The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 3 - Conrad Black, Dr. Eric Kam, Sean Speer

Episode Date: May 25, 2025

Best of the Week Part 3 - Conrad Black, Dr. Eric Kam, Sean Speer Guests: Conrad Black, Dr. Eric Kam, Ayelet Razin Bet Or, Sean Speer, Flavio Volpe If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show Best of the Week podcast. We had so many great chats this week, including Conrad Black joining me to talk about his new book, plus the state of play between the US and Canada. Enjoy. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for spending a little bit of your Thursday with us. And you know, we say thank you wherever you find us. You might be listening on the radio or on the iHeart radio streaming app, or you

might find us on the podcast platform of your choice and coming up soon. As a matter of fact, now, you might find us on the podcast platform of your choice. And coming up soon, as a matter of fact, now you may find us on our YouTube channel. So thank you very much. All right. This next guest, I have a long family relationship with. And I remember when I would, he would call the house to look looking for my dad and I would have to take the message. He would use so many words that I didn't know at the time that I would have to take the message. He would use so many words that I didn't know at the time

that I would write down just gobbledygook and then hand it to my dad. And he would just see the chicken scratch and know who was calling. He is a great Canadian with a depth of knowledge on a number of fields. He's been a nation builder and a corporate titan, Lord Conrad Black, former politician, newspaper publisher,

author of so many more books than I've read. And now, most recently, the political and strategic history of the world, Volume Two, from the Caesars to the Peace of Westphalia and Louis XIV. Lord Black, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Ben. And it's good to see you again. Always good to see any of them. Well, I'm very glad to chat with you about volume two. I mean, this is no small feat. This is, you know, I was writing a history this broad. It must require a lot of your time, a lot of your attention, a lot of care. It has been a lot of work. I'm almost finished now. I'm up to the Vietnam War, so I'm almost finished.

Well, one of the broad strokes of the book is, you know, you are one of these people who believes in the power of the individual to shape history and that we're not, we're not at the mercy of moments and trends, but it's, there are definitional people who can, who can change the outcome of any, any given event. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, people make history. The idea that we're just, you know, we're soldier ants and subject to changes of public attitude and so on, like, you know, as if it was the weather. This is rubbish. I mean, history is made by people like,

you know, Julius Caesar and Napoleon and Abraham Lincoln, all kinds of people that the world would be very different if they hadn't been there. Are there commonalities between certain types of leaders or are there buckets in which you can say, okay, we put, you know, leader one, two, and three in this bucket over here and these other ones fall in this other category? What have you learned and these other ones fall in this other category. What have you learned about leadership in studying this large of a part of history? The criteria for leadership have changed. You see, prior to, let us say,

the book you've just referred to gets us up almost to the end of the 17th century. And prior to that, great leaders were either conquerors like Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great, I mean, Genghis Khan in a way, but he didn't really try and administer anything. Or, but subsequent to that, or even a man like Cardinal Richie, for example, really the builder of the modern state and a great academic, the founder of the French Academy and the provost of the Sorbonne. But subsequent to that, rights and the concept of ethics and government became much more focused on and much more required by publics and ultimately

electorates. And so in the subsequent era, you get people where there's a strong dimension of what they did in an altruistic way, like an Abraham Lincoln or a Winston Churchill or Franklin D. Roosevelt, people like this. Now, they couldn't have commanded armies like Napoleon did or, you know, conquered the world. But on the other hand, in the perception of modern times, they're greater statesmen because they were ultimately more positive people defending good things. You know, one of the lines that people say all the time is, those who don't learn their history are doomed to repeat it. Now you've now studied enough history. Have we ever done that?

Are there examples in history of people not knowing their history and then repeating it? Or is that just a trite phrase? Yeah, there are. And there are cautionary tales in all sorts of people. In the first volume, I made a comparison between Pericles and Gorbachev. I mean, these people can be

tremendously well-intentioned, but a little naive about the consequences of their actions, and everything comes apart. I mean, Pericles died before the end of the Peloponnesian War, which he initiated, but it ended in a complete disaster for Athens, a terrible disaster. Well, from your study of the past to you, let's move to an analysis of the present and somebody who may very well get books written about him in the future, Mark Carney, our new prime minister. And Lord Black, I'm of the opinion that in these early days of a government, I'm not going to get too heated over any one thing or another because they really haven't done anything of consequence yet. However,

I do know how the election campaign was prosecuted. I know what story Mark Carney told the Canadian people that got him elected. And what I'm seeing in these early days is he is behaving in a way that is most certainly not a product of that story. There's no elbows up, there's no retaliatory tariffs, the old relationship is still exists, and the US isn't trying to weaken us to take us over. Ben, by the way, for heaven's sake, call me Conrad, at least 40 years. All right, Conrad for at least 40 years. So that's what we're going to do for you. All right, Conrad. But no, look, I don't want to be, I agree with you.

He's a new prime minister and he's our prime minister now, so we wish him success. But the campaign was a fraud. It was based on the idea that he was taking a kind of Churchill oath to stand down at the Toronto Lake shore, shaking his fist at potential invading our maggots crossing from Rochester, New York, launched by President Trump against us or something like this. It was all nonsense. Trump was just having a joke at the expense of Justin Trudeau, who had been pretty cheeky with him in his first term.

The idea that he really had any designs on Canada was just foolishness. I found it as a citizen embarrassing that our country took the whole thing so seriously. I wrote that, but we are where we are. But of course, the idea of, you know, man, the barricades, the US Marines are coming was just a lot of nonsense. Well, and he was trying to reconcile what he said on the campaign trail with sort of his behavior today. Mackenzie Grave, Global News, challenged him on that. And he said, no, the relationship is fundamentally over and we got to rebuild it. We got to build a new one. And it's about working together if we can,

but not necessarily working together, I'm paraphrasing. But I really thought I took issue with that because it's sort of like, it ignores the importance of relationships across the border over decades and building those relationships. And sometimes those relationships go swimmingly and sometimes those relationships. And sometimes those relationships go swimmingly and sometimes less so.

But we're in a different phase of that relationship today. When Donald Trump is gone, there will be somebody else in that seat and that will dictate a new chapter in that relationship. But different doesn't mean over, it just means different. Yeah, and there's another aspect too. I agree with what you say, but let's keep in mind that when, that when Justin said to, to Donald Trump, when he visited him in Florida, they, you know, if you impose these tariffs, our economy will

collapse. And, you know, for years, Trump had been saying, Canada is not pulling its weight. You're only paying about 1% of GDP in defense. You're relying on us to defend you. Now, if you can't defend yourselves and if we impose a tariff, your economy collapses. I mean, are you sure that you really want to be an independent country? You join us, we've got basically a 50% higher per capita standard of living and national, you know, annual income. And, you know, you don't have to have any defense budget because we'll, you know, we'll take care of that. And I mean, to him it was logical and based on what Justin had said and done. But this was, you know, transmogrified by the liberal myth makers and election apparatus into the theory that he was contemplating

the takeover of Canada, you know, like the Mexican war or something. You know, we've got to have a smarter electorate here. We shouldn't be so gullible. Well, Conrad Black, I want to thank you so much for joining us to give you give us the pulse on how you see things politically today, as well as to let us know about volume two of the political and strategic history of the world. We appreciate your time and I hope to talk to you again soon. Always a pleasure speaking with you, Ben. Good luck to you. Take care. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney show And I remember going to a lot of G7 summits with my family. As a matter of fact, some of you don't know,

I didn't travel a lot with my dad. People assume I went all over the world, but my parents had a rule that we only traveled with them during the summer. And what was during in the summer? The G7 summit. So we went to almost every G7 summit. I remember one, I was in London and I wore a black,

I wore a tuxedo to go see a laser light show in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace. That was cool. And on one of the off nights, because my parents had a bunch of stuff to do, I got a ticket to go see Miss Saigon, a play in the West End. And turns out, at that play, I was sitting in the balcony, like in the fourth row of the balcony, and Barbara Bush and a couple of other first ladies showed up and sat right in front of me. And I shouted down in front, and the secret service turned around, and Barbara Bush turned around,

she recognized me, we had a good laugh. Anyway, all that to say, I'm never in the room with the people making the big decisions and having the big meetings, though that happens by the leaders themselves. So all the more reason to speak to somebody who knows the ins and outs of what happens in moments like this. We're joined now by Eric Kam. He is a good friend of the show and an economics professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. Eric, welcome.

Benedict, I have to tell you that when I was younger, my parents would take me to flea markets in Barrie, Ontario. So six to one. There's a comparison. There's a comparison. I never met Barbara Bush, but I once tried to run through a bush and I got poison ivy. There you go. There you go. And I have a daughter named Ivy. See how we're connecting all the dots. Okay. So let's move on. The finance ministers are at in Banff right now. They're discussing the global economy, Ukraine and so much more. A lot of it is pageantry. A lot of it is press conferences. A lot of it is standing together for photo ops. But I don't think you would send your finance ministers or your representatives of your finance departments are halfway around the world unless you thought

something could come out of it. Well, that's right. And what this is to me in all the reading that I've done, and even spoken to people that have been, as they say, in the room, is that this is the political version of what academics do at conferences. They go, they meet people, they meet new people, reconnect with older people. But what they really do is set the groundwork and try to talk and make sort

of back room, front room deals. They may not come to fruition at the conference, just like an academic won't write a new paper to be published at a conference, but you meet new co-authors. And so people have told me that mostly it's about not just standing for pictures and looking like you should, but making connections in the background that can one day turn into fruitful agreements, Ben. Yeah, and it must be this, a meeting like this should be even more important today, given the fact that you've got of the seven,

you got Donald Trump sort of creating chaos and everybody else reacting. So to have the other six together, not necessarily all rowing in the same direction, but knowing what the other guy's doing. You show each other your cards, right? So you can possibly sing from the same hymn book. Well, I think it's been well established on your show and in our discussions, the world economy right now is really teetering. So we need leaders to step up and actually be leaders and have conversations. And with Trump as well to try to minimize some of this risk and uncertainty that they're pouring into the markets.

It's the one thing that they don't see while Trump does understand it. It doesn't seem to care right now is that with every passing day with every increase in risk and uncertainty that they put into the markets is another day that the markets have higher and lower fluctuations, which has more ramifications on things like stock prices and future prices. And we know that tariffs are just taxes and this isn't good for any country, Ben. So if nothing else, I hope they come out of this with a little bit more stability and a little bit less riskiness. And some countries are doing better than others. Canada has not been faring well for the past 10 years, and it looks like it's going to get worse. Do you agree with the chief economist of TD Bank

who says that Canada is entering a recession, and we're about to shed 100,000 more jobs? I believe that half of that is true. I think that we're going to shed 100,000 jobs. I don't believe we're heading into a recession, Ben. We are in a recession. I don't like when economists word Smith and they say, well, a recession is two consecutive quarters where GDP goes down. That's just ridiculous. And that's just to impress people in the media. What's going on is that our economy is recessed. We know that all of our macro indicators are pointing

down. We know we haven't had any GDP growth in years. The productivity or the supply side of our economy is stagnant. And if you look at, in my opinion, the three biggest problems in our economy today, housing, affordability, debt spending, and I forget the third one because I'm not looking at it. The point is that none of them, none of them then are going to be solved by lower interest rates. And so far, that's the only bullet in our government's gun. So are we heading into a recession? No, Ben, we are absolutely mired in a recession. And now it is time to get us out of the recession, Prime Minister Carney and friends. Yeah, that's just super, my friend. All right. Yesterday, people on social media were making a big deal about

yield bonds in the US and when I hear that Eric my eyes they gloss over what does that mean for the average person? They're talking about the yield curve and what's going on Ben simply is that the yield curve says that the return on short year short-term bonds should be less than the return on long-term bonds so you should be able to gamble and I use that term with a small G, on putting your money in the bond market for the long run because you're going to be safe. Well, guess what? Not to sound like a broken record, and none of my students know what that term means, but all of this risk and uncertainty we've planted into the market, you've actually

upended the yield curve. And right now, if you look at the futures market on bonds, long-term rates are scheduled to be shorter than short-term rates. So it's not unlike any other market that you've turned on its ear. And one of the basic tenants in economics and finance is you can always rely on long-term bonds. And now, thanks to what's going on in the world, you cannot.

So if you can't bet on the bond market, Ben, the average investor says, well, what the heck can I bet on? And right now, the only thing you can bet on is recessionary polls. I gotcha. I gotcha. OK. Ontario now, it turns out, could have a half trillion dollar debt by 2027.

First of all, I wasn't keeping track of Ontario's debt, but that would be a record, Eric. What implications could that have? And we always talk about the federal debt, but what happens to a province when it's carrying that much debt? Nothing good, Ben. I'm going to let you in on a little secret about economics. It reminds me of other parts of life. Size matters. And Ontario is Canada's largest province by population and economic output. So slowdowns are going to hit this province harder and show up more clearly in all of our statistics. Moreover, of course, Ontario is reliant heavily on manufacturing, services, and real estate because those things are dependent on high interest rates, global trade showdowns,

and immigration-driven population growth. All of that means put it in a bowl, stir it up, and everything that makes our economy susceptible to disaster is staring our economy in the face right now. Not to mention the fact that our debt is out of control and heaven forbid the bottom falls out of the unemployment market, which it looks like it might then as you said. If our employment market gives out, that's the last domino and we are really really headed in to major problems. So that means, long story short, Ford has got some real challenges ahead of him

in terms of spending, revenue, labor, and economy. And I hope he's up for the job. All right, very quickly, I wanna throw to us a piece of audio from Kate Harrison on the CBC. She said, she gave the truth as she sees it on housing. This is a generational issue. Emily is right, no one has the political courage to say what the truth is she sees it on housing. This is a generational issue. Emily is right. No one has the political courage to say what the truth is,

which is that in order to bring affordability, to increase affordability, prices for others will have to come down. Your resale value will come down. But some have more capacity to let those prices come down than others. They do. They do.

And I think Gregor Robertson, the new minister, was trying to, you know, have his cake and eat it too in terms of threading that needle. I think the prime minister did perhaps a little bit better job massaging a message that is a difficult one. But to be totally candid to solve the housing issue in Canada, it's not going to be done just through temporary modular housing. It's not going to be done just through half. Like every level of government has something that they need to do to bring to the modular housing. It's not going to be done just through half. Every level of government has something that they need to do to bring to the table here. But it will involve some political courage

on the part of federal leaders, as well as provincial and municipal, to admit that, yes, for the boomers that were lucky enough to secure low mortgages and pay those off, their values will have to come down in order for young people to knock on the door of homeownership. All right, Erica, you got 35 seconds to comment on what Kate Harrison said about housing. Garbage, unadulterated garbage. There's no policy where you can just unilaterally bring down housing prices.

And do you really want to? You and I just talked about if the bond market isn't there, what can people put their money into that they're assured of increases? For years it's been housing, Ben. So are you going to punish boomers and punish successful people who've bought homes as investments? You are not going to do that. If you believe in markets, markets got us into this mess and markets can get us out of this mess, not stupid government policies like price controls. Thank you, Eric. I appreciate it.

Stay healthy, Benedict. When I found out my friend got a great deal on a designer dress from Winners, I started wondering, is every fabulous item I see from Winners, like that woman over there with the Italian leather handbag, is that from Winners? Ooh, or that beautiful silk skirt. Did she pay full price?

Or those suede sneakers? Or that luggage? Or that trench? Those jeans? That jacket? Those heels? Is anyone paying full price for anything? Stop wondering. Start winning. Winners find fabulous for less. Welcome to the Ben Moroney Show. Thank you for joining us on this Thursday. It's, well, there's some sad news that we've got to jump right into. There's normally the story of two young people falling in love at the place they work is it was puts a

smile on my face, you can see it. And you can hear it. And this the idea that two people could find themselves and go to a place where they both love working and find each other and build a life together that way is beautiful. Yesterday two such people, two young people were shot and killed in Washington DC. They were staffers at the Israeli embassy, Yaron Lashinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgram. They were leaving an event that was promoting peace in the Middle East. And a gunman opened fire on four people hitting these two young people. And they died. And it's,

it's, it's, it should be a warning for a place like Toronto, to be honest, like we got to call it what it is. Because I heard this story yesterday last night, this morning. And I thought, we're setting up the ground conditions to do the exact same thing here for someone, for someone to escalate and for another person to lose their life. I know it as sure as I'm sitting here. So to discuss this, we're joined by Ayelet Razin Bet-Or, an Israeli expert on international law

and human rights, but also someone who is friends with Sarah Milgram, one of the victims of last night's targeted attack. Ayelet, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me and thank you for your strong words, which is exactly, I think, what we should learn from this horrific terror attack on Sarah and Johan. Robert Leonard First, allow me to say, I'm so very sorry

for your personal loss. We'll talk about the larger implications in a moment, but tell us a little bit about your friend, about Sarah. Ayelet Gabbard So Sarah was, first of all, a moment, but tell us a little bit about your friend, about Sarah. So Sarah was first of all, a colleague and if he would have known her, he would have understood how she sneaks into your heart and every heart of any person that she met. I am a criminal lawyer since October 7th,

what I've been, my mission that I took upon myself was to learn and research and advocate for the victims of the sexual violence of October 7th and captive. And that's how I met Sarah. Sarah was my contact person in the embassy in Washington, and she took it upon herself to make sure that the story, these voices, these victims' stories will not be forgotten. And she was the one who made all the arrangement and the coordinated, the important meetings and briefings that I did in the Senate, in the

State Department, in the White House, and all these places. So that was really something she took upon herself. She was passionate. She was passionate about the work. She was. And she also, she joined the embassy after October 7th because she felt the rise of the ugly head of anti-Semitism. And she combated it not in violence, but in diplomacy, in that peaceful making, again, this was something that was very important to her telling the facts, right, telling the story. And that's the way she fought anti-Semitism, which eventually brought to her murder. And let's talk about the murder.

The person who is alleged to have perpetrated this awful crime was heard shouting, free Palestine, free Palestine. So we know it was targeted. Let's assume that they have the right man in custody, and there's no reason to suggest otherwise. But this was targeted. They were targeted because they are Jews. And look, when you hear something like that, it gives far more credence to the concern that protesters shouting from the river to the sea or globalize the Intifada, those aren't just words.

They are motivational. They are gasoline on a fire. If somebody has it in their heart that they feel that they can do something for their cause and those words are rattling around in their head. I think it makes it more likely that somebody is gonna pick up a gun and do some damage. Exactly.

And Canada has suffered, Jewish and Israeli Canadians have suffered grave terror attacks by anti-Semites. And this is something, it's important to say, this is not a sporadic murder of Jews. It's a peak in an escalation of violent crimes against Jewish people around the world, in Canada, in the United States, also in Europe and Australia, all over. And it is legitimized. It's something that is, you know, normalized by freedom of speech and freedom of protest and not

enough is being done, obviously. Oh, I would say, I would say almost nothing is being done in this city. We're currently at our city council in Toronto, debating a bubble bylaw, which would be one of the most watered down bubble bylaws in the country, where protesters could be as close as 20 meters from a school or a synagogue or a children's school or residential homes. So to me, we're not doing anything.

40% of the total hate crimes in Toronto are perpetrated against 3% of the population. So we are not doing nearly enough. But I will say one thing, another reason that I was concerned when I read this story, Ayelet, is protesters in this city descend quite often on the same intersection of Yonge and Bloor. And yes, it is the most, it's the busiest intersection in Canada, but it's also a stone's throw from the entrance to the Israeli consulate. That is not by accident. And my fear is the people who work there will be targeted. You're very right. But it's not only the people in the embassy, because the result of the

murder I just read a few minutes ago is that there's a strong recommendation not to hold prayers in synagogues in Washington, maybe in the whole United States, I don't really remember the exact recommendation, which means that this freedom of protest, this freedom of speech has brought to the, you know, complete, you know, Jews not being able to practice their right to pray and to be together because there is a danger. Tell me, which other group, ethnic group, religious group is constantly under a threat

and in such ways that they can't wear a kippah. They have to wear hats to camouflage themselves, not their symbol, the Magin David. I was in Britain. They told me you need to have an Uber name. You can't have this Hebrew Jewish name that you have. You haven't needed an Uber name. I went to synagogue. They told me to ask to get off a few blocks before

so I won't be targeted by the taxi drivers that I'm taking. It's a constant threat. It is unsafe to be a Jewish person these days, not in Israel and not all around the world. We've been talking about the fact that the police in the city of Toronto have not stepped up and drawn a line in the sand and said, across this line, you cannot cross.

And the pushback is, well, we as the police, we don't want to escalate. And I've been saying since the beginning, if the police don't escalate by arresting, then the protesters will escalate by being emboldened to take it one step further the next time. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The next murder is not a question. It's not an if. It's a when. And usually after these kinds of things, it's very inspiring. And it will be very shortly after in Europe and Australia or in Canada. And I have to say that Canada is had a very,

a long series of violent crimes, very violent crimes compared to the world, especially in Toronto, even if I'm not mistaken against Jews. This has not been a good time for the city of Toronto in terms of how it stands up for the Jewish Torontonians. But Ayelet Rezin Bet-Oor, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for allowing us to remember Sarah. And I just hope that it's on your own. And I hope this serves as a warning for cities around the world. We appreciate you. Thank you very much.

A wake up call. Thank you. Thank you very much. around the world. We appreciate you. Thank you very much. Awake up Carl. Thank you. Thank you very much. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And we sort of accidentally stumbled on to a talking point a theme today about how the the crisis that apparently got Mark Carney elected doesn't exist. We talked about it a couple of times on the show. And we're going to do it again with somebody who's written on this very topic.

Please welcome to the show Sean Spear, editor at large for the hub, as well as a former senior economic advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Sean, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us. It's wonderful to be with you, Ben. So, you know, I was just telling Conrad Black

that I'm not gonna get overly heated in the early days of a Mark Carney government because the rubber hasn't really met the road yet. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be critical of a few things. And this idea that there was a crisis, there is a crisis with the United States, I never believed it.

But I didn't vote for the guy either. But I feel bad for those who did, who believed that this was a pretty much a war in all but name that we were going into. And now, it hasn't materialized. Yeah, and what worries me then is that the government's identity, its core proposition is so rooted in the presumption that there is indeed a crisis, a generational one, as the prime minister continues to say, in fact, as early as recently as yesterday in the release of the mandate letters for the various ministers, is that it becomes difficult for him and his government to give up the notion. And the risk, of course, is that

And the risk of course is that leads it in, I worry, some bad directions, including with respect to the pending negotiations of a trade and security agreement with the United States. It's going to involve a lot of trade-offs, some of which will be challenging, but ultimately, I think you and most of your listeners would agree that Canadian interests are rooted in maintaining mostly tariff-free access to the United States. And if you have a prime minister and a government that are so invested in a notion of an ongoing crisis, are they prepared to make the kind of trade-off that will enable us to maintain that type of access to the US market. And look, for me, the issue isn't simply a bait and switch that they got elected, they sold us a

bill of goods and now they're doing something completely different. To me, there are actually some toxic and disappointing aspects to this, not the least of which, Sean, is the idea that Danielle Smith, who was preaching a more conciliatory tone to the United States was called every manner of sin, she was called a traitor. And then you find out that this government had no intention of keeping the retaliatory tariffs on one day longer than they needed to. And yet they're being lauded for essentially

the same position that got her denigrated. Yeah, yeah, I'm afraid I can't put it any better than that. The Prime Minister is going to have to answer for the fact that he gave Canadians the impression indeed throughout the campaign that it was his intention to go to the wall against the United States for better or for worse and those who disputed that strategy were as you say characterizes traitors or whatever but meanwhile behind the scenes the government was making the types of policy decisions it was it needed to in order to essentially forgo the retaliatory tariffs that he was talking about on the campaign trail that dissonance should be something that journalists are putting to him.

But I would say more broadly, the risk here is that he has socialized a large swath of the Canadian public, particularly those who are animated by these issues over the course of the campaign in such a way that it'll be hard to make the types of trade-offs and adjustments that we're going to have to make. Take for instance the conversation in the past 48 hours or so about ballistic missile defense. There are good arguments in favor of it, there may be bad arguments in favor of it. We need to have that debate, but how can this Prime Minister, after having told Canadians that our relationship is over relationship is over we can't trust these people as far as we

can throw them and now we're only going to be living under a golden dome with them exactly that donald trump is essentially a bad actor and now he's gonna have to go back to the same voters and tell them in fact it's in canada's interest to hand over uh... are defense and security sovereignty to this so-called lunatic in the Oval Office. I just worry a bit that, your dad used to say the two most important issues

the Prime Minister has is one national security, pardon me, national unity, two Canada-US relations, and those are subjects where you don't play politics. And the government has backed itself. Yes. Well, I was gonna, that's another thing that really disappoints me with his assessment that the relationship as we knew it is over.

We're leading towards a deepening of economic and military integration and that's done. And now it's going to be an ad hoc case by case basis, cooperate if we can, but not necessarily. And to me that ignores 60, 70 years of history and the personal relationship that is required between a president and a prime minister. Yes, there was consistency for a large period of time, but within that consistency, there were differences. And the, you know, the military, I brought it up a little bit earlier in the show,

the military, I brought it up a little bit earlier in the show, explain that worldview, Mr. Carney in the face of Jean Chrétien, turning down an invitation to, uh, to join the United States at war with Iraq. That doesn't, that belies a deepening integration. And so we're in a different phase of the relationship, but it is not, the relationship is not over and it's disappointing that, that, as you just said, in this all the relationship, but it is not the relationship is not over. And it's disappointing that that, as you just said, in this all important relationship, he's not even looking at history, uh,

without looking at through a political lens. Yes. Mr. Carney is an impressive dude. They'll get me wrong. Um, but I'm not sure he can overcome geography and culture and history and language and the sophistication of our integrated supply chains and on and on and on. Canada is a North American country. We have, you know, that is that is our destiny and a responsible prime minister takes that as a given and then and then plans for how best to represent and advance Canadian interests in that context.

You know, this past week, Mr. Carney signed on to what I'd characterize as an anti-Israel statement with his peers in Britain and France. And I interpret that at least in part as much about leading into Canada's relationship with Europe as a comment on Israeli policy. I just think that's fanciful. Our future does not lie with Europe, it lies with North America and securing mostly terror-free access to the United States in a security and defense arrangement that is satisfactory to both countries.

It's going to require prudence, it's going to require judgment and it's not going to, it won't be achieved, um, by flattening the flames of, of anti, of anti-Americanism within the Canadian public, as we've seen over the past several weeks, this might be good in the moment. It may have helped his electoral chances for sure. Um, but it is not in the long run interests of Canada. Well, also, and the last point that I'd like to discuss with you, and we only have about a minute and change left, is the fact that while discussing this crisis that has not

really materialized, there hasn't been a whole lot of room to discuss the homegrown crisis or rather series of crises that have been festering and multiplying and growing for the past 10 years in Canada. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah, that's precisely the problem with manufactured crisis, isn't it? They come to eclipse the ones for which we have direct responsibility and in so doing

and such the capacity to change. We have a affordability crisis. We have a growing crisis of confidence of young people in the country itself. Our pluralism is being pulled apart by these protests and acts of violence in our streets. The country faces real challenges and, you know, I think Mr. Carney can be up to those challenges, but the first order of business is to define the right ones, not make up ones that don't exist.

No, you're absolutely right. I'm so glad you wrote the piece. I'm so glad that you came here to discuss it because yeah, two things can be true at once. We can have this discussion about why this was a deeply cynical electoral ploy and that we wish him well. We do hope he succeeds because if he succeeds, we all succeed. And I do hope Sean,

that you come back on the show again sometime. That would be my pleasure, Ben. It's always great talking to you and congratulations on the show's success. Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us.

In the lead up to Donald Trump's world-changing tariffs, this next guest that is joining us in a moment was such a voice of reason, of measured, well-thought-out arguments on how to deal with the bouncing ball that was Donald Trump and his thoughts on any given day on tariffs. And now that we are living in a tariff-filled world and our eyes are on the G7 Summit. It's time to ask ourselves what to do now. So let's go to Flavio Volpe, the president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association.

Flavio, welcome back to the show. That was very generous of you. Thanks for having me back on. Thank you, my friend. Okay, so the G7 Summit is a time where the world leaders get together. In a lot of cases, the cameras are not on. A lot of big things can happen at these summits.

Now, for sure, a lot of the heavy lifting is done before the summit even happens. So you kind of know that you're gonna come out with some deliverables. But you say that it's the time where we can fight the US tariffs, we can plead our case. Tell me what you mean.

Yeah, look, I think presenting our case is more what I mean than plead. But the president, the world is watching the president's showing up into a country where he's talked about annexation. Now, certainly he's backed off that. He's walking into a room with countries of major consequence with whom he's picked the fight, but with a lot of them he started conversations about, you know, the UK framework deal, or we saw that meeting with Prime Minister Carney, which I think most people should assume was of about a lot more substance and material discussion than just a meat and green. Here we have a stage where we, the other six countries, including us as the host country, can help Donald Trump present the win.

On the highest stage, in the most collegial manner, it's an opportunity not to be missed. We Canada should be working very hard on the Kenanaskis summit, being a place where we publicly, you know, bury the hatchet. So hold on, Flavio, I don't want you to get too far ahead of me here. What, what do you think can be accomplished? What meaningful changes to our relationship with the United States do you think can actually be accomplished at the summit? Well, I think everybody should remember that the only thing that's changed from six months ago

is tariffs have been placed on the Canadian economy. Now, the consequences have made this a massive conversation, but these are tariffs that have been put in place through national security and emergency declarations by the president. We, Canada, should be looking to have those tariffs lifted. Now, in return, what are the Americans looking for? Well, he is, he styles himself the master negotiator. We keep saying we have things that they need. Well, we should put some, we should put some some parameters around it.

We think they need our critical minerals. I know that if I'm at Ford Motor Company and I want lithium from Canada, I don't know when I can buy it because we haven't approved the stretching and we have no processing. We should consider paying for processing that only exists in China

and making these approval processes shorter and saying to the Americans, you can have lithium from this facility in Quebec in 2033 and that gets you off. Yeah, I got it. So, Bafavio, let me play devil's advocate for a second because advocate for a second because look we watched for months the parade of provincial leaders and some federal leaders but also vocal voices in the business community speaking to Donald Trump either through on television or directly in front of Mar-a-Lago. All of this information is stuff he probably already has. He's doing this because he wants to do it. He and his worldview is informed by how he feels about something not about the facts on the ground. When he says we don't need anything from you, that's not true. But in his mind, that's how he feels.

Yeah, look, what we've been seeing, you know, it was one of those voices we've been seeing is a different total relationship between the new Prime Minister of those voices. We've been seeing a different tonal relationship between the new prime minister and Donald Trump. We're watching it in the reaction of his executive. We no longer see Howard Lattnick out there every second day saying something about Canadian jobs should be American jobs. We don't see Scott Besson, his treasury secretary

out there saying, well, you know, the Canada is not paying their way. His surrogates are quiet. Yeah. And the premiers have lined up behind the Prime Minister. I think we've got something really substantive on the table here. I think, you know, most of us, if you're watching this closely or you're stuck in the middle

of it like me, you could tell the difference between a Justin Trudeau Canada, a Donald Trump conversation and a Mark Carney one. I'm hopeful because the Americans are acting differently too. Yeah. Well, I want to move my attention, our attention to something you wrote in the Globe and Mail. And also sidebar, I heard you on a different radio station a few weeks ago, making the point that Donald Trump really hasn't thought long and hard about the idea of closing down factories in Canada so that they can ultimately one day reopen in the States. If a factory closes here in Canada,

that is a factory closing for an American automaker. And so the only people he's helping are Korean car companies in Tennessee. And I really thought that was a really very interesting point that you made. But given the fact that we are feeling these pressures, given the fact that our integrated automotive sector is being choked with an attempt to bring everything south of the border by Donald Trump, you posit that maybe this is now the moment,

the opportunity for a Canadian automaker to rise from the ashes of this relationship. Yeah, look, I think we need to figure out how to buy some insurance and we should build some ourselves. We've made this argument, Ben, you've had me on the show for the last couple of years talking about this is the best place to make cars. Please come here. We'll subsidize your production because we have the best raw materials, parts companies, applied technologies and workforce. Well, all those arguments are true for Canadians, for a Canadian operation as well.

In the past, not since Bricklin 50 years ago, we tried this, but the world has changed and the auto business has moved to Canadian strengths. Regardless of where we are right now, the industry is electrifying around the world. Well, we have the things that help you electrify, but also the things that make these cars connected autonomous work. So, Flavio, level set for me, what you're not talking about the government getting into the business of building cars, right?

No, what I'm saying here is I think the first step is the government says, yeah, we agree. We should have a national ambition. We'll support the idea with helping industry do a feasibility study of what kind of car we should make and how it should be positioned. And then industry and government should also be humble enough to say, if we do this effort properly, and it looks like it's not going to work, then we're not going to do it. When I read the headline, not the story, just the headline, I thought, oh my goodness, it's the Avro Arrow on wheels.

We have the know-how to build something, but everything that goes into the development of a car that could compete on the world stage, I think that's where I'm wondering. I don't know if there are any gaps in what we can do here. I got an answer for you. We built Project Arrow, launched it two years ago. It's a fully working prototype. I got an answer for you. We built project arrow launched two years ago. It's a fully working prototype. I'm not proposing we put that into production, but it's an all Canadian car. We answered that we have all the technology. What's it look like? I will go to project arrow.ca you'll like it. I'm going to keep talking. I'm going to type. Yeah. And I'll tell you Mexico, who is under the exact same pressure that we are president

Scheinbaum said, okay, look, part of what we're going to do here is we're going to launch our own company. It's called Olenya. And Mexico's got 130, 140 million people, but they only buy 1.7 million cars a year. Why lower disposable income? Well, we're going to target a $10,000 US city car. And we'll- Well, this, I'm looking at this thing. It's a good looking car. I did not

expect this at all. I mean, it's not bad at all. Is that we roll then? Wow, I'm really impressed by this. Okay, hey, we're gonna have to leave it there, Flavio. But thank you very much. Like I said, I always appreciate your voice on these important issues. And I appreciate that you come here to the Ben Mulroney show. Thanks for having me on anytime. Thanks for listening to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thanks for having me on anytime. Thanks for listening to the Ben Mulroney Show podcast. We're live every day nationwide on the

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