The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 4 - Michelle Rempel Garner, Tasha Kheiriddin, Dr. Eric Kam

Episode Date: March 16, 2025

Best of the Week Part 4 - Michelle Rempel Garner, Tasha Kheiriddin, Dr. Eric Kam Guests: Michelle Rempel Garner, Tasha Kheiriddin, Dr. Eric Kam, Andrea Shalal, Francis Syms Michelle Rempel Garner, Tasha Kheiriddin, Eric Kam, Andrea Shalal, Francis Syms 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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Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Best of the Week podcast. We had so many great conversations this week, including conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner on the true cost of Mark Carney's carbon pricing plan. We dug into the ramifications of the ongoing tariff war. And does the new prime minister have a Quebec problem? Enjoy. plan for an oil and gas emissions cap. And the PBO says that production would need to decline by nearly 5% to meet the cap, would grow 11.1% without it. And the difference between these two scenarios is $20 billion less in GDP and almost 55,000 fewer full time

jobs. To discuss this and a few more issues around the soon-to-be Prime Minister of Canada, we're joined by Michelle Rempel-Garner, conservative MP in Alberta. Michelle, welcome for the very first time to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thanks for having me, Ben. So this plan of Mark Carney, it's going to hit quite literally close to home for you as an MP from Alberta.

Absolutely, but our economy across the country is so interconnected, particularly now that we're seeing in light of the American economy. So we're know, our economy across the country is so interconnected, particularly now that we're seeing in light of the American tariff threat. You know, a strong Alberta is a strong Canada. And the parliamentary budget officer report that you just mentioned, it proves that some of these liberal policies, particularly this cap on oil and gas development, is going to cost the entire Canadian economy over $20 billion and over 54,000 jobs across the country. So it's, you know, it's these types of policies that the liberals have kind of become known

for over the last decade that we need to put a stop to, particularly given the economic crisis that the country finds itself in. Yeah. If this is, if this is a type of thing that they're putting in the window, it should be concerning to so many Canadians who know, as you just mentioned, the interconnectedness of it all,

that if there's less oil and gas out there, it's gonna cost more, and that cost is gonna get passed on in one way, shape, or form, ultimately to people like you and me. Absolutely, and I think the last few weeks have really highlighted how important it is for the country to have a stable, secure supply of energy, which frankly the Liberals have worked against for the last decade. And if we're going to be serious about protecting Canada's sovereignty,

we have to protect both our economy and our energy supply. So these types of policies, which like the Liberals are still out cheerleading today, they need to go. Yeah. And well, it sure would be nice if Mark Carney stood in front of the media or sat with the media to answer the questions that we have on this PBO report, for example, and a myriad other issues. But he doesn't do that.

And yesterday he was in Hamilton, Ontario to stand shoulder to shoulder with the steel and aluminum workers. And CHCH News from out there said, an auspicious start for PM Designate Mark Carney, no questions taken from reporters. And his handlers told the camera operator pooling the event to shut off sound when he was inside talking to workers.

Now, I remember on great many reports that popped up on my Twitter feed of very similar behavior on the liberal leadership campaign trail. So at least he's being consistent. You know, I'm just sitting here shaking my head because the news outlet that you mentioned, it's a local it's a local outlet. It's not known for gotcha reporting. And you know, he had just done this photo op where he looked ridiculous in a helmet, to be honest with you. This could have been an easy opportunity for him to look relatable, talk about workers.

He just kind of like linked into this black motorcade and drove away. That's not the transparency that we need from somebody who has a lot of questions to be answered to the Canadian public about, for example, some of his personal financial assets, potential conflicts of interest, his stance on past policies that he's championed, like everything that we've just talked about today, the lack of support for Canada's energy sector, working against it, in fact. So you're absolutely right, Ben. He needs to be on, he needs to answer some questions. And if you're going to be Prime Minister of this, he needs to be on, he needs to answer some questions. And, you know, if you're going to be prime minister of Canada, you

have to be able to do something like manage a basic scrum. Yeah. Well, Michelle, you know, because the house has been prorogued, there's no reason for you to be in Ottawa, I have to assume that you're spending even more time in your riding. What are you hearing from voters about sort of the rise of Mark Carney? And, you know, there's a eco's poll and you can take ecoOS for what it's worth, but there's an ECOS poll suggesting that the liberals under Mark Carney could win as many as 11 seats in Alberta. So I'm feeling a dissonance between the numbers and what I feel is the reality on the ground,

but you're actually on the ground. So tell me your sense. Yeah. So I mean, like that pollster you mentioned, he even removed that poll because it was but you know, let's forget about polls and talk about exactly what you just said what people are saying. The reality is, is that, you know, the cost of housing and rent hasn't magically decreased in the last

eight weeks. Crime hasn't gotten better. It's fact it's gotten worse. People still can't afford groceries. So all of those problems that you know the liberals really had a big hand in creating over the last decade are still there. And now the liberals are asking for another four years and hoping that people just forget that they helped cause these problems and they're trying to blame it on on other factors. What I'm hearing is people are like, we need to have a real plan to change the economic conditions in Canada. That's why I do think that in spite of the Liberals trying to censor him by shutting out down parliament, Conservative Party leader Pierre Polyab has been out communicating a real

plan. Our Canada first plan to do things like secure the borders, make our economy more competitive. He's been lauded in the media for having a concrete plan, which Carney does not. And that's what I'm hearing is people are just tired of, you know, 10 years of liberal economic ruination and they want some change. So you know, it sounds like we're going to be in a federal election soon. And it's that consistent plan to address the core issues that Canadians are facing, like housing affordability crime, which tariffs admittedly are making worse,

but we have to address those issues too, and that's what we're gonna continue focusing on as a party. I'm speaking with Michelle Rempel-Garner, conservative MP in Alberta, and look, if there are voters out there who are willing to give a good faith look to Mark Carney, one of the reasons I think he's more palatable to them is because he presents as very different from Justin Trudeau, at least in presentation, right? He's the substance where Justin was the sizzle, and he's deliberate in what what he says and he's got a resume that Justin did not have.

However, there are similarities that irk me to my core and it's the self-righteous environmental leadership, the performative leadership that seems very consistent from our 23rd prime Minister into our 24th. It was tweeted by Brian Passifum of The Sun that Mark Carney flew to Toronto from Ottawa aboard a private plane and while he was meeting with Doug Ford in Toronto, he did a quick hop from Toronto to Hamilton so that he could avoid, I mean, I don't know if it was the purpose of avoiding 45 minutes on the highway in traffic, but again, it's very much do as I say, not as I do, one set of rules for you and one set of rules for me. And it's that self-righteousness of what I am doing is so important that the rules that I'm foisting on you cannot apply to me.

Well, you know, you talk about sizzle and substance. I think it's Justin Trudeau was the icing on a cake of economic disastrous policies. You know, Mark Carney was the cake. He was that substance. He was the liberals economic advisor for several years. Beginning back in the pandemic, you'll remember he was like the build back better guy. So, you know, at the heart of a lot of this inflationary spending, he's being held to account for those types of decisions, similar types of decisions in the UK by the UK media. And you know, he's been the liberal senior economic advisor. So it's an, you're right.

Like it is, do as I say, not what I do. But it's also like, this guy was the architect on a global basis of a lot of these policies that have held Canada back, like his Net Zero Banking Alliance, which has completely fallen apart. So there's an article out today in one of Canada's major newspapers that talks about how he based, Mark Carney single-handedly defunded Canada. And, you know, he might not feel that impact because like, to your point, he jets around, he's extremely wealthy. He hangs out with a lot of elite people. But at the end of the day, my constituents need to buy food. They need to be able to afford rent. And I don't think this guy understands that. So there's a big contrast to be made there for sure. Michelle Rempelgarner, thank you so much for joining us on the Ben Mulroney Show and come

back anytime. Thanks for having me. Very happy to welcome back to the show Tasha Carradon. She's a political analyst and writer. She's written a great piece in the Calgary Herald. And we're going to get to that in a moment. But first, let's say hi to Tasha. Hey, Ben.

Hey. So listen, I'm a guy who sits here getting annoyed every single day. get to that in a moment but first let's say hi to Tasha. Hey Ben. Hey so listen I'm a guy who sits here getting annoyed every single day with Mark Carney who doesn't seem to want to answer any questions. You know you're in media if you had the opportunity to sit down with him what sorts of questions would you put to him immediately? I would ask him first off how he plans to deal with Donald Trump, what's his strategy, what's his game there. I would secondly ask him how is he plans to deal with Donald Trump. What's his strategy? What's his game there? I would secondly ask him how he's going to deal with the economic issues that we're facing,

housing shortages, cost of living, things that are on Canadians minds. Because those are the issues that we want to know what his answers would be and all around the corner. Yeah. And not just as in scrums where somebody asks a question, he fires out an answer and there's no pushback, there's no follow-up because you can't do that in a scrum situation. There needs to be a sit-down interview with this guy where he is pushed to answer questions and then justify them.

You're around liberals a lot. Do you sense that there is optimism on that team right now? Do they feel they have the wind in their sails? Yes, they do. 100%. There's a lot of optimism. It's guarded because the polls still show the conservatives are leading, but very small. It's the momentum piece that they want. If you're on an upswing, you don't necessarily want to go into the election in the lead, but you want to have the momentum, and that's what they feel right now. Well, it's interesting because I'm trying to make heads or tails of some

of these polls. You know, you've got polls that say that the vast majority of Canadians can't even identify a picture of Mark Carney. So I don't understand where the enthusiasm for Mark Carney comes from. It's very confusing. However, in your piece in the Calgary Herald, you sort of drill down on more interesting data points. Like there's, I thought it was really interesting that you looked at the numbers as they related to who was voting for Mark Carney and where they were coming from and how old they were

in the liberal leadership race. And you postulate that it, that might not be a harbinger of good things to come. Well, yeah, I looked at the numbers because they were all accessible, which is really interesting to see where the votes came from. And first of all, the percentage of people who voted in this leadership was not high.

It was a 38 percent turnout of registered liberals. Yeah. Compare that with 65 percent in the conservative race in 2022. So you had a lot fewer people bothering to vote. And I think it's partly because you can be a liberal supporter without actually paying anything, right? You just sign up and all you know full disclosure I signed up my cat. People were signing up their pets one day on Twitter and I did. Sorry for your noise I'm in an airport that's gonna stop in a second. But anyway the second thing is very important is

that their organization in Quebec looks very weak. He's polling well in Quebec, but on the ground, they only got less than 50 people voted in 24 of the bottom 25 ridings. They were all in Quebec. Yeah. And Tash, again, that's where the numbers just, I don't understand how these polls are coming out with the numbers that they have because when I hear your numbers, the 24 of the bottom 25 ridings were Quebec ridings and in almost all there were fewer than 50 people who voted and yet I believe it's a Leger-TV poll that said that he is the runaway favorite in Quebec to be the man

of the hour as it relates to Donald Trump. I don't know how you get from your numbers to those numbers. Well, I haven't seen the breakdown of a Leger-TV poll. I did see that top line. And the question is, where are all those people if they're all concentrated on the island of Montreal, that's not going to help the liberals very much. Right. Because those are the traditional writing.

They have to be stronger. They have to contest the blockade across the island. So that's really it's a riding by riding breakdown that they have to do. And that will tell us the real story. And then the last piece is really important. Our young voters, you us the real story. And then the last piece is really important are young voters. You mentioned the age issue. So when you look at who voted in this leadership, the big numbers, the big numbers of votes

that were going to actually turn out, like over a thousand people kind of thing, were all in writings that were more affluent, that are older. The younger people who you would think like that would have turned out for Carina Gould, that was the big hope that she was to get. She only got 3.2% of the vote. Yeah. And that's telling because the millennial energy she thought she'd bring, it wasn't picked up on where were the millennials and the Xers. And I think,

I mean, partly the people vote for who they think will win. That does affect the result. But I think it's also just when you look at it, if Trump is a ballot question, who's got the most of fear from a Trump administration are people with skin in the game. People who have houses, who have savings. Those are older people like actors and boomers. Yeah. And the younger people, they worry about even being able to buy a house. Those are PR polyeth people. So the question is, this is going to be a generational election. Um, if the liberals don't appeal to those voters and offer them something, then you might end up seeing that

and who knows which way it'll go. Yeah, I mean, I'm struggling to see. I mean, when you see how poorly, I mean, I don't know if it's a demonstration of how poorly they organized they were in Quebec with these poorly performing ridings, as we just discussed. Is that indicative of the ground game that they are capable of mounting in the province of Quebec? Because I always was led to believe that the Liberal Party's Quebec machine was as

sophisticated as they come. Yeah, well, Pablo Rodriguez, who is a Quebec Lieutenant has gone, right? He's running for the Quebec Liberal Party. So he's no longer manning that store. I don't know, you know, why they didn't pull out more voters and I mean Carney got the most in those writings which tells it's less than 50 and he had the most and other people had, you know, single digits. That's pretty sad because you would think that exactly that, that Quebec is a place where especially now with the conversation around Donald Trump, Quebecers are getting super patriotic. They're like, oh, okay, Canada, we love you now.

That could benefit the liberals. So where were these people? Why didn't they show up to vote? Yeah, so we've been talking data and numbers. I wanna take that hat off and I wanna put the speculation hat on. And let's imagine for a second a best case scenario where Daniel LeBlanc and Doug Ford

come out of their conversation with Howard Lutnick with a promise and a path to remove the threat of tariffs altogether. All of a sudden they are not looming anymore. There's an agreement in principle where we will renegotiate NAFTA 2.0 in good faith and because of that the tariffs are going to be removed altogether. We're going back to the way things were two months ago. If that happens, what going to be removed altogether. We're going back to the way things were two months ago. If that happens, what happens to this election? Does it go back to being a carbon tax election or is Donald Trump still the big ticket item?

I don't think we're going to have a carbon tax election. I think that that ship has sailed. Economic election, yeah, which is tied to Trump. But sadly, I was hopeful when I saw what happened if Ford got this meeting and then I read what Howard Lecknick said about Doug Ford and how he basically said that Trump brushed off the threat as a little threat. And Letnick told CBS on Tuesday Trump's 50% terror threat was a tactic to break some guy

in Ontario. You know what? They don't respect us at all. If I were Ford, I wouldn't even go. I wouldn't go. I was happy at first. I thought, wow, big score. And I'm thinking, these guys are just jerks. No, but yeah, and by the way, I want to apologize. I kept saying Daniel LeBlanc. I don't know why. Dominique LeBlanc. I don't know where my head was at. I do apologize to the minister because I sincerely want him to go down there with, you know, as much wind in the sails as possible. But Tasha, as somebody on this

radio station said, you win if you're talking. And so to close up, they're the ones who called us, right? And there is so much pushback, increasing pushback and pressure on this administration for what is being increasingly called boldly. There are people speaking now that were silent just a few weeks ago saying this is asinine, this is idiotic, this is dumbheaded. This is the wrong thing for America. And meanwhile, on this side of the border, you have people who are ready for a war, willing to sacrifice and willing to get dirty

and willing to put themselves in a precarious situation to get to the other side of this in a stronger position. So, we're ready for what they're gonna send our way, meanwhile, he's getting pressure and they're getting pressure. So to me, this talk by Lutnick and Trump, it's all bluster in order to sort of tamp down on the criticism. I hope so Ben, because honestly,

this trade war is stupid. It is dumb. It is all those things. And yeah, if they come to some kind of discussion on Thursday and they some kind of sorry, some today some kind of consensus, that would be amazing. It also would affect the election because if Trump is off the ballot, it's a question it changes the whole complexity election. I don't think it will be a carbon tax election, but I think it would go back to being on the economics issues, jobs, housing, you know,

because that is a number two issue people raise. Number one is Trump's 36% to the most recent Nanos poll. Number two is economy and jobs, 29%. So that could vault ahead depending on what happens. I've been speaking with Tasha Carradon. Her article in the Calgary Herald is, Carney's boomer bet could go bust. Absolutely worth a read. Thank you so much, Tasha.

We'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Ben. Bye. 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 show. And this story out of the Parliamentary Budget Office that pretty much takes Mark Carney to task over the social value and the economic cost of his cap on oil and gas is, I think, a pretty big story.

And we just talked about sort of the political angle with Alberta MP Michelle Rempel-Garner from the Conservative Party. Now I want to take a look at it from an economics perspective. And joining us to drill down is economics professor from Toronto Metropolitan University, Dr. Eric Kam. Eric, welcome to the show. Thank you, Benedict. How are you? Well, I'm okay. This to me seems like a very big story. And listen, credit to Mark Carney for at least putting something in the window that we can then debate the value of.

But it seems to me when an organization like the PBO comes out and says that in order for this to work, our oil and gas production would have to decline by almost 5% and the difference between cap or no cap is $20 billion less in GDP and almost 55,000 fewer full-time jobs. Like, ah, this seems like if we go for this as a nation, this is doubling down on the stuff that got us into the problem that we're in in the first place.

You know, it's in a sense, it's tripling down. And what a sad state of affairs, Ben, that we're applauding transparency on the part of the liberals. I mean, all they had to do was actually say what they're going to do and everybody goes crazy. It's pathetic. Oh, I'm not. I'm just saying at the very least, that's what we're getting.

Oh, it's the least all right. So, you know, they say it's the least you can do and it's the least they can do. I have no time for this. Yeah. That doesn't mean that I don't have time for clean air and clean water. I'm a father like you. The problem is, is that right now we are mired in potentially, and I know you've heard this before, stop me, the potential for the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. If COVID wasn't bad enough, this is the one that could really pull us down. And so all I have to read,

all I have to read is that the projection for this is a decrease in nominal GDP by $20.5 billion and another 41,000 jobs, maybe up to almost 60,000 jobs. Wrong policy, wrong time. And this is the thing that the liberals haven't caught on to, and Justin didn't catch on in almost a decade. These are wonderful policies. And what you do when the economy is booming, your GDP is rising and jobs are rising. But when the economy is teetering on the brink

of not just a recession, but a depression, this is the wrong thing to do. Every, again, these are great policies, but not now. Eric, level set for us. So this is an oil and gas emissions cap. Is it a is it a carbon tax by another name? It's a tax by another name. You can call it a carbon tax and environment tax and environmental tax. You can call it whatever you want. It's a tax on a time that Canadians can least afford to pay a tax. Ben, it's got to be scrapped for the time being. They know it, conservatives know it.

I think almost everybody knows it, except for Carney. He's been under the closet on this, Ben. I don't understand, Mark, how he can come out and say, we've gotta build pipelines, we've gotta get our resources out of the ground and selling them to various markets around the world. I don't know how he can say that simultaneous to essentially throttling the oil and gas industry. I can't square that circle.

You can only square the circle if you like the who. Because they taught you to meet the new boss same as the old boss, and that's exactly what we're going to get if this guy ever, God forbid, becomes Prime Minister, legitimately Prime Minister. I don't mean what's going to happen tomorrow. Yeah. Hey, the Bank of Canada cut rates again amid what they say is the new crisis of the trade war with the United States. I think it's a, I mean, I haven't looked at the interest rate in a long time, but it's getting down there.

Are you surprised we got another rate cut? No. Why would you be surprised? This government has one, one game to play in terms of economics, right? They keep cutting the rates. They keep using monetary policy to make money cheaper so that you'll spend. As we've said before on your show, Ben, this used to be a two-pronged approach. Make money cheap, make immigration large. They finally realized that the larger you make

immigration, you pull down all the per capita statistics, so they've closed that off. So there's proverbially one bullet in that gun and they're gonna shoot it. They're gonna make money as cheap as possible to try to prop up the economy on spending. And as I've said before, as a short run solution, you can do that because you can have an increase in the business cycle and it looks good and you can sell that to Canadians. But as soon as Canadians pull back the curtain and they say, Mr. Carney, what does this do for long-term economic growth? The answer is nothing.

So I'm asking Canadians, keep their eye on the prize because if all you do is stimulate short run spending, you're also at the same time asking to stimulate long run inflation, Ben. Look, Donald Trump was elected on a promise that as soon as he got into office, don't worry, do you vote for me and the second I get into office, everything is gonna be great.

That was the promise. And now it looks like consumer confidence, and we know in Canada, it's very low with 40% of Canadians worried they might lose their job because of this tariff war. But in the United States, the fear of recession is on the rise. The president had to admit

that there could be an economic slowdown, a potential downturn, and now people are genuinely worried about a financial crisis. What do you make of this? Do you think an ongoing tariff war is gonna plunge us, possibly the Americans, into recession? Yes, I do. So the only question we have left,

you know, one thing about Trump, first of all, at least he was elected. That's number one. But number two is he's not stupid. I don't care what anybody says to you. You don't get to be Donald Trump and be an idiot. You at least have smart people around you. He knew going into this

that it was gonna push his own country into recession. And he knew it was gonna push his own country into recession and he knew it was going to push his own country into some inflationary effects. So if you know that, Ben, why are you doing it? And that's the only question in this we really don't know. We don't know what his end game is. We know the middle game. We don't know his end game. So what you've got to do is try to put the pieces together, follow the money as they say, and try to figure out where he's going with this. And frankly, hope he gets there in the not too distant future before he pulls the whole world into recession. And that's actually a possibility right now

because of their size and because of the number of their trading partners. Now, when you look at what's happening with the stock market and you, I'm sure you're aware of what key indicators to look at, where are we on a roadmap on our, if the optimum destination is a recession, where are we on a roadmap, if the optimum destination is a recession, where are we on that roadmap? Oh, like Springsteen said, we're going down.

If you look at all these, I love these pop culture references, but if you look at all these macroeconomic indicators, they don't look terribly different today, sadly, than they did a year ago. They are kind of teetering around zero or pointing downward. I mean, that's what's going to happen to consumption, to investment, to Canadian exports. It doesn't really matter which one you look at, and you can play with them

in real terms or nominal terms, but they're all still pointing downward. And again, not to be too repetitive, Trump knows this, right? He knows he's put the fear of God into North America. He knows that prices can only go up in a trade war and GDP can only go down. So I keep asking myself, Mr. President, what are you trying to do? And maybe he'll tell us one day, but he sure hasn't told us yet,

but you gotta keep your eyes open because nothing positive can come out of this. And especially for a small open economy like Canada. I am speaking with economics professor Dr. Eric Kam. Hey, Eric, why is Tesla's stock doing so poorly? It is one of the worst performing stocks in the United States right now. Elon Musk lost $29 billion in value in a single day. Donald Trump vowed to buy a car.

He got a little bit of a bump. But by and large, that stock is in the toilet. Can you believe what you just said? I mean, if I misplace a Tooney, I lose my cool. And this guy just lost a small nation's GDP. I would love to tell you, Ben, that this is pure economics. I do, because I like when things are pure economics. I can explain things that involve demand and supply.

And if you want to stretch the argument, I guess you could say that this involves those things too, because demand's going down, supply is going up. But I do think there's a bit of a Tesla take down, for lack of a better term. I think people are, especially in countries not called the United States of America, kind of tired of this guy's act. And I think that they're trying to send a message. Sometimes when you can't send it through one market, you send it through another, and people are trying to tell Musk, you know, enough is enough and you're not really helping us. So I think there is a piece of that. But yeah, if you want to look at it in terms of economics, this is strictly, they haven't changed the number of them that they are making, but demand for them has really gone through the floor since this whole thing has started. But now the question of course is,

will that threaten Elon Musk? Is he nervous? And my guess is given the amount of net wealth the man has, probably in a short run, he probably couldn't care less. We all have a boss, Ben. We all have a boss. Yours is super nice by the way, if he's listening. But he has a boss too.

And he has to make his boss happy and that's exactly what he's doing right now. And he's not concerned about anything else. Dr. Eric Kam, always appreciate your honesty on this show. I hope you come back soon. If invited, stay healthy, Ben. Take care. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show.

And you know, we spend a lot of time on this show trying to get in the heads of our American analogues as it relates to this terrafore. What is, you know, what is theiff war? What is the government thinking? What are the officials thinking? What is the cabinet thinking? What are business and members of the press thinking? And rather than speculate any further, we're joined by somebody who will be able to provide

a little bit of that insight for us. Please welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show, Andrea Shalal, White House correspondent at Reuters. Andrea, thank you for being here. Hey, thanks so much for having me. So give us a big picture overview. You know, I'm watching the stock market. It doesn't look good these days for the president who used to say any president who witnesses a two day, a thousand point drop of the Dow Jones should immediately step down. I think we're at a three thousand point drop over the past month.

Are Americans feeling the effects of these tariffs and at the very least of the uncertainty that comes from the threat of tariffs? Yeah, I think we're starting to see that happen. You know, we have a new poll out, had a new poll out yesterday at Reuters that said that a majority of Americans believe Trump is being too erratic in his moves to shake up the US economy. There's a lot of concern, including one in three Republicans who say that Trump's policies have been unsteady as these terrorist threats, you know, kind of unsettled the markets and

create a lot of uncertainty not just for consumers about the cost of things going forward but for investors and so we're seeing implications, although from the perspective of the folks at the White House, they are busy touting all of the investments that they say companies are planning to make. But I would just caution that those are pledges. That is not actual money on the table yet.

And chances are, they're probably not gonna want to put that money in the market until there's more certainty in trade policy coming out of the administration. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because forever really Trump has been very focused and concerned about the stock market. It was something that was, um, during the Biden administration, where president Biden would often say, you know, Donald Trump is looking at the stock market, we're looking at main street. Now Trump has, the white house has adopted a lot of that kind of language and talking about main street and the importance of main street, but the net

effect of what he's trying to do. So the intention of President Trump in pursuing these tariffs is to rebalance what he says are just massive imbalances in trade. And those have obviously built up over many decades. And, you know, as companies have moved offshore to manufacture in other countries where labor is cheaper, environmental laws are less onerous. And, you know, for a long time, we all moved along this globalization effort.

But then COVID came along, right? And showed the vulnerability of having supply chains that are almost exclusively in China. But Andrea, I've got to go back to the beginning of these threats where Donald Trump made it all about the Canadian border and the fentanyl crisis and likening the drugs pouring over the Canadian border to the crisis at the southern border. It had a whole lot of us up here shaking our heads, not really believing that that was the case.

And now, every now and then, Howard Lutnick will throw out that he wants zero deaths from fentanyl until these tariffs get lifted, which is an insane bar to cross. But none of us up here believe that that was ever the actual reason. Is that a doubt that is shared south of the border? I, you know, I hesitate to say yes because I have to cover the White House. So my, I'm gonna take them at their word

that fentanyl is the primary driver. I think a lot of people are skeptical, honestly. I think we have seen different responses from the Canadians than from the Mexicans, but I think on both sides of the border or both border countries, there is a lot of concern about this move, which upends the US, Mexico, Canada trade agreement. And initially when tariffs were first announced, trade analysts and experts and former government officials told me they thought it was all a ploy to get to an early

renegotiation of USMCA. I know I think you used different initials up there, but the you know, that the Trump administration has now denied that and said, no, it's really about fentanyl. Yeah, it's hard to know how to negotiate when you don't necessarily believe the person telling you the reasons for the negotiation. And today, famously, Ontario premier Doug Ford, as well as federal finance minister Dominique LeBlanc

are in Washington for a sit down with Howard Lutnick. And, you know, a lot of there are critics and advocates towards what Canada's policy has been. You know, a lot of people don't like that Ontario, which is, you know, Canada is already a very small player vis-a-vis the US economy. Ontario even smaller than that. And yet Doug Ford took it upon himself to put a 25% exit tax on the electricity going south to three border states that got the attention of Howard Lutnick. And a lot of people are saying, like, what what's going to go on in this room? And, and it reminded me of a quote from the office when Michael Scott left Dunder Mifflin and he started his own paper company going about undercutting Dunder Mifflin's cost and stealing their clients to the point

that Dunder Mifflin reached out, called them to see for a sit down. And Michael Scott said, I don't need to wait out Dunder Mifflin, I think I just need to wait out you, pointing out that they have the pressure of a shareholder meeting coming up where they're going to have to explain how their most profitable branch

was bleeding clients. And I'm likening that to the pressure that this administration is probably feeling with relation to the stock market and their desire to hold on to the House and Senate in the midterms. And I wonder if they're truly feeling that pressure. Do you think they're looking for an off ramp? Do you think that they're realizing they may have bitten off more than they can chew, and that countries like Canada, provinces like Ontario are simply leaning into the chaos

that they've created? I think you're absolutely right. I mean, I think that there is a lot happening all at once. And that's very much the playbook that the Trump administration brought into office. There has been a deliberate effort to kind of overwhelm the system. So you have massive efforts underway to dismantle the, you know the significant parts of the US government. Thousands of federal workers, tens of thousands of federal workers are being let go. I just went to the post office here, the clerk behind the counter said, well I don't know how long we're going to be here. You know,

there's all that federal attack. Then you have the tariffs, which are coming hot and heavy. But also, you know, yesterday, President Trump told reporters as he sat down to meet with the Irish Prime Minister, he was asked about flexibility. And he said, I'm always going to be flexible. asked about flexibility and he said I'm always going to be flexible. So you know it's this unsettledness of keeping your, your, the person on the other side of the negotiation unsettled enough to not know what's going to happen. And I think some people were really rooting for Doug Ford to turn off the electricity just to see what happened. But see, that's another thing.

It's about the level set that's happened with our respective populations. Canada is prepared for things to get very, very bad. We're not going to be treated this way. Donald Trump, on the other hand, promised, vote for me, and sunny days abound. It's going to be rainbow and sunshine and unicorns, and America will be great.

And so I just think that it is not going to be as simple as David versus Goliath. I think it's more like the US military and the Viet Cong. And Andrea Shalal for White House correspondent Reuters. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate your insights. Such a pleasure. Thank you so much. Let's first start with the F-15 fighter jets that Canada has bought from the United States.

We've spent billions on this over the course of their life. It's gonna cost them about $70 billion. It's a huge investment in Canada's airborne military. And I'm happy to see that we got that commitment out of this liberal government. But the defense, our defense staff is warning that the U.S. will control key systems on these F-35s because of software patches and over the air updates

and that sort of thing. To the point that if they wanted to, they could just turn off the lights and our F-35s would be bricked. And so to talk about this and much more Francis Sims joins us. He's the associate dean in the faculty of applied sciences and technology at Humber Polytechnic. Francis, thanks so much for being here. Great to be here with you. Always been. Is this an overinflated worry or is this a genuine concern? I think it's a genuine concern. What we don't really understand is the scope of control, right?

What we did see with somebody like Musk is months ago when a Chechen warlord was driving a cyber truck and thanking Musk for giving him the cyber truck, he just turned it off remotely. Right. So definitely any of these devices, whether it's military devices or software devices like your phone that are connected to some server at some point, maybe for a software update, have the ability to be stopped. And it may be as simple as maybe it can't connect to the US radar systems. Maybe it won't get that maintenance update at

some point in the future if the relations are sour. I would imagine the Canadian military, the German military is having the same issue, are thoroughly having these kinds of conversations and doing what they can to prevent it. But what we don't really know is at the deep code level how much control they actually have. That's not disclosed. We may never find out. And so I think the concerns are real. If we don't have a supply chain in Canada to build these spider jets ourselves, we're reliant on somebody else. And everything now these days is connected to some sort of internet or network outside of the actual device itself. Yeah. If you, if you told me that this was an issue, if you told me 15 years ago, 10

years ago, five years ago, that the Americans had this sort of ability over our military hardware, I don't know that it would have raised the same alarms in my head as it does today. But watching sort of this realignment that the Trump administration is hell-bent on, sort of marginalizing democracies in favor of cozying up to autocrats, what happens if Canada's military priorities do not align with the Americans? What would stop him from telling the manufacturer of the F-35, you know what, we don't like the fact that they're sending their F-35s to say, Ukraine. So we're going to have you brick them for a little while.

And that's exactly Germany's concern right now. What happens if they go into Ukraine and you know Trump's not aligned with it. What happens to those F-35s? So we are witnessing the rise of AI as we know, but it's physically manifesting in robots. I mean we saw Optimus, the Elon Musk robot, which looks incredible. And now Google is getting in on that with their deep mind AI models that are going to power physical robots. We saw a video of it that Google released. To me the robot looked like a generation behind Optimus, but the potential for it is still there. And it's, I gotta say, it's

giving me Shades of Eye Robot, the Will Smith movie. Oh I remember that I like that movie. Yeah. But what's interesting about what Google is doing is they're taking the the chat GPT concept and they're applying it to robots. So what does that mean? So you can tell a robot go over there and pick that thing up that looks like a yellow circle and the robot will do that. You know previous you know five years ago in order to do that. You know, previous, you know, five years ago in order to do that, you had to spend hours and hours and hours coding the thing, right, to get it to do it.

But now Google is gonna provide this tool so that software developers can actually start to communicate with it like you and I are talking today and to, you know, walk down the street and pick up that thing maybe, or help that lady cross the street or go to the store and pick up my medicine. Yeah, right. You can imagine scenarios like that. Simple, simple what what what the robot might seem as simple commands, you know, will be able to be done by by programmers

like you and I, right, we'll be able to buy something off the shelf, maybe at Best Buy, and then start to tell it what to do. So it's really revolutionary, because what it's doing is it's bringing chat GPT off of the computer and into the physical realm. And watching the video as it demonstrated what it could do in the kitchen for example and said hey pack my lunch for me and don't forget my trail mix and it puts the trail mix in the bag and then at the last minute he says oh and give and that there was a bowl of fruit with three different types of fruit and he said oh and and and give me one of the oranges as well and it was able to determine which the orange was and put

it in the bag. There is there is absolutely a use case for this type of robot, perhaps not this generation, but it could be three or four years from now where we see these popping up more and more in people's homes, I think so. And what Google is saying is they have three key things that they're trying to do. They're trying to focus on generality

so that the robot can adapt to new situations, right? So say if there's a box in front of it and able to walk around, interactivity so you can talk to it, right? That's like we do with chat GPT and dexterity. That is going to be able to pick up things, right? That's been very difficult for robots is to be able to, you know, have that fine motor skills. That's really what it's focused on. And so I think if it can solve those three things, it's going to be exciting. I'm speaking with Francis Sims. He's the associate dean in the faculty of Applied Sciences

and Technology at Humber Polytechnic. And we're talking tech stories that will affect your life. And one of them is going to affect a great number of people in the province of Ontario. Is this lawsuit that a number of Ontario school boards have brought against social media giants? And what's interesting is that the government the province of Ontario is this lawsuit that a number of Ontario school boards have brought against social media giants.

And what's interesting today is we're learning that the courts have given permission for these lawsuits to proceed. And what's interesting about the claims in it is the school boards are claiming that the platforms are negligently designed and they're designed for compulsive use and they have rewired the way children think, behave and learn.

Now I believe that that is a case that should be tried in court. However, I got to wonder what you think because unless these school boards can prove that they have done everything they possibly can to keep the phones and therefore those platforms out of the classroom, they don't have clean hands. And for example, in the area I live, the Toronto District School Board has what has been referred to as a toothless policy on cell phones.

So if you're not willing to take the extraordinary steps of keeping them out of the classroom, how can you then criticize the platforms themselves when you yourself are still allowing them to fester in your classroom? Mm hmm. I have a slightly different perspective though. I have a daughter that's in grade 12 at the TDSB and they use Instagram, her and her other college students to plan, you know, group projects and communicate in the classroom. Right. And so I think, I think the issue is I have is that phones

are part of our lives. They're part of our lives inside school, outside school, in the workplace, everywhere you go. And I think it's a difficult situation to ban phones entirely. Providers like Meta, what they could do is they could do things like geofence, right? Or time of day.

They could turn off certain features so that when the students are in the classroom, they're not getting a feed with all of this, you know, what's happening to your friend down the street, what's happening in another country, what's happening to your social media favorite person, influencer. What they could do is focus on limiting access to those tools during school time, I think, right? That's a very simple thing because the reality is that if a student is, you know, in five

years from now, everybody's going to be running AI on their phone, they're not doing it already. So these tools aren't going anywhere. And so if we take these tools away from our students in the classroom, it takes this takes an opportunity for the teachers to tell the students how to use those phones to make their lives better, faster. Francis, I'm thinking maybe maybe with the solution here is for the it's the phone producers, Apple and Google, who

should be cutting off access once they know that it's geolocated inside a school. 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 to 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 can do this. I'm physically fit, I'm mentally fit. They must learn to adapt or they'll be voted out. Being a physicist, playing men's hockey, this does not scare me at all. When my kids watch this, I want them to look at me and say, I'm proud of him.

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