The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 3 - Stephen Lecce, Emerson Csorba, Dr. Eric Kam

Episode Date: April 26, 2025

Best of the Week Part 3 - Stephen Lecce, Emerson Csorba, Dr. Eric Kam Guests: Emerson Csorba, Dr. Eric Kam, Nathan Radke, Dave Snow, Stephen Lecce If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit pcfinancial.ca for details. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show Best of the Week podcast. We had so many great discussions this week, including someone who worked on Mark Carney's leadership campaign, plus an economist to break down both liberal and conservative platforms. Enjoy. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And earlier during the show, we played a clip of Mark Carney saying, trying to explain to a journalist how different his

government would be from the previous government. He said, it's a completely different government, completely different. And I take issue with that. I take issue with that because from my perspective, on the outside looking in, I see a lot of the same people lining up behind Mark Carney. I see the same cabinet. I see a lot of the same candidates. And by my personal estimation, it feels like the people behind the scenes are very much the people who were pulling the strings during the 10 years of Justin Trudeau. So changing the guy at the top, yes, it's a change, but it's not it's not the meaningful change that everybody thinks. Again, that's from the outside looking in.

I'm very glad to welcome somebody who's been on the inside of the tent who can tell us his assessment of the situation. Please welcome to the show Emerson Sorba, business executive, previously working in geopolitics and he's the author of an article that we're going to be discussing called The Emperor Has No Team. Welcome to the show, Emerson. Welcome back to the show, I should say, because you've been on the Ben Mulroney show before, but not with Ben Mulroney as host.

Exactly. Well, great to be back on. I think you were caught in a snowstorm. Yes, indeed. It was two months ago, which feels like a very long time ago. And I was in- Minus 20, terrible. I was in Montreal, but that's apparently

where you're based as well. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So born and raised in Alberta in Montreal now and spent the last 10 years or so in England. And I've been back for two and a half months and got back right for that first snowstorm. So your experience with regard to the introduction of Mark Carney to Canadian politics and being brought into into the tent so to speak is I think really insightful why don't you tell us a little bit about your experience great so first I I cross paths with the carnies over the course of a decade in the UK especially Mark's time at the

Bank of England and like Mark I did a PhD at Oxford and worked in geopolitics and renewables and I've always respected Mark. He's a great Canadian and he has an impressive career. And when I got back two months ago, I was asked to help during, uh, on, on policy during the leadership phase. And over the course of about four weeks, I helped drive the development of a lot of the platform that's now public, uh, things like the CBC, how do you Canada policy, uh, they're creating one Canadian

economy, internal trade policy, I co authored the foreign policy platform, and a lot of a large portion of what's in the campaign today stems from that work. So that was my brief experience, being a non liberal part of that leadership team. But you know your brief time, and I've got to ask, why was it brief? Well, it was brief. One, because my focus was trying to bring the liberals back towards the center with a more pragmatic policy, which I think Canadians understand we need. After 10 years of Trudeau,

we need more pragmatism in politics in general. So that was one reason for it being brief is this is a short-term opportunity. The other piece, and this is the more important piece, is because I realized during this period that unfortunately the team that is behind Mark is the Trudeau team. There's no difference. And that's what I was sort of alluding to from my perspective from the outside. You're saying on the inside that's exactly the assessment.

Exactly. And so all the things that you would expect and Canadians would expect whether you're living in you know BC or Ontario or Quebec, things like a lack of detail, a lack of rigor, a lack of urgency, the work ethic just not being there, a focus on vibes rather than sound analysis. These were these are all things that are a part of the current carny team, unfortunately, which is that the Trudeau team, the carny team is is the Trudeau team. But Emerson, how do you how, how do you square the circle? I take you at your word that he is the

the current liberal leader is a is a thoughtful, intelligent man of strong principle. How do you how do you how does that make any sense to you that somebody who comes with his own vision and his own version of what he wants to do with the future that he would simply allow a team that's been there for 10 years to remain intact? I think the honest answer is because it's the easy way in. It's the easiest to get into power. The Trudeau people are the people who run the party

and they have certain agendas and Mark helps to serve their agenda to extend the Trudeau policy from the last 10 years. But you've known him, so you know him to be somebody who probably is more of a centrist, correct? And so, yeah. I think, yes. No centrist, correct? And so, yeah. I think, yes. No, go on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has centrist instincts, certainly, but I think in this case, we have seen, unfortunately, power come before principle. And what is the principle that you would like to have seen from him translated into policy? Well, when you saw the platform come out, what is it, what would you have rather seen? A big focus on energy security. That's a key one, pipelines as a key example. We're facing a geopolitical crisis

and we need to improve our energy security. That is a key element. And that would be one example. And then the second- Oh, go on. Yeah, go on. I want to hear the second one. And then the second one would be bringing more eclectic and independent voices into the team

because personnel is also policy. So, you know, you have to keep some people from the Trudeau era because that is the current party, that is unavoidable. But if you are an outsider candidate and are gonna be a person who's focused on change, which Canadians certainly want, whatever the government, we want change,

you need to diversify the team. And that can't just be candidates. And that just wasn't there. Emerson, a lot of us are scratching our heads because we're having this moment, you know, Mark Carney is telling us incessantly that we are in a crisis. And and it's the worst crisis ever. I challenge that. And I would say that the COVID crisis was worse than, you know, a Donald Trump induced crisis,

but it is what it is. We're living in a time where because of that, there's this galvanizing effect. There's this, we're having this moment where a lot of people are singing from the same hymn book in a way we haven't before, specifically as it relates to energy independence and our need for pipelines. And yet you would think it would be a layup

for this liberal government to give a full-throated endorsement of a national unity project such as pipelines, and yet, we're getting a lot of hedging, we're getting a lot of saying one thing in one part of the country and something different in another, something in English, something in French. Do you attribute that to the ideology of, of the the institutional ideology of the people who are running the party?

I think some of that, certainly. So on the energy security front, as you say, that is a layup. And that is something, if we're serious as Canadians about geopolitical independence, about sovereignty, that's something that we're gonna focus on. But the issue is that a lot of the Trudeau people are still pretty strong on

the climate agenda. And climate is obviously very important. I worked in the, in the renewable space previously, but those people are going to be pretty partisan, pretty purist on those points. And that's going to make it really difficult for Mark, even if Mark, you know, wants a more pragmatic approach. But again, it comes back to the team point is the team matters more than policy

because the team is the team that is advising the prime minister. That is, you know, effectively running the show on a daily basis, writing the policy, et cetera, et cetera. And if that team doesn't change, then that's gonna put the prime minister in a very challenging spot. And that I think is what Canadians need to really be considering over this next week.

If they're undecided, and if they're insane, Ontario or Quebec as key, key, key parts of the country for this vote is who are you voting is is what team are you voting for? The question shouldn't be, are you voting for Mark or are you voting for Pierre? It should be, are you voting for the team or are you voting for the Kuliev team or the Carney team? And I can tell you without question, a vote unfortunately for Mark Carney, despite his great career, is a vote for Team Trudeau.

And I've got it. And in about 30 seconds, have you given any thought to the type of government that we would have under Mark Carney? Were he to win a majority versus a minority? If it's a well, yeah, definitely. If it's a minority, there might be more focus on balance. because the result isn't what the liberals are probably expecting. So there'd be some change. If it's a majority government, it is going to be a full-fledged team Trudeau government,

unfortunately. And it's gonna be the same focus on the last, you know, 10 years cost of living crisis, one of the least competitive economies in the developed world and a damaged international reputation. I can guarantee you, that will be the problem. Emerson Zorba, thank you so much. Your insights, I think, invaluable, and I hope a lot of people heard them. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Well, look, when a party leader puts out their costed platform, they have to field questions, and they have to be... It's a trial by fire. They are going to be asked every question under the sun about the cost, about the policies, and you have to be prepared to take those questions because that is how you gain social acceptance. Mark Carney was asked about his platform and well, this is what he had to say. So Trevor Toome is wrong in your opinion. Yes, I have more experience than he does. And it's important to state that I'd like to follow up on that. Just if you've got an economist like Trevor Toome saying that your plan is unsustainable.

I mean, it's just that is there an argument that if Pierre Poliev is trying to bring down, bring down spending, bring down the deficit that his plan is more fiscally responsible than yours okay there's one thing that you can write on a paper there's another thing that will happen in the economy our plan to be clear is focused on investment in growing this economy

all of the spending all of the investment in years three and four are for growing this economy. All of the spending, all of the investment in years three and four are for growing the economy. Oh boy, Mark Carney is the smartest guy in Canada and I know it's true because he tells us almost every day. I mean he said it twice there in different ways but my goodness he does not like being criticized. But he's right. He's an economist. I'm not an economist. So I brought an economist on so we can talk about it. Dr. Eric Kam from Toronto Metropolitan University.

Welcome, sir. Thank you for being here. Benedict, thank you very much. And I'm just glad that I can pave the way for a superstar like Wendell Clark. Okay. So in that clip, there was a reference to a gentleman by the name of Trevor Toome. Who's Trevor Toome? Trevor Toome is a macro economist who's at the University of Calgary. He does a lot of work both

in the university, outside of the university. He does consulting work and he's a very intelligent economist. Now like every economist I agree with some things he says and sometimes I don't but I don't agree with anybody 100% of the time, not even my wife. But let me tell you if you wanted to ask me who knows more right now about the functioning Canadian economy, would it be Dr. Toome or Dr. Carney, I would take Trevor Toome every day of the week. What is Trevor Toome's criticism of the liberal platform? His criticism is simple. His criticism is that they're lying. His criticism is that why don't you come out and admit that it's a complete platform shift. You came out earlier, this is the same party, and you said that we were going to reduce

the debt to GDP ratio and limit deficits to below 1% of GDP. They've thrown that in the ocean, right? Deficits are going to skyrocket way above 1% and the debt to GDP ratio, that's going to rise from 42% to God knows what. The fiscal anchors, right? That's the expression that we used to hear. Well, fiscal anchors is a cute expression, but the liberals have no idea what it means, because if you just look at what they're going to do, this is nothing more than tax and spend and of course bloat the deficit. And there's a lot of economists out there that believe the deficit doesn't matter.

I'm not one of them, because if nothing else, even if you never pay back the principal, it's like your credit card. You've got to pay back the interest and interest costs are going to rise and rise. High debt levels, Ben, just mean that interest payments could hit around 70 to 75 billion by the time we get to 20, 28 or 15 cents per tax dollar. How does an economy ever want to dig out of a hole when it just keeps building a deeper hole? Well, tell me if I'm understanding this correctly, that the sort of the the reason that the engine

of this platform is government spending to spur private sector spending. Is that true? Is that what they're trying to do? Or they say they want to do? That's what they're trying to sell you. But as you and I have said pretty much on Thursdays for about a year now, spending is fine. Consumption is one thing and it will stabilize the short-run business cycle, but it does

nothing in terms of economic growth. What you've got to do is spur on productivity. We call it supply-side growth if you really want to increase the ability of the economy to produce more goods and services. And these are very questionable assumptions. I've read this liberal thing and he keeps coming back to $13 billion in productivity gains. He's very that's very proud. It's in there two or three times. Never does he say where that's going to come from. Where are these productivity gains going to come from? I've heard for nine and a half years they were going to start increasing productivity. Hasn't happened yet. So why does anybody think the same group of architects is going to bring it in now? They're kidding themselves.

Well, because Mark Carney is the smartest economist. He just told us. Come on, Eric. Come on. Well, I know one thing. I'm not the smartest economist, but I know someone when they're full of baloney and Mark Carney is trying to sell people a bill of goods. You know, I went through the liberals and I went through the conservatives and I went

through and I looked at it and you know what? At least the conservatives, at least they are not lying to us. They say balance budget. We're not going to balance the budget, right? We're going to cut $70 billion in tax reductions, bring in $34 billion of new spending. You don't have to be able to add. You just have to be able to subtract. Well, we're going to we're going to talk about the conservative plan in just a minute.

I want you to drill down on a number of points for us. But before we do, let's hear what Mark Carney had to say about Pierre Poliev's numbers. Our tax cut compared to his plan, I'll give you one number, is four times larger this year. Is four times larger. These numbers are a joke. We aren't in a joke. We are in the worst crisis of our lives. It takes a serious government. It takes a serious plan. It takes a plan that delivers today. It takes a plan that delivers investment. It takes a plan that grows this economy,

stands up to Trump, and moves forward with the brilliance of the workers here and across Quebec and across Canada. Eric, real quick, is this crisis that was brought on by Donald Trump bigger? Is it greater than the pandemic that we just came through? It could potentially be if it went to the maximum and he brought in the 25% on everything

and it lasted for years. But I think now we already see Trump is starting to waffle and that probably isn't the reality anymore. I think the biggest crisis would be another liberal government. I really do. I don't understand how people can look at nine and a half years as direct hard evidence and say,

I see enough to give them another four or five years. Ben, I just don't understand it. Well, we've talked about the liberal platform a little bit. Let's drill down into the most recent platform that was unveiled, the conservative platform. So $110 billion in new measures, and it projects $31 billion in deficit. Essentially over four years, they're going to have that deficit. What do you make of that? billion dollars in new measures and it projects 31 billion dollars in deficit essentially over

four years they're going to have that that deficit what do you what do you make of that i think that's being honest i think we have sold out i mean since the pandemic and the massive monetization in the pandemic i think we know that as a nation we are going to be a deficit nation for a very long time you can kiss surpluses goodbye there's positives and negatives to being that type of uh an economy it does help our multiplier effects. And one thing I did like about their plan, as we said, 70 billion in tax reductions, 34 billion in new spending. I don't like the referendum thing because as you said, why do we need more inefficiency in government? But at least he's got numbers that add up.

They're not fiction. He's looking at deficit productions that they at least dropped to 15 billion by 2029. He says we're gonna make some money off retaliatory tariffs. 72 billion in new revenue. That's basically carbon taxes that have been dropped but transferred to EV mandates. At least it's a plan. It's a plan that makes sense and to me as an economist there's causality. Even I know quickly when he wants to reduce foreign aid and reduce federal consulting and streamline the public service. These are moves to decrease spending and I see nowhere in the liberal plan to decrease spending

anywhere. As I said you're taking a hole and you're digging it deeper Ben. Any question marks on the conservative platform? I don't have any question marks I think it's actually well-costed. I've seen two or three different accounting firms that said we stand by this so it makes sense to me. And at least it's not pie in the sky. Mr. Poliev is saying we are going to be in deficits. I can't fix them overnight, but maybe I can stimulate the economy and the liberals can't. And he's right. Yeah, I'm looking at those deficit numbers and what it shows me is he's saying, look, this is a big problem that we have. It's a structural problem. It's going to take a long time.

But I want you to see that over, over four years, if you stick with us, we will get that down to a more manageable number with more to come in the future. I think it's a way of signaling it's a priority without saying we're going to burn the village down in order to save it. It's a really salient point is that there's two types of problems in the economy. There's frictional and there's structural. And Mr. Poliev is saying we have structural issues we have to deal with. Mr. Carney is saying no we have frictional issues that go away over

time and you know where that's gotten us for the last nine and a half years Ben. Well Dr. Eric Kam, this is a so if you had to give them a grade, give the Liberals a grade, give the Tories a grade. I would give the Conservatives a B to a B plus and I would give the liberals a 49%. I'd say they fail, but it can be redeemable if they become the opposition and then take another whack at it maybe in five or ten years. There's nothing on paper right now that says they pass.

Dr. Eric Kemp, thank you so much for making sense out of things that people like me cannot make sense of. Stay healthy, Ben. It's always an honor. This is the Ben Mulroney Show and thank you so much for sticking with us. I will admit that when Donald Trump declassified the remaining JFK files, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy files, it didn't ping on my radar. I just, I didn't care enough to say, oh, now we're going to know the truth. I was,

however, surprised when after they were declassified, I didn't see a whole lot of news coming from it. And it's only later on that I read that it's because there wasn't much news to be made that by and large, what people believe what the story that had been put out there was the story of what happened. And I guess a lot of people were hoping there would be a smoking gun, Lincoln, the mob, and, you know, second shooter and, and, you know, the Cubans and Russia, all of that stuff. It wasn't in there because sometimes the simplest answer is the correct one. And so now we're finding, I guess, maybe because that

one's been put to bed, there are some politicians in Washington that are looking for a new conspiracy to get behind, because Senator Ron Johnson says that there are a lot of questions now about 9-11. Well, start with building seven. Again, I don't know if you can find structural engineers other than the ones that had the corrupt investigation inside NIST that would say that that thing didn't come down in any other way than it controlled demolition. I mean, you just look at that, you talk about molten steel. Again, you listen to the documentary Bravo 7, there's an awful lot of questions. Who ordered the removal and the destruction of all that evidence? Totally contrary to any other firefighting investigation procedures. I mean, who ordered that?

Who was in charge? I think there's some basic information. Where's all the documentation from this investigation? There are a host of questions that I want and I will be asking, quite honestly, now that my eyes have been opened up. All right. So Senator Ron Johnson suggests that more congressional hearings into 9-11 need to happen. He's spreading this theory that may be conspiratorial.

Somebody who knows the difference between fact and fiction and conspiracy is our next guest, Nathan Radke, the cohost of the Conspiracy Theory podcast, the young coverup. Welcome back to the show, Nathan. Well, thanks for having me on. Okay. I would like to take the, an approach on this story that is, you know, with a, with a smile on my face, because if I don't, if I take this really seriously, then I'm going to go

down a path where I'm going to say something like Senator Ron Johnson in peddling this stuff is besmirching the memories of the people who died that day. But I don't want to go there. So let's have a little bit of fun with this. What is going on? Well, I mean, what's going on ultimately is that politicians are often tempted to tap into this sort of conspiratorial energy. And it seems to, you know, motivate their base, it gets them a lot of press. And they often think that they can control it and use it for their own purposes. But that's never what ends up happening. Yeah, that paranoid conspiratorial energy, it only consumes and destroys. And it's a very cynical move sometimes by politicians, unless of course, it's entirely

possible that he genuinely believes this. Well, let's assume that he does. Let's assume he's a good faith actor. But before we get there, like, I mean, I remember when the 9-11 Commission put forth their report, it was like, I don't know, thousands of pages in that big blue book. What's, I thought there was a, there is a consensus, right, that we believe, we believe that the story that is public is the story most people believe, right? Well these days that's true. I mean, back in 2005 the Iraq invasion was a few years old, the insurgency was getting stronger, it was becoming clear that the war wasn't gonna be

the quick and easy operation that had been promised. And so back then, a lot of people were questioning the motivation and justification for that invasion. The documentary, Loose Change, had been released online at a time when many people had the ability to burn DVDs and pass them on to friends. And while that doc was riddled with factual inaccuracies and unfounded speculation, it

was extremely widely distributed, influential, and it caused a lot of people to ask questions about the official story of September 11th. And it's understandable that people had questions about something that terrible and destructive. There were a lot of odd elements to that official story, like the links between the Bush and Bin Laden families, or the way that Building 7 collapsed collapsed even though it hadn't been hit by a plane and people had questions about why fighters hadn't been able to intercept the hijacked airliners. There were things in the videos that looked suspicious like puffs of smoke emerging from tower windows that collapsed or what appeared to be

molten metal and there had even been examples of the American government lying in the past about attacks. Things like the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. Even a proposed plan from the Department of Defense in the early 60s titled Northwoods to launch false flag style attacks on American interests to justify an invasion of Cuba. So it's good to have questions. It helps keep the government more transparent, it prevents them from getting away from nonsense. But if you have questions, you have to be willing to listen to the answers. Yeah.

And there are answers to these questions that people have about 9-11 that don't require there to be an inside job or explosive placed in the towers or anything like that. And look, I have to assume that even on the conspiracy side, there isn't a consensus on what actually happened, what they believe happened. There must be myriad conspiracies, each one of them mutually exclusive from the other. Well, and the problem is, as time has passed, and I can't believe it's been almost 25 years, this has allowed more and more ridiculous hypotheses to creep in. What's the most ridiculous one you've heard? Oh that the airplanes were holograms and didn't exist at all.

Are you kidding? No, I'm serious. And I've spoken to people who said, I mean, maybe this is even more ridiculous that the World Trade Center towers never existed to begin with. This is the problem when something starts receding into the past, it makes it possible for people to come up with more and more ridiculous explanations. My goodness. And do you think that if, listen, if we have congressional hearings, what are they gonna focus on? Because you could focus on any number of things here. You could focus on, like Ron Johnson talked about, the collapse of building seven,

or you could go to the hijackers themselves because I heard one guy a few days ago say that Israel was involved in 9-11. I mean, there are so many strings. Once you start pulling at the strings, you never stop. I mean, and that's why it's so important to have a historical context. For so many people, when this awful thing happened, it appeared like it came out of nowhere it just came out of the blue sky but I mean the more people learn for example but the history of what happened during Cold War in Afghanistan the less they tend to believe in these in the inside job hypothesis and of course nothing that we learned is going to justify the

mass murder that happened in 9-11 but it can help us it, which is a very different thing than justifying it. I don't understand these people who go down this rabbit hole and when they do so, like I said, they are denying the pain and suffering of people who died that day and whose families carry that pain with them to this day. Well, and again, it's that pain and, and trauma that I think often leads people to conspiracy theories because otherwise things seem so out of control. Whereas a conspiracy theory, if you thought your own government was in charge of it in a really weird way, that's almost a little bit soothing.

Yeah. It's almost a little bit calming because then rather than this sort of outside force that was able to pull off this terrible thing, it's your own government that was behind it. And we're almost more, we're almost happier when there's somebody who is near to us that is still in charge of things, even when it's as ridiculous as this. And Nathan, is there one thing that conspiracy theorists have in common? The theories can be different, but is there one thing that links all conspiracy theorists?

Well, I think the one thing that links all conspiracy theorists is that we could all be conspiracy theorists. We have the natural tendency to seek out explanations. We have the natural tendencies to find patterns. And so any one of us can be sort of tempted into a conspiracy theory. It's why it's so important that we always have proper historical context and that we teach media literacy and critical thinking. Because I've spoken to so many people at parties or at school or wherever, where they talk about a friend or a family member who got sucked into some kind of deep dark rabbit hole. And it is a thing that can happen to any of us, particularly when we feel like we're not in control of the situation we're in.

Very quickly, in a couple of sentences, is there one conspiracy theory that you actually believe? Well, there's there's many. The CIA had a mind control project called MK Ultra. I mean, oh, I thought that was real. It is true. Yeah, that's a true one. I believe it because it is accurate and it is history.

There have been some conspiracies that have occurred. And that's again why it's so important that we're able to sort the difference between the two, because some of the ridiculous ones like the Americans planning on nuking the moon, are so accurate. Nathan, thank you so much for joining us. Enjoy the rest of your week. You too. Thanks for having me on. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And as I was getting ready for this next segment, there was a story that popped in my head that I hope applies here and it's a story that I think we've all heard before that if You throw a if you throw a frog into a boiling water. He will immediately jump out. But if you put a Frog in regular water and then turn on the heat

He'll he'll cook to death because he won't notice that the temperature has changed until he's way past expired. And I was reading a story in the hub about government subsidies for Canadian media, and it didn't occur to me until I read this that the media subsidies were supposed to be temporary, but they've grown to the point that, there's a quote here right off the top of the story

Peter Menzies noted in The Hub, this election isn't quote about whether news organizations get government support or not, instead is about how they get it. And it occurred to me these things have been happening sort of in drips and drabs for so long that I didn't notice that this is a pretty tectonic shift in our media, its relationship to the government, how they are funded.

And so to do a deep dive into it, we're joined now by Dave Snow, associate professor in political science at the University of Guelph. He's also a senior fellow at the McDonnell Laureate Institute. Dave, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I mean, in my mind, I didn't I didn't, I don't know, I

guess it happened so incrementally and quietly, I didn't realize how much had changed on the media landscape as it relates to funding. I think that's exactly right is that it's sort of crept up on these programs and slowly piled on top of one another. And part of what my deep dive does is just sort of explore, okay, what are all the different pieces here? How much do they cost?

And now what, now that they are in place, what are the major organizations, News Media Canada, the major lobby, what are they arguing for now? And it won't surprise you to know that they're the sort of, no one ever says, okay, that's great. We're happy with our funding, nothing more. They're sort of always request for more and more. Okay, yeah. So tell me, Dave, in your deep dive, what were some

of the some were some of the big points that came out? So one of the big points that came out that surprised me, and it doesn't have to do with the money, but was just the, the sort of publicness and I dare say shamelessness of News Media Canada's lobbying, particularly in the National Post, arguing, you know, having its CEO and having its chair write articles saying, this is what you should ask your local candidate for in the election in terms of how they're funding media. So I traced five articles over the last year and a half from the CEO or the chair of News

Media Canada saying this is what we've got and government needs to do more. And sort of using the newspapers who are their members as the perch from which they lobby the public as they also lobby the government for more and more government funding. And of course that means more and more taxpayer dollars. So that part really surprised me just how public, how brazen, how obvious this has become for what was supposed to be one at one point, a brief single temporary program to help news media out. Have we done a disservice to ourselves as it relates to how our critical eye that we

should have about our media, its relationship to the government. We've done a disservice to ourselves because we focus so intently on the CBC. They're the big bad that get 1.X billion dollars. They're in line to get $150 million more under Mark Carney. And the other flip side is Pierre Poliev says he's gonna defund them.

Because we've been focused almost, I wouldn't say exclusively on them, but because we're looking at them so intently, have we not looked at other pieces of the puzzle that deserve attention? Yeah, I think that's really well put. And I certainly I don't think you're saying that we should sort of ignore CBC because I think there's there's good reason that we look at it. It's our public broadcaster.

It's the institution we want to most be unbiased. There's a lot of evidence and sort of progressive leaning and CBC and that we're not getting our value for money. And $1.4 billion is a lot of money. It's a lot more than these other programs. So there's good reason to look at the CBC. But you're absolutely right that we've sort of missed these other programs creeping up. And I think that, you know, there are different arguments for and against the CBC, but I think that when people find out, okay, the Toronto Star is sort of an explicitly progressive newspaper. It has principles baked in that are progressive. The National Post is an explicitly conservative newspaper. Is that what we want our public dollars going towards?

Funding newsrooms from newspapers that, whatever your perspective, have a clear ideological orientation. I think that's snuck up. And part of the reason, you know, I'm biased here because I'm a hub reader, subscriber, and occasional contributor, but I think venues like the hub have been an individual journalist substacks have been the places where we had to find out more about this information because there's an inherent conflict of interest in the legacy news media focusing on the money that they're getting from government. Well, yeah, and that's sort of something I've always believed as well. Like, look, if the CBC went away tomorrow, that doesn't mean that the best people working there wouldn't work ever again, that the voices that matter, the voices

that people want, there are places that exist today where we could find them. And you said it, you said it perfectly. You got the hub, for example, you've got the line. You've got the walrus you've got. And Substack just writ large as a place where you can create your own bespoke newspaper based on the voices that you want to pay for. And so is there a solution that has almost been created from whole cloth just by virtue of technological advancement that if we really wanted to, we could strip down the current system, just by virtue of technological advancement, that if we really wanted to, we could strip down the current system, peel away some of this funding, and the solution exists if we're just willing to look for it.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of merit to that point. I'm sympathetic to the idea that actually funding sort of news from journalistic outputs is a little more difficult sort of inherently there might be a bit of market failure built into the idea of funding journalism but at the same time I see you know journalists like Paul Wells who've developed an amazing stuff sack who are both doing opinion columns and outright news journalism shows that it can be done and I think what we're seeing right now is venues like the CBC, especially crowding out a lot of that news seeking.

So we haven't gotten to the point where we can actually see what happens if you, I don't know, get rid of the CBC or get rid of a portion of it and allow those individuals to work elsewhere. And I have no doubts that it wouldn't be perfect. But I also think there's lots of evidence right now that the CBC, in particular, these legacy media outlets are sort of preventing this evolution from happening, or at the very least slowing it down. You know, I saw a tweet this morning that stuck with me, and I'm glad I saw it because I can bring it back into this conversation. As someone pointed out, you know, a lot of critics of the CBC point to Power and Politics

and David Cochran and the posts that they see on social media as the reason to get rid of the CBC, forgetting that there's all this great content that they make that binds the country together. I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little tired of being told that the CBC is nation building when they are doing things that are completely analogous to what what I do and what people at private broadcasters do. There's nothing inherently special about what they do just because they do it at the CBC. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think part of it is that the CBC has conditions surrounding it that

enable it to do that work more effectively. They have this huge subsidy, but they also have advertising. Nothing frustrates me more. I went to watch the French language debate the other night on my phone temporarily, and I had to watch two ads before I got to, you know. Oh, you're lucky.

I normally have to watch three. Normally I gotta watch three, Dave. Exactly, but the idea of what a public broadcaster ought to be doing is just so divorced from this. I think you're absolutely right that there's, you know, that when you see I was speaking with a with an old friend a few weeks ago, and who said, I really like the CBC, because I'm a progressive, and it gives me a sort of progressive worldview. And whatever the merits of that

position, that's not what you think of what a public broadcaster ought to be doing. So I think there's merits there. I would just add as well that we talked about the 1.4 billion and what the CBC is doing. So much of it is not journalism. I watched the great Canadian baking show and I like it. I don't think that's what my taxpayer dollars are best served for. And so I think there's a lot of things that the CBC is doing that aren't related to journalism that the public interest case just that aren't related to journalism that the public interest case just really isn't there for in 2025.

So real quick in about 30 seconds, we already know that Pierre Pellier wants to defund the CBC. But what do you make of Mark Carney's doubling down of investing an additional $150 million a year? Well, I'll say this, and I'm not going to sort of I have I know no one's motivations and and I'm not going to say this, I have, I know no one's motivations, and I'm not going to say this, but this speaks exactly to the problem with government funding journalism, whether it be the CBC or whether it be these private news outlets, because

a skeptical public will rightly say, he's doing that so he can get positive news coverage, or skeptical public will rightly say the Goldman Mail is going to inherently favor Party X because they're the ones who have offered to keep their funding. Dave's note speaks to the conflict of interest. We're gonna leave it there. Thank you very much my friend. Okay thank you so much. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and if you have been anywhere near a TV over the past few months if you've been anywhere near a TV over the past few months, if you've been watching American news, you've no doubt seen Ontario Premier Doug Ford popping up on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, to talk about Canada having all the critical minerals, Ontario having the critical

minerals that the United States is going to want as we both build a 21st century economy. He has talked about Fortress Amcan and how we've got what they need and we want to sell it to them. So Ontario has a plan to become a critical mineral superpower and the Ontario government has taken a pretty bold step to get there as quickly as possible. Joining me to talk about Ontario unleashing economic potential of critical minerals and resource development. Please welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show the Ontario Energy Minister, Stephen Lecce. Minister, thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much, Ben.

Yeah, so this is the Ring of Fire is what it's called. And it's, from what I understand understand and you can add colour to this it has been it has not reached its potential but in any way shape or form this is a piece of legislation that could help get get Ontario there. Yes it's a plan to really ensure we are economically self-reliant so we are a nation that really realizes its full energy potential and I think many Canadians particularly in the post-Trump world, are sort of shaking our head to think that we have one of the largest bounties of rare earths and minerals. I'm talking about things like nickel and cobalt and platinum, copper, gold.

Like these are all things needed for defense and for EV and for aerospace to power the future economy. And we're sitting on them. And you know, last year we opened the mind, it took 17 years. We have one of the slowest permitting regimes in the industrialized world. Australia could do it in eight years,

EU could do it in nine years, 10 years, Alberta could do it in 10 years, and here we are at 14, 15, 16 years, always the outlier. So this is our moment to really level up with speed and a sense of ambition, a balanced plan. But at the core of it, it's about getting resources out of the ground to create jobs, unlock our potential and make sure we're independent of economically sovereign, independent nation that we're never relying on

the US or anyone else that matter in the future. Okay. And the vehicle to do that is the introduction of a piece of legislation called Protect Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy Act. So tell us what give us the key bullet points that everyone should know. Sure, I think the first principle is we got to move with speed because it takes too long. And so we want to really come up with a program that gets us to become the most one of the fastest permitting systems in the industrialized world. That's what this policy is going to do. And at the core, it's about unleashing our economy by getting resources to market. So the step one is we have for project proponents here in Miner, you want to open a mine in the province rather,

we ensure it's called one window one process. We essentially streamline the approvals so that a project proponent doesn't have to go to 20 ministries. They now come to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, one ministry, and we sort of shepherd the policy and the permit through the government so that we save time, we save money, and we create a more efficient system for them. So that's a huge win for the big mining companies who want to make it easier to invest. The second thing is we're reducing the permitting approval time by

50%, which is a hard KPI. We're actually, you know, you could benchmark that. It's going to be something we really are going to lead into to speed up the approval process. That'll get us from 48 months on average to 24 months. That's quicker than the EU who just announced their policy at 27 months. So we're on the cutting edge. We're staying competitive. We're realistic while maintaining environmental protection and of course course fully respected the duty to consult for Indigenous people.

Okay, let's spend a minute on that Minister, those two points, environmental protection and duty to consult First Nations. Because I mean I don't even have to go out and find somebody on the other side of the aisle and I know what they're going to say. By speeding things up you're going to be running roughshod over those two key hurdles. Well, I think, you know, we're the slowest permitting system on earth, or one of them at least. I think it's fair to say that we can do better.

The status quo is not working for Canada. We've been talking about the ring of fire since, you know, a generation ago. And I think there's an opportunity to really seize our moment as Canadians by moving with a sense of speed. When I say speed, it still means we're within the relative benchmark of all industrialized democratic countries on earth. Why can Alberta or Saskatchewan or Western Australia or the European Union permit and

get mines open quicker than us? I mean, no one's suggesting the EU is an environmental prior. That's a good we are literally no, but like it just come on. We are slow, but we can be balanced and responsible. And I agree with the premise. You've got to protect the environment. I mean, one day, you know, we all want our kids and grandkids to be raised in a country where we have clean air and water. That's at the core of the plan. This policy actually quadruples funding for conservation, it strengthens enforcement,

and it comes up with more tougher penalties because of the messages, zero tolerance. But this policy, what it's really going to help do, it's going to respect the environment, but it's going to help us make sure that we are never beholden to one nation. And China today dominates the critical mineral space. I mean, literally, they are right now 90% of processing capacities in China, 70% of resources of all rare earths are in China. China accounts for a third of the world's copper consumption. I mean, they are dominating the space and they've already said they're denying export

access into the US. They don't want to give the Americans the upper hand. Fair enough. So we go back to the US issue and say, look, we want to get a deal with you, a trade deal, an enduring deal, remove the tariffs off the table. Well, we have soft power leverage, but we only have that leverage if we have a credible plan to get the resources out of the ground. Otherwise, it's just a talking point, a talking point for which our government and people have been talking about for 30 years. So this is a very existential to our prosperity for jobs, for GDP, for revenue generation. But actually in the US discussion, Ben, I think it's really important that we show them a plan, a credible plan. And that's what this is. There's a reason why the Chamber of Commerce of Ontario, there's a reason why

the Business Council of Canada, there's a reason why the Ontario Mining Association, the Association of Major Power Consumers, like every mining company come out saying, yes, this is exactly what we've been asking for for decades. And the government is finally bringing forth a policy that is ambitious, bold, but responsible. I'm speaking with Ontario Energy Minister Stephen Lecce. We're talking about unlocking the potential that Ontario has on the files of critical minerals and resource development. Mr. Minister, I have to assume that you still have to play ball with the feds, that you can't do this all on your own. Has there been any discussion with the government

in Ottawa about what you're up to and are they on board? You know, look, I think the current, to and are they on board? You know, look, I think the current liberal government of Ottawa, you know, has been slow on this file. I mean, I just think we have to be honest, we need to be much more, I think, aggressive in the space. It's either us democratic, stable, democratic, environmentally responsible Canada, or it's going to be, you know, the authoritarian regimes of the world of China and Russia that dominate. And so the feds need, I think, move with a greater sense of speed and ambition. There's bills,

like legislation like Bill C-69, by its design is undermining resource development, duplicative assessments that the problems are already doing, adding months or years and creating a massive amount of cost and burden on these project proponents. And look, you all know this, capital flows on the path of least resistance. If we're making it so difficult to do business, companies are just gonna say the hell with it. I'm going somewhere else. They'll make more money, greater returns somewhere else.

So we've got to make sure we've got a system that attracts and retains the investment and the ingenuity and the research and all that. So the Fed need to step it up. And I think, you know, both parties are saying the right things generally, but I think the conservatives that come out with a much more ambitious policy

to get resources to market. And they've championed the idea of getting resources to tidewater. We don't have, you know, natural gas. We don't have petroleum, but we're a, I believe we're Canadians, like we're one country. And if we think as one country, we will support our Western and Eastern provinces who have that capacity to get those resources to market, to process and refine in the country and create

more value added jobs. So we want to take a one Canada approach to this. And we're hoping whoever's elected will really make this a priority and remove the self-made barriers to our own economic progress as a country. The name of the game of this legislation is speed. You want to develop as quickly as you possibly can. So if speed is the name of the game, how long before this legislation becomes law? How long before you can actually start taking advantage? And sir, you got 30 seconds. Well, I'll do it in shorter than that, which is historic for me, Ben. I will, the answer is the goal is to, just for this past legislature,

we'd have it brought forth for the spring, for the fall, meaning it'd be implemented later this year. Stephen Lecce, Minister of Energy for the Province of Ontario, thank you very much. I wish you the very best with this. If we can unlock the potential that God gave us as a nation, I'm all for it, but all the best to you, sir, and hope to talk to you soon. Thank you, very best with this. If we can unlock the potential that God gave us as a nation, I'm all for it. But all the best to you, sir, and hope to talk to you soon.

Thank you and amen to that. Thanks for listening to the Ben Mulready Show podcast. We're live every day nationwide on the Chorus Radio Network, and you can listen online through the Radio Canada player and the iHeart Radio Canada apps. And make sure to follow and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your streaming audio. We release new podcasts every day. Thanks for listening. I love that. Tune into Flavor Network every night at 9 Eastern or stream live on Stack TV.

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