment into an opportunity for betterment for the country. And you've got a few suggestions on what we can do, how we can turn this moment into an opportunity. The first you say is we have to recall parliament. That's not happening. But it has to happen.

I mean, this is political grandstanding. You just had the premier of BC and I don't care what he has to say. I care about a united front from Canada. There's a vacuum of leadership in this country. In Ontario, we're in the middle of an election and federally we don't have a parliament. We've got to get back to the basics of democracy. We need parliament in power. We need to very quickly move to liberals choosing a leader and we need to, as Canadians, we got to

go to a national election and choose somebody that we feel can best represent our interests. That's job number one. If not, we're just rudderless and we're going to be just picked off like a low hanging fruit by the Americans. Yeah. Now you did, you made one point that I think is really interesting. Stop spraying money like an unneutered cat. Well, there's billions and billions of dollars that we can be repurposed to the good of Canadians.

We spend so much money working government and so little money working for Canadians. The second thing that drives me crazy is when I hear things like the generosity of government and I go, where's the financial literacy and voters? There's no generosity of government. It's based on taxpayers and our ability to borrow money, which means taxpayers are responsible for the interest on those payments. And we're spraying so much money, world organizations, and we're, you know, hundreds of millions here to garner favors of countries in Africa. We've got to start repurposing that money. We spent $17 billion in consultants last year. Put that into Canadian IP.

Yeah. And take that money that used to go, I don't really care about Accenture and McKinsey and making those partners wealthier. What I care about is Canadian IP that we can use to monetize for the next decades to come. And that's $17 billion would go a long way for Canadian entrepreneurs to scale their businesses. These are smart, strategic moves, but you need a leadership in place capable of looking Canadians in the eye saying, this is the path we must follow. All the special interest groups get out of my way

because ultimately what we need to do is to try to make Canada's destiny a matter of choice versus do follow the plan of Donald Trump as we've become so economically damaged. We have no choice but to join the United States. You know we are living in uncertain times but I gotta say I was I was quite inspired when you said in a decade we can be a superpower in ingenuity AI content food rare minerals energy preventative health care longevity indigenous medicines data

centers nuclear sustainability and more in two decades we can be debt free. I mean, those are laudable goals to keep on the horizon. Well, how's Norway owned 3% of the world's stock market? Because they leverage their oil resources. Right? How does Saudi Arabia step up and say, we're going to put trillion dollars of investment into United States is because United States has bought that much of their oil. We've got rare minerals. We've got uranium. We've got food. We've got a Canadian brand.

Where would you rather eat food from China or from Canada, anywhere in the world? We just got to tell our story, package it up and present it. Instead of having, oh, I don't want a pipeline here through this province. Well, if you don't want a pipeline through our province, you don't get any equalization payments. That's how tough we've got to be as a country. We've got to get pipelines east and west built with Ontario steel. We've got to get our rare minerals. If the United States wants to do a trade war, then go and auction our rare minerals to other countries in the world at top dollar. And you'll see how fast

they're going to go. You mean we're going to lose access to Canadian lithium and rely on China to supply us lithium? This is the stuff we have to leverage, but we need leadership and we have to look Americans in the eye and say, look, we're either in this together because it betters North America, or if you want to become an island, well, then you think the world's moving one way, we think the world's going to move away from the United States and we plan to lead that charge. And that's what I want to see out of Kanaan. I want to see that strength in numbers as opposed to this partisan interest.

I mean, honestly, the premier of BC telling us that we should boycott red states. I mean, like this is just inflammatory nonsense. Well, I can understand the logic behind it. What he's saying is if we target these guys, they're going to feel the pain first. They are the ones who have the ear of the president. And if my constituents are hurting,

I have to bring that up the chain to the president and hopefully move the needle in favor of Canada. Donald Trump signed 65 executive orders in the first 10 days in office. His pen is now suddenly, the tip of his pen is shaped like a crown. He's not even thinking about Congress or Senate. So all he's looking in his mind as a dealmaker is we can take all that Canada has offer for pennies on the dollar. They're not willing to do it right now. We can cripple them economically. So to think that we're gonna put a dent in his mentality,

I think is a mistake. He has declared an economic war in Canada. He thinks we are a great strategic asset. He wants to buy us like a roadside motel and build a Trump Tower on us. And I think we gotta wake up to this. This is not, this isn't some reality game. This isn't something that's gonna go away tomorrow.

We're gonna feel such pain in this country over the next three or four years. But what if we can turn that pain into gain versus just simply going, oh, we'll subsidize everybody because we're now out of work. What if we just rallied like this was a war and said to this, Canada can stand, like we only have 40 million people. We have the second largest landmass in the world. We have one fifth of the world's fresh water. We've got rare minerals, energy, uranium, potash. I mean, listen, guys, we have a lot of assets to offer the world. Tony, we're going to have to leave it there, but it's an inspiring piece.

I'm just getting going for God's sake. I can tell. Yes, every angle of the Trump tariffs is what we're delivering today. And our next guest is someone who knows Canadian US relations as well as anyone Gordon Giffin, former US ambassador to Canada. Ambassador Giffin, welcome to the Ben Mulrooney show. Oh, Ben delighted to be here. This is look, so many of us we got to take the world as it is. We know these things are coming. But so many of us still don't know why. but so many of us still don't know why.

Yeah, well, there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's aberrational at best, unconventional, without a doubt. So you couldn't have anticipated this. Yeah. And if first it started with border issues, and then it was a fentanyl issue. Now Donald Trump is railing against our banking system. It seems like it's a perpetual shell game. Every time we think we've dealt with the problem, he gives us another reason why these tariffs are to come in. Yeah, it almost strikes me as if we've got an intention deficit issue here. He started out, as you suggested, talking about the border fentanyl migration, as if the Canadian border was really a legitimate problem in that respect, which it isn't. But clearly the Mexican US border is, but it's almost as if he was wandering through

the West Wing Thursday or Friday and somebody said, did you know, by the way, the Canadians don't let our banks in? And he said, no, I didn't know that. So you know, I'll add that to the list. But what do you make of Donald Trump saying from the Oval Office that there's nothing that Mexico and Canada can do, these tariffs are coming in, but we recently learned that Mexico has negotiated for itself a reprieve of sorts. Well, one month reprieve before they come in because they've committed 10,000 National Guard to secure their border. So clearly there was something they could do.

I wonder whether that the door is open to a similar reprieve for Canada. Well, I'm assuming yes. As far as I understand, the Prime Minister spoke to the President earlier this morning, and they are scheduled to speak again at 3 this afternoon, which causes me to believe there were some to-do's on lists after that call with the potential. And I'm making this up. This is conjecture. This is not informed. I just am assuming that there's some potential that there'll be a similar bargain struck

by the prime minister. Yeah, it's just for people on the outside looking in, we feel quite helpless, Mr. Ambassador, because like as I said before, we can't even agree on the facts on the ground. JD Vance tweeted, Mexico sends tons of fentanyl into our country. Canada has seen a massive increase in fentanyl trafficking across its border. There are three ways of stopping this.

The first is ask nicely, which we've done. It's gone nowhere. Now we're onto the consequences phase. And then he goes on to say, spare me the sob story about how Canada is our quote best friend. I love Canada and have many Canadian friends, but is the government meeting their NATO target for military spending? Are they stopping the flow of drugs into our country?

I'm sick of being taken advantage of. Now you know, one ounce of fentanyl going across the border is too much. But Canada makes up 0.08% of the fentanyl going into the United States compared to Mexico. How we're getting lumped in with them makes no sense. Well, what you just heard from JD Vance is a stream of consciousness and he almost sounds like you know, a parrot that's been hanging around the Oval Office and he's just heard Donald Trump say it so much that he's now able to say it. There's not a lot of originality in what he had to say.

You know, there's historic frustrations, as you know, in our relationship and talking about defense spending. When I was ambassador a hundred years ago, I hectored Canada about, at the instructions of my president, Bill Clinton, about the level of defense spending. That's been a frustration forever. But to try and tie that in now, it's just the old laundry bag of going into things that can be individually addressed without something as irrational as threatening tariffs. But here, I do have a thought that's not original,

but I do think it would be a good idea for Canada to pick one distinguished, highly respected, almost nonpartisan person and say, this is our person who is going to Washington until such time as we get this resolved the United States give give us a person Corresponding to that and the two of them can just work on this and back in The old 102 era he was in government at the time, but John Manley did that on behalf of of He was in government at the time, but John Manley did that on behalf of Canada. He was a minister, I guess, deputy minister.

He and Tom Ridge worked through an awful lot of border issues post 9-11 when the US was threatening to shut down the border, not as irrationally. But you know, I dig Manley out of retirement. Ambassador Giffin, my dad used to say that his most important relationship was with his caucus and his second most important relationship was with the president of the United States. And it wasn't that he assumed that that he would get everything he wanted from the president, but he knew that he would get an audience. And that's the best that a prime minister can hope for. So what does it say that Donald Trump,

yes, he's speaking with Trudeau today at 3 p.m. But prior to that, he had not spoken to him since the inauguration. This is, I mean, I think he's probably spoken to Kim Jong-un more often than he's spoken to the leader of his largest trading partner. Well, first, Ben, I hate to tell you, but you're our third largest trading partner of this and sinking.

But that really isn't the point. You are our next door neighbor. You have been a centuries long ally, friend and partner. One, you have to acknowledge or or I have to acknowledge, that the President of the United States is not conventional. So your dad's proposition was exactly right. He practiced it extraordinarily well, as did his successor, Jean-Claire Chan, in my view. Jean-Claire Chan and Bill Clinton had a very close relationship. But that was based on a global partnership. Canada and the United States, Prime Minister Mulroney, Prime Minister Kray-Chan,

were people who were consulted by the American president on things that just didn't have to do with what we sold to each other across the 49th parallel. They were on things that mattered global. In the last couple of decades, not so much. And so that partnership has not been valued as much and is not valued as much in the United States leadership today as it was 25 years ago. So some of its interpersonal chemistry and your father with both Ronald Reagan and with George HW Bush was extraordinarily well respected, but he was also a close friend. And, and so that's lacking. That's certainly lacking. Yeah. Ambassador Given, thank you so much for, for coming onto the Ben Mulroney Show. We appreciate your time. We appreciate your sage advice and I wish you a very good week.

This is the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you very much for joining us and let's just jump right in because I'm so pleased to have these guests back on the show. Please say hello to Warren Kinsella, former special advisor to Jean Chrétien and CEO of the Daisy Group. Welcome back, Warren. Hey, my friend. And let's say hi to Anthony Kosh, the managing principal at AK Strategies and former national campaign spokesperson for Pierre Paulyev. Welcome back, Anthony. Thanks for having me on. Okay, so we're talking tariffs. We're talking like what happened yesterday. I think that's

the level set, right? Canada, Mexico got 30 day reprieves. But the question I have for both of you and Warren, you can go first, who capitulated here was it was Trump always playing a game of chicken? Or did he? Was he surprised by the blowback he got? That's a really good question. There's a lot of speculation about that this morning. And my answer is I actually don't know. I mean the markets tanked when they opened and then Mexico announced that they've been giving a 30-day reprieve and the markets recovered. So you know did Trump look at that because the one thing we know he does listen to and pay attention to is the markets. Did he look at that and say geez maybe I've gone too far here I need

to recalibrate because at the end of the day if you look at that and say, geez, maybe I've gone too far here. I need to recalibrate. Because at the end of the day, if you look at what Mexico and Canada agreed to, and I've now seen plenty of evidence of this, they basically agreed to do something that they were both already doing with respect to either deploying or having deployed, in the case of Mexico, troops to the border to deal with the fentanyl issue. So like, I don't know what Trump won. If his objective was to show everybody that we are under his, his heel, I think he probably accomplished that in terms of getting what he wanted on the fentanyl front. I'm not so sure.

Anthony, what do you think? So it is weird because Trump is a master showman and he's also, I guess, engaging in what we call mad king diplomacy. But he does this, he did it in his first term and he's starting way out of the gate in the second term where he basically manufactures a crisis so that he can then deliver some sort of solution to it, whether real or imagined,

and he can maintain this perception of of solution to it, whether real or imagined, and he can maintain this perception of being the ultimate dealmaker. Like Warren said, very little changed. Mexico basically re-upped commitments that they effectively had already made. In Canada, there was some new material. You see Canada is now going to join the United States in declaring drug cartels as terrorist organizations. In terms of border patrolling and stuff like that, there's a new joint task force.

There's a couple things there, but even in terms of funding, the $1.3 billion on border security, which I believe is over the course of five or six years, that was already announced by Prime Minister Trudeau a few months ago. So that's not new, but it's being made out to be as if this was this big concession that Trump had extracted. But it is important for people to note that we still have, like, this is not over. No. There's going to go, we're going to go through this all over again in 30 days. So there's still probably more things that they're going to try to extract. Yeah. But in the meantime, yeah, not really the deal that Trump was looking for. Well, let's, let's look at this from a different angle now,

and let's look at it as sort of the end of the symphony that has been the political career of Justin Trudeau. He was going out quietly, and then this happened. And he came out. Listen, we didn't get hit with tariffs, so that's a win for Justin Trudeau. And I wonder if this is going to change anything in the way that we think about him.

And I also wonder if it's going to change anything for how we look at the liberals going into the next election. So Warren, back to you. It really reminded me of Rudy Giuliani. And bear with me here as I kind of explain the comparison. When 9-11 happened just before, Giuliani was incredibly unpopular in New York City. He's going through a nasty divorce.

He'd had all kinds of scandals. You know, people couldn't wait to see the end of him. And then 9-11 hit, he became America's mayor, and he became one of the most loved figures in the world, not just in the United States, because he was so courageous and strong. Trudeau kind of is analogous to that. I don't think anybody loves him per se. But you know, the polling I've seen, and certainly my own gut, have told me that people feel like he did a good job, as good a job as he could do in very difficult circumstances.

What it means for his future? Well, Giuliani went back to scandal and getting into all kinds of trouble, so he's not so loved anymore. I guess, you know, does Trudeau do what prime ministers usually do, like Harper and Christian, head off to the lecture circuit and write his memoirs and kind of keeps quiet about current affairs? That's what I'd advise him to do, but I think I'd be the last guy he'd listen to for advice. Anthony, what do you think is, was is he so past his expiration date that it doesn't matter? Or is this is this a relative high point for him?

I think we got to see what happens in 30 days. But but in any case, I'd say that beyond this being a good thing for Justin Trudeau, a bad thing for Justin Trudeau I think yesterday was mostly a good thing for Canada I think a lot of people underestimate just how many Canadian jobs and how much Canadian prosperity relies upon our relatively free access to the American market and I'm a partisan guy people accuse me of it all the time. It's fair A lot of us in this game are partisan people. But at the end of the day, I'm a Canada first guy also in terms of how I want to see a relationship with the United States. And I want the Liberal government to have as much success as humanly possible in the meantime when dealing with the United States. So there's a lot of investment

dollars on the line. I know I barely slept the last few days. My clients are freaking out. This was a big thing. And I'm happy that at least we get 30 days of reprieve but that uncertainty hasn't gone away. And I hope we're not going through a six month period of just repeated 30 day delays where they continue to try to get new extractions out of us. Anthony, I'm going to stick with you on this next one because we're talking about Pierre Poliev. It seemed like over the weekend, it was a tale of two speeches.

You had Justin Trudeau speaking on Saturday, and then you had Pierre sort of laying out his vision for how to deal with Donald Trump. And it seemed to me that he had a few things that he needed to accomplish. And one of them was to blunt the future attacks that are going to come in a political campaign that he is the, you know, he's the maple MAGA. You know, he came out very forcefully against Donald Trump, very much in favor of Canada and Canadian interests. And I wondered when you saw that speech, did you see the same thing?

Well, 100%. But I also think, again, there's a lot of like weirdos on Twitter that are Canadians who want to I said this on my Twitter I said there's a certain kind of Canadian conservative that Worships Donald Trump and I say they are mentally and spiritually colonized by the United States much in the same way that you have a lot Of Canadian liberals who exclusively consume their news from CNN and frame any and all Canadian issues from the lens of the American Democrat cultural issue of the day in the United States. That exists on both ends of the political spectrum. But you know, Mr. Poliev has revived the quote from our one of our greatest prime ministers, as far as I'm concerned, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, saying Canada first, Canada last, Canada always.

Yep. At the end of the day, whether we're liberal, whether we're conservatives, we love our country, and we want to remain a country and we want to get the best deal for Canadians. Well, let's say, you know what, I'm going to stick a pin in that because I want to go to the liberal that we have with us today. And if you are advising the liberals going into the next election, Warren, I wonder whether there's danger in campaigning against Donald Trump, which has really been their stock in trade because we now know he's listening to what's going on up here.

Yeah. And that's why I actually was nervous about all the hallelujahs that were going around social media last night saying we won and we fooled him and he got played because we all know that, you know, when Trump sees that, when he sees somebody getting coverage like that, he lashes out. So I would caution all of my Canadian friends to temper their enthusiasm for the results. Because, you know, the sentence was commuted somewhat, but it wasn't, you know, we didn't get a pardon, right? As Anthony said, 30 days from now, we're going to be in it again. And the problem we've got with this guy,

and full disclosure, I work for Kamala and I worked for Hillary. And the only thing I learned about him is he's predictably unpredictable. So he said it was about banks. He said it was about fentanyl. He said it was about illegal aliens. And he threw dairy in there as well.

Oh, dairy. I forgot about that one. And then of course, he wants to be the 51st state. So, you don't, we don't know what we're going to get in 30 days, but we're going to get something. The thing that worries me to answer your question, I apologize for taking so long to do it. Well, you got 30 seconds, Warren. The Liberal Party is not going to be led by Justin Trudeau at that point. It's going to be led by a guy who doesn't even have a seat in the House of Commons. Looks like Mark Carney's going to win. What legitimacy is he going to have to pick up the phone and speak to Donald Trump? That, I think, is a real worry.

Warren Kinsella, Anthony Kosh, really appreciate you coming on and giving us a state of play. Thanks, guys. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show show and we are ending this show in style. You know, when Justin Trudeau promised a team Canada approach, he brought some heavy hitters to the table to help get our message across to the Americans so that we could get to the other side of those tariffs, at least for the time being. And one of the people who was involved in the Council on Canada-US Relations is Arlene Dickinson, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, author,

and of course, dragon on Dragon's Den. And I'm very pleased to have Arlene on the show. Arlene, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Hey, Ben, nice to talk to you. All right, so how are you preparing for the next 30 days? Are we going to have to go through all of this again? Well, I mean, certainly there's going to be more negotiation that's going to happen over the course of the next 30 days. And hopefully we'll be able to continue to find a way forward where these tariffs are

not going to be implemented and we can carry on with our lives the way they were. But we also have to prepare for whatever the inevitability might be and be ready for that. Arlene, you've negotiated against straight shooters in the past, but this, this, Donald Trump is not shooting straight. He, at first it's about the border, then it's about NATO, then it's fentanyl. He just mentioned banking. So how, how do you negotiate on shifting sands? It's difficult for sure, because you never quite know exactly what he's going to do next or or what is actually going to appease him which is exactly why you can't you know offer things up that you don't believe are actually what's necessary in order to get him to agree. So

he is he's definitely erratic in terms of what he wants, but we have to get down to what is it he really wants. And I believe that that is power and control. And that means him taking as much as he can from the country that he needs the most from. Can you give us a sense of what the day to day was on the Council of Canada-U.S. relations? Because people heard it and they saw you at press conferences. But what exactly were you tasked with? Well we continue to have conversations and discussions and roundtables and

ongoing daily with a lot of communication between all the parties to discuss what we believe are the right steps that we need to take but also to discuss what Canadians are thinking, how we're feeling, what we think we can do in order to help ease them, any pain that might be inflicted on Canadians. So, meetings, calls, emails, dialogue, and it's ongoing. Donald Trump projects strength, but he is notoriously thin-skinned. And I've got to wonder, and you're closer to it than I, but I'm just asking for your

opinion, really. How much of this was based on the antagonistic relationship between Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau? That they just don't see eye to eye. They're never going to be friends. So how much of this was Trump just not liking the guy on the other side of the border? Well, I think that, you know, the President of the United States would do anything based on the dislike for is actually frightening. That's a frightening thought. So I

would hope that he is not going to let personal bias or decisions or thoughts cloud his impact on the American people in that way, or the Canadian people. Well, I was just talking about it a few minutes ago with some political strategists that there was concern with people going on social media and taking to my to microphones dunking on Trump saying, yeah, we won, we won, because he's going to see that. And if he feels like he's being disrespected, I mean, there's a because he's gonna see that and if he feels like he's being disrespected I mean, there's a fear he's going to retaliate emotionally at least in part Yeah, I mean that listen again, you know like that would be a very Potentially I'm trying to I'm actually not now you got me thinking am I gonna say anything that's gonna get him that

Well, you have to we have to speak the truth. We have to speak the truth, no matter what that is. And I, you know, like, I think the White House came out with some fairly strong language this morning about us, you know, kneeling to, you know, so like, listen, is that is that infuriating people? Sure, we don't like it when people say stuff like that. But that isn't what drives your negotiation. Negotiation sure as heck shouldn't be. Arlene, have you ever met Donald Trump? I have not.

If you did, if you had just happened to be shaking his hand at Mar-a-Lago or wherever, what would you say to him? What would I say to him? I would ask him to be, I have a big belief then in capitalism with a conscience, because I'm thinking about, you know, I certainly understand capitalism, I am a capitalist, but I believe that capitalism has to account for

and help people that are vulnerable and in need. And so I would caution him. I think what I would say to him is, I understand the quest for, you know, control and power. You know, a lot of capitalists have that. But Donald, you need Mr. Trump, President Trump, however he would want to be referred to when talking to him.

I would be saying to him, you have to make sure that you are considering the most vulnerable, the underserved, the underprivileged, and the rest of society, and be much more magnanimous in terms of what the dollars that you have and the power you have could do to help you and other people. I'm in conversation with Arlene Dickinson who's a member of the Council on Canada-U.S. Relations when they were central to getting us past the

tariffs for the next 30 days. Arlene, one person who has spent time with Donald Trump is someone you and I both know, is Kevin O'Leary. And he's been on this show many times. He makes great radio, but sometimes he doesn't make a lot of sense. And most recently when he talked about, you know, when he came on the show to tout the idea of an economic union between Canada and the United States, and anybody who knows anything about Canada and the United States knows any union would be a takeover because they're not giving up their passports

and they're not giving up their laws and they're not giving up their courts. So that's a non-starter. But he does have the ear of the president. So what do you do with a Kevin O'Leary in a situation like this? Well, you know, you asked me what I would say and that was me talking personally.

But I think when we were talking and, you know, like a negotiation or when we're thinking about the what is at stake here, which is our sovereignty, which is exactly what you just said, our identity and our ability to control our currency and to control our nationality. And so, you know, when Kevin says those things, I mean, he's always had a very bombastic in your faith style. He's always been, you know, talks in absolute. He tends to talk over people, not with people. And I can see them getting along very well.

You know, like, whether or not that means that he's going to, you know, influence Trump. He certainly got no mandate to speak on behalf of Canadians. Everybody I've talked to does not want to be a 50 per spade. If there is any appetite for it, it generally comes from people who are only thinking from a financial perspective, not from a true patriotic Canadian perspective. So I don't know. I mean, I try to ignore Kevin. I don't know how much of Mr. Trump's ear he has or President Trump's ear he has. I don't, I can't speak to that.

It's nice that they can have dinner together. Maybe that's good for Kevin if that's important to him. Arlene, are you gonna get any time off? I don't think so. I think that it's, nothing's more important right now. Nothing's more important right now. Nothing's more important right now. How much of your schedule is taken up by this council? Been quite a bit.

Yeah. Been a lot. And again, I think, you know, when you have an opportunity to have a voice on behalf of entrepreneurs in this country and to represent, you know, businesses who are trying to grow and build economic value for this country and talk about what's needed in this country, that you take

that advantage and opportunity to do so. So it's worth every minute of time I'm spending and I appreciate all the emails and calls and texts and advice I've been getting from all parts of the country of people who have a concern and want to make sure that we defend ourselves properly. ≫ Lastly,

Arlene, one day the mandate of the council will end and you will have that time freed up. What are you gonna fill it with? I think I'm doing two full-time jobs right now and I'm busy with my fun district venture capital. I'm busy investing in businesses and Canadian businesses and making sure that we're continuing to think about our economy and how I can contribute to it. So I'm very busy with all those companies that we work with and invest in.

And I've got lots of projects on. So Ben, you know, be careful. Yes, I do. Actually, you know what? I've got 20 more seconds. You are a great investor. You are bullish on Canada. What would you tell people who've got money in their pockets and sitting on the sidelines?

They're like, I'm not investing in Canada till I know things are a little better. I would say, you know, if you're an investor and you're entrepreneurial, that's in the midst of crisis is when you see opportunity. And you know, like, what do they say? Never squander a good crisis? I would say this is the time to get into the medium business and to invest. Arlene, I know how busy you are, and the fact that you found time to come onto the show

means a great deal. So thank you so much for all the hard work you've been putting in, and thanks for showing up to the Ben Mulrooney Show. Thanks a lot, Ben. It's always so good to talk to you. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney show. Thanks a lot, Ben. It's always so good to talk to you. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And now that we've got a 30 day reprieve from the Trump tariffs, question is, what do we

do next? This is a, you know, we look, it looks like we've solved some of the problems that Donald Trump has, but how do we take this scenario? How do we take this moment and turn it into an opportunity to better our country? And I believe a lot of our weaknesses have been highlighted by this Trump administration. A lot of people don't like it,

but he in a lot of ways has been speaking the truth, a truth that certain politicians have been beating the drum of for years. And it's only now that other politicians are taking those things seriously. A valued voice on the media landscape who is saying just that is Robin Urbach. She's a current affairs columnist with the Globe and Mail.

And she joins us now for the first time, but hopefully not the last on the Ben Mulroney Show. Robin, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. A real leadership is about taking a crisis and finding a way to turn it into an opportunity. And I feel like we're, we're halfway there. We've definitely identified the crisis, we see the opportunity. But we as Canadians far too

often fall short, we'll, we'll make a big bold predict pronouncement, we're going to do x, Y, and Z. We get the photo op. And then we don't finish the job. Yeah, that's exactly it. And I think the situation now, it's twofold. There's a practical limitation to that, which is, of course, that Parliament isn't sitting. And we have a lame duck prime minister.

And nobody can actually get things done. And we have no idea who the next prime minister is going to be immediately after Justin Trudeau. And then of course, we're going to see an election after that. So there's that. I mean, we can't get things done because like literally parliamentarians aren't working the way that they're supposed to. So there's that, but then there's also, I mean, just the,

the sort of institutional bias towards the status quo. And we see it not just when it comes to trade, we see it on defense, we see it on healthcare, we see it on so many things in this country that we are sort of so committed to the way things are that if anyone comes along and proposes something bold or different, we all sort of clutch our pearls and we say,

oh God, no, we can't do that. My hope is that the crisis that we're in right now, and that may be revived in 30 days or 30 weeks, we have no idea with this presidency. I mean, we could get another 30 day reprieve and we're just going along for the ride for the next four years. But I think there is a chance now because people really see in front of their eyes, okay, the way that we're doing things just isn't working. Our dependence on the US, both economically and for our own defense, I mean, we have let our forces just become this shell of what they could be in terms of procurement, recruitment, all of these

things, because we have the convenient geography of living next to, you know, the strongest military in the world. And that has served us very well. But then you have a mercurial president who comes along and all of a sudden says, you're on your own. And we look at what we've been doing and we say, oh crap, like maybe we shouldn't put the majority of our eggs in the U.S. basket. Not that we can really sell the eggs because it's the fly management. But that's a whole other opportunity.

But I think it's right in front of people's faces now. And the reality is this isn't anything new. Like we've talked about, Ben, you know this, of course. We've talked about this for years, decades, generations, really, the fact that Canada has become far too dependent on the US. And so far we've gotten away with it because there has been this adherence to norms and

presidents who generally appreciate, you know, you treat your allies while they treat you well back, but Trump is different. And I think our concern should also be that Trump is going to be gone in four years unless he does something radical, which, you know, it's not beyond the realm of possibility, but Trumpism could outlast him. Well, yeah, you make that point. You're like the, the, the, the, the powers that be in Canada, in, in, if this were any other time,

would just say, we've got to just wait this guy out. Plane-cade him, do whatever we have to do, kick the ball down the field, but he'll be gone. However, Trumpism is, he's remade the GOP in his own image and there, his acolytes are young and they're driven and they, they see his vision as the way forward for America and they will be the ones to pick up the baton.

So we have to be prepared that this is our new reality. And I wanna go back to something that you said a little bit earlier that anytime somebody comes with a bold idea on how we can do things differently, it's not just that they are unwilling to debate, they have been unwilling to debate the merits of that vision,

but they will actively call that person out for being un-Canadian or being, I mean, I've been called a traitor on social media nonstop because I've questioned this government's motivations and its sincerity and its ability to get anything done. And so like that's what they're up against. Right, and we see a lot specifically in healthcare too. Oh yeah.

When someone brings up the idea that, okay, our healthcare system is broken, you shouldn't be waiting 17 hours in emergency rooms. The response is often, well, what do you want the American system? Do you want to go broke? I know, it's such a binary, I don't understand why the simpletons who view the world through the eyes of a child like if it's not

this and it must be that I don't understand how they're able to monopolize the conversation. But that's the thing though. They have done it right. And I think you're right. And those accusations are law that suddenly you're uncommuting if you're questioning the value of the way that we've been doing things the way that we continue to do things, the way that the government's doing things right now, you're seeing that sort of betraying this oath to your country. And the great thing about living in a democracy like Canada is you can question those things and you should because that's how great change happens, right? By someone standing up and saying, you know what, this isn't working.

And even though the status quo is like this, and everybody, even though everybody's afraid that we're going to end up with an American healthcare system, for example, we have to acknowledge that what we're doing isn't working. So we need some change. But that's a real barrier though, because whenever somebody says something like that, and to go back to the healthcare example, there's fear mongering within political academic circles. People saying, okay, well, so and so wants to privatize their health care system. So enjoy the free health care that you had so far. Now you're going to go bankrupt. And this is what this person's doing. And they back off. And it's a really big challenge. The inter-provincial trade barrier debate is one that

we should have been having for a very, very long time. It does seem like at least initially at first blush, there is a desire to break those things down. But once we get into the nitty gritty of those debates, the interest groups will come out and they will try to defend their small piece of the pie. It's gonna be a long, long slog before anything gets done, if anything gets done at all. I think that's it.

And I think the premieres too, I mean, they're talking big right now, but there are all these regulations that sort of protect the interests of one province against another. And it does all of Canada a disservice, but there are those narrow myopic sort of interests that stop progress in its tracks. So it is one of those things that, I mean, we've been talking about forever. I can't remember when we weren't talking about inter-provincial trade barriers but. But the one thing that's different right now, Robin, is that this is a conversation that's happening out loud in the public square and real practical examples are being given to people. For example, you know, this idea that in certain

provinces porta-potties have to have a lid, but in others they don't. And so it makes- I don't even know that. Oh yeah, that's one I learned today as well. So it makes it hard to then sell that around the- you can sell it north-south, but you can't sell it east-west. Interesting. Lids have been stopping progress across the country. Specifically in the outdoor urinals market. Um, sphere, okay. Yeah. I mean, it's a niche, but it's there.

But because people are now armed with examples, people don't even know, in practical terms, what an inter-primitive trade barrier was until a few days ago. And so the fact that people are armed with that knowledge now might spur a little more heft beyond people just talking about it around a table and actually getting it done. I think you're right.

I think it's been sort of one of those nerd topics where if you're really involved in political circles, for example, it's something that you like to talk about kind of like Arctic sovereignty or, you know, if you're those big deal things, but the average person doesn't care about. But I think this has punctuated that or perforated that bubble, that political, intellectual, academic bubble. If you went to Costco, for example, a couple of days before the trade war, it was or the deadline for the terrorists rather, he was not because people were doing that sort of panic buying that we saw around COVID-19.

And for a second, I thought, well, what is going on? And then I realized, okay, well, the average person is taking note of what's going on and they're worried that these tariffs are gonna have an immediate effect, even though I don't think it would be that fast. But I think you're right in that these topics are sort of having a moment.

Like we're having a moment where the average person is actually paying attention to some of these things. And that's the time to really seize upon the actions necessary to make the change happen. If only we had a parliament. If only we had a parliament. If only that we had the possibility of, I don't know, maybe exercising our right to vote. All of those things will come one day when the government deigns us eligible, but not until they get their house in order.

Robin, thank you so much for joining us. I love talking to you. I would love to do it again soon. My pleasure. The expression fentanyl czar. Get used to it because you're going to be hearing a lot of it. Now, we hear about border czars and drug czars in the States. Never had one up here.

And so it's a new concept for Canadians. We don't know exactly how it's going to work, who it's going to be, what the qualifications of the job are going to be, what the requirements of the job are going to be. But somebody who could probably give us some really detailed guesses is our next guest. So please welcome to the show Adam Zivow, national post columnist and executive director for the Center for Responsible Drug Policy. Adam, welcome and tell me when you hear fentanyl czar, what do you think? I think if someone who can coordinate all the different

stakeholders that are trying to tackle this addiction crisis, but currently lack a coordinating mechanism, we have to keep in mind that addiction is a very complicated issue And there are all sorts of different players involved, but they all seem to be in a sense fighting each other and and not coordinating any significant way and I think a great example of this would be the port of Vancouver, which is a major entry point for Fence still precursors and has been for many years. And unfortunately, you know, we don't have many dedicated staff to actually check, you know, whether precursors or

other illicit contraband is coming into the port. We have zero dedicated staff, the Canadian Border Services Agency, you know, only checks about I think, 1% of shipments coming in, because they're under resourced. And so they try to, for example, offload some of this work to the RCMP. But the RCMP says they don't have resources. Yeah. So I think a boarded SAR would be someone who could come into this kind of, you know, scenario and say, okay, we have these different agencies, they're not working well together. How can we find synergies? And how can we allocate more funding to make sure that this broken system finally works? So we have to make sure, though, that this is not a symbolic gesture that like this that this office has teeth. Do you think that means that, you know, like a czar operates, traditionally,

it operates in the in the American system of, of government, we would have to find a way to create that a meaningful analog here in Canada. Do you think that means elevating it to a ministerial position, cabinet position? Well, I think creating a new ministry in these circumstances might be impractical, especially considering that we're walking into an election, we have enough chaos already. I don't know formally what a fentanyl czar would look like. What I do know is that it would be good to get someone from a law enforcement background, because although addiction is seen as a public health issue

by some, well, by many, the public health experts who have been tackling the addiction and overdose crisis for the past 10, 20 years have proven remarkably ineffective at all of this. And in fact, many of those experts have advocated for drug decriminalization and for giving out fentanyl, right? Yeah. So we have these, we have law enforcement and public health on the other, you know, two different sides of this issue. And one side says we should make it easier to get fentanyl, we should give it out for free. And law enforcement sides that side says that this does that we need to actually, you know, curtail all of this. So I know which

side I think we should pull from if we're going to create this new office. All right, let's move on to something that Pierre poliev tweeted just a few hours ago, he said, Pierre poliev will impose life sentences for fentanyl kingpins. Overdoses have killed 49,000 Canadians under liberal open borders and soft on crime laws. Fentanyl traffickers are mass murderers, lock them up and throw away the key.

I think a lot of people will connect with this emotionally, but from a practical standpoint, there are a lot of hurdles to get from here to there. Well, I think one of the main hurdles here is establishing causality, right? So how do you get, how do you get from point eight, which is someone selling fentanyl wholesale to point B, which is someone dying with fentanyl overdose, right? If you're going to jail someone for manslaughter or murder, it's going to be really difficult to prove something like this conclusively.

This is why I think it's actually better to charge the street level dealers, because there it's much easier to say that, you know, the fentanyl that this person used came from this source and it would kill them. And in fact, there's actually been a conversation since the mid to late 2010s about whether fentany no dealers should be charged with manslaughter. And that debate is still up in the air. And from my understanding, there have been a few cases where manslaughter charges have stuck. I believe there might have been one in Sarnia, but I'd have to double check. But the problem is that at that time, some of the sort of bleeding heart voices in the addiction conversation said that, no, no, no, you can't charge street level dealers with manslaughter because they themselves are addicted to drugs. And I think that's ridiculous. You know, I don't think that having an addiction gives you license to kill other addicts by selling them poison.

as essentially murderers, we are reinforcing this idea that people's lives don't matter just because they're addicts. If someone has been killed by fentanyl, you know, they had just as much of a right to live as someone who has been killed by a gun. The question of how big fentanyl is as a problem is, I mean, it's open to interpretation. It depends on how you define the problem. And some people are pointing to, you know,

0.2% of all the fentanyl going into the states is coming from Canada. Therefore, it is not a problem. However, the flip side to that is a conversation. I believe it was in committee on Parliament Hill on December 12th with the RCMP. And they were talking about how big the fentanyl criminal infrastructure is in Canada.

How many to the RCMP, how many people do you estimate are involved in the production and distribution of fentanyl in Canada? Do you have like a ballpark estimate? Is it a thousand people? Is it 10,000 people? I don't have a ballpark figure on it. So you have no idea how many people could possibly be involved in the fentanyl trade in Canada?

There is a significant group, a significant number of organized crime groups, but if you're asking for a specific number, I can't give you a specific number. How many organized crime groups are involved? Over 4,000 organized crime groups in Canada as assessed by the Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada. 4,000 individual organized crime groups all with their own distinct leadership and membership? That's correct. Okay, that's, that's chilling. Adam, that's chilling to think that we've allowed that many groups to pop up in Canada and they seem to be operating with impunity. I would agree to a certain extent, but I also think that looking at absolute numbers is not that helpful considering that we're a country of 40 million people. And the way that I want to think

about this and the way I think that people should think about this is to think of Canada as an emerging fence no producer. So we're not a problem internationally just yet, but we're getting there. So essentially our domestic fence on production was very low up until China stopped exporting fence known the late 2010s and they stopped exporting fence known in response to American pressure. So suddenly you had all of these opioid addicts in Canada, they couldn't get access to fence null and that actually created an opportunity for organized gangs in Canada to start producing fentanyl themselves. And then of course the pandemic, you know,

exacerbated that because global supply chains were disrupted. So Canada became a national, an international exporter of fentanyl starting from a few years ago. And we're still very small, but the amount of fentanyl that we're exporting is growing exponentially. So it's good that we're trying to nip

this in the bud because before it becomes too bad. Now, of course, you know, the amount of fence know that we're sending over to the United States is not that significant only 0.2% compared to what Mexico is sending over. Uh, but I think that the bigger

risk that we pose globally is actually exporting our fence Nol to Southeast Asia, specifically to Australia and New Zealand, because there they don't really have robust fentanyl market. So it's a new drug and it's quite expensive. So gangs can make a lot of money from selling there versus when you sell to the United States, because so much fentanyl is already coming in from Mexico. Fentanyl is not, it doesn't command that high of a price, so the profit incentive is not as strong,

because you're not making as much money per unit sold. It's, I'm happy to hear, when I come at you with doom and gloom, I'm happy that you temper that negativity with a little bit, a dose of reality. But I wonder if we even have the manpower and the boots on the ground to attack this problem to nip it in the bud as you said Well, I think the problem here is that Trump has actually been counterproductive because he's given so much of a focus on on the border

And I don't think that the border is the real issue here. I think the problem is that we have a lack of enforcements within our cities that have allowed these superlative labs to proliferate and flood our country with fentanyl and produce enough fentanyl that we can ship it, you know, via the port of Vancouver, the Southeast Asia. I think that's a real problem. And I think that rather than focusing on sending 10,000 people to the U.S. Americans to the Canadian U.S. border, we should be focusing on criminal justice reform. We should be focusing on. Adam,, we should be focusing on we're

gonna have to leave it there, my friend. But thank you so much. 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 I heart 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. Just keep your head down. He's away, he's away, go, go, go. Watch Canada's number one national newscast.

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