The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 4 - Dr. Nadia Alam, Dr. Eric Kam, Flavio Volpe

Episode Date: April 13, 2025

Best of the Week Part 4 - Dr. Nadia Alam, Dr. Eric Kam, Flavio Volpe Guests: Dr. Nadia Alam, Dr. Eric Kam, Regan Watts, Flavio Volpe, Vass Bednar, Craig Baird 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

Okay, Martin, let's try one. Remember, big. You got it. The Ford It's a Big Deal event is on. How's that? Uh, a little bigger. The Ford It's a Big Deal event. Nice. Now the offer? Lease a 2025 Escape Active all-wheel drive from 198 bi-weekly at 1.99% APR for 36 months with $27.55 down. Wow, that's like $99 a week.

Yeah, it's a big deal. The Ford it's a big deal event. Visit your Toronto area Ford store for dotca today. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show best of the week podcast. We had so many great discussions this week, including our economist breaking down the insane reversal from Donald Trump. Plus is doge a possibility in Canada. Enjoy. One of the biggest misnomers about the Canadian health care system is that it is in fact a single system. That's not true. Every province has its own system that is supposed to respond to each province's particular idiosyncrasies, right?

So every system is completely, not completely different, every system is different. And we are current, but one thing that's universal is that we are in crisis. Never before have we thrown more money into the system and never before have we gotten worse outcomes on so many levels. And so I am a big believer in throwing every idea out there, seeing which ones are the best with the caveat that if it doesn't work, you reverse course. with the caveat that if it doesn't work, you reverse course. And I am not afraid of trying something new so long as it leads to people getting better outcomes and the system taking better care of people.

Well, Alberta is shifting its focus to something called activity-based surgical funding. And in typical fashion, it's a it's a political football. And so let's figure out what this means. Because if it does work, what the heck's wrong with following suit across the country? And if it doesn't work, let's turf it. Let's welcome Dr. Nadia Allam to the show, family doctor and past president of the Ontario Medical Association. Doctor, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Ben.

So what is this new Alberta plan? So it has to do with how hospitals are funded. Like you said, every province has a different way of allocating money, putting money into the system, how they pay family doctors all the way to how they pay for drugs, how they pay for hospitals and how they pay for all of the allied health professionals that are involved, not just nurses but physiotherapists, dentists, etc. etc. Everything that's needed to keep a patient healthy. Now when Alberta talks about the activity-based funding, they're talking about a

component of funding that goes to hospitals. And hospitals are paid in a bunch of different ways. It's actually pretty complicated. Ontario has had a similar system since, oh, how long ago? We call it quality-based procedures. And we've had it since about 2015, I think. That's some of the older ones.

No, like back to 2013 actually, even earlier. I'm looking at the Ministry of Health website that talks about this. Okay. We have it for procedures like hip and knee replacement, cataracts, things like like removing a uterus, aortic aneurysm surgery, what else? Things like stroke, heart failure. Doctor, what is this change? How does this change differ from what might be

a best practice in other provinces? And why is it garnering so much controversy? So the challenge with something like this is if you compare it to a different way of funding the hospital, which is like a global budget where a hospital gets a lump sum and the hospital decides where the money goes, you get less control over it, right? Governments don't really get no, are not really privy to where the money is going and what the rationale is. With something like quality based procedure funding or activity based funding, they get to pick where this money goes and they

incentivize access because the more procedures you do the more money you make. People love that, that is going to change behavior. The question becomes, if they do more procedures, are they cutting corners anywhere? And that's always the fear with paying people per service. Could you could they put guardrails on this on this system to ensure that things don't go sideways too quickly? It's challenging putting guardrarail on it. They're not going to give a lump sum for a particular procedure. They might say, well, okay, not everybody who comes for a knee replacement,

as an example, is the same. You can have 65 year old people who have maybe one illness, maybe they've got high blood pressure, something like that, but they go golfing, they exercise, they walk a lot, they're pretty healthy, right? They eat well. You can also have a 65 year old who has really bad diabetes, kidney failure, heart failure, etc, etc. Someone like that, when they go through a knee surgery, they're going to risk more complications,

they're going to cost more. So sometimes what hospitals do is adjust the price based on the risk of complications. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it does. But I don't have a problem with trying things. We are in a crisis and so every idea should be vetted and if it's something that gets past a vetting process and if it works for a government, they should try it. So long as they recognize it, if it doesn't work, they should get rid of it.

And I have no problem with it. I know that there are some people who have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that they think comes anywhere close to the line of, oh, we're privatizing the public system. I don't have a problem with it if it leads to better outcomes. Yeah, and that's the hope with something like this. But we know that volume based funding can have risks associated with it. And if you do, if you're a revolving door, basically, the risk is maybe you let a patient go home too soon. Maybe they should have stayed longer. Maybe you're not giving them all of the services they need,

because soon as you're done one, you have to get the next one. Right. Yeah. Right. And there to be able to get more and more funding. So it's a double edged sword. So what are you going to be looking at in this new system, this funding model to determine

whether in your mind it's a success or not? How quickly people come back to hospital, right? If they go home and they do the rehab, they're back to functioning, they're not going to go back to the hospital, they're going to be fine. One of the things I'm going to be looking for is to see are a lot of people coming back, particularly within the first month after the procedure. Right. Because that'll indicate that the job wasn't done.

Exactly. They were let go too soon. Right. I gotcha. Well, thank you very much for that. I think I started this conversation not knowing a whole lot, and now I know just a little bit more, which is exactly how much I should know as a radio host. I want to go to a story that we've been talking about

for a few days. And I think you're going to bring some color into it and some nuance. But there's the story that Ontario schools have begun And I think you're going to bring some colour into it and some nuance. But there's the story that Ontario schools have begun suspending students who aren't fully vaccinated. The story was that there were 10,000 students who weren't up to date with their vaccines. And when I saw that number, my jaw dropped to the floor.

So give me a sense of what we're actually up against here. So measles, highly contagious. If you're even in the same room as someone who has measles, 90% chance you're going to get it if you're unvaccinated. If you are vaccinated, you've got almost 100% chance of being protected. So it is a great vaccine. It is one of our best ones out there. The challenge has been a few things, right? We've come out of the pandemic and during the pandemic they stopped a lot of vaccine programs particularly in schools because schools had shut down. It was all virtual teaching. Part of it is this rise in anti-vaccine sentiment and we see this particularly down south, right? Texas is kind of a hotbed of anti-vaccine sentiment

for a variety of different reasons. And part of it is people are now busier. The cost of living has skyrocketed. So everybody's working more. And so they're not paying attention to, have I kept up? Doctors aren't calling them because doctors are swamped with work. So we're not calling people anymore that,

oh, you know, you need to come in for a vaccine. What we do instead is tell people come in every single year. If you're a busy parent, you might not remember to do that. Well, can I tell you, I'm so glad that you brought that nuance to this because I've been operating under, I guess, the false, the misconception that this was 10, this was anti-vaxxers, 10,000 people strong,

10,000 children strong. And I guess it's nice to hear that a lot of them are probably just busy parents. Yeah, and I certainly was. I got those notes. My kids are gonna be suspended. I was like, how is this possible? I've managed to keep up, haven't I?

And you're a doctor, doctor. I know, I know. Isn't that awful? It's so embarrassing. So I rushed to get all of my kids caught up on their vaccines because between the pandemic, between working, between being busy with kids' activities and just regular living, I had forgotten.

So my sympathies to the parents who have forgotten, you are not bad parents. But catch those kids up, protect them the best way you possibly can. It is a great vaccine. Dr. Nadia Allam, thank you so much for joining us to two stories that required digging into and I'm so glad you're here to do that for us. You take care of us. If you've been listening to the show since the beginning, you know that I've addressed this next topic a couple of times, talking about Trump's reversal on most of his tariffs. None of the duties on Canada are changing, but there's only so much a guy with no knowledge

of the financial markets can do with this story. So we're bringing somebody in who knows a thing or two about a thing or two. Let's welcome to the show Dr. Eric Kam. He's an economics professor at Toronto Metropolitan University. Eric, welcome to the show. Benedict, a good morning from North York General Hospital. Oh, that's right. How's your daughter? She's okay. Thank you. She's recovering from a ruptured appendix, but she will be okay. Well, please send her our best and thank you for joining us despite the fact that you've got so much on your plate.

It's not a problem then. All right, let's talk about what happened yesterday. As soon as the pause, the 90-day pause in the tariffs was announced, an explosion in the stock market, like 8% to 10% depending on the exchange in all of your years, Eric, have you ever seen anything like this? No, I mean, this is a roller coaster like we've never seen economists in some way, shape and form live for this type of exogenous shock, because usually they're just things that we have in textbooks. And we don't have any real data to back them up. But here comes the real

data. But as I've told you before, while we find these things interesting on some intellectual level, these are real numbers. And eventually they trickle down to the job market. And that's real unemployment. And those are real people looking for work. So I actually don't find this funny or fun at all. I find it kind of terrifying on a macroeconomic level and a personal level. Well, if you're in Trump world, this all went according to plan. This is was exactly what Donald Trump wanted to have happen. And that is the message that his team is selling to the world. But there the the counterpoint to it, I think was was said very well by Jessica Tarloff

on Fox News. Let's listen to what she had to say to explain this pivot. Trump even admitted that it wasn't the art of the deal or be cool. He said he was watching the bond market. And that's what decided this. He had to cave. I think CNBC Steve Leisman, he said he didn't just flinch. He ducked.

There are trillions still lost. And our very own Charlie Gasparino has been on for the last couple of hours saying that he wished it weren't so, but that the truth is that the White House capitulated. We still have tons of tariffs on, even our closest trading partners. They still don't make any sense. There's a lack of clarity on the specific numbers for Mexico and Canada. So we could go back and forth, Eric, about whether we believe the White House or the theory that Jessica Tarlough has. But I think the more important conversation is, what is the bond market? A lot of people know what the stock market is, but they don't necessarily know what the bond

market is. And why was it that indicator that possibly scared Donald Trump into pivoting? You know, the silver lining that is that we're talking about things that are so important. So everybody knows what a stock market is that buying and selling equities, but a bond market is where various debt instruments are sold by either corporations or governments when they want to raise money. So bonds are issued to raise what they call debt capital, to fund operations ongoing, or to seek new growth opportunities. And all it is, is really a big fancy IOU.

Issuers promise to repay the original investment plus interest. Now, what makes the bond market, of course, interesting as a part to the equities market is equities are very risky. Bonds are not risky. In fact, it almost would take an earthquake of catastrophic proportion to risk uncertainty in the bond market.

Well, guess what? For arguably the first time in maybe ever, the bond market is at risk. And what do I mean by that is that we have a yield curve, which is how you pay out bonds. And for many, many centuries, short term bonds pay out less than long term bonds, and the economy is stable. Right now, what Trump has done with all of these tariffs, is he sent the bond market upside down. We don't know which way the yield curve is going to go. We don't know what that spells for investors. And so he's almost managed to do the impossible, which is unstabilize or destabilize the most stable market that there is. And I think what happened is that even people around him, people that

he trusts, people that he knows, wealthy people must have come to him and said, Donald, you have done the impossible. You are absolutely setting our financial system on the breaking point. And you know, at some point, I'd like to believe that there's learning being done. And maybe even Donald J. Trump said, all right, maybe I overreached. And so I'm going to pull it back a little, because I don't know any other explanation, Ben, for how you could destabilize the most stable market there is. Eric, I don't know a lot about a lot, but I do. I've heard many, many times that China owns a lot of America's debt. Is that manifested on the bond markets? It is.

It is. It is manifested on the bond market. China does own a lot of debt, but the biggest bond market in the world, and it isn't even close, is the one in the United States of America. That's the biggest bond market, and it's the one that all of the other bond markets look to in terms of setting their interest rates, right? It is that federal funds rate in the U.S. that really dictates every other interest rate in the world. And so you can imagine that if the U.S.'s interest rate is being bounced upside down, what it's doing to countries like China and Japan and India that hold a lot of U.S. debt.

I'm not even mentioning Russia. So this is the problem, Ben. It's just now an episode in the ultimate destabilization into the parts of the economy that everybody thought couldn't be shaken. Yeah. But I guess what I was trying to get at is I wanted to see from you if there was any truth to the rumor that China was selling off their bonds as a way to destabilize the market. I don't believe they would do that. I don't believe they risk their own economy to do that. This is way too high stakes a game.

And I don't really think countries are willing to play games of chicken with their population and their investments, Ben. I think what you're seeing is a contagion effect around the world starting in the United States of clear widespread panic that we haven't seen since the Great Depression. And I think many countries are putting pressure

on the United States to say, can you please do us a favor and not destroy our economy? So, listen, getting a pause on the tariffs is better than having the tariffs, but it's still not the stability that global markets are probably looking for. How big of a problem is, again, the looming threat of the tariffs being reapplied three months from now? Like the looming threat of a global world war. I mean, it's exactly the same thing. You can't quantify these things,

which is why economists find it really dangerous. All you can do is qualify them and say that there is really not much has changed because we live in a world right now where things change hour to hour and minute by minute. It is gonna take a long time to restore stability stability even if Trump got up tomorrow and said I'm getting rid of tariffs forever I promise no one's going to buy it now because everybody knows that announcement effects don't mean anything anymore in the United States so

unfortunately it's going to take years for this to settle down and I'm not exactly sure our financial markets have years to absorb that. So I hope things really cool down fast. But the real answer to your question is, this is not going to go away anytime soon because all Trump has done is reeled in the fishing rod. He hasn't thrown it away. Eric, in about a minute, talk to me about what's happened to the markets in terms of public trust. I'm seeing a lot of people being very cynical online saying this was the greatest pump and dump of all time.

I think that these tariffs, anything Donald Trump said, he was actually had a lot of control over the markets, right? If he put the tariffs on, the markets went down. If he took them off, they went up. And so a lot of people are feeling very cynical about the markets. Is there any impact if people do not trust the markets as much as they used to?

Well, that's everything. I mean, markets are just a relationship between investors and consumers and the markets themselves. And so you have to let consumers, they get to vacillate between their decisions between consumption and savings and firms have to vacillate between do we invest or do we save and all of these things are dependent on the belief that they'll actually get their return if they put their money in the market. So going back to our very first topic even when hell has gone to a handbasket then firms and consumers have said to themselves well at least I can always dump my money in bonds they will always be safe and I know where I'm going. And now they can't

even do that. That's the problem. You pulled the foundation out from under them. Eric, Eric, we got to run. I wish all the best to you and to your daughter. We'll talk to you soon. Hi, I'm Donna Friesen from Global National. Life moves fast these days and we want to make it even easier for you to get the news you need. That's why you can now get Global National every day as a podcast. The biggest stories of the day with analysis from award-winning global news journalists. New episodes drop every day so take this as your personal invitation to join us on the Global National podcast. You can find it on Apple podcasts, Spotify,

Amazon Music and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and another day another slew of stories to deal with about the campaign trail as the federal parties get ready to go to the polls and we as a country decide who we want to form the next government. And of course, the Donald Trump of it all makes this a very unique moment in history. Yesterday, Donald Trump, some call it a pivot, some call it a walk back. Others say this all went according to plan. But a lot of the tariffs came off for 90 days.

The Canadian situation is a little bit different in that it is exactly the same today as it was yesterday. Let's listen to Pierre Poliev talking about what this actually means. While President Trump announced a 90-day pause on tariffs for dozens of countries, he kept those tariffs in place on Canada. Take that in for a moment. This after Prime Minister Carney boasted that he had a, quote, productive phone call with the president. He said that he had made progress with the president. He said that he had made progress with the president. What progress? What progress do the auto workers in Brampton and Windsor and elsewhere in Canada today see?

Yeah, I hear that and I agree with everything he just said. And let's bring in a guest who may disagree or he may tell me I'm right. Welcome back to the show. Good friend of mine, good friend of ours. And look, he's been on the show so much. He's a good friend of yours. Regan Watts, founder of fret and part Inc and former senior aide to the Minister of Finance, the late great Jim Flaherty. Regan, welcome back. Good morning, Ben.

So what's your assessment? Is Pierre calling it right here? Well, Mr. Poliev and Mr. Carney, this election has been fought primarily over two issues. One, being cost of living and affordability, and two, our relationship to the United States and how to manage President Trump. Mr. Carney and the liberals have been crowing

for several weeks now about how the Carney Prime Ministership was gonna represent a new regime, a new opportunity, a new way of engaging with the world. There was a time when Mr. Carney said our relationship with the United States is over, and Then he said we had a productive conversation or he had productive conversations with President Trump. I'm not really sure what to believe but what I do know and I can only deal with things as they are not as we wish them to be is that yesterday along with China and Mexico, Canada is

one of only three countries that's still getting smacked with US tariffs. And that means workers in the auto sector and steel and aluminum and forestry are still getting hit. And these are families who are worrying about their future. And I'm not really sure why Mr. Carney would welcome Mr. Trump's actions because those are critical sectors, particularly auto, for the province of Ontario, as well as steel and aluminum that are under tremendous pressure because of President Trump and US actions. So I think Mr. Poliev is right and has a very good point. You know, Mr. Carney is in a campaign,

so he's going to do best with the politics. But the reality is, since January, Canada has not been able to escape being under the thumb of President Trump, regardless of who the Prime Minister is or what we've tried to do. And he came, he said, I left the private sector to come back to Canada because I'm the guy who can solve the problem. If you're the smartest guy in the room, I kind of expected a little more. I'm not and I'm not I don't think I'm being glib. I don't think I'm being facetious. I expected more from Mark Carney. If that's why he came back. Why

don't we? Why didn't we fare better in this situation? Well, I think it speaks to competence. You know, Mr. Carney, and I've said on your show, Ben, and your listeners have heard me say this before. As an economist, he is eminently qualified to run a G7 economy. He's been a governor of two central banks. That is not nothing, that is substantial and verifiable and quantifiable experience. However, real politics and dealing leader to leader is much different than dealing as a central banker at a

international meeting with other monetary policymakers. And so, you know, Mr. Carney, I think has a lot to answer for. I don't know if the media are going to push him on this. But, you know, Canadian auto workers, steel workers, and aluminum workers and their families, particularly in Ontario, are going to wake up tomorrow morning and still have tariffs likely on their businesses and their employers. And they're going to be worried for their jobs. And for me, that's not progress. So, Reid, I'm going to take issue with one thing you said worried for their jobs. And for me, that's not progress. So Reid, I'm going to take issue with one thing you said a few minutes ago.

You said he said a while back that our relationship with the United States was over. He actually also said it last night. Let's listen to what I think is infuriating audio. The world economy is fundamentally changed. The relationship the relationship we had with the Americans, these guys weren't wrong. They want us to be the 50 first state. They want to break us. They want to break us so they can own us.

They want, they want our resources. They want our water. They want our land. They want our water. They want our land. They want our country. Reagan, we don't have to talk about the politics of it. I get the politics. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That beating the Donald Trump drum has gotten Mark Carney this far. But I've never heard inflammatory fear mongering like that from a candidate who wants to form government federally.

I completely agree with you, Ben. And I happen to believe in this case, despite Mr. Carney's credentials as a central banker, I think he is being reckless in his comments towards the United States and the U.S. administration. By the way, just as Justin Trudeau and his government were for the last 10 years, which is why, you know, the contempt that they've shown towards, in particular, Republican lawmakers, but American and US federal lawmakers in particular, has put us in the position we're in.

And, you know, Canadians and Ontarians, in particular, have to ask themselves, those who are under tariffs or working in industries that are tariff, do they want another four years of this approach because it has not yielded the positive outcomes that Canada should be yielding with its best friend? I also find it so irresponsible and so callous to get up on stage and just decide the relationship is over. And I have a real problem with it

for someone who actually hasn't been elected yet. I don't know why. He is the prime minister. I can see that point. There's just something that doesn't sit well with me, that all the work over the course of generations and decades building a relationship that has stood the test of time,

now it's hit a bump in the road, a significant bump in the road, but somebody who hasn't been elected comes in and says, it's over. I have a problem with that. Look, I think Ben, that's a very wise and astute observation. You know, if Mr. Carney wants to campaign between now and the remainder of the election on severing Canada's relationship to the United States, I invite him to do so. I think most Canadians realize that friendships take work and they take effort and you need to lean in and nurture.

And if there's some give and take, the kind of language where Mr. Carney says that the relationship with the United States is over, I think is inflammatory. It's incorrect. It's not the right approach for Canada. And yes, he is the prime minister. So he's certainly welcome to his own views on this. But I don't think Canadians are on side with him. And I think he he and the Liberal Party should be thinking very critically about how they approach the US administration in this very important file. Reagan wants Lastly, yesterday was another example of of Mark Carney, stepping in and having to walk something back when he claims that he had missed, he didn't hear somebody referencing the quote unquote genocide in Gaza, which in my, it's not in my opinion, it's not happening. He heard Gaza and then said something that sounded like he was agreeing with the statement made by the person heckling him. And then he had to go back and walk it back.

The question I have for you is this seems to happen far more than I think a lot of us expected that he gets himself in trouble every now and then, but none of this stuff seems to stick to him. He's like the Teflon candidate. What do you make of that? Well, there's a couple things that I want to address then. I'll deal with the Teflon candidate in a second with respect to the issues in Israel and Gaza. There is only one party in this election who are on the side of Israel and Jewish Canadians, Israeli Canadians and supporters of Israel as you and I are and many, many others, millions of Canadians are know that it's pure polyamorous conservatives who will support Israel and its right to exist and its right to defend itself.

You got 30 seconds for the second point, my friend. Yeah. And the idea that the Liberal Party is on the wrong side of that issue should be very clear to everyone else. With respect to Mr. Carney and his Teflon Don suit that he's wearing, he has spent a lot of time with reporters and media over the years building relationships.

And I think Mr. Carney is getting the benefit of the doubt from people covering his campaign because he's got a lot of credit to build, to draw from. And when he makes mistakes, the gallery are giving him a bit of a pass and that is to be expected given his longevity in Ottawa. Regan Watts, I appreciate your insights, my friend. We'll talk to you soon. Merci, nonchalant.

Thanks. This is the Wednesday edition of the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you for joining us on the Chorus Talk Network. Thank you for enjoying us at your leisure and convenience in podcasts. For more, you may be streaming us on the iHeartRadio app. Wherever and however you find the Ben Mulroney Show, we say thank you, welcome to the party.

Donald Trump's tariffs, we all know, are and will continue to have negative global impacts and effects. And if I were to sit here and pontificate about how bad it's going to be for the automotive industry, you would rightly say, Ben, give us some details. And what's your resume to be able to say those things? Well, I'm not going to have to say them. Instead, I'm going to bring on somebody who has the resume, who has the knowledge,

and who's written a very important piece in the Toronto Star entitled with Trump's auto tariffs outstripping the sector's profit margins prepare for a continent wide industry shutdown. Please welcome to the show the president of the automotive parts manufacturers association Flavio Volpe. Flavio, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me on Ben. We're about to talk about math, which is inescapable in a business like this. Well, in any business, it's all about how much money you can make for the product at the cost that you make it for, right? The profit margin, right? So talk to us about the math and why the math doesn't math and it's going to cause it's going to break the system. Yeah, I wrote a piece, thank you. I wrote a piece in the Star yesterday that said,

look, if the average car in the US sold last year for $48,000 and about half of the cars that are sold in the US are imported and the president of the United States put a 25% tariff on those cars, then those cars are gonna cost $60,000. Are American consumers gonna pay that? That's a big question.

Yeah. Who's the first customer though? It's the dealers. All these car companies, they import to a dealer. That's an independent business. And do the dealers have to buy them outright or do they have to pay if they sell the car? No, no, they're not on consignment.

They buy them. So the dealers make 4%. So dealers are, how many cars are you going to take where you're nine and $10,000 underwater? First question. The other half of the cars that are sold in the US were made in the US last year, 10 million, 10.6 million cars. Donald Trump has put a tariff on all auto parts going into a US production. Well, every single car that's made in the US, if we assume that they're USNCA compliant, which

says if 75% of the cars come from the US, Canada or Mexico, they're still tariff free. Well, people forget that the other 25% comes from a couple of dozen other countries. All of that $12,000 worth of car is now has a 25% tariff. So now cars made in the US are $3,000 more expensive. And then on the 50% or so that would come from Canada or Mexico, they're about to get 25% more expensive on May the 3rd.

So now you have a scenario in the US where 16 million cars get sold a year. Yeah. If they're made in the US, they're, you know, $9,000 more expensive. They get imported, they're 12,000. Who's going to pay that? Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So, so, so what is your conclusion? Like what take this train to the logical conclusion sure the answer is nobody so On the extra parts cost the car companies have to pay that it doesn't it doesn't go to an autozone Counter, you know the engine in your f-150 comes from Windsor Yeah

So the company that makes that will have to pay that or they're gonna try to pass it off to the suppliers If you try to pass it to a supplier that makes 6% a year on average, you try to pass on a 25% tariff, they'll tell you, you're gonna bankrupt me, so I'm not gonna do it. And you can't make all the cars without all the parts. What we saw when the Ambassador Bridge was blockaded for a week in 2022, parts from Michigan couldn't get in

and parts from Ontario couldn't get in. And we saw automotive production shut from Ontario to Kentucky. Okay, so yeah, so Flavio, I want to keep the conversation going. So let's, so I have to assume you've got more numbers that may paint an even more dire picture. But what does this mean practically for the industry in Canada? But what does this mean practically for the industry in Canada? There are companies that are much better off that have been able to over the years really managed to do a lot of build where you sell and source where you build companies like Toyota that are exemplary that could and are planned to be able to ride this out a lot longer than others. Then you'll see companies that have been stalwart partners of Canada, like Stellantis, the Dodge and Chrysler products that gets made in Brampton and Windsor. They're part of an international

conglomerate that has to share the pain. And unfortunately, some of that pain falls on Canada. Those plants in Brampton and Windsor are already shut. Okay. And what does that mean? So what does that mean for Brampton and Windsor? I have to assume that the, because you've got, you've got this plant, a lot of people are employed. There are other industries that depend on that plant being open. So what does it mean for the health of the cities themselves? Thousands of people in those plants, you know, 3000 people or so in each of those plants plus 12,000 or so that work for suppliers that can't deliver to parts, the cars that aren't getting made and all of those logistics companies, the restaurant, the gas station

outside of those plants, those people who aren't working who aren't buying other stuff locally, that the the hit to the economy is their domino. Did you have a sense of like a number that we could expect just from the just from this crisis? In terms of in terms of unemployment? Well, look, if everything shuts down in in automotive, you're talking about hundreds of 1000s of people in Ontario, we can avoid that. But the date that everybody should look at look, if everything shuts down in automotive, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people in Ontario, we can avoid that. But the date that everybody should look at is if the White House puts tariffs on all

the parts like it says on May the 3rd, then you'll start to see dominoes. And some of the bigger, better managed companies will ride it out for a little longer than the others. But I think there's a few that won't make it to that date. Flavio Volpe, you've been very active since Donald Trump leveled this threat in the first place, working with politicians and working with business leaders and stakeholders and community leaders, union leaders.

You've gone to both sides of the border. You've been on TV on both sides of the border. How do you feel today knowing that like you and your colleagues You've gone to both sides of the border. You've been on TV on both sides of the border. How do you feel today knowing that like you and your and your colleagues put a full court press on in an attempt to stave this off and here it is? How did like, do you feel like you wasted your time? No, I feel like if we if we if we didn't put mass into the equation and if we don't keep doing it, we may not get to that May 3rd date.

But what I see some hope is I'm watching Republican senators stand up, not because they like Canada, but because they understand that declaring a phony national emergency with Canada or an economic emergency with Canada put tariffs on Earth's Americans. And there was a motion last week that passed, it was symbolic, but four Republican senators walked over. Well, there's another one coming. And we're starting to see Americans who don't need to care about you or I, Ben,

or anybody that you're listening to, but they care about the people in their states who are gonna pay more for everything. We're just talking about cars, they're gonna pay more for everything. Say, the most senseless thing the White House is doing is picking on Canada. I talked to staff or members in every single district

in the US that's in the auto business, including dozens of senators, and all we said to them was, I'm not negotiating on behalf of Canada, the government does that. I'm telling you the mass of the auto investment in your state, some of those 170 Canadian auto parts plants in 26 states, those are going to go down if you don't stand up. Yeah. What did you make of Pierre Poliev's idea to axe the GST on Canadian made cars? He announced it last week, but we haven't had a chance to hear from you on it.

I thought it was very useful. Yeah. And I said so. It is the, like, we all have to think about scenario B. What happens if Donald Trump doesn't pull back? Well, there are five car companies operating in this country and they have the capacity to make two million cars a year

and Canadians buy two million cars a year. Anything that helps to get those companies to look at matching the Canadian demand as a relief to being blocked for export is good. Yeah. Flavia Volpe, before I let you go, I just want to say, you know, there's all this talk about saving the CBC and injecting more money in the CBC that without them, we don't have a country. They are nation-building. I reject that and I look at the people

who work on the line, who build those cars, who support the towns and the cities that they work in and all of the other businesses that come together that form the automotive industry in this country. That to me is true nation-building and the people who will be affected have my complete support and I think they are lucky to have a staunch advocate and communicator like you as the tip of the sword. I wish you the very best. Thank you, Dan. That was Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association.

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us. There is a certain amount of theater involved in what we see down in the United States with the Department of Government Efficiency. There's always grand theatrics when they uncover what they feel is government waste and how much money is being sent to all points for all so many reasons and how much money is being saved and how much red tape is being cut and on and on and on. If you take the theatrics aside though, I think you'll find a lot of Canadians who will agree with the statement that government is probably not as efficient as it can be and

government in Canada probably cost more than it should for what we get out of it. And so if people agree on those points, then they should naturally agree with the idea that maybe we should have something like Doge in Canada after the next election. I'm joined now by Vas Bednar, executive director of the Master of Public Policy program at McMaster's University and co-author of The Big Fix, How Companies Capture Markets. Vasass, thank you so much. Oh, and Harm Canadians. I'm sorry, I missed the last part.

Vass, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So there is a piece in The Walrus entitled, Are a Handful of Wealthy Tech Bros Bringing Doge to Canada? And again, I'm not a supporter specifically of Doge, but I do like to know that if there are inefficiencies and if there are costs that can be cut without harming Canadians, I'd like to look into that.

What are your thoughts? Oh, yeah. The titling of that essay is a little bit, can be rage inducing, right? It's a little bit, it's a little bit silly, a little bit snarky. I do think there's a lot of alignment as you said. How can we make the government work better? Where can we find either streamlining opportunities but also what digital public infrastructure can we build that we own so that we have to outsource less and elements like that? I think those are key elements of building. And what we're seeing in the US, you know, it's not just that Department of Government efficiency. I think it's a pretty big shift in power, right? This elevation of the richest tech leaders who are sort of substituting or inserting themselves in major policy decisions that don't seem to be building

the USA up but seem to be really dismantling the role of government eroding and causing chaos. So, you know, in Canada, could we do a better version? For sure. You know, better is always possible. But I think those overtones or maybe undertones about whose voices get privileged is what I was actually trying to get at in the essay and maybe distracted by using the D word. I know some people see red when they see things like that. Anything that comes out of the United States can be triggering to a certain type of person.

And I take that point, I'm not looking to do that. I actually am looking for a best practice. So let's talk about it. Let's talk about what could be a better version of Doge in terms of, we're putting a lot into the system. How can we make sure that the outputs are of greater value to Canadians? You know, I think one challenge bringing that mindset,

and there's been some great pieces on this written by Sean Spear at the hub and Jennifer Robson, who's a professor at Carleton, she wrote up kind of a response on medium. So they're really, you know, owning, I think this conversation in a really thoughtful way. I sometimes we have conversations that sort of say things like, and I reacted to this online a few weeks ago in my little social media bubble, but basically it was being presented as like, oh, well, we should spend more money on jets. So why do we have this program for poor kids to get lunch at school? Just take that money and kind of move it over there. And government is so complex and responsible for so many things that are hard to kind of hold in our minds at once. Oh, yeah, that's I remember growing up and, you know,

and when when when my dad's government would make a decision, it would then be turned into, well, had they instead of doing that, we could have opened X amount of hospital beds or we could have spent on the X, Y, and Z. And it isn't as simple as that. That's a very, that's a politically effective message to target the policy initiative, but it's not necessarily, it can't be proven out in real life. Yeah. And I didn't mean to lecture you. Those inter complexities, but it's sort of like when we, when we treat, uh, public budgeting, like a, like a household budget, there, no, no. Those intercomplexities, but it's sort of like, when we treat public budgeting like a household budget, there are limitations, right?

Of course, a household budget is most tangible and kind of there to us. So, you know, going forward, no matter who forms government, do I expect there's going to be a more of a refreshing conversation around the size of our government, where we're focusing a kind of recalibration and some of those opportunities. Absolutely. And I mean, we're also not just in

this tariff war, but struggling through a productivity crisis, which I think might accelerate or give us more hustle to eliminate in those instances where we truly just have old, stinky regulations that don't make sense anymore, that were designed for a totally different economy, are holding back our best entrepreneurs. Yes, we need to look at that really carefully and we need to move quickly to reduce those barriers. We may also have legislative uncertainty for really cool things. As an aside, but as an example, we don't have a pathway for cell based meat in this country yet. Okay, this is like somewhat silly to bring up. It's really interesting genomics, but we can

recreate meat that people can eat from cells, you know, in a lab lab based meat kind of fascinating. Yeah, I did. I did an interview with somebody I believe worked at a university in Ontario about about awesome about what they were the advances that they were they were making on that. It's incredible. It's incredible. It's great for the environment. It's great for affordability, all this stuff, right? You know, disease, these huge weather shocks we're seeing. But actually, we are actually seeing some entrepreneurs in this space leave Canada, or switch to making

animal food because we don't have a way to get it to the marketplace fast enough because we don't have a regulatory pathway. So those are also conversations about how we can build Canada up and kind of the pathways we need to build. And I think sometimes we frame it as like, what can we erase or kind of draw a line through, but it's also like, what do we need to do so that we can get cool stuff happening and commercializing it out of universities? So essentially, I think what we're saying is we would look at a Canadian version

of the Department of Government Efficiency as a broader tool, not just a cost-cutting machine going in there and just line item by line item, deleting them and saying they were useless and we're not we don't have them anymore, but rather maybe it needs to be made up a broad based task force that has, you know, tech entrepreneurs, as well as union leaders, as well as you name them, put them all together almost like a think tank that could go through the government and ask serious questions, good faith questions

about how it operates and how they could make it work better. Yeah, I think you'd have to do that in some sort of partnership with public servants too, right? Like anything that's evocative of what's happening in the US, which is really, again, something that seems quite destructive, oppositional to the state, locking people out of their computers, firing them, the uncertainty and upside downness. That's

like not the Canadian way. We got to do some peace order and good governance here. And of course, any new government coming in is going to have new spending priorities that recalibrates public budgeting again and again and again. But I think another element of this conversation is, you know, if we're not going to tinker with the tax system in terms of that modest capital gains increase that was teased or blindsided so many people by the Liberal government last year, then we're not boosting the state coffers a little bit, right? We don't have a little bit more to work with. So that I think accelerates more of the austerity measure that sort of says, okay, we have to work more effectively with what we have and also keep building up the state so

that there's more value and more productivity and more economic growth in Canada because that's so good for everyone. And also we're reducing our immigration, right? And we've long relied on immigration as a way to solve for certain jobs and also grow our GDP by growing our economy. So look, there's lots there. And at the end of the day, what I appreciate and admire kind of the most here

is that we have voices that might have been quieter or kind of more heads down, right, from Canada's tech sector, getting excited about public policy. Like that's actually really cool. It's no mean feat. And I hope it can keep going after the election and we can find better and more effective ways to make sure that those voices feel, you know, more included, more appropriately consulted, and part of, you know, putting your fingerprints on building up Canada.

That's Bednar. Thank you so much. It's been a fascinating conversation. I hope we continue it after the election because I think this is a good idea. How it devils in the details, how it's put into practice is a whole other thing. So we'll talk soon, but thank you so much. You got it. Bye bye bye. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And this is the time in the show where we grow our brains by learning something we didn't know. And so I want to jump right in with the host of Canadian History X, one of the most

valued, treasured and trusted guests we've got on this show, Craig Baird. Craig, welcome back. Thanks for having me. And because we're in an election campaign, it's almost a regular thing that we look back at previous elections and learn a little bit about our history by way of example. Today we're talking about the 1926 election and I was surprised to learn that it came less than a year after the previous election. Yeah, the story of the 1926 election is really the story of the 1925 election because in that election the conservatives actually won 116 seats while the liberals under William Lyme McKenzie King won 100 seats. But because William Lyme McKenzie King had been prime minister before the election,

he was actually able to hold onto power by having an alliance with the progressive party. So, a lot of people think that if you win the most seats, you're automatically the winning party, but it's really whatever party is able to control the most seats. So, that's why the liberals, even though they lost the election, stayed in power, but it was a minority government. It was not very strong. And then a collection or a custom scandal actually erupted soon after. Is that the King Bing affair? Yeah.

Great name. So King went to Lord Bing, who is our Governor General, and said, I'd like to call an election. And Lord Bing said no, so King resigned. And then Lord Bing put Arthur Meehan, the leader of the conservatives, into power and asked him to form government. He did, but it only lasted a few months. And then it fell, which brought us to the 1926 election,

which the liberals won with the most seats this time. And so this custom scandal, which it sounds very dry, but it's actually kind of exciting. It is the the minister of customs at the time, what was happening was he was accused of actually profiting off the illegal trade of alcohol, because at the time prohibition was going on in the United States, he was shielding people from prosecution. So it was actually a major scandal. And King knew that he would actually probably his government would fall over it. So he hoped to kind of stay ahead of things by calling an election. But unfortunately, Bing said no, and it's one of those rare instances where the governor general actually refused something like that.

Usually it's a ceremonial thing. And then afterwards, because of what Lord Bing did, the governor general's powers were actually scaled back a little bit because a lot of people felt that it was the British government interfering with Canadian affairs by refusing to call an election. Okay, so then we find ourselves in an election in August of 1926. Talk to me about what happened on the campaign trail. Well, more or less, the conservatives were campaigning on having high tariffs and things like that. They won the previous election, so they more or less tried to do the same thing to win the next election. But King actually, he campaigned on the

whole King being affair and saying that it was a constitutional crisis and how Mian wasn't actually supposed to be governing and all of this. So he actually ended up winning the election. He won 116 seats while the conservatives won 91 seats, but it was a minority government, so once again he needed the support of the Progressive Party to stay in power, which he did until 1930. Yeah, I mean I just find it all this stuff so fascinating. Thank you for that history lesson, my friend. How long did this campaign, or how long did this government last for?

That government lasted from 1926 till 1930. And then King lost the election because of the Great Depression was starting. All right. Well, now we're going to turn our attention to the most bananas hockey story I could possibly can't even imagine this. You I cannot wait for you to tell us about the Dawson City Nuggets. This is definitely probably my favorite hockey story because we think of, you know, hockey players traveling today,

they travel in private planes, slap of luxury, but there was in 1905, this team from Dawson City who traveled about 6,400 kilometers by dog sled, bicycle, foot, train and ship, just to compete for the Stanley Cup against the Ottawa Hockey Club or the Ottawa Silver Seven. So hold on, we need to, you just glossed over some stuff

that I think bears repeating. A hockey team traveled for two days, it took them, so they left Dawson city to get to Ottawa. They walked, they took bicycles, they took a dog sled, they took boats and trains. This is how bad they want to compete in the Stanley Cup. Yeah, exactly. And a lot of the trustees of the Stanley Cup

are very worried about this, because if Dawson City won the Stanley Cup, under the rules, any team that wanted to play for the Stanley Cup would then have to travel to Dawson City to compete for it, which would meant that Dawson City would probably hold the Cup for years. It took them two weeks to get there.

So at that point, there was no, like there was no direct route. There was no, there was no road that they could take. No, they pretty much had to walk or take bicycle from Dawson City to Whitehorse. From Whitehorse to Skagway, there was a train, but it was delayed. And then from Skagway, they would have to take a ship and they got down to Vancouver and it was a whole thing. Like it was, it was definitely not a good trip for them. How did it, did anyone get injured on this trip?

No, they did get severely seasick, though. That was probably the worst thing that happened. Okay, so they get there two days before the first game. It takes them two weeks to get there, and they've got two days to prepare. Uh, I'm imagining it was not a best of seven series. No, at the time time what they would compete in is two game series and it was the most goals.

And they actually did ask Ottawa, can we just delay the game just a few days to rest? And Ottawa said, no, that's not happening. So yeah, they more or less had to like get right into hockey and it didn't go well. I got to say, so you got the Dawson City Nuggets and the Ottawa Silver Seven. How many teams were competing at that time for the Stanley Cup?

Oh, it was pretty much any team that wanted to compete for the Stanley Cup could compete for the Stanley Cup. All you had to do was challenge for it. So that's how they were able to. How long were the seasons? Well, every team kind of had its own league and everything. You know, you had the Eastern Leagues, the Maritime Leagues, you know, Western Canada. And so whoever was the champion in those various leagues would then be able to say to Ottawa or Montreal or whoever held the Stanley Cup that I want to compete for it.

And so places like Ottawa would actually have, you know, they'd have to hold onto the cup through like three or four challenges per year because people were trying to get it. It's like a lawless thunderdome. I love it. We should remind people that the Dawson City Nuggets lost first game 9-2 and the second game 23-2. Here's a snippet of Dawson City Nuggets on Canadian History X. The first part of the journey took the team to Whitehorse and they had to cover a distance of 500 kilometers with no train service. So the players traveled by dog sled first with some on bicycles. And at first they made good progress but then the weather turned warm and their route became slushy and muddy.

The bicycles and dog sleds became useless then players were forced to walk the last stretch into Whitehorse. Along the way they slept in Northwest Mountain police sheds. Upon reaching Whitehorse the weather turned bad and the trains could not run for three days so the team had to wait as their steamer in Skagway, on the coast of Alaska, left without them. When the weather cleared, the players boarded the train to Skagway but their bad luck continued to follow them because as soon as they stepped off the train in Skagway, they were met with a buildup of ice at the harbor which prevented the steamer coming to pick them up to take

them to Vancouver from approaching. The Nuggets would have to wait another three days. By now they were a week behind schedule but the team was finally able to leave Skagway on a steamer and it wasn't really smooth sailing. On the journey south along the British Columbia coast the players became seasick which made an arduous journey even worse. I mean Craig, this is, this feels to me like it should be a buddy road trip comedy movie akin to planes, trains and automobiles. More or less, yeah. I mean this would make a great movie.

Just these, these, you know, few players from Dawson City trying to go up probably against one of the biggest teams in history, stacked with Hall of Famers, and you know, hoping to win the Stanley Cup. It makes it even funnier that they failed so miserably. I mean, the tagline, well, that didn't work out. This is amazing. What was the fate of the Dawson City Nuggets? I mean, I'd never heard of them until you brought them into my life.

Well, after they lost the Stanley Cup challenge, they actually toured around Eastern Canada and played against a lot of teams. They're kind of the toast of Eastern Canada for quite a while. And then they just kind of went back to Dawson City and everybody went back to their lives. And that was the last time they ever really competed for any major championship.

Because in Dawson City, there were only like two teams. So there wasn't much to compete for because the league was so small. I would just, I would love to see them repeat the the root back. That would be incredible. As I've always said, and I will continue to say I love these segments. I love that you share information and about our history that it just adds. It adds to that connective tissue that binds us all together. So thank you very much. Really appreciate Craig Baird. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to the Ben Mulready Show

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