The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 1 - Warren Kinsella, Robert Fife, Greg Brady

Episode Date: March 15, 2025

Best of the Week Part 1 - Warren Kinsella, Robert Fife, Greg Brady Guests: Warren Kinsella, Robert Fife, Greg Brady, Jas Johal, Regan Watts, Mohit Rajhans 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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With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month. Savings may vary. Eligibility and member terms apply. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Best of the Week podcast. We had so many great conversations this week, including why Mark Carney is hiding from the media. Our panel discussed the right approach to handle Donald Trump

and how advertisers are targeting kids through mobile games. Enjoy. In first place, the next Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney with 131,674 votes, resulting in 29,457 allocated points, representing 85.9% of the vote. Well that was it. With that announcement, Mark Carney replaced Justin Trudeau as the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and our Prime Minister-designate. Here with far more incisive opinion than I is Warren Kinsella, former special advisor, to one of the speakers yesterday at the Liberal event, Jean Chrétien, and CEO of the Daisy

Group. Welcome to the show, my friend. Good morning, sir. OK, so what number should we be paying attention to? The 85.9% of the vote on the first ballot, which is a crushing victory, or the 131,674 votes, which, you know, given how many registered voters there are in Canada, adds a small pond relative to the larger fight that is before him in a general election? I'm going to be a contrarian as usual and say neither number matters. They're both in the rearview mirror at this point. The number that matters is the one we haven't seen yet,

which is what kind of honeymoon bump is Mark Carney going to get out of that huge victory that he got last night? Like everybody gets a honeymoon bump. Even people like Mark, you know, Michael Ignatius and Stefan Diehl, everybody gets one. The question I've got is how much and it really matters because all the polling showing that Poliev and Carney are largely tied or Poliev slightly ahead. That changes the consequences last night. That's what I'm looking for. Now, I think we could all agree

that the Chrystia Freeland's campaign was not strong, but I didn't think it was 8%. Like I didn't think that by the end of this, that was what she was gonna come home with. That's, what does that speak to? Me neither. I was shocked, I think with a lot of other folks, you know, that I think the early indicator was that she wasn't traveling the country. She was doing meetings by Zoom. And that would maybe make sense if you were still a cabinet minister, but she wasn't even

a cabinet minister anymore. So I think that was an indication that they knew that they were in some trouble. But like you point out, like to get that is just a pounding. Yeah. I felt badly for her, but it fits with my traditional rule is that Brutus may have taken out Caesar, but Brutus was never rewarded for it. If you're the one who takes out the leader, rewarded for it. You know, if you're the one who takes out the leader, you rarely become the leader yourself. And that's certainly the case with Krister Freeland. I think a lot of liberals were grateful that she bailed the cat and she was the one who

mainly took out Justin Trudeau, but they didn't want to reward her for doing that. Interesting dynamic. You know, I think for a lot of people, the bloom was off the rose with Justin Trudeau. Last night was his farewell. And so the style of Justin Trudeau has now left the building to make way for the Mark Carney of it all. And he is, as I've said many times,

if Justin Trudeau was all about the sizzle, then Mark Carney is all about the steak. He's about the substance. He then Mark Carney is all about the steak. He's about the substance. He's not a rousing speaker. But what did you make of his speech? It was boring. Oh my God, it was boring.

I joked. But for some people, that might be a good thing. Yeah, well, no, that's the point. I had said to my colleague at Post Media, Natasha Karen, and I was like, oh my God, it's like watching a bowl of tapioca with this guy. And she said, and she's right, you know, maybe that's what the country wants. Maybe that's what people are after. You know, Donald Trump is like this Tasmanian devil on Benzedrine, and it just never stops. So maybe people are looking

for somebody who's a little dull and plotting and a lot like a banker. So, you know, that works to Carney's advantage. But I still think, and as you and I have talked about this before, I think Pauli-Ed and Blanchette are going to absolutely razor him in the leaders debates, which will be happening in, I suspect, the next few weeks. Well, that was going to be my next question, because you've got Jagmeet Singh and his NDP support cratering around the country. A lot of those votes up for grabs, most probably from the liberals. How soon do you think he needs to call an election or wants to call an election?

He's got to go right now. Yeah. They'd be crazy to wait. You know, getting back to what I was saying a minute ago, he's got momentum from Trudeau leaving. He's got momentum from a leadership race that took place and they got lots of uncritical coverage. You know, Poliev disappeared and now he's going to get some momentum from his leadership bumps. They would be nuts not to go right away because, you know, Donald Trump may go off and chase some new chew toy and start focusing on Panama, Greenland or something like that. And then the panic, you know, the anxiety in the country diminishes. And that hurts the Liberal Party. So I think

they've got to go right away. I suspect we're gonna be looking at him walking over to see the Governor General, Ben, sometime in the next few days. Really. But Warren Kinsella, what kind of campaign is he gonna run? He says he wants to dump the carbon tax right away. He wants to stop the increase in the capital gains tax. But he also mentions building off of dental care and pharmacare. Is he going to run a centrist campaign, or is he going to run a progressive campaign?

I can't tell what he's going to do. If you look at some of the columnists this morning, they're saying, oh, boy, he sounds like a conservative. And you look at other columnists,ists this morning, they're saying, Oh boy, he sounds like a conservative. And you look at other columnists, they're saying, Oh boy, you know, he sounds like, you know, a Justin Trudeau style liberal. I guess they're trying to figure that out. But at the end of the day, the ballot question, the main polling, the campaign that I think they're going to run, which is, um, I don't like Donald Trump.

I don't like his style. I'm going to fight Donald Trump and Pierre Poliev secretly loves, you know, has a picture inside his locker of, like Donald Trump. I don't like his style. I'm gonna fight Donald Trump and Pierre Poliev secretly loves You know has a picture inside his locker of Donald Trump I think that's gonna be the campaign that we're looking at and Poliev that means that he is going to do everything he possibly can to make sure that none of his staff or his Caucus or his candidates get photographed in a mega hat or say anything that is remotely mega. They cannot provide evidence of the criticism that Carney is going to be bringing to bear

against them. And look, it is a criticism that can, I mean, they can find traction with that. There are certain people who, I guess they're more predisposed to believing something like that. But you know as much as I, you know better than I how important campaigns are. And given the fact that this liberal leadership campaign was I believe a campaign in name only,

is Carney ready for the buzzsaw that he's going to encounter? Not just from the conservative party, but the fact that he is going to encounter not just from the the conservative party but the fact that he is going to have a cortege of media following him wherever he goes demanding answers to every and all questions this there's gonna be a level of scrutiny of demanded of him that he has not lived up to yet I don't think he is ready you know Corina G, who got 3% of the vote last night, absolutely clobbered him. You know, this unknown MP absolutely clobbered Carney in the French and

the English debates. I think Bailis was better than him. So, you know, having experience in politics, as you and I both know, matters a lot. And I know Carney's trying to turn it into a pause and say, I'm not a professional politician. And it's like, yeah, no kidding, pal. Like you really don't sound like a politician. And sometimes we need that. You know, we want somebody to just show passion and vigor and like, this is why last night

after my former boss, Kretchena, spoke, I got hundreds of notes from people across the country, including from conservatives, saying, man, we need some of that. Yeah. He's 91 years old, he's still got it. And the same thing with your dad is, you know, there comes a time in politics where you got to bring the fire. Yeah. Right? You've got to bring it. And Mark Carney, I haven't seen him do that once. And I think, you know, it's going to be a challenge for him against a couple very accomplished performers like Pollyade and Blanchet. He also hasn't been as full throated in sort of the building of pipelines as a lot of people would

want him to be. I mean, he said some things, but he's also hedged a lot. Your former boss made quite a compelling case for exactly that yesterday. I don't think that was by accident. No, and I, it was, it was wonderful that he did that, you know, in full disclosure, I'm a Calgarian and I've worked in the oil patch and I believe we are an energy country and we should not be leaving energy in the ground, right? And particularly now that we're facing this existential threat, we need to bring our energy, our resources to other markets other than the United States. So, you know, Poliev's on the right track and Carney, I just can't figure out where he stands. So I thought, Karencia, what he did, that's really important, what you've just brought up. Karencia, without disclosing any of the

conversations I've had with him, what he does, he always does it very deliberately. Warren, we're gonna have to leave it there. Thank you so much, my friend. We'll talk to you soon. Up until this moment, David, it's really been the resume of Mark Carney that's been running.

It hasn't been the man, Mark Carney. And he's gonna have to run now. And he's gonna have to do interviews. And he's gonna have to do debates, and it'll be interesting. That was a former Conservative cabinet minister, Lisa Wrait, talking about what Mark Carney needs to do now to be accountable to the Canadian people and to allow them to get to know him so they can make an informed decision once we all ultimately go to the polls. The question I have is why is Mark Carney avoiding the media?

And to hopefully help answer that, I'm joined now by Robert Fife, the Globe and Mail's Ottawa Bureau Chief. Bob, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Welcome, happy to be here. So a couple of weeks ago, maybe it was a week ago, Bob, I heard you on television talking about sort of his inaccessibility to the press.

And I don't want to ascribe anything to you, but it did sound, I sensed what I thought was exasperation or frustration in your voice. Would that be fair to say? Yeah, look, I mean, we were in the process of a liberal leadership campaign. It was pretty clear that Mark Carney was going to be the front runner. This is a man who has a very impressive record as a central banker and in the business community. But we don't know a lot about him in terms of

the kind of in-depth ways he looks at policies. And so this is an opportunity to ask some questions. The frustration that we had as journalists is that he was not very available to reporters. At the most, we'd get two questions, and then his handlers would haul him away. And when he has had questions asked, he's got himself into trouble, as he did when he claimed he was not actually... It was a question that I had asked one of our reporters in Montreal to ask Mr. Kearney about the movement of Brookfield assets management from Toronto to New York. We asked him about that. He didn't like the question and he said, you got your facts wrong. He said, I wasn't the chair of Brookfield Asset Management when

it was moved, which in fact, as we found out the next day, that is completely wrong. Then we had to wait another week to try to get him at another event in the Hamilton area and I sent Laura Stone to get him and ask him. then he said, well, he was just imprecise. And then he explained that this was just a move to get access to New York stock exchange indices and that there were no job losses. But he could have said that right from the beginning. Yeah. And we've had we've had similar things with them, skirting questions in terms of what he's going to do with his

financial assets and public disclosure. He has actually put everything into a blind trust, just revealed that today. But again, it was like he didn't want people to ask him those kind of questions. And that's just not going to be good enough. When election campaign is called, I mean, I would hope that none of our colleagues are going to roll over and get away with, he's going to have to stand up and take tough questions. And, you know, Ben, the thing is that he's a central banker. He's worked in the, you know, the governor of the bank of Canada, the governor of the bank of England. He's used to the financial media being quite deferential. People don't tend to go hard after central bankers, but he's not wearing that hat anymore.

He's wearing the hat of somebody who will be prime minister and wants to continue to be prime minister. And you know, you're going to get tougher questions. Yeah. And I mean, you know that. Well, I do. I mean, I say I wasn't even technically in the arena and I carry some of the scars from the battles that my dad was in, but battle testing is part of it. You have to, you've gotta learn how to deal with the blood sport that is politics.

And I struggle to understand the logic behind bubble wrapping this man as he is about to get into the arena with somebody who has been sharpening his skills for the better part of two decades in Pierre Poliev. This is he faced no tough questions from his competitors for the leadership. The press did not have the ability or the chance to push him And so he was treated with kid gloves, unfortunately, during the leadership. And here we are two days after assuming the leadership. He still hasn't sat down for a long form interview.

I don't understand the logic knowing what is the buzz saw that's coming. Well, he has not had a news conference at all. I mean, yesterday he- It was a scrum. Well, he said a few words going into the prime minister to see the prime minister, and then he said a few words when he came out of the liberal caucus, but they were like, they were less than a minute conversations, or I'm sure it was like 40 seconds and then he was gone,

which is not good enough. We have to put our leaders to the test of being able to answer questions. Everybody else does it. Francois Blanchet does it. Pierre Pauli does it. So does Jarrett Mead saying this is part of the political process, of course, they're being very careful with him. And this is he's not he's not a seasoned politician. And they, they are clearly trying to run a campaign that guards him as much as possible. I, and I, again, I struggle to understand the logic. I mean, this flies in the face of the notion that this man is the agent of change in a party that is in no way a party of change, at least if you take the last 10 years as an indicator.

So for him to conduct the Herculean task of reframing the last 10 years, he needs to put more in the window. I struggled to understand the logic about it, Bob. I mean, at some point, at some point that becomes the story, doesn't it? Yeah, it will become the story. I mean, we expect a cabinet shuffle either tomorrow

or sometime this week. And one will hope that when he comes out, he's gonna take more than two or three questions. If he was really smart, he would say, I will meet you in the national press theater in a half an hour and we'll have, you know, half an hour or 40 minutes of questions. That's the way to do it.

I mean, that's really, given his history, Bob, that's really throwing yourself into the deep end where all the sharks are. Well, he's supposed to be a really smart guy. Well, obviously he is a very smart guy. If you're a smart guy, meet the test. Yeah. In your experience, you've covered a lot of campaigns

and a lot of prime ministers. Is there a historical analog to this? I mean, have you ever seen anything close to this? Well, I've seen things where leaders try to hide from the press because they're ahead. You see, there's a famous election campaign in 1980 after Joe Clark lost. And Pierre Elliott Trudeau just basically got on the plane and

flew most of the time so he didn't have to answer anybody's questions and he won a majority of government. So yeah, there was precedent for this, frankly. Yeah, but this isn't an honest to goodness front runner campaign. I mean, he's not, there are certain polls that put him ahead and they're certainly doing a heck of a lot better in the polls now than, than they were before the leadership race. But this is not a pure front runner campaign. It's not like I get the old political adage, when you're ahead, don't give them anything to punch at. But this is a party with a lot of baggage. This is a party that a lot of Canadians are expecting some explanations for.

Why should I trust you with a fourth mandate, even if you've changed your leader? I mean, the questions abound. And so I don't get this belief that he's a front runner, and therefore he should just do nothing. Well, so far it's working for them. The polls are showing them now in a dead eat with the conservatism.

There's a big problem with the conservatives. Pauli doesn't know how to change his message. You know, it's not from Canada's broken and it's certainly not the carbon tax anymore. And, but they're still on the carbon tax. They're trying to move off Canada's broken through Canada's first. But I mean, I was stunned yesterday that they were still back on the carbon tax when, you know, the number one concern of Canadians is how to deal with Donald Trump. Mr. Polly has some good policy ideas, some of them which have been stolen from the liberals,

from Mr. Carney's already taken some of his ideas. But you know, they better figure out a new strategy to counter Carney and to deal with Donald Trump or they're going to be in big trouble. Well, Bob Fife of the Globe and Mail, we know that you will be keeping the pressure on and we appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining us on the Ben Mulroney Show. You're welcome. Ciao. RBC Avion Visa lets you get there your way. Whether you want to suit up for peak ski season

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favorite companies. Just pick a stock and decide how much to spend on the share. It's a piece of cake. Learn more at td.com slash partial shares. TD ready for you. The Ben Mulroney Show marches on from coast to coast to coast on this Tuesday and it's time now to convene our This Week in Politics mid-week panel and joining us to discuss the hot button issues of the day are Greg Brady, the host of Toronto Today on AM 640. Jazz Johal, the host of the Jazz Johal show on CKNW in Vancouver, also former member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, as well as Regan Watts, the founder of Fratton

Park Inc, former senior aide to finance minister Jim Flaherty. To all three of you, I say hello. Bonjour Ben. Bonjour, bonjour, bonjour to all three of you. Now listen, I believe that what we're witnessing right now is a tale of two tactics to deal with Trump tariffs. A lot of T's in that sentence. But on one hand, you've got the Ontario model

that is looking to apply pressure and lean into the chaos of the Donald Trump tariffs. And on the other hand, you've got Alberta's Danielle Smith, who's urging caution and calm in the hopes of weathering this storm and cooler heads prevailing. Doug Ford took a moment yesterday to try to convince Danielle Smith of Alberta

that his way is the right way. We have to remember the 4.3 million barrels of oil that's coming from Alberta. As Premier Smith said on our comments, I think over the last couple days, she has the Trump card. Well, a message to Premier Smith. One day I think you might have to use that Trump card and give approval for an export tax. Because you want to talk about a Trump card that will instantly change the game instantly when the Americans and I know the Americans

also in their gas prices go up 90 to $1 a gallon, they will lose their minds. Now that was said prior to Donald Trump levying his 25% 50% tariff on all steel and aluminum coming into the United States from Canada in response to the Ford 25% exit tax on electricity. So Regan the first question is to you, Danielle Smith has said she's not going to do that. We've seen a reaction from Donald Trump. Are we going to witness a schism in Canada in terms of the best way to deal with Donald Trump? Whether we have a schism now or in the future, I think because of the absence of federal leadership, we've got a situation where provincial premiers are not working together.

And while Premier Ford is the chair of the council, the federation, which is the group of premiers that get together once or twice a year to talk about national issues and how they're gonna fight the federal government, that does not make Premier Ford the prime minister. The good news is the long national nightmare known as Justin Trudeau is almost over. And Mr. Carney, who I'm sure we'll talk about a bit later,

will be the prime minister soon. Or we may have an election soon. What we do need is federal leadership in this space. I don't think it's fair for Doug Ford in Ontario to dictate to Danielle Smith in Alberta, what she should or shouldn't do on export pricing for energy. We are a small, small monkey in a space fighting against a very large gorilla. I just don't see, and I'm sympathetic to Premier Smith's view, more than Premier Ford's view, that escalating this trade war is wise. We saw President Trump's reaction this morning,

and one has to assume that will continue to be reaction every time we escalate. We must fight back, but we need to do so strategically and picking our moments. And I don't think raising tariffs on electricity and oil and gas exports at the same time is going to manage the situation well. Jazz Johal, I take Regan's point,

but I also look to the reaction by the stock market and this uncertainty certainly is not helping the United States standing as it relates to the market. And I wonder, maybe Doug Ford is right. Maybe he's leaning into the chaos to put pressure on Donald Trump by way of the stock market. What's your take on this? Yeah, you know, I think there's some, you know,

that point makes sense to me, but I would agree with Reagan here and Daniel Smith at the end of the day is be patient. We got four years of Donald Trump here. Let's take our time, keep our powder dry in regards to how we respond to Mr. Trump. We should weaponize our energy. Absolutely.

I'm not sure if Doug Ford needed to do it now. That's my point. I think that ultimately the oil and gas from Alberta specifically is our Trump card. Absolutely. We may have to use it, but let's wait six months or eight months or a year that we have to. Here in British Columbia, 98% of our energy is hydroelectric. We sell to Washington State, to California, to Oregon, but we sell to them when the prices

are high during the year. And when prices are lower, we buy from them. And that works well for BC taxpayers because I think we pay about the sixth lowest rate when it comes to electricity in North America. If we were to weaponize power today and now, that would raise costs for Canadians and British Columbians specifically and Albertans. So I don't have a problem weaponizing energy. I think we need to be doing that, but let's wait. We don't need to do it in the first few months

in Donald Trump's presidency. We've got four years of this guy. Let's take our time. Greg Brady, the counterpoint to what Jazz is saying is that it's not just about eliminating the tariffs, it's about eliminating the threat of the tariffs that we as a province, we as a country cannot exist in this world where we don't know what chaos is going to come tomorrow if Donald Trump changes his mind on X, Y or Z.

And therefore we have to maintain the pressure because we have to we've got to be definitive about it because we need the threat of the tariffs to go away. Yeah, and listen Reagan put it put it right. We've just dealt with so much economic uncertainty, especially at the federal level. But I I look and I go I'm not quite sure that premieres shouldn't essence, stay in their own lane and handle their government. They're allowed to criticize for sure. There was a lot of criticism of Daniel Smith when she didn't sign off on the original, quote, unquote, Team Canada

plan, but she was attempting to be more diplomatic than many other premiers were. The point everybody's made so far is also the right one in that I really don't think people like bigger gas prices, as Doug Ford said, they also don't like stock markets crashing and losing 10 or 11 percent of their value of investment. And they're losing that in the last 10 days. It was a fantastic start for Donald Trump creating, as he called it, a fantastic economy. The markets soared after he was reelected. But what he's got wrong is actually something Kamala Harris pointed out on the campaign trail, but with all the other noise, it probably got missed. She said the tariff plan that Trump and JD Vance want to come up with, she called it

a Trump tax. It's been exactly that. It's been a tax on wealth on the stock market with their reaction And it's been a tax on on whatever goods Trump has put in. I mean the US importers Paid the tariffs and that's the thing Trump has repeatedly said it's the other countries that do know it is and it's the people that import Yeah I want to stay with the Danielle Smith of it all because Danielle Smith is scheduled to go down to Florida to conduct a fireside chat with the Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro. And the provincial NDP are calling this despicable,

and she needs to cancel. Jazz, am I missing the controversy here? She's going to share the stage with people that Donald Trump listens to. Where is the controversy? Where is the harm? Yeah, I can't believe I'm agreeing with Daniel Smith. But I don't have a problem with this. Look, the right wing in the United States has created an interesting ecosystem. They've created their own media, whether it be far right, somebody who's maybe small C conservative,

big C conservative, doesn't matter. That is the ecosystem that Donald Trump listens to. Yeah, and I don't have a problem with Daniel Smith going down there to articulate certainly her provinces, you or our country's you? Will she be ultimately successful in convincing Donald Trump? I don't think so. But she'll have his ear. Yeah, and jazz. I don't want to interrupt, but I only have a few seconds for each of you. So I want to go to Regan Regan, you got about 30 seconds on this. I mean, the NDP in this country, whether they're at the federal level or the provincial level, continue to prove themselves among the most useless politicians and political strategists

in Canada. The idea that somehow Danielle Smith is doing a incorrect or a bad thing. I agree with Jazz. The Ben Shapiro has a huge audience and we should be doing more of this. I would love to see her do Rogan and Jordan Peterson and Matt Taibbi and some of these other, not Matt Taibbi, pardon me, but some of these other podcasters who are out there talking to Trump-land and conservative voters. I want to give the last word to my colleague from here at 6 40. So Greg, over to you. You have to meet people where they live. And it was, I mentioned Kamala Harris earlier. She probably should have done Joe Rogan.

She did Howard Stern. Not quite the same impact as it might have been 15 years ago. So you better meet people where they live. And the NDP have championed an awful lot of people post October 7th. Noted QP representative of Ontario, Fred Fred Hahn still buddies with him. And I'm like, I find him a bit more odious than Ben Shapiro's opinion. So it's you got to look in the mirror sometimes. Well, more with our political panel when we continue, including our next prime

minister playing hide and seek and peekaboo with the media. That's next on The Ben Mulroney Show. Welcome back to The Ben Mulroney Show and welcome back to Greg Brady, Jazz, Joe Hall and Regan Watts for our This Week in Politics Midweek Panel. Gentlemen, CBC's Rosemary Barton admitted that when it comes to Mark Carney, he still has a lot to answer for. There's lots of other questions for him in terms of what is he, how soon is he going to move his own personal investments and stocks into

a blind trust? Will he wait until he becomes prime minister? Has that process started? We know he's received security clearance. Is he getting security briefings already by intelligence agencies and the head of the RCMP and CSIS? What is his intent behind a cabinet? How quickly will he call an election?

There's lots of questions there that people wanted to ask and that he didn't answer. Now, to be fair, as an update, Mark Carney has in fact moved his finances into a blind trust. But I'll start with Greg and Jazz because, look, a lot of people are trying to normalize this rather exceptional event that we have experienced. An unaccounted, unelected person is about to assume the leadership of our country.

And people are trying to equate it, some pigheaded obtuse people are trying to equate it with my father becoming the leader of the opposition. This is not the same thing. This is a unique moment in history. And that lack of accountability should be countered by Mark Carney with a higher level of exposure to the media. And instead we've gotten none of it. To Greg, as a radio host, are you as frustrated as I am

that he won't give anyone a real interview? Yeah, and listen, we gotta be honest too, the media as a whole, and I hate lumping it all in together because everybody has different jobs and everybody has different factions. And we're in the opinion business and opinions are going to clash, but we're at a pretty low threshold for trust. We are. And that's for how we've covered a ton of big stories in the last five years. But what I'm seeing Mark Carney do, Ben, is run, in essence, a front runner campaign. He could do that with the leadership.

I didn't like it because I think when you're a leadership candidate, similar to all the candidates for the CPC in 22, even closer to Ontario, all the candidates got on the radio, did newspaper interviews, did big, you know, big interviews. We saw none of it with Carney and I watched three minutes of the Scrum yesterday and the questions aren't about Brookfield. The questions aren't about how he managed life in the UK. They were what riding are you going to run in? So we shoot ourselves in the foot here.

If the goal is to win the election, he isn't the front runner, regardless of what some of the polls say. If he wants to make up ground, if he's satisfied being an opposition leader in a majority conservative government, he should keep doing what he's doing. Jazz, he becomes leader and the only press conference I've seen of any substance came from Pierre poliev. This is an exceptionally frustrating thing for a population that has seems

to have been frustrated by this liberal party at every turn we want our voices heard. And if we can't have our voices heard, we need to have his voice heard. Yeah, I think tactically, they certainly made a decision not to make him available to media during this leadership race. And because of this unique period, as you said, Ben, that's worked in his favor because we're the tremendous anxiety with Donald Trump. But moving forward, you know, his personal finances

and putting that in the blind trust, I think he has to start articulating what he will be doing when it comes to policy, specifically carbon tax. Is it just a consumer-prior carbon tax that goes, or is it going to be the business carbon tax as well? All these issues now are at the forefront, and he has to start articulating what his clear vision is for Canada over the next four years and also how we will differentiate himself from Justin Trudeau. He can't continue to do this. It's all well and good to do it over six or seven weeks during a leadership race, but moving forward the game has changed and he's going to have to make himself available and answer some tough questions. Regan, you're the only non-media person on this panel. How do you see

things? Well, as a struggling small business owner who's just trying to make ends meet, I'm aghast that Mark Carney has not disclosed what he actually owns. Yes, he has taken steps to put his assets into a blind trust, but we don't know what those assets are. And I suspect until we know what those are, there's still going to be questions about where his interests lie. The other thing I'm curious about, Ben, is which of the three passports is Mark Carney going to carry as Prime Minister of Canada? Will it be the Irish passport, or the British passport, or the Canadian passport? Look, Mark Carney becoming the Prime Minister was always inevitable.

His Pokeroo Act with the national media, I agree with Jazz's comments, it is not a sustainable path. This reminds me a little bit of Kamala Harris when she ran for president. I don't know if folks remember, but in the summertime, when she became the nominee, she avoided doing any type of media for almost two months. And it was clear why when she started doing media that why she stayed away. You know, Mr. Carney, from a policy standpoint, I think jazz raises a good question. This reminds me of Dallas and the Bobby Ewing shower scene. The new guy is just like the old guy and in the words of the notorious big, it was all a

dream. These two guys are the same. Mr. Carney is is is a far left climate zealot who wants to drive the world to net zero. And the only way you do that is by raising taxes and punishing people's pocketbooks. And he is going to have to be accountable for that at some point. I would invite him and encourage him to do the Ben Mulroney show because I find this to be a friendly, welcoming audience. But at some point, he's going to have to talk to media somewhere. And until he does, the questions will still be raised. I'll bring this up too Ben. I'll jump in and make it and this is the absolute two-ton elephant in the room. There are photos of him outdoors at a festival seemingly on a farm with Ghislaine Maxwell,

Jeffrey Epstein's right-hand woman when it came to sex trafficking. Is there a political leader anywhere in the Western world that wouldn't be asked about this in a seven or eight minute sit down interview? No, there is not. We'd ask Jagmeet Singh. We would ask Elizabeth May. We would certainly ask Pierre Pauliès. If he's avoiding this not to answer that question, how long have you known her? When did you meet her? Did you meet Epstein? On and on and on. Boy, we've got a scandal on our hands and a scary one. And this is, Jazz, this is the issue that I'm noticing. There are a lot of people out there

trying to gaslight us into believing that this behavior is normal, that our system allows for it and therefore it should be acceptable. And what is acceptable from a systems perspective is not acceptable from a societal perspective, especially when we're about to go into such an important election. And I'll start with you, Jas, and we'll keep going around the horn. And you got about 30 seconds.

You know, just to add,, the when it comes to behavior of politicians in public life, there's been a slow and steady decline. Absolutely. We can only have to look south of the border, where that's an issue. I really hope that Mr. Carney starts articulating a vision for this country. And for all Canadians, because he has to start answering these questions. If he doesn't, whatever balance he's had, it's going to be a steady decline after this. So he's got to start talking about what he wants to do, what his plan is. Yeah, Regan, if you if you were advising him in good faith, you are you're now

working for Mark Carney, what would you tell him to do? Well, look, I'm feeling particularly generous this morning and will advise liberals. And I'll say this Mark Carney should do a press conference, he should do a scrum. He should get out in front of the national media and relieve that tension because as Jazz and Greg know, that will continue to build up as long as he's avoiding the national media. That's the first thing I would do. The second thing I would do is I would speak to the nation. He gave a speech to the Liberal Party supporters on Sunday. He should find an avenue or a venue to go and speak to the country. Maybe that's what the day he gets sworn in as prime minister, maybe that's another venue, but he needs to start articulating his vision. Mr. Poliev has been hammering his vision and really

put some meat on the bones a couple of weeks ago when he did his speech on Flag Day and has continued with that theme. Right now, all we have from Mr. Carney is a resume and a bunch of liberals telling us how great he is. But we, you know, for those of us who've paid attention to him, we know he's a climate zealot, but he hasn't shared that view with the rest of the country. And I think if he wants to defend that type of policy, he should get up there and do so. Yeah, Greg Brady, it feels to me like since announcing

his retirement and he then played keep away with the press, not talking to a whole lot of people, We have an absence of leadership at the top. And yet this does seem to be working in the polls. I mean, they are competitive again. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? dip soon after Labor Day. She was happy to go on Fox News for half an hour. She was happy to do more podcasts. She probably should have done even more than she already had, whether the messaging was right there or not. This is the antithesis, honestly, to of Justin Trudeau in 2013 going into 50. We knew everything about him. He wasn't avoiding the media. He was out there. He wanted to sell himself. I am ready. I am qualified for this, whether the conservatives say I am or not. And you can't win majority governments without being somewhat relatable to the public. And the party's not even attempting to do that right now.

Greg Brady, Jazz Joe Hall, Regan business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do, business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show.

And if you're like me, you rely in some way, shape or form on the platform X on Twitter, I use it as a news source, I get immediate updates on a number of fronts, which I then turn into information that I put into the show. And yesterday, as we were building the show, we noticed as so many of you did, that there was something wonky with Twitter. And it turns out, according to Elon Musk, the owner of the platform, that he was dealing and the platform was dealing with a massive cyber attack yesterday. I mean, I was I heard some news sources that said that there were as many as three separate cyber attacks yesterday, which to paralyze the platform for the better part of a day

to discuss that and a heck of a lot more. We're joined by good friend Mohit Rajan's, a mediologist and consultant with ThinkStart.ca. Mohit, did you feel theologist and Consultant with thinkstart.ca Mohit. Did you feel the impact of the Twitter downage yesterday? I did. And you know, we're so loyal to Twitter that we don't even call it X. But X.com. Yeah, definitely was the victim yesterday. And it's amazing because I you know, despite the any political stance you have about the platform or whatever,

or, or the person that runs it, the truth is it is delivered consistently for a large amount of time in the promise of being able to get timely news information and discussions, even though you and I both have a love hate relationship with it. The tricky thing right now, Ben, is if Elon is going to sort of continue to be in this political sphere the way he is, I think he might be victim to more of these sort of occurrences on his platform. Well, and look, we know famously that when he took over, he fired so many people on the company, including a number of people on the cybersecurity side. And I got a wonder, and this is just a good faith question, could he have weathered yesterday's storm a little bit better if he had the boots on the ground

to help him? A great point, but I also think the sophistication that's happened within those three years of cyber attacks is something that, you know, we're constantly fighting and hearing about. Let's just put it this way. If we hear about just the fact that this coordinated effort was successful, think about how much he's actually fighting off on a daily basis on X. And so I think we're in a new phase of cyber warfare. Truly, I think it'll also cause a few different types of people to pause about what they really rely on X for.

One thing I did notice is that no users complained about, you know, their posts being hijacked. And I think that's the next phase that it's going to become very tricky to be able to combat. Yeah. Well, let's talk about deep fakes. You know, it's, it's, it's an increasingly increasing concern as the sophistication of them is getting to the point where our eyes and ears

can no longer differentiate between what's real and what's fake. And now there's this new volley in this scam of celebrity AI deep fakes. They're flooding the internet and celebrities who are being essentially their images and likenesses are being hijacked, the celebrities are pushing Congress to fight back. Give us a little bit of a download on

what this is all about. I've been following synthetic media and the way it's being created. And so I refer to this as synthetic media sort of the Hollywood wanted best of both worlds, right? They wanted the ability to actually up convert some classic material and do some great things with some legends and recreate movies once somebody passed and use the same technology that's being used by people on their phones now. And you and I both know in some cases, it's pretty cool to let your kids sort of make their own version of a Simpsons episode.

But at the same time, it's also going to bother Scarlett Johansson when she's used, you know, nefariously where you and I might find it a little difficult to sort of understand is celebrities aren't going to lead the charge in this regulation. This is something that technology companies are working on daily to actually improve. And so where's the, you know, Hollywood, I don't think is going to save us from deep fakes. Instead, I think it's really going to take some rigorous actual legal standards in order for people to understand what's legal and what's not legal.

Well, yeah, I mean, there are companies that are building out the tools to build deep fakes. And so I mean, they exist, we know that that they are in operation and they're they're making money. And going after like the biggest ones right now seems like the smartest, easiest play. You go after the most successful ones and hopefully the smaller ones will fall in line

to make sure that they don't run a foul of what is right. But I guess we'll have to see how that works out. Hey, so a lot of parents think that if they keep their kids off social media, if they keep their kids off of platforms like the Snapchats and the Facebooks of the world, that that is somehow gonna protect them from being leveraged and data mined.

But now we're finding out, oh, if it's as innocuous as playing a simple game, I guess I'm like, I don't know if it's Candy Crush, but that's the first one that popped in my head. That could be enough for these companies to build profiles on our kids. 100% Now this is where it becomes tricky our terms and conditions that we're signing up for or letting our kids sort of

get away with the fact that they might be just slightly under 12 and want to download a game. All of that is at play in this conversation, this idea that on one hand, children are protected under Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. On the other hand, we're starting to see apps that are finding very creative ways to actually skirt issues like for example, can track one transaction that was made perhaps at a 7-11 and then where the child went after a postal code radius of where kids live and where the high density population is. This might not be specific data about your kid, but it creates a generalization that is really creepy and has information about our kids that's in play for marketers.

Yeah, I mean, like, come on, we just want our kids to play a game so that they can be there and quiet while we while we cook dinner. That's all I'm looking for. I'm not looking for a company to build data, a data set on them so that they can then leverage it to make money. Okay. We, you know, we've talked about AI, the fear of AI. How has that turned into AI FOMO? Yeah.

So it's very interesting. We're talking about this a lot, this idea that more and more employees are AI smuggling. They're smuggling AI into their workplaces and they're starting to use it unbeknownst to their companies and especially their IT departments. So definitely a generational thing. There's many people who are willing to work with AI tools to see if it'll help their life

and maybe either work, be a little bit more manageable. And you're seeing Gen Z and millennials starting to experiment a little bit more, but there's still not a lot of guidelines at work and in workplaces about the do's and don'ts. And so what's happening is people don't want to feel left out. They don't want to feel like they're being less efficient at their jobs.

And so now we're in this phase of AI FOMO, they're calling it. So it's a call to arms for companies to be on the lookout because you got to train your employees for what they need for the future. Are we talking about situations where employees are using AI in places where they are explicitly not supposed to in as a way of like lessening their workload? Or is it a case of, you know, more technologically savvy employees trying to use tools to make work more efficient and optimal despite perhaps dinosaurs running the company.

Ah, well, I think you're talking about both, right? You're talking about an accounts receivable department that knows there's an easier way to understand the spreadsheets by using AI to actually study them. And then you're also talking about graphic designers that understand that doing five versions of something should be as simple as a prompt and not having to redesign the same thing several times. And I think all of this goes to show

that there is an actual utility in some of the AI that's being used on a daily basis that unfortunately is still feared. And that and to that note, if you're an agency or somebody and you're dealing with your client's information and all of that, it's still a security mess out there when it comes to using this AI. So you can be reprimanded for using the wrong tools in the wrong environment. Well, absolutely.

I mean, if you're if you are if you're're dealing with a client's IP, and you're using AI, then technically, you are sharing confidential information with a third party in order to, you know, get back information that you would then get paid for like that, that to me is a is a blatant disregard of confidentiality. As one example, and it's, and it's, it's in subordordination at the end of the day, you know, the same reason why, you know, you have those big disclaimers at the end of the email for the longest time about what this transaction or information doesn't mean is the exact same reason why you shouldn't be using AI tools nefariously within your work environment. Mohir Rajan's, Mediologist and Consultant with ThinkStart.ca. Thank you very much, my friend. I hope you have a great week. Always a pleasure, Ben. Take care. Thanks for listening to the Ben Mulroney Show Podcast. We're live every day nationwide on the

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