The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 4 - Pierre Poilievre, Kate Harrison, Anthony Koch, Sharan Kaur

Episode Date: March 9, 2025

Best of the Week Part 4 - Pierre Poilievre, Kate Harrison, Anthony Koch, Sharan Kaur Guests: Pierre Poilievre, Kate Harrison, Anthony Koch, Sharan Kaur, Eric Kam, Laura Stone 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

Want to own part of the company that makes your favorite burger? Now you can. With partial shares from TD Direct Investing, you can own less than one full share, so expensive stocks are within reach. Learn more at td.com slash partial shares. TD, ready for you. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Best of the Week podcast. We had so many great interviews this week, including a discussion with Pierre Poliev on how he would deal with the Trump administration. Our political panel was particularly good as well. Enjoy. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show and one of the things that I love about doing this show is how I am able to bring conversations to our listeners with the people who make the news.

And one of the people who hopes to one day be our Prime Minister joins us now. Please welcome to the show the leader of the official opposition, Pierre Poliev. We're going to talk to him about a plan that he brought forward today to force party leadership candidates to disclose financial holdings within a month of declaring their candidacy. This is with the backdrop of Mark Carney,

who is an exceptionally influential person who has built up a storied career as a central banker, as a board member to some of the biggest companies that wield enormous influence on world markets, on job markets, and yet because he is not technically an elected official, he is not subject to the the disclosure rules that apply to everyone else. This is not just an issue that politicians have had a problem with. The Globe and Mail's Bob Fife has been particularly frustrated at the lack of transparency from Mark Carney.

Why did you story about the delay there? That's all right, that's all right. So I gave the listeners the delay of the land in terms of Mark Carney and his lack of transparency right now. I contended that the rule is written in the spirit of openness and transparency. And it wasn't written so that somebody who doesn't necessarily fall into the category

can skirt the rules that everybody else is beholden to. And you want to change that moving forward. So here's why this matters. Let's suppose for a second that your Prime Minister has a financial interest that is opposite to your interest. Then he's not working for you, he's working against you. That's why we have a conflict of interest law that requires or is meant to require ministers and prime ministers to first divulge to the public what they own and second, if there are any conflicts to sell it immediately.

But Carney has found a loophole, very sneaky. He's going to use the fact that he's not yet a prime minister, he's just a leadership candidate, to get into office and then he has a hundred and twenty days before he has to either A, tell Canadians what are his investments are or B, throw it into a what's called a blind trust which means nobody can look at it and his trustee can just keep him invested in all the same things that he has right now. Let's get this straight. He is invested in American businesses that Trump would manipulate to get concessions out of Carney on trade with Canada. Imagine if Trump takes a look at all the millions of dollars that Carney has accumulated by moving jobs to the U S from Canada and says, Oh, I'm going to

change this regulation, this tax, this government contract to advantage Carney if he gives concessions to America, or punish him if he stands up for Canada. And that would effectively mean that Carney's interest would be against Canada's interest. So I'm saying he should divulge his interest and sell the holdings that put him in a conflict. Okay, Pierre, I want to move on because we don't have a lot of time. I want to know what you make of Justin Trudeau's 11th hour conversion. He's been silent on the anti-Semitic protests that

have gripped our country for so long and only in the last few days before he's leaving office does he finally have the bravery to call out this scourge that we've been enduring for a year and a half and he calls himself proudly a Zionist. What do you make of this? It's really something that the breadth of hypocrisy. Justin Trudeau has been unwilling to stand up to anti-Semitism. He spread falsehoods and lies about Israel. He even regurgitated disproven Hamas propaganda, in one case saying that Israel had blown up a hospital in Gaza. In fact, it turned out that it was Hamas that had blown up the hospital. He never corrected that, but now at the 11th hour he wants to be a hero. These liberals are looking for a

fourth term in power after 10 years. They've allowed anti-Semitism, crime, inflation, and countless other scourges to run rampant. They want you to forget all about that with last-minute sneaky tricks and reversals. But Canadians are not dumb, like Carney Trudeau think they are. Canadians, I think, want a government that will stand up for them, that will fight anti-Semitism, crime, inflation, and bring home the country that we knew and still love. It's been pretty clear to me that the issues

that we've had with the United States thus far under Donald Trump have had very little to do with the border or fentanyl and far more to do with what JD Vance tweeted a few days ago. He said, if you move your business to America, there are no tariffs. This feels to me like the battle that we have to gird for. What would a Poliev government do to fight for the businesses that we have here, for them to stay here, despite what feels like a

one-track mind by Donald Trump to get everything that would to hollow out our economy and bring all of our jobs south of the border. We got to bring it home. I got to bring it home plan. So this is what it will look like. One we're going to repeal the anti energy anti resource laws like c 69. And I'm going to be granting fast permission to Canadian businesses who want to build pipelines, mines, liquefied natural with natural gas terminals that ship overseas, not just to the states.

I'm going to cut red tape to give permission to businesses to build homes that our young people can afford. Second part of my bring at home plan is a massive patriotic tax cut on work, investment, energy and home building. We're going to take GST off new homes. We're going to cut income taxes. We're going to cut taxes on reinvestment in Canada so that we incentivize the half trillion dollars liberals have already pushed south of the border to come back to Canada and employ

our people, making our economy sovereign, self-, self reliant and stand on our own two feet. Lastly, when do you think that the campaign is going to start in earnest? Are we, do you think Mark Carney, once he assumes the leadership is going to call a snap election or are we going to have to wait a while? No, he'll call us a sneaky snap election.

He wants to hold the vote before Canadians get to know about his enormous conflicts of interest before they realize that he's been Justin Trudeau's economic advisor for the last four or five years, during which time housing costs doubled, food bank lineups doubled, the national debt doubled. And so we as common sense conservatives have got to be ready. And that's why I'm already talking about our bring-it-home plan for Canadians. Pierre Pauly, I'm the leader of the official opposition and leader of the Conservative Party. We appreciate your time. Have a great weekend. Great to be with you.

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and you know I'm a jack of all trades. I know a little bit about a lot. I like to say that in college I majored in cocktail party conversation, knowing just enough to have interesting conversations for about five minutes before I migrate to somebody else and have a different chat. But what's going on today because of these tariffs requires a depth of knowledge in economics that I do not possess, but again, I could talk about for a few minutes. So let's invite somebody in who can help steer this ship, Dr. Eric Kam, economics professor

at Toronto Metropolitan University. Eric, welcome to the show. Benedict, in lieu of a real expert, you've got me for a few minutes. Okay. Let's talk about how these tariffs, well, they're doing a lot, but one of the things that the market seems to be telling us is they're causing uncertainty. There's a precipitous drop at the beginning of the day on the Dow Jones, because look, we don't know which industries are getting slapped, and they get carve-outs, and the

percentages change, and then there's a pause pause and then there's a pullback. This is not a country, a continent, a world cannot do business in this environment. Absolutely not. You can't keep moving the goal posts. But back to your question about what tariffs are, I mean there's only two things that we know with certainty that tariffs do and I don't care what Lutnik or anybody else says. Number one, any tariff, any quota is a departure from efficiency. It is a departure from letting demand equal supply and anytime that you shove a wedge between those two forces that guide our country's economies, you're going to get inefficiency, you're going to get quantities that are too low, and you're going to get prices that are too high. So that's number one. And number two,

because just of the gross nature of these things that most people don't understand them, and I include myself in that, nobody knows everything about what's going to happen, they inject a certain amount of fear and uncertainty and there isn't a financial, labor, money, credit, capital market that exists that isn't made worse off when you inject such uncertainty, Ben, because it sends investors scrambling and again diverges between the two forces that guide our economy. So all we know for certain is that these things are destabilizing and not healthy for any capitalist economy. Yeah, and well, let's look at what commerce secretary

Howard Lutnick says tariffs don't do. We just talked about what they do do. Let's, I said do do. Let's see what Lutnick says, what what tariffs don't cause. Inflation comes from a government printing more money. Some prices can rise, you know, this bottle of water. It can't happen at all. No, tariffs do not, tariffs do not, do not, do not create inflation. Printing money creates inflation. You have a balanced budget. There can't be inflation. It doesn't

mean one product could be more expensive and one product could be less expensive. But China, I'll give you an example. China has the highest tariffs in the world. In the world, everything gets taxed in China and they don't have inflation. In fact, they have deflation. India, the second highest tariffs in the world, they don't have inflation. So this concept is just people whining and complaining and not being truthful. Eric, how much of what he's saying is accurate? Very little. And people should know that Latinx, now, by the way, you's saying is accurate? Very little. And people should know that lotnick's now, by the way, I, you know, I'm not an arrogant

person, but I think that for somebody who has a BA in economics, I went to school on a tennis scholarship. He could be a little bit more forthcoming. The reality is, is that there's no way that these tariffs are not going to be inflationary and they're going to be inflationary to both countries because just as we said a minute ago they're just driving a wedge between the natural price or the price that would settle among equal and competing wants and it's creating in a sense a gap between what people want to pay and what people will pay. So he cites countries that have such different economic infrastructure to us.

He's not talking about their level of unemployment. He's not talking about anything else. I mean, there's many ways to absorb price increases. And in those countries, you know, there's a lot of issues that we really shouldn't get into like human rights and this and that. People are slaughtered. I mean, there's a lot of ways to push people to competition that we think heavens don't do in our countries. But no, he's absolutely half right when he says printing too much money too fast causes inflation. Sure. But so do import tariffs and quotas. There's no other result than inflation, Ben. What Canada does in response is really the question that we're going to be asking ourselves every day.

Are we on the right path? Did we bite off more than we could chew? Are we trying to get into a knife fight with somebody who's got a semi-automatic rifle? And so there's a conversation going on online about whether counter tariffs make for a good policy in this environment. And there was a tweet by somebody who said that counter tariffs make the U.S. more likely to repeal their tariffs sooner and therefore you're inducing less total pain.

The answer is I'm a trained economist so I fully understand and usually support the argument against retaliation. However, this is exactly what I've been thinking about. The simple traditional analysis is static. The world is not. I don't have an answer, so any input is welcome. I don't have an answer either, but is it true? I mean, counter tariffs sort of in a static world would make sense, but this is such an ever-evolving, ever-changing situation. Maybe it's not the right policy right now. Look, it depends on whether you want to just look down a pure economic textbook road, Ben. And if you do want to do that and you turn to chapter 11 on international trade, the

answer is no, it's not a great idea because if you have tariffs and then you act back with tariffs that inevitably come with more tariffs, again, you're just pushing the inflationary effects of those tariffs for both countries higher and higher. So on a purely economic argument, no, that's not the way to go. But we know that economics is tied with politics, you can't get those things apart.

And so this is really a power play on the part of the Canadian government and Premier Ford, who I think has done a tremendous job coming up on your show very soon to the good listenership, because what else are you going to do? What are you going to do if you don't push back? You're going to look like a weak person and a weak country. So I don't disagree with Canada's doing this.

They really, in a sense, have no choice. When your back's up against the wall, you have to push back. So what you can't do here, Ben, is you have to sort of marry economics and politics. The textbook will tell you it's a bad idea, but I think in terms of a globalized world, I don't think Canada has much choice. No, and I agree with you. And I was likening it to sort of the Americans in Vietnam. Like, we are the Viet Cong in this situation. We don't have the numbers and we don't have the firepower,

but we are going to, if the first volley of tariffs caused uncertainty in the markets, then Canada was gonna lean into that uncertainty and create chaos and force the Americans to pay attention to what this is doing to their stock market. I mean, today, if the trend line continues and the stock market closes a thousand points lower today, I think a lot of it will have to do with the fact

that Canada is not taking this lying down. But that, the economic threats from the US, it does appear, are having issues beyond what we've been talking about and into the Canadian housing market. When I saw that Toronto sales dropped almost 29% in February, that's a crisis, isn't it, Eric? Ben, this is astounding because we have, especially in the GTA, we've lived for years saying what is going to cool off the housing market if it's not interest rates? What is going to bring this thing down? What's going to burst the proverbial

bubble? Well, we found it. Go into a trade war with a country that we need much more than they need us. And I know that the premiers you're going to talk to are going to say that that's not true, but you can't look at the GDPs of the two countries and the number of trading partners and the percentage of GDPs that each other is and not come up with the conclusion that we need them more than they need us. Now, that's a long-winded answer to your question, which is back to the fear, back to the uncertainty. The most important statistic in economics is the unemployment rate, Ben, because as much as we complain about inflation, things are handleable. You can substitute out one good for the other when you have a job and an income. This

trade war is doing nothing but telling ordinary, and that's all of us, Canadians with a job, be careful. You might not have yours for much longer if you're one of the five or six biggest goods We trade with the United States. Yeah, so the answer now we know Ben we know now it's out of the closet How do you kill a housing market? Have a trade war and threaten the jobs of potentially a million people every other month And that's one exact figure but that's not a bad Approximation if you look at the five biggest goods that we trade with the U.S.

If you shut those down, you're going to lose about a half a million jobs a month. So take that out of the equation. There goes your demand for housing. Dr. Eric Kam, economics professor at TMU. Thank you so much for joining us and giving us the economic lay of the land. At Desjardins, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear

off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do, business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us, and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And it's time for this week in politics where we look back at the biggest stories of the week. And let's say hello to our great panel, Sharon Carr, political strategist and partner at Sovereignty Advisory, Anthony Kosh, managing principal at AK Strategies and former national campaign spokesperson for Pierre Poliev, and Kate Harrison, vice chair at Summa Strategies. To all three of you, I say welcome. Let's jump right in. Kate, what do you make of Donald Trump changing his mind on tariffs again?

What do you think finally got him to back down? He's changing his mind as frequently as the weather. And I think it's important for Canada right now to not get caught into a tit for tat on retaliatory measures right now, Ben. I think, you know, there's a moment in a time to respond in the moment with with reciprocal measures. And I think Canada is doing the right thing in terms of holding strong at the moment and not engaging in a negotiation until there's a more long-term conclusion on the tariff issue. But what I think

more people need to be looking at right now, politicians need to be putting forward is, what's the plan when we're out of April 2nd, right? So what is Canada's economy going to need to do to be more resilient in 2026 and 27 and beyond? So this week is fine for the short-term retaliatory action, but I think a lot of Canadians want to see their decision-makers also put forward a plan that prepares Canada to be on more solid footing so that we're not just going around this White House merry-go-round and we've got a bit more of a strategic plan for how we're

going to recruit investment not just how we're going to deal with the White House. Yeah well and unfortunately though like the the imminent threat is the whims of this president the whims of this White House. Anthony Kosh, I kind of like the position of the feds as well as say a province like Ontario which is say, look, no, we're not changing our policy. You may be vacillating back and forth, but until not only the tariffs are lifted, but the threat of the tariffs are lifted, we are going to stay the course. No, 100%.

And this is the thing that I think is what's really going ahead here. You saw Donald Trump, a lot of people never thought that he was actually going to go ahead with this, that it was just sort of a threat, you know, the threat of Damocles hanging over your head sort of thing. But then you realize the moment that the 25 percent across the board tasks were actually implemented, all of the major auto manufacturers got on the phone with the White House and lit them up. Yeah. And then similarly, like, let's be clear here, why did American voters make Donald Trump

president again? There's a number of reasons, but the major ones were people wanted lower taxes, more money in their pocket, and more affordable goods. There was frustration about inflation, and they wanted things like immigration reform and cut down on government waste. Nobody voted for a trade war and 25% tariffs with Canada, Mexico, and other countries. And now you got a bunch of people, not only in the business community, but writ large, who are saying, wait, why is my 401k plummeting? Why is the stock market going down as fast as it has? Why is the cost of goods about to soar? I didn't vote for this. I think that's the big driving force behind why the president has waffled on this so much thus far. Yeah. And Sharon

Carr, I've got to ask, my theory that I'm operating under right now is that at that first dinner at Mar-a-Lago with the Trudeau government, it seemed like that Donald Trump got hung up on this idea that Canada would cease to be a country if these tariffs came into place. And he thought that's how we were gonna that's how we were going to be. We were going to roll over on him and give him exactly what he wanted.

And that's not what happened. Yeah, no, I'm not exactly sure in what world he thought that would actually happen. But apparently he thought it was an actual possibility. And maybe there was a discussion at that dinner that led him to believe it. But he is now saying that you can't just annex random countries left right and center and is having to deal with the fallback from that now. Yeah it's it's and but I also believe Kate that fundamentally one of the indicators that Donald Trump is slavishly devoted to is the health of the

stock market and when he saw when he saw what happened, that was him, I think he had to course correct. Yeah, that would dot protest too much. He was saying, you know, I don't even look at the stock market. Well, I'm not a financial advisor, but I would really hope the president is looking at the stock market when he's making some

of these decisions. That's what gonna be what moves the needle here. But again, that brings me back to the point, Ben. We have to be thinking longer term. We have to be thinking about more than just psychoanalyzing Donald Trump, because that could be a full time job. But Kate, we don't have the capacity right now to think long term. We don't have a functioning government. We don't know who the prime minister is going to be. We don't know when the election is going to be. I mean, there's a lot. There's not only do we don't know who the prime minister is going to be, we don't know when the election is going to be. Not only do we have uncertainty south of the border, but we quite literally have been living

in this era of political uncertainty in Canada. Well, yeah, the conceit of all of this, of course, is that we have been left very vulnerable and very exposed because the Liberals have decided to embark on an internal-facing leadership race rather than having some of these long-term conversations. So you know I get that it's easy to throw up your hands and say yeah Donald Trump's unpredictable and it's psychodrama from Washington but that shouldn't absolve the current government of some responsibility in longer-term planning and strategy. And I think, Ben, you know, I'm in Ottawa. I think that a lot of civil servants are working hard

to come up with those plans. But I do sense that there's been an abdication of political leadership here. And that's not gonna get better anytime soon. The election could be called next week. We still then will have a period of uncertainty for more than a month. Canada has been left exposed.

The person to blame for that is Justin Trudeau. It's not Donald Trump. Yeah. And Sharon, I'm going to come to you next because look, there have been some good things that have come out of Justin Trudeau. I don't have this reflexive knee jerk. I'm going to hate everything he does because he's who he is and he's a liberal. He has made some good statements.

I think the, our retaliation on the tariff front has been strong, but that is a limited response in terms of what our country needs to do. And it's been limited because of the political situation that we find ourselves in due to choices he's made. Well, yeah, listen, I've worked in this government for five years and I can clearly say that there were some really great things that we've done, but we've also, or I can say they've also done things that have turned Canadians off to a certain level.

People feel that there's been too much going in one direction and people feel disenfranchised. So yes, the prime minister had a strong statement this week pushing back to Donald Trump. He's had a strong position on what Canada's role is in being part of Team Canada, but there are limitations because the level of toxicity that has surrounded him and his brand only let him get so far. And I think that's what we're seeing with the polls changing. That's what we're seeing with some of the announcements coming out. And I think we're going to see a pretty drastic shift in terms of how the Liberal Party operates after Sunday, whether we have an election immediately or later in the fall.

Anthony, let me play devil's advocate and suggest that having Parliament parogued in this moment might have been a good thing because had it not been, we would have been thrown into an election campaign at a time where we needed a steady hand on the till. Yeah, I don't buy it. And I think right now Jagmeet Singh is probably like, I actually suspect when eventual Prime Minister Mark Carney makes his walk up to Rideau Hall, that you will actually see Jagmeet Singh outside the building on his hands and knees begging Mr. Carney, please do not call an election. Please we can work together.

Because since I mean, right now the NDP would be on the path to electoral Obliteration not only at the national level, but the leader. Mr. Jagmeet Singh would lose his riding as well So I don't buy it I think that if the liberals want support from the NDP they would get it right now I think they would have gotten it at the time. You're already seeing their backtracking more and more I think this is going to be right in the hands of whoever ends up becoming the next Liberal leader and Prime Minister. But I actually don't think there's a credible threat of an election right now being brought

down by a vote of lack of confidence in the government and the House of Commons. I think what's going to end up pulling the plug, so to speak, is the Liberals seeing a potential for political advantage brought about about by this power crisis and thinking that they can maximize their support off of it. Kate, what are your thoughts? Yeah, the NDP are hemorrhaging. If you're the Liberals, it's not the moment to give them a Band-Aid. Their opportunity at forming another minority government, I think, will be off the backs

of the NDP, likely not the Conservative vote, or at least fewer seats. So I think that it's very likely Carney turns around, wins the leadership, says he needs a mandate from the people. And there's an opportunity here, Ben, too, for him to say the deal making with the socialists on the New Democrat side is a trudo thing. I'm my own man. This party is going to look different. It's going to behave differently. And so I'm not going to, I'm not going to be making those deals that might appeal to more of a centrist voter that has been historically liberal and a little bit skeptical of all this deal making with the NDP. So an opportunity for Carney to divine himself in the early days, while also to Anthony's point, taking advantage of a weakened NDP

to try and score some more points. Well, we are going to continue with this conversation more with our political panel next, including who we believe will be the next Prime Minister of Canada and what that's going to mean moving forward. That's next on the Ben Mulroney Show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show and welcome back to my incredible This Week in Politics panel, Sharon Carr, Anthony Kosh and Kate Harrison. I got to my incredible This Week in Politics panel, Sharon Carr, Anthony Kosh and Kate Harrison. I gotta ask, let's start with you, Anthony. Mark Carney is going to win this thing. What made him the standout, the front runner to begin with?

It has been a race in name only. There hasn't been a lot of fireworks, there hasn't been real debate. Why is he the guy? What made him the guy from the beginning all the way to the end of this thing? Well, the Liberal Party of Canada still, regardless of all the changes they may have made since Justin Trudeau, sorry, became leader of the party, is still a very top-down party,

and the establishment chooses leaders. And quite frankly, the only major contestant in this race other than Mark Carney was Christa Freeland. And I think, you know, there's that old saying from back in the Margaret Thatcher days when she was taken as leader that the person who holds the knife never gets to wear the crown. I think that's very much the situation we're in. I think that the, while people like myself and maybe Canadians, some liberals even, are grateful for the actions that she took that resulted in Justin Trudeau resigning as Prime Minister. I think that made her, it was considered unforgivable for the overwhelming majority of

liberals who saw that as an act of treachery. And I think Mr. Carney has been working his ways in the wings for several years now, has managed to get some big heavy hitter recruitments, not only in terms of caucus and cabinet ministers, but also in terms of powerful backroom liberal guys who sort of make the calls on these sorts of things. I don't think it was ever much in doubt. But again, I think he's also just liberal enough where he's in with the old boys crew, but he also has some sort of assemblance. I don't buy it, but a lot of people feel he has this credible claim to semi outsider status because he's never been an elected before. Well, I want to touch on that. Sharon, how does it benefit the liberal party already saddled with nine years? Every part, every government settled with nine years of legacy

has has to defend that legacy, whether or not they change their leader. They have been treating this man who has never been in the political arena before, like a piece of fine china that you have to, that you're moving with. You put in bubble wrap and you care for it very carefully. And they haven't put him through any sort of battle testing prior to going into an election with somebody who has been sharpening his skills in the arena for years. Why? We were promised a robust national debate and we didn't get it. And consequently, the leader I don't know is necessarily ready for the rigors

of a national federal campaign. Right, you're telling me those two debates we saw were not at all a debate and this is a family dinner. Listen, Mark Carney is somebody that has been in the periphery of the political world, whether it be with conservatives or liberals for quite some time and being a two-time governor. I think the biggest problem the liberals are going to have is while Mark is a formidable

candidate they have, and he's tried to point back against the I'm an insider perspective. We heard Minister Jolie come out saying she briefed him. She briefed him on Trump tariffs, but no other candidates have been briefed. So there's clearly indication internally that he is the guy that's going to win. It's quite obvious he's going to win. He has not faced off against someone like Pierre Pauliev. And I do think that will be the critical moment in time to see how Mark Carney is as a politician. I have been in his orbit for many years and I think he has the ability to do it, but it's quite different

when you're a central bank governor and when you're the prime minister dealing with Donald Trump, dealing with Pierre Pauliab and dealing with people slinging mud at you and can he handle that? That is to be determined. I'm hopeful that he can. Sharon, there's a lot of daylight between accidentally in French saying that you agree with Hamas and having it picked up and fixed for you by one of the people on the debate stage. If that happened in a French debate with Pierre Poliev

or Yves-Francois Blanchet, he's not getting the same treatment. I don't say this for political reasons. I Blanchet, he's not getting the same treatment. I don't say this for political reasons. I say this like he is not ready for the onslaught. Well, you're right. The problem here is that we all saw that. We saw that clip and Minister Freeland, while her way of correcting him was a bit self-serving, he's not going to have that level of camaraderie with people like Yves Blanchet. And to be honest, his French, when it comes, his French next to Pierre Pauliap, it is going

to suffer. Pierre Pauliap is an excellent communicator in English and even more excellent communicator in French. And that is going to be the true test of whether or not Mark Carney can be a prime minister that Canada needs. I want to switch our focus to Donald Trump. He said some perplexing things about NATO recently. Let's listen.

And you know the biggest problem I have with NATO, I really, you know, I mean, I know the guys very well. They're friends of mine. But if the United States was in trouble and we called them, we said, we got a problem, France, we got a problem, a couple of others I won't mention. Do you think they're going to come and protect us? They're supposed to.

I'm not so sure. Well, the last time that happened was 9-11 and every single NATO country answered the call. So, but this is a man who muses about history without knowing history. So that's par for the course. But Anthony, what's his angle here? What's he trying to prime the pump for?

Well, here's one thing. I'll actually do something that I'm not prone to do. I'll say Trump has a point in this respect. When NATO was founded, every country committed that they would spend 2% of their gross domestic product on military spending, defense spending. And most countries absolutely failed to do that. And we're basically excessively reliant on the United States of America for defense purposes. But Anthony, that's a debate. And it's a fair debate. We've had that conversation before.

But I feel like this is different. Yeah, so it is. And again, the proof that this is different is specifically the fact that he used, even funny, in this case, it was not even a NATO-related country, in Japan. Why doesn't Japan, we have to defend Japan, why would Japan defend us? Well, actually, Mr. President, it's because after the Second World War,

the United States forced Japan to sign on to a series of treaties that basically banned them from ever having anything close to resembling a functioning military because of what happened. And that was part of the deal. So there is a lot of historical illiteracy here. Same thing, economic illiteracy, when you see talking about trade tariffs and whatever. But I think what you're seeing, there's this weird attempt, Donald Trump loves to create crises so that he can then make himself out to be this great deal maker who solves the crisis that he

himself created. But I think what we're generally seeing is, I'm not the first person to be this great deal maker who solves the crisis that he himself created. But I think what we're generally seeing is, some of the first person to say this, the return of American isolationism, for better and for worse, in my case, I think much for worse. But I think looking forward, countries, whether they're NATO or otherwise, are gonna have to realize that Big Daddy United States

is not there to bail us out anymore. In many cases, they may even be an adversary, and we to sort of pick up our own boots by the bootstraps. I want Kate to jump in. Kate, does the Russia of it all play into how we should interpret these thoughts on NATO? It's hard to separate those two things, especially given, you know, we're only about a week removed from that horrible historical intervention at the White House with Zelensky. Yeah, it's clear to Anthony's point that the U.S. is taking a much more isolationist approach, not the approach that I think is good for the world. It's certainly bad for Canada. When I hear our own politicians respond then to how

we need to course correct. It's not through anything from my estimation that would move the needle in a way that it needs to in terms of NATO and defence spending. The Liberal plan right now seems to be to increase CAF salaries to help get us to 2%. Needs to happen. Not going to be the only thing that's needed in order to make sure that Canada is prepared because we don't even have the military equipment or kit available to help those CAF members. So I'll be honest, I haven't seen from any of the parties a real thoughtful practical plan to get

us on that path and procure what is needed. The situation with the White House should really force Canadians and government's hand to take a much more serious look at this because we're going to need to because America is just not going to be as reliable a partner as they have been. Sharon, the last 30 seconds to you. Yeah, I'm with Kate on this. The whole situation to me is a bit bogus. It's like Donald Trump saying, if something happens to us, no one's going to come to our

defense. Listen, if you guys called me at two in the morning and said, you're under siege, if I had the equipment or not, I would be there. Your partners are there to help you. So I do think it's a wake-up call. We need to spend more on defense. We need to be ready to go. But like also, part of me just wants to roll my eyes because I don't even know what this guy's talking about anymore. Well, I can't imagine that the adults in the military in the United States would ever tell him that abandoning NATO would be a good idea for the United States and for its national interest. But you never know, you never know

in the world that we're living in. Hey, Sharon Carr, Anthony Kosh, Kate Harrison, thank you so much for joining me. I always love these conversations, always love these chats. I hope all three of you have a great weekend. You too, take care. Take care. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show.

Thank you so much for joining us. And you know, yesterday, as I saw the premier of Ontario very emotionally defending the interests of Ontarians and saying that he was going to inflict the most pain possible. There was a part of me that wondered whether that was the right tactic. Was that too much? Was that too forceful? Was that going to elicit the wrong response from the Americans? Well, as it turns out, Laura Stone from the Globe and Mail broke the news that it in fact,

the response was, I have to believe quite positive because Howard Lutnick called Doug Ford yesterday, asking him about what he meant and how far he was willing to go. And so to drill down on that scoop, I'm very pleased to join for the, I believe the first time on the Ben Mulroney show, Laura Stone, Queens Park reporter for the Globe and Mail. Laura, welcome.

Great to be here, Ben. Thanks so much for having me. Okay, so talk to me about what you uncovered yesterday. So it was quite an extraordinary call between Howard Lutnick and Doug Ford. I'm told by sources that Mr. Lutnick reached out to Ford's team shortly after his press conference at Queens Park and that the Commerce Secretary came in hot. It was an

aggressive phone call. It was described as tough. And he essentially kind of began by berating Mr. Ford and saying, you know, I'm here to remind yourself that this is not how you should, I'm here to remind you that this is not how you should conduct yourself. You need to stand down on these kind of on the strong language and the retaliation that Canada has announced and essentially the Premier's response was no I'm not doing that and in fact if I do anything I'm actually going harder on you guys and apparently it was a quite turf exchange for the beginning of the phone call and then you know they talked about fentanyl and the actions that Canada has taken and

Mr Ford said look we've kind of done everything we can at this point to work with you and I think the message from the Premier was I need to stand up for my people and telling Lutnick you would do the same thing for America and that appeared to kind of shift the conversation and I'm told that Mr Lutnick softened somewhat after that. And then they began to have a negotiation about trade and tariffs. Yeah, well, that's it. See, that's interesting.

And later on in the 10 o'clock hour, we're gonna have the Premier himself join us. So we'll hear from the horse's mouth about the call. But this fits with the narrative that I think the progressive conservatives want, that this is what Doug Ford wanted. He wanted a strong mandate so he could have that very phone call and be that forceful in that moment. For sure. I think what's really interesting is, you interesting is the difference that we're seeing between Ontario and the federal government because Mr. Trudeau came out yesterday also very strong and making

kind of a personal plea to the president. And I've been told that his comments, quoting the Wall Street Journal saying, addressing the president by his first name, Donald, and saying, you're a very smart guy, but this is a very dumb move, really struck a nerve with the White House. And they viewed that as a personal attack on the president. And I'm told that Lutnick expressed that to Mr. Ford, even though Doug Ford is also kind of trying to needle Mr. Trump, right? He's going on all these American networks. He's saying he loves the Americans, but this is the fault of one guy who's putting

your economy at risk. But I think there's clearly no love lost here between the Trump administration and Mr. Trudeau. And we heard Howard Lutnick speaking to reporters last night after the joint address in Congress just saying like, it's time for Trudeau to go, we need to replace the government in Canada Canada so there's clearly a difference there in how they view the different administrations. Oh absolutely and listen I'm never one who enjoys ad hominem attacks amongst leaders but if Donald Trump is able and willing and eager to denigrate and demean our Prime Minister, whoever that person is, by calling him a governor, then you've got to be prepared to be called by

your first name. And if you don't like that, then if you can't dish it, or if you can't take it, don't dish it. Yeah, I think the Americans are almost taken aback that Canada has had such a strong approach. And there's this attitude that that no, no, you guys don't get to hit us back. You need to do everything that the president says and sort of keep your mouth shut. And obviously the premier's response to that was no, that's not how we operate. And I've been also told that by the

sources that that's respected by the US. Like if you back down and sort of hide your head in shame, they actually go harder on you, but they respect when you stand up to them. So it's a really interesting dynamic. And there's also so much that's unclear about what this is even about, right? Because we've heard from US officials, this is only about the border and fentanyl. Then we have the president talking about bringing industries back to the US, about unfair trade practices, about banking. So this is clearly so much bigger than just the Sentinel problem and the sources.

And I hope you can get this more clarity from the premier on this, but the sources said, Lutnick essentially said, yeah, this is part of the negotiation. Let's renegotiate USMCA and come to a deal together. So I think kind of the phone call laid bare the negotiating tactics that the Americans are approaching here with the tariffs. And I think the point kind of to drive home about the call was that, you know, clearly Canada has struck a nerve

with the US, they're surprised by their reaction and they may be trying to walk this back today. Yeah, listen, the fact that we keep hearing from the Commerce Secretary, the Commerce Secretary that this is a fentanyl issue and not the border czar. The point person here is the Commerce Secretary. And so that tells me that it really, yes, fentanyl was probably the original, hey, let's call it a fentanyl issue, but that's not the thrust and the driving force of this anymore. And I've got to wonder, Laura,

I wonder whether the Americans were caught flat-footed because they had, I think they thought they were only gonna be dealing with sort of the federal government on this and reciprocal tariffs. I don't know that they thought that premiers in this country have the ability to inflict damage on the American economy the way that they probably can.

So I don't know that they thought that the, sort of the secondary level of government in the provinces was as influential as it is. The fact that Lutnick has to be talking to a premier is, I think, significant. I think that's absolutely right. I think they're taken aback by the unity, I guess, of Canada's approach and just how high profile some of the premiers like Doug Ford has been.

I mean, I'm in Washington right now and he's all over the news. I'm watching Fox News and they're talking about his threats to cut off energy supply and to add taxes to electricity. So it's being noticed and I think there's potentially some backlash there among Trump supporters and kind of the MAGA crowd and the administration of what are we doing here? Is this going to hurt us? And there's a lot of discussion about the markets, about businesses, about making life more expensive for Americans and I think that they're getting a little bit squirrely here. Now, I'm not going to say that they're gonna back down

from the tariffs, because we haven't heard that message at all, and they're still promising to review sort of the trade system later in April. But I think on this kind of across the board tariffs on Canadian goods, there seems to be certainly some revisiting of whether 25% on everything, including autos, is the right approach. Well, I think, Laurie, if we see a third straight day of losses on the Dow Jones, I think that

is that's the most compelling evidence that this administration is going to need that the market doesn't have faith in these tariffs as a net positive. Absolutely. Yeah, I think I think, you know, the president has said this takes time. There's gonna be some pain, and we heard that message, but I think there's going to start to, I think people are going to start to get impatient if they start to see their savings and retirement plans

go down the drain, and it's not really fulfilling the president's promise to make life better and more affordable for people. So we'll see what happens today. What are you chasing today, Laura? Well we have the commerce secretary, Lutnick, saying that there might be a compromise on some of these tariffs and he specifically spoke about autos today. He was talking to Bloomberg saying that the president might announce some

new tariff plan today. So yeah, this never really ends. We could see some movement on some of the tariffs put in place for the auto sector and other industries. But it looks like there's going to be some change to the original tariff announcement that was only made a couple of days ago announced later today. Laura, someone's got to get details from Lutnik as to what those calls that he supposedly got yesterday on new things on the border, because I think we need details as to what Canada was promising yesterday that we didn't deliver the day before. Yeah, I mean... Oh, I'm sorry, I got a jet, but thank you so much.

Oh, okay, yeah. All right, good luck. Thanks for listening to the Ben Mulroney Show podcast. We're live every day nationwide on the Chorus Radio Network, and you can listen online to the Radio Canada player and the iHeart Radio Canada apps. And make sure to follow and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your streaming audio.

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