The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 3 - Scott Moe, Ian Lee, John Ivison

Episode Date: June 1, 2025

Best of the Week Part 3 - Scott Moe, Ian Lee, John Ivison Guests: Scott Moe, Ian Lee, Dr. Eric Kam, Dr. Nadia Alam, Anthony Koch, John Ivison 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 conversations this week, including Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe joining me ahead of the First Minister's meeting. Enjoy. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And I want to thank you for joining us. You may be listening on the radio on the Chorus Radio Network. You may be listening on a streaming app like the iHeart Radio app, or you may be listening in podcast form on Amazon, on Apple, or on Spotify. But now we have a new home on YouTube as well. We post content over the course of the day, and you get to see my lovely face.

So just search up Ben Mulroney Show or The Ben Mulroney Show, and there you will find some of our interviews, some of our conversations, some of our panels. So on June 1st and 2nd, this is the time of year where prime ministers get really busy with a lot of meetings. We know that our prime minister obviously has the G7 summit coming up in Cananaskis, Alberta.

That is in mid-June. He's got the NATO summit that's coming up as well. That's a very big deal as well, because apparently on the table could be a discussion on elevating the commitment by member states in terms of their spending on military, on their military from 2% of GDP up to 5% of GDP. I don't know how Canada is going to get to that. We haven't been, we've been mired around 1% for so long. I have no idea where we're gonna find that money, but that is a problem for the guy who wanted the job,

Mr. Prime Minister Mark Carney. But one of his signature promises, and to be fair, it was a signature promise of Pierre Poliev as well, was to break down inter-provincial trade barriers. And by and large, it does seem like there is a willingness to do that across this country, more or less. Mark Carney promised that they would all be gone by Canada Day. That's not happening. There will be legislation tabled by Canada Day. And so that's not the same thing. Am I going to

get super upset over a change like that? Not really, but the devil's in the details, right? What does it mean to reduce and eliminate all of these inter-provincial trade barriers? Keeping in mind that the sacred cow of all inter-provincial trade barriers is supply management of our dairy industry. trade barriers is supply management of our dairy industry.

It's the Quebec and Ontario are very precious about that. And if they get to keep that, then aren't other provinces gonna say, well, if I get to keep that, if they get to keep that, then we wanna keep a protection for this industry or that industry. So this will be a test of Mark Carney's ability to bring people on side, to convince them that life is better

in a world with fewer barriers. And also he said on the campaign trail, I'm gonna get rid of all inter-provincial trade barriers, but supply management is here to stay. I'm not here to debate the merits of supply management. I've had people come on to talk about how, why it's a great thing. I've had people come on to tell me why it's a terrible thing.

But I don't know how your opening salvo can be, we're going to get rid of all interprovincial trade barriers, except for that one. And that one deeply affects Ontario and Quebec. So what's Saskatchewan going to do? What's Alberta going to do? What's BC going to say they need to protect? If he can eliminate all interprovincial trade barriers, What's Alberta going to do? What's BC going to say they need to protect?

If he can eliminate all inter-provincial trade barriers with the exception of supply management, that will be a testament to his ability to negotiate. It just will. Like you'll have to give him kudos for doing what he said and saying what he did. And so that is going to be on the docket for this in-person first ministers meeting

on June 1st and 2nd in Saskatchewan. One of the issues that I know is important and central to the people of Saskatchewan is the tariffs on canola products by China. You will remember that we as a nation placed a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. We don't want them in our country for a number of reasons. One of them is an issue of national security.

They have too many cameras and too many listening devices. And we don't know who's got that data. And we don't know if the Communist Party of China is able to essentially spy on our country with these cars. We have no idea. And so because of that, we placed a tariff on their cars and they reciprocated by tariffing canola

coming out of Saskatchewan, which is a huge export for that province. And some people believe that what that does is we've prioritized our EV industry over our farmers and here to discuss that and a few other issues. We're very happy to be joined by Scott Moe, the Premier of Saskatchewan. Premier, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us. Hey, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate your time.

So I was just bringing our audience up to speed on so the tariffs on canola, which is a huge industry in Saskatchewan. Can you give us some more detail as to the impact that those tariffs are having on that industry and any communication that you might have had with the federal government on getting China to lift that tariff? Yeah, first, we've talked not only with the Chinese ambassador to Canada, the Canadian ambassador to China, they've talked to the prime minister as well as a number of other

ministers about it. Prime Minister Carney and his cabinet is engaging with China. Our ask is for the federal government to request to start negotiations on how we can work through this trade relationship with China.

From China's perspective, it's a counter-tariff on the steel, aluminum and electric cars. So that is going to have to be part of that conversation moving forward. So that is going to have to be part of that It's a counter tariff on the tariff on steel, aluminum, and electric cars. And so that is going to have to be part of that conversation moving forward. And the impacts on the Western Canadian agriculture industry, and largely from our perspective, the Saskatchewan canola industry, are pretty severe. We've worked hard and have attracted investment the last number of years to increase our value added oil production.

And to lose a market like China, which is a large market, one that we've worked hard to acquire is incredibly challenging for the pricing of that product. There's really three products there. There's seed, there's canola oil, and there's canola meal. And- Mr. Premier, do you feel like farmers have been sacrificed at the altar of an EV industry in Canada that is not actually performing very well? To some degree they have.

Yes. And yeah, that is my feeling in a voice that the secondary thing to this is we are being hurt by the there's a price reduction, I price reduction on canola today. It is still not at zero of course. We still do have market access to markets around the world because of our global presence and because of the effort we have made as a province for the last decade and a half

in ensuring we have those provincial relationships with countries outside of Canada around the world. and have introduced and worked alongside our exporting agri-food industries to ensure that they have solid and sound relationships as well. So the canola does flow to other markets and even sometimes it will flow into China from those other markets as well.

However, there is a price reduction that is in effect today. So farmers are being sacrificed at the farm gate for some of the policies that our federal government has made. And so for all the reason that we are, you know, a nation of Canada, they need to get to the table and that's our ask. Get to the table with China and work through this. Mr. Premier, I know that there's going to be a lot on the table to discuss on June 1st and 2nd at the first minister's conference that that Mark Carney will be in attendance at in your home province. I want to talk about his stated goal of eliminating

all interprovincial trade barriers, but the sacred cow that he says he's not going to touch is supply management of the dairy industry that really benefits Quebec and Ontario. And I wonder, can he truly find a national consensus if that is off the table? Well, like, the same would hold true, I think, when you look at building Canadian economies. You need to realize that it's the sum of its parts. It's 10 provinces and three territories. The same goes when it comes to interprovincial trade. And so everything has to be on the table. I would say the quickest way to make great strides in this space is to take the offer that the Western and

Northern Premiers offered last week coming out of Yellowknife was to expand the new west partnership to the other six provinces and to the three territories. The three territories over there were open to having a look at that. But we would ask the other six provinces to join as well.

It would be a great stride forward. It is the gold standard when it comes to free and fair trade between the four Western provinces. To expand it to the rest of Canada would be the easiest, the quickest and the most open trade that we have ever experienced in this nation.

Well, Mr. Scott Moe, Premier of Saskatchewan. I know that you've got a lot to prepare for because this summit is coming up in short order. So as the host, I wish you the very best. I hope that Saskatchewan puts its best foot forward and I hope that your concerns are heard and acted upon by this new Liberal government. Thank you very much for joining us today. I share all of your hopes and desires. Thank you for having me and wishing all your listeners a great week. All the best. All right. After the break, we're going to take a look at the travel industry, the airline industry in this country. Don't go anywhere. This is the Ben Mulroney show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. The 26th president of the

United States, Theodore Roosevelt used to famously say, speak softly and carry a big stick. It was big stick ideology where Donald Trump has his own big stick energy where he speaks very loudly and wields a huge stick in the form of tariffs. He's been able to scare the ever loving bejesus out of the global economy trying to get them to bend to his will with the threat of tariffing the heck out of the global economy, trying to get them to bend to his will with the threat of terrifying the heck out of anything that comes into his country. Well now there is he's got a huge setback because there's a court in New York made up

of three judges that said that's not your power to yield the wield. That's not yours. You've been abusing of that power and you've got 10 days to reverse course on most of the tariffs that you have been applying around the world. Unfortunately for Canada, the aluminum and steel are still gonna be tariffed, but 10 days from now, we could see the lifting of most of the tariffs that have been hampering our economy

and hampering our ability to do business across the border for far too long. So discuss this and the Canada Post situation as well. We're joined by Ian Lee, associate professor at Carleton University at the Sprott School of Business. Ian, thanks so much for being here. My pleasure, Ben. Thank you. Yes. So this is, this has been a tool in his toolkit. He was chomping at the bit to unleash tariffs on the world prior to coming into office. And now he's got some judges telling him, yeah, that's just not your power to wield. You're right. And this is, I think it's good news, the checks and balances that exist in the US and Canadian system.

A lot of people are dismissing these checks and balances. They've always been there. Courts, opposition leaders, media, protesters and so forth. So there's tons of checks and balances. This is one very powerful check and balance. I don't want to get too ahead of this because this was a trade court. It's a specialized court and they ruled that those tariffs imposed under one specific act, some emergency legislation, are invalid. He didn't justify or invoke that same act for all of us, but yes a good chunk of them. But the first thing is the White House has already said they're going to appeal this.

And so, yeah, but Ian, just to be clear for our listeners, he absolutely has the right to appeal. But in the interim, the terrorists have to come off within 10 days. If they apply, and I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is they can apply to a higher court for a stay of that order. So yet to be determined. I'm not certain he may go to a superior court and say, we want you to postpone that order to rescind the tariffs until it's been dejudicated by a higher court.

So they might disappear in 10 days or more likely they'll find a workaround. So this is so central to everything that Donald Trump wants to accomplish. The, the ability to, to declare tariffs and levy tariffs and threatened with tariffs. I don't know where he goes or what he does. I don't know what this administration does without that power. I don't think they've thought that that they, they wouldn't have the power. I agree because it's been at the centerpiece of everything that he has said and done, not only

just in the last 90 days. I mean you go all the way back to 2016 when he was elected the first time. Yeah. It was the centerpiece then. So he's a one-trick pony. Yeah. You know, he doesn't have another trick up his sleeve so to speak. And, there's no question that this is going to throw a big wrench into the machinery and it's really going to slow them down and make them rethink. People need to remember that traditionally the right to tariff, the ability to tariff, is the exclusive domain of Congress and it can be taken by the President under certain circumstances, most notably national emergencies. And, and in this case, we were told both the fentanyl cover that he claimed was a national emergency, as well as this

idea that a trade deficits unto themselves constitute a national emergency, don't hold water. Exactly. And this is, I mean, again, I just think this is wonderful news because there are checks and balances and it's not just, you know, people writing op-eds in the, you know, in the New York Times. There's protesters across the country. My sister is an American citizen living in Arizona. She says, it's not getting reported in the national media. She says there's a lot of protests out there in different cities about his terror. So, and then of course, there's apparently there's just court actions being launched left, right and center across the U S so one of them's going to stick sooner or later. One of them is going to stick. And what we could witness, if this,

if this judgment holds and it is, and he is told in no uncertain terms, and after he exhausts every legal recourse that there is no, you do not have this power, Mr. President. What that is going to do to the dynamic between leaders, our prime minister and this president, I think there is going to be a re-realignment because all of a sudden the force and the weight of his office is lessened in significant ways. Exactly. And which is going to ironically drive him back to a trade agreement, I believe, because a trade agreement is within his purvey.

It'll have to be ratified by Congress for sure. But he can propose a trade agreement with tariffs in it, whatever he can get Canada to agree to. I'm not saying I know what that is. But my point is a trade agreement at least is going to make it legal. It's going to codify it. And so he may, ironically, the man who's been famous for being so dismissive of trade agreements

may be forced back to a trade agreement because of the courts not allowing him to go to the tariff route. Yeah, we'll have to. This is a binary. I honestly didn't see this coming yesterday. Very glad it did. And the implications of this decision will be felt at Cananaskis in the next couple of

weeks when the leaders of the G7 unite for that meeting. But I want to turn our attention to Canada Post. You know, we went through that work stoppage at the end of last year. There was the threat of one just a few days ago. It did not come to pass. They are in a strike position, the workers, but they've chosen just to throttle back on overtime. And now Canada Post has offered what they say is their best and final offer to the employees of Canada Post. Tell me what you make of the offer. The offer is really it's not about wages. Yes, wages are on the table. Of course, they are they always are in any negotiation. But that's not the main show. That's not the that

that's a side show. The main show is are they going to restructure so they can deliver parcels on the weekends when a lot of the action of parcel delivery occurs and become competitive, which they're not now with private couriers and I do have the data I promise you. Okay. So they're trying to do is trying to do some incremental structural reforms. It won't be the total solution. They've still got to rely on the government to you know end the home delivery the 25% of Canadians to do because that's cost a half a billion more a year. They got to end the five day a week delivery to every

address in Canada because there's not enough mail, mile, volumes. But if they can, if the government can do that side and they, Canada post management can get W to agree to reforms on the, on the, on the parcel side on the weekends, then they will at least be still in the game. They, in other words, they're not out of the woods at all because they're losing money like crazy. They're still gonna have to get out of the game.

Yeah, $1.3 billion in operating losses last year. That's a heck of a nut. Yes, and just so everybody understands, within the end of this year, they've already said, Canada Post has said, we're gonna run out of the last bailout of a billion. They'll be back to the government to get a new, the government's not calling it a bailout,

but that's what it is. And they'll be back to pick government to get a new, the government's not calling it a bailout, but that's what it is. And they'll be back to pick up because they have no reserves left. They've said so in the report, the Audit Denny report, they said, we burned through all our cash reserves. So whatever loss they lose has to be picked up by Canada Post, by the government of Canada because they're the taxpayer, they're the owner of the post office. So we the taxpayers are going to be on the hook for funding this company until it gets, if it ever does get back to profitability.

And I get so many packages delivered to my home from Canada post. Why aren't they? And we only about a minute left. So if you can let me know in about a minute, why aren't they in your words, competitive with private industry? Cause I'm like I said, they're always at my house. Yeah. It's, it's partly the inflexibility. They have to pay time and a half, sometimes double time on the weekends. It's partly they are paid more than the private firms. But I think that can be dealt with. If you have higher productivity, you can pay workers more money. Yeah. But their problem is, is their code, their current structure is too rigid. Yeah. And in in parcel business,

you got to be much more dynamic and fluid and willing to change on a dime and the gigs are killing them because they're flexible they're innovative and Canada Post isn't so what they're trying to do is do some incremental structural reform through the collective agreement with the threat I think in the background of the government saying well we're gonna do something much worse to you if you guys don't get your act together so I think that's the threat link hanging over their head of both CupW and Canada Post. Get your act together because you may not like what the government of Canada will do to you if you can't

get your act together. Ian Lee, I really appreciate having you on for these two really important stories. I think the implications for both are we're going to go far and wide. So your insights were really important, at least for me. So thank you very much, my friend. Thanks very much, man. Thank you. You are listening to Ben Moran. You show him because of that. I say thank you. I say welcome. And I say, let's build this show together. Lots of stories with economic angles that are affecting so many Canadians for so many different reasons. So let's break a lot of them down now with what great friend of the show, somebody who really doesn't need a reason to give us his opinion, but I'm going to elicit it. In this next segment, please welcome to the show, Dr. Eric Kam, economics professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. Eric, thanks so much for joining us. Benedict, it is always an honour and good morning from Denver,

Colorado. I can, I can tell I can see the mountains in the background. I don't look like it looks like a very comfy, comfy hotel room. I hope I hope you're getting a good night's sleep. The hospitality is wonderful. And just for you, I made the bed. Okay, well, let's talk about that the the Canada Post putting forth its final offers to the union. And this is with the backdrop of them posting a $1.3 billion operating loss last year. This is the house is on fire.

And I don't know what to make of this. What's your take on the health and long term longevity of Canada Post? I can't believe the stupidity on both sides, Ben. First of all, on the part of the union, unless they're completely out to lunch or living under a rock, they know that their jobs, their livelihood are in jeopardy. And whoever runs Canada Post should really understand that by now this is a dead, not outdated, a dead business model. So you don't think that you don't think that there's a future for some version of Canada Post with a

smaller, a smaller footprint, a smaller workforce, paired back hours paired back delivery dates, you don't you don't think that there's a future for them somehow. I think if you were running them, and you had those ideas, then possibly, but the problem is, I see no flexibility and no nimbleness or willingness to change. Listen, there's two things that they're not responsible for. There is a massive decline in letter mail, and there is huge rising parcel competition. That's not their fault. But their high

operational costs are brutal. The customer experience is terrible. Government constraints on them, like most government constraints, are bad. And so if you wanted to present me with some model that shows that it could work with say weekly mail service or restricting mail service to northern communities that may not have Wi Fi like we do, maybe but as it stands right now, it is a it is a dead company walking. All right, let's let's move on to some data that just came out. You know, we heard a lot the especially Pierre Poliev and the conservatives for years. They were talking about choices that Canadians had to make. They had to pick be that

to pick between paying their rent or buying gas, feeding their kids or paying their mortgage. And now Equifax has said that 1.4 million Canadians missed credit card payments in the first quarter of 2025. So those choices are affecting people's credit rating at this point. People's credit rating and their livelihood. I mean, we've been saying for years, people really haven't been listening

that the average savings rate in Canada is zero. Yeah. And so this is a real forecast that the average savings rate is only going down, not up. And this is really a very bad foreshadow for what's coming next, Ben, because all that increasing debt levels in this country have done is they are going to positively predict bankruptcies, personal insolvencies, people who have to walk away from their homes. This is really, really bad. And this is, as we were talking last week, along with the unemployment rate,

if you look at the debt equity ratio just on houses, when those two statistics, when the bottom falls out of those two statistics, it doesn't matter if you think you're headed toward a recession, Ben, you're in a recession. Yeah. Now this is, this to me should be an alarm bell going off somewhere in Ottawa to let people like these, these are the bad indicators that proceed something worse.

Well, that's right. And that's why they're called leading variables. Because when we see these go poor, we know that everything's going poor. And this is just more and more mounting evidence, Ben. What does it take for the people in Ottawa to realize that a capitalist economy is only solvent when it grows? And our economy hasn't grown in years, not months, years. And yet they keep running like a football game, the same play over and over again, they drop interest rates that does nothing for housing affordability. That makes the debt crisis worse. That makes almost every crisis worse unless you're wealthy and you're borrowing money. But wealthy people

don't really have to worry at most times. So they keep coming up with one solution that makes the problems we have today worse. And I wish people would wake up and see what's going on. If there's one pet peeve I have about government is when they insist on calling every aspect of spending an investment and not every, not at not every time you spend money is an investment. However, CIBC is reporting that Mark Carney's defense spending plan is actually an investment. If it's done properly, it could have a knock on effect of up to $46 billion to the economy. What's your take? Well, you're right.

Consumption is not investment and investment is not consumption. And as we pointed out, the only growth in our economy has been playing around with the business cycle to make sure that spending stays at a significant level Due to interest rates, but that's not your question The question is is investing in the military going to stimulate an economy and the answer is like all spending It can yeah in the short run But it's if it's not followed by some growth then it's just going to do what all spending does and become inflationary some growth, then it's just going to do what all spending does and become inflationary in the long run.

So, you know, the PM can try to impress you with I'm going to spend here and I'm going to spend there. But, you know, the Prime Minister's spending is no different than a household spending. You can stimulate spending easily, right? Because the government has a Visa card or a MasterCard that doesn't have a credit limit. So they can spend and spend and spend. But is it going to do anything then increase the business cycle? No. And of course, it's going to increase the payments on the debt at the outer end. So a little bit like they tried to use immigration as a growth strategy

and it failed. If they're going to use military spending as a growth strategy, it's going to fail. Well, so long as I mean, it depends on what they want to invest in. I mean, if it's if all they're doing is going to say the UK or France to buy military equipment, then that's, that you're outlaying cash. But if the goal is to invest in building military procurement ability here in Canada, well, then there's all sorts of knock-on effects

that can come from that. Then there's the entire towns that could be built around something like that. So I do see a pathway for this to be sort of a new engine to an entire sector of the economy. But it depends on how they do it and how they pay for it. Well, you're right. And so what you're talking about in a broad stroke is saying, shouldn't we start to stimulate the supply side of our economy through efficiencies, through research and development, through investment spending

through foreign investment spending, and trying to increase levels of competition in our country to increase output per worker. So you're 1000% right, I agree. But is there a propensity to do that in Ottawa today? I've seen nothing over the last nine and a half years. And frankly, I don't expect anything else for the next nine and a half months, then Donald Trump has not had a very good couple of well, a day between this tariffs being told he doesn't have the power to levy tariffs. And then he was told that he has a new nickname or there's a new type of trade called taco trade that stands for Trump always chickens out. Let's listen.

Mr. President, Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the taco trade. They're saying Trump always chickens out on your tariff threats, and that's why markets are higher this week. What's your response to that? I kick out. Chicken out. Oh, and then I chicken out. I've never heard that. You mean because I reduced China from 145 percent that I set down to 100 and then down to another number and. I think that that was it's deliberately antagonistic of a man you probably don't want to antagonize, but is there truth in this nickname? Yeah, and I have to say, I don't know if he's making America

great again, as I sit here, but he sure is making comedy great again. Well, okay, so here's what's going on, which is, I don't care what anybody says, I don't believe that donald j trump is an idiot And I think he has also pretty smart people around him and he knows that what he did was put on a power play That he probably figured would gain him some economic and political capital Well, I don't know if it gained him political capital, but it didn't gain him economic capital because as any textbook will tell you, the more you increase tariffs, which are just a tax, it's gonna decrease your economic output.

So he either found out the hard way or he knew all along that what he was doing was gonna slow down his economy. So, you know, this is not the man you wanna pee off Ben, so I don't like to throw titles at him, but I think what he's done is updated his economic expectations, and he has said, I better go back to the playbook because this isn't working. And even, even my most safe market, my bond market is tanking. So I'd like to think that

he just woke up and said, you know what? Play A didn't work. Let's go to plan B. All right, my friend, listen, I appreciate it. Have a great time out West. Enjoy the fresh Colorado air. We'll talk to you soon. Everybody here sends their love, Ben. Stay healthy. Thank you, my friend. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show

and thank you so much for joining us. Healthcare in this country is a cherished right. It is a cherished institution, so much so that it's, poll after poll after poll suggests that this government program is viewed by so many of us as something that defines us as a country. And so we spend a lot of time particular attention on the ills that are facing our health care systems across this country. And one of the hardest things to do these days is to

find a family doctor. And so when I hear that nearly 40% of the 6300 family doctors who entered the physician workforce in Ontario have devoted their careers to something other than office based cradle to grave comprehensive primary care, I was like, ah, therein lies one of the problems. So talk about that. And much more a great friend of the show and a great friend of mine is Dr. Nadia Allam. She's a family doctor and past president of the Ontario Medical Association doc

welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Ben. Okay, so so these numbers are in the Globe and Mail today. What do they mean to you? It confirms everything that my colleagues and I have been saying on the front lines for a very like for years and I'm talking about years so pre-pandemic we started my colleagues and I started noticing that more and more family doctors knew grass were choosing to go into these focused practices where

they're they're sub-specializing in something as opposed to doing what I do, which is taking care of people from birth to death. Yeah. Right. So comprehensive care. And we started talking about it, but it's, this is the first time I've seen data to prove it. Yeah. Yeah. We've been able, you've been, you've been seeing it with your eyes and anecdotally, you knew it to be true. And now it's being confirmed by the data. Is it because of the flexibility and perhaps a higher pay that, you know, the schedule allows them to be in more control of their, their, their schedules and make more money? Is that why they would be making this choice? That's part of it. Family doctors have for a couple of decades now been slowly seeing reductions in their take-home pay. And that's partly because they run small

businesses, which is challenging. We're not trained in running a small business. We're trained in medicine and the costs of business going up. But part of it is also that we're just not paid as much as we used to in terms of proportion. A lot of it though, I think has to do with the burden of paperwork and the burden of trying to use electronic medical records that are not user friendly. Yeah. You and I have talked about this a lot. There are solutions on the horizon, probably not just on the horizon, but in market right

now that could help reduce that burden, that time on paperwork versus time with patients. Correct. Yeah. And that's what I'm hopeful for. We've got artificial intelligence scribes that some family doctors swear by because they find it really helps them take off one administrative task off their list, right off their shoulders. Yeah. But doc, wouldn't it, I mean, you got to get these, you got to get these doctors early. Like once they specialize, that's it. As they say, here's another line I use all the time. The game is up. Yeah. Yeah. So you're right. You're right. When they come out of training, it's a bit of a culture shock, right? Because they come into the real world where they may not be part of a family health team. They may not have

nurses. They may have to pay for nurses to be in their office. All of a sudden they realize the cost of leasing, the work that goes into maintaining an office, the cost of buying medical equipment. Oh my goodness. And then the reality of your paperwork following you everywhere. I had a family doc who retired and the first thing he said to me that he noticed was he could sleep three more hours a night because he wasn't up at night thinking about, Oh, did I do this for that patient? Did I do that for that patient? Of course, because it's evidently been, you end up loving your patients. Like you're really, yeah, doc, how much of it? Yes, the paperwork is the burden. Uh, and, and, and that needs to be addressed. There are some tools with AI. How much of that could, how much of it is superfluous on its face? Meaning how much of it is bureaucratic busy work that has been added just because over the course of years and years and years? Like is there, could

somebody come in there and do some sort of forensic analysis of the paperwork that is required of a family doctrine and say, you know what, 25% of this doesn't need to happen, but it's there because somebody decided to just add one more form to the pile and then another person added another form. And next thing you know, it's a whole extra hour of work a day that just doesn't need to be there. Oh my God. You read my mind. I wish someone would, I wish someone would come in and some of it. I already know. I know that some of these disability forms need to be filled out by physicians, but some of these insurance forms do not need to be filled out by a physician. Some of these other forms can be filled out by the patients themselves because they know

a lot of their health history or they could just ask me, I am their health record custodian. The information belongs to them. If they want the information, I just email it to them. Yeah. Yeah. In a secure server. But it's just seeing some of these forms come again and again and again. It's frustrating.

It's frustrating because nothing's changed with the patient. Yeah. But you have to spill it all out again. All right. Let's, let's, let's switch topics for a moment because there's a, there's a headline that I'd love to get your take on. When I read the headline that says almost 70% of Canadians surveyed want child vaccines to be mandatory. So a couple of things. One, I'd love to know what you think of that number. It does that impress you or does that worry you? And two, how come they're not mandatory?

All right. So first, I actually thought the number would be higher. I really did. I'm glad it's 70%, I'm glad it's the majority, but I thought it would be close to 80 to 90%. And that's partly because of how you hear about kids not only getting sick from vaccine preventable illnesses, but dying from those illnesses, which is horrifying because it is entirely preventable illnesses, but dying from those illnesses, which is horrifying because

it is entirely preventable. Um, I, I understand that parents are trying to make the best decisions possible and there's so much information, misinformation, disinformation out there that it's no wonder they're confused about what is the best option for their kids. I mean, yeah. Cause I can't remember. Uh, I can't remember when my, I remember when my kids were born and I remember that they got their, their childhood vaccines, but I don't, I don't remember being given a choice. Like to walk me through the process.

When a child is born in a hospital, the doctors come to them or the nurses come to them and say what? So when a child is born, we only keep them about 24 to 48 hours. So we do the absolute necessity of what we need to do to make sure they've begun their life in a safe way. And then we bump them to the family doctor

or the nurse practitioner. And then at that point, we start taking care of them, making sure they're gaining weight, meeting all the developmental milestones. But we also start talking about vaccines, which start at age two months. What I'm noticing more and more now is there's a certain amount of vaccine hesitancy that you're seeing. People are saying, I need to take a beat. I need to think about this. I need to research it. Oh boy, I gotta do my own research. Those are my favorite people.

Hey doc, we gotta leave it there, but great talking to you again and look forward to talking to you again in the future. Thank you so much, Ben. Have a great day. You know, we're living in a time where I believe there's a crisis in confidence of those people that we used to trust implicitly, you know, we're living in a time where I believe there's a crisis in confidence of those people

that we used to trust implicitly, you know, and we've witnessed the byproduct of that in really interesting ways. I've seen now, you know, the rise of the of the stand up comedian slash expert slash podcaster has replaced a lot of those voices that we used to trust. And our next guest sort of breaks that down and asks, you know, what role do elites, should elites play in society? So please welcome to the show, Anthony Kosh,

a good friend of the show and, well, welcome Anthony. Thanks for having me on, Ben. Yeah, so you wrote in the National Post, anti elitism is antithetical to the conservative tradition. What's what's the takeaway from your column, your opinion piece? Here's basically the point and you addressed a little bit over the course of the last decade and a half, even two decades, what we've seen over the course of multi across multiple societies and what we

can call Western civilization, the failure of elites, okay, across a number of issues, whether it was, for example, lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or some of the handling of the COVID crisis, whether that be on the financial side, the great financial crisis in 2008. The point is all these people like you said, that Joelo shmo, people like me and you used to tune into our televisions, radio sets, the newspapers and trust implicitly because they were the people that had a hand in things. They were the people who knew what was going on and they could tell me what to expect. They were wrong about a whole bunch of stuff.

And the problem is as a result of that, as a result of what I think is two pronged, one legitimate failures and two, I think overconfidence on behalf of elites. It's okay to say when you don't have a hundred percent sure bet on something, but oftentimes people feel like they have to speak as if they do. So what's happened is you got a backlash going on right now and it's not just against specific individuals, it's against the entire idea of expertise and elites in general. Basically what I'm saying is every society ever

in history has had hierarchies, every organization, every business, every community, hierarchy is necessary. It's good in most circumstances. The problem is not with hierarchy or elites in general. It's more to do with the specificity of the fact that the ones that we have right now have failed and we need to replace them. Well, and I'm glad that you're the one who wrote this because I think I think

conservatives and the conservative movement writ large is unfairly tarred with the brush of being anti intellectual populist and therefore rejecting of of of that that high degree of a special specialization and information. And you're saying that's not the case. It's not, to be conservative doesn't mean you reject elites. It's just a rejection of sort of the ones that have failed us.

Correct, and also a recognition that we probably live in a society today with over-credentialization. So it's about prioritizing hierarchies of competence. It's not just because you have a name, a letter next to your name. Sometimes the letter next to your name is indicative of some competency, but it's not automatic. And that sort of placeholder that we fit in for a lot of people, or we jump the gun because so-and- so went to so-and-so's school, that they must be a genius who knows everything

about everything, and then maybe another person who did and doesn't know anything. That's not the way we have to approach this thing. It's about, of course, there's some people who know more and a lot more in many instances about specific important topics than regular people that you find off of the street. And those people should be given influence

and the ability to influence positions, public policy or whatever on those specific topics. But at the same time, we also have to have, in order to be able to get back to that sort of place, a recognition that the sort of automatic trust that's been placed in a lot of people over the course of the last two decades, people rightfully, it's not some sort of distortion, rightfully feel frustrated by the fact that that trust was misplaced in many circumstances, and they were forced to face circumstances that they themselves were told were not supposed to come to pass. Right. So people are upset, they're feeling frustrated, there's a bit of a backlash and a lashing out at the system in general going on. Some of it's fair, some of it's probably torqued a bit. But my point is basically

just to say the problem is not with hierarchy in general, without the fact that we need greater accountability, right? To whom much is given much is demanded in return. That's a good thing. It's a good principle to have for society in many respects in terms of responsibility. We just got to home the message a little bit, make sure that we're focusing on the right problem. But, but Andy, why are we living in a time where it does seem because you lay out some pretty compelling examples. And when you hear them, my God, yet we have been failed by the people that we used to trust implicitly.

How did that happen? How did so many people on so many key files at different times in different sectors all collectively drop the ball? It's a great question. If I have a concrete answer for you, I'd probably, you know, be making a lot more money than I have. But I think what it really comes down to, it's a couple of things. I think there's a problem in our society in the sense that there's a tendency towards

elite consensus. Okay. So you often saw this was during COVID, this is during economic crises, whatever. And it's fine. I understand that sometimes in crises, you want to have a sort of party line in quotation marks because you want to make sure that if you need people to follow certain rules in a quick period of time, sometimes that could be. But the point is the silencing of dissenting voices and not regular random joblo schmo. I'm talking about actual people who are experts

in their own rights, but dissented with, let's say the majoritarian position. But I also think we have to recognize, we live in a world that is changing faster than ever before. There are more variables to account for than ever before. And in doing so, a lot of people who have expertise are also failing to recognize their own limitations in many respects, in terms of predicting certain things, transpiring, whatever.

And like I said, I also think a lot would go a long way. If for example, during COVID when new policies were coming out, there would have been a bit more honesty. Oh yeah. How certain, about how certain people were about certain things being a silver bullet or working out or whatever. I actually am one of those people and you see this all the time in politics. When people are honest. Yeah. And they recognize their own limitations and say, Hey guys, we don't actually know if this is 100%. There's a lot of uncertainty. The situation is in flux. It's impossible for me to give you

guys 100% certainty on these specific things. I remember being on TV and being that guy who, who was, you know, I got I, I, I got myself vaccinated. I wanted my kids to be vaccinated. I believe that that was the safest path to getting through it. And I was the guy who went on TV and said, the first, uh, the first shot is the best shot, whichever one's offered to you, you should take and stop this shopping around for vaccines, nonsense, go get your shot, go get your shot. And then, uh, once I said that that, and I got that lesser one, I can't remember

what it was called, but once I did that, then I find out that the government turns around and says, Oh, and now we're going to, you know, we're going to, because they were the ones pushing that idea. And then they did an about face saying, well, if you got that weaker one, then we're going to allow you to pair it with a stronger one. It's like, well, that's not the line that you told me as a media person. I was supposed to go out there and share. And now I feel like an idiot. Exactly. And then in the early days, don't go buy masks. They don't do anything. We need to leave them for medical professional. And then it was no,

actually masks are great. You need them at all these sort of jobs, right? We had some rest or some facilities that were remaining open, but playgrounds were closed and then they were, it was convoluted. It was clear that things didn't make all that much sense. And if I maintain this and I always will, if there would have just been a little bit more honesty in the, in the ability of just saying, listen, there's a lot of stuff that's in flux. We don't have all the answers all the time. We're doing the best that we can to be better. But I think that need by so many in elite circles to always give definitive concrete answers and say, this is the truth. And anybody who has any doubts or asks any questions is automatically some neanderthal.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. You know, you weren't trusting the science. You weren't trusting the science. It's like, well, it's more art than science, at least in the beginning. And you're absolutely right. And because it was such a moment of global importance, the fact that we had this absolute certainty that you're supposed to believe it slavishly to your own detriment, and then to be told, ah, you know, in retrospect, we didn't completely get it right. I think that's probably the most, the biggest contributing factor to that cynicism that we have today. But Anthony Kosh, I want to thank you for writing this. It's a great conversation.

I really appreciate it. I know we're going to have you back on the show soon. Thank you so much. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And there's an old adage that if you want to know the values and the priorities of a government, just look at their budget. And I would say just look at their spending. And fortunately, we have our next guest is here to give us

a peek through the keyhole of what the values of this new untested, in a lot of ways unknown government under Mark Carney is all about. Because as I've said many times, I don't believe that Mark Carney was properly and totally vetted during the election campaign or during the leadership campaign. And he can be very vague in terms of what his policies are.

We've got these grand notions of building an energy superpower. But beyond that, I've heard some words. But until I see some action, I'm not in the jury's out. The jury's out. So here to to talk about those those priorities and what this government is all about. We're joined by John Iveson, political journalist with the National Post. Thank you so much for being here, John. Hi, Ben.

So, yeah, so you've broken it down. There are some real spending concerns that could be coming down the pike, and we could get a sense of what this government truly values based on what they want to spend their money on. Our money on, I should say. Right, right. I mean, I think... So what we're talking about are the main estimates.

Yeah. They're not the main estimates. They come out every year. They are essentially what the government wants Parliament to approve as far as spending goes. So they give you a sense of what the government is going to spend. They're not the last word in the what the government is going to spend. They're not the last word in the picture because that is really the budget. But as folks will know, the budget is didn't come out in the spring as it normally does. And it's not due to come

out the first carny, but it will come out sometime in late fall. And John, before you go on, is this normal to have these main estimates come out and ask parliament to vote on spending without actually seeing a budget? Well, the budget and the main estimates are kind of related, but they're not the same thing. Yeah. And they're slightly disconnected and they're very confusing for people

because they have different accounting methods. But the budget is really the last word in what the government wants to do. very confusing for people because they have different accounting methods and but but the budget is really the last word and what the government wants to do. The main estimates are then followed by even more confusingly supplementary estimates which are responses to to events over the course of the year. So the main estimates are only a partial picture. But what I think is interesting in this is that the first real concrete evidence of what the government intends to do, you know, the party platform came out during the election, but you know, that's not written under oath.

Right. Yeah. They don't actually have to do anything that they say they're going to do in the party platform. And voters are, you know, justifiably skeptical about platforms. Yeah. But this is actual dollars being put next to government plans for each department. I mean, 130 organizations.

So Mark Carney promised to be a different kind of leader than Justin Trudeau, and Justin Trudeau was the type of leader that didn't. I mean, there was no rat hole that he wasn't willing to throw money down. Right. And so by saying that he was going to be a different leader, implicit in that is that he was going to be a more restrained spender. Is that what these numbers are saying?

Yeah, well, he said that explicitly. He said in the campaign that the previous government spent too much and invested too little, and that operational spending was rising at 9% per year over the course of the Trudeau government. He said we will limit that to 2 per cent. But that's not what these numbers show. And in fact what the numbers show, the main estimates suggest a 7.75 per cent increase in the money that the government will spend this year. The total amount is $486.9 billion

across the fiscal year, across all departments. So that's all spending. That includes transfers to people in the form of old age security and guaranteed income supplement, includes transfers to governments, such as the Canada Health Transfer and the Social Transfer. Let me say, if I got this straight. So he, Mark Carney and the liberals got elected on a promise of reducing that the rate of spending to 2%. And but these numbers are suggesting it's going to be north of 7%. Right now complicated further by the fact that

Carney, if you remember, divided the budget up into operational spending and capital investment. And he said that the operational spending side would be capped at 2% and that budget would be balanced within three years. Now, it's now and impossible to separate the capital spending and the operational spending in the main estimates because it's all mixed in. But there is no sign of restraint in this document. Almost $500 billion in spending set feels like a lot of money to me. Right. And talking to people who know this stuff, we're looking at it inside government. They're kind of surprised that there are no signs of restraint and they suggest that it'd be very, very hard to meet that balanced budget within three years at the spending levels. I mean, you only have to look at each

department. I kind of did a rough count of the 130 departments. There were something like 60 plus departments that are seeing major increases in budget over the course of this year. And there were only about 14 that were seeing budget cuts. The biggest indicator to me was the fact that if you look at all 130 departments and their spending plans on consultants, which if you remember is a big, Yeah, yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah. Was it 20 target for a lot of people? Was it $26 billion? What are all the bureaucrats for if not to do the job that we're now

outsourcing to consultants? Right? I mean, you could understand the rise in consultancy costs. If the size of the bureaucracy was shrinking, yeah, but the size of the bureaucracy ballooned under the Trudeau government. And so did the amount of money they're spending on consultants. So you would have thought that like as a first indicator what the government would what the Carney government would do would say right we're going to take a hammer and sickle to the to the number of

consultants being employed. Yeah. So I mean to give the government it's due the new government is due it would not it has not had time to do a route and branch line by line spending review. But at the same time, the government has put in this document under its name as if it endorses these plans. It had to break out in estimates. The government, the parliament has to vote on this stuff to keep the machinery of government moving.

Right. But it really surprised me that there were no signs that the bureaucracy or that the new government had taken on board the message, which currently was quite explicit at sending during the campaign. Is there anything in this document that you would view as a positive development in the form of a decision that's being made that is different, that is a departure from the Trudeau years? Well, nothing from a taxpayer

point of view. Yeah. And you can hear terms white or whiter in my case. But from the bureaucracy's point of view, they're probably delighted. They've apparently been given part blanche to keep spending, which I think makes the budget in the fall doubly interesting because it surely has to signal that. I mean, in one of his mandate letter, Carney said that this will be a fundamentally different approach to government. But this looks to me to be a business as usual spending plan. So the budget, when it comes, has to be dramatically different. We can see already in this document that there's more spending on defense.

It goes up from, I think, 30 billion to 35 billion. But That doesn't get us to the 2 percent that NATO demands or even the five percent that apparently is on the table moving forward. Right. And currently it was quite explicit this week, as was David McGinty, the new defense minister in a speech yesterday, that more is coming. More is coming. So really quickly, only about a minute left, John,

but what's the procedure that happens now? Does this have to be tabled and it gets voted on? Yeah, this is something that goes before parliament and is approved. So presumably all the liberals and at least three or four other MPs are gonna have to vote for this spending plan going forward before presumably is disowned at some point later in the year.

Is it picked apart in committee or in the Senate? Is there any sort of check on this? Well, normally it would go before committees, but we're not at that stage yet. Committees haven't been formed and it's not quite clear to me how this will. Isn't that convenient? At some point it needs to get waved through by parliament. Yeah. Presumably even go before committees are formed. All right, John. Hey, thank you so much for highlighting this. This is a really important piece of information as we get to know this new government. Great. Thanks, Ben.

Thanks for listening to the Ben Mulroney Show podcast. We're live every day nationwide on the Chorus Radio Network, and you can listen online to the Radio Canada player and the I Heart Radio Great, thanks Ben. The My Choice sales event is back at Nissan and the choice is yours. Choose our best-selling Rogue, always ready for adventure. Or the Dynamic Sentra, packed with safety features. Or the all-new, boldly redesigned Kicks. And now during My Choice, you can choose up to $1,500 in Nissan bonus or accessory credit. Or choose three-year prepaid maintenance. Hurry into your local Nissan dealer today. $1,500 applies to Sentra and select rogue models when leasing or financing

through NCF. Conditions apply. See Nissan.ca for details.