The Ben Mulroney Show - Best of the Week Part 5 - Sylvain Charlebois, Goldy Hyder, Craig Baird

Episode Date: March 9, 2025

Best of the Week Part 5 - Sylvain Charlebois, Goldy Hyder, Craig Baird Guests: Sylvain Charlebois, Goldy Hyder, Craig Baird, Mohit Rajhans, Vincent Geloso If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Best of the Week podcast. We had so much coverage of the tariffs this week and we covered all angles. How much would groceries go up? How bad will business be affected? Plus, we even took you 130 years back in history to when tariffs were applied to Canada in an attempt to annex us. Enjoy. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for listening on this Thursday. There's a lot of news being made and Thank you for listening on this Thursday. There's a lot of news being made. And one of the people who can speak to an issue that

is very important to so many of us and our pocketbooks, our food insecurity issues in this country, is our next guest, Sylvain Charleboix, Canadian researcher and professor specializing in the food industry. Sylvain, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you, Ben. So there will forever be a debate in this country as to

whether or not one tactic is better than another tactic as it relates to retaliation in this tariff war with Donald Trump. You have taken the position in an article that you've written that Canada cannot win a trade war by taxing its own people. True leverage comes from targeting American reliance on our exports not undermining our own food security and economy. Talk to me about what you mean by that. I'll be honest with you, Ben. Over the last several weeks, I've started to realize that many Canadians don't understand what the dollar-for-dollar rhetoric response actually means.

It essentially means that we're going after the largest economy in the world, dollar for dollar responding with counter-terrorists, but these counter-terrorists will only hurt Canadians. Yeah. It just makes our market less attractive. And if someone actually does import products from America, well, those products will be more expensive for us to consume. And of course, eat, which is the one thing be more expensive for us to consume and of course,

eat, which is the one thing I'm concerned about food security and food prices at the grocery store. And that's why I've always been very uncomfortable with this dollar for dollar rhetoric because we just can't win a tariff for nobody can win a tariff for Yeah, but but see, what I'm coming to realize, or at least this is sort of an idea that's getting comfortable in my mind. I don't know where I land on it yet.

But what I'm coming to think about is that I don't know that the Americans thought we would punch back at all. I think they thought we would roll over and take it. And I think what they're seeing is we recognize we don't have the ability to really affect their bottom line. However, we're leaning into the chaos. And the chaos is exacerbated by what we're seeing

on the stock market. And we know Donald Trump pays attention to the stock market. And if we can lean into that and make it just a little bit worse, then that will have the effect of making him notice that maybe these tariffs were a bad idea. Well tariffs are a bad idea, for sure. But let me use the analogy of a bully in a schoolyard.

So Trump decided to punch us in the face. And so our response was to punch back. Okay. What I'm arguing is that we shouldn't be punching back. We should go to that schoolyard bully's house and burn it. Oh, geez. Okay. Now, okay. That's what I'm suggesting. Okay. So now put that in terms of our food supply and our farmers and the grocery store. our food supply and our farmers and the grocery store. So, so instead of, of, of using counter-terrorists and penalize Canadians, we should actually remind Americans of how important we are when it comes to food systems and target Canadian exports, key Canadian exports into the U.S. like potash, beef, pork. So they decide to slap a tariff on

our products. Let's double the ante and make these products even more expensive and that's when you realize that not only you're making American companies less competitive but you're hitting something that is precious to Donald Trump is base farmers, food manufacturers, and so on and so forth. You're basically gonna hit America where it hurts. Well, I'm glad you mentioned the farmers as they relate to Donald Trump

because he posted on his Truth Social, to the great farmers of the United States, get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold inside of the United States. Tariffs will go on external product on April 2nd. Have fun. When you see something like that, what do you think? You're not looking at the same numbers we're looking, for sure, because of course, America, like Canada,

they feed the world. So they're thinking about China. They're thinking about other markets to make money. So that pose from President Trump makes no economic sense at all. Okay, so let's assume that the snapshot of the way things exist today, the tariffs as they are applied today remain for a while. What does that mean over the next few weeks to my grocery bill, to the cost of my breakfast. Listen, Ben, we're probably a couple of hours away from hearing either Howard

Lubnick or President Trump making an announcement about tariffs on food and agriculture. So there may be some exemptions in a few hours from now. Forecasting anything right now is close to impossible. So all we know right now is that there are tariffs, okay, and counter tariffs will include many products coming into Canada that will affect some products in the produce section, center of the store, shelves, table trucks, and the frozen aisle. So those are the three sections that are likely going to be impacted by current tariffs. Now in three weeks from now, there's another layer of uncertainty. Who's

going to be leading our country? You and I have no idea. That person will have a huge say on how we're going to implement a second wave of tariffs if tariffs are still there. Yeah, no, the amount of uncertainty that we're dealing with on this side of the border is, it's unbelievable. We got the economic and the political and it's, this is no, this is no way, if I were a business owner I wouldn't know what to do. To be honest, Ben, I mean, on the American side, you have a president and everyone's scared of him. His own party's scared of him. So he's doing whatever he wants. Our best hope is to see his approval rating drop significantly. And that's when he's going to start making better decisions.

Let's talk about the odd exception that is eggs. White House press secretary Karen Levitt said that President Trump is open to additional tariff exemptions, including for Canadian eggs. Now, I know, I've read, I haven't been an expert on it, but I know that they have a shortage of eggs in the states, and generally speaking, the cost has already been very high. Give me the state of play on eggs. Yeah, so essentially what's happening in America is that they've lost control of the avian flu.

I mean, they had to call almost 200 million chickens. That's more than 10% of the entire American flock. And so they're struggling. And we're getting closer to Easter, which is arguably the one season where eggs are most popular. And so prices are only going up and eggs are important because it is the cheapest, cheapest source of adenoid protein out there.

And so a lot of Americans are concerned. So they're not thinking, Americans aren't thinking about the border. They're not thinking about tariffs. They're thinking about the price of eggs and the price of milk and things like that. So I think this is probably the one thing that is going to hurt Donald Trump's popularity over time. Well, this is what this goes into what I was saying earlier about leaning into the chaos about furthering it, making it so that what they have posited as a deliberate, important move, it only sows more chaos, both in the markets and in terms of the cost of things

that will ultimately affect Donald Trump's popularity. Exactly. So we do have enough eggs to export, not much because of supply management, but we do have some. Yeah. If my approach would be very simple, because right now they're looking at importing from Turkey, that wouldn't be a popular decision in America.

But Canadian eggs are trusted. But I would say this, you want eggs? Sure. Eliminate all terror. Yeah. Thank you. Hey, before. Eliminate all terror. Yeah. Thank you. Hey, before- Turn it down the house, my friend.

Before I let you go, have you tried any of these apps that allow Canadians to go into a grocery store and determine whether a product is made in Canada, produced in Canada, packaged in Canada? No, I have not. Have you? Well, there's a couple of them. I had someone on my show with someone called Maple Scan. Apparently it's a fantastic app. There's also one called Oscanada. But I think you should try these out and then let us know. Absolutely. Yeah. By the way, sales are up

for K&N products, the grocery store. But most important is that American sales for American food products are down almost 7% in the last month. And so people are clearly telling grocers, you know what, de-Americanize your store for a while because we wanna buy other things. You know, I do not think the Americans expected us to rally around the flag as we have. And I think they thought we would just roll over

and take it, but Sylvain Charleboix, always a pleasure to have you on the show. Hope to hear back from you soon. All right, take care. Bye-bye. Well, we learned today from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that Donald Trump intends to pretty much walk back almost all of the tariffs that he levied on the country just a few days ago and give us a quote-unquote reprieve for a month. Here to talk about this ever-changing situation and what it can mean for business in this country is Goldie Heider, the president and chief executive

officer of the Business Council of Canada. Goldie, welcome for the first time, hopefully not the last, to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you. So this is good news. You can't say it's not, but it doesn't change the fact that we are living in an exceptionally chaotic time. As someone in your position, what do you tell members of your organization about how to deal with this sort of chaos? Hang on tight for the ride. It's just been six weeks, because look, you know this better than anybody,

but business loves predictability and certainty, and we're not getting any of that. I mean, I think it is unbelievable to witness what we're seeing in just the last 48 hours, nevermind the last six weeks, as I mentioned. What you're seeing is an escalation, a de-escalation. You're seeing tremendous pushback, not just from Canada. I would point out the pushback is he's responding to his presence.

The pushback he's receiving in his own home country, a number of lawsuits have been launched there. A number of industries from auto to agriculture to energy and others are saying, here are the consequences of your action. Not only will life get more expensive and inflation return, but it's hardly going to make life affordable, which is what you ran on. And so I think when your opponent is having these difficulties, get out of the way. Yeah.

Let them figure it out themselves. But it also means being prepared for two things, right? I'll be honest, I've been thinking a lot about Mr. Moroni at a time like this, because I did have the privilege of having a lot of conversations with him and access to his advice. And I kept asking myself, what would he say to me today? And I think what he would say is, look, stay calm, be united, and get yourself to that negotiation table. Because what you've not heard the president ever say is, I'm getting rid of the USMCA.

I want to have bilateral. He's never done that. And I think the advice would be find a way to get back to that table and negotiate a win. You know, we know the scenario, they must win. So what's the win that we can live with? Let's figure that out. And then I think he would say, pivot to making sure you don't waste this moment of really creating a competitive Canada that can diversify its markets, that can sell what it has to the rest of the world. As I tell the Americans, one of the things you've done

is reminded us that it's good to be wanted because it means we have what you want and therefore others want it too. And we got to smarten up. Good news on the inter-provincial trade barriers here, but we've got a lot more to do. But Goldie, he's got the wind staring him in the face. He's got the border wind. I mean, he's, we, in all the conversations I've had with newsmakers and wind staring him in the face. He's got the border win. I mean, he's, in all the conversations I've had with newsmakers and people who are in the arena, the general consensus is the fentanyl and the border thing, that was a pretext so that he could open up

a tariff war with Canada. So if it was a pretext, then the victory itself can be made up as well. And so he could just as easily announce that he got what he wanted out of Canada, that we weren't being serious about the border, we weren't taking drugs seriously, we weren't taking the cartel seriously, but now we are hooray, hip, hip hooray for Donald Trump. And then he can and then we can move on to what this is really about a renegotiation of NAFTA 2.0.

Yeah, I think that's that's pretty accurate. I mean, it's not that the crisis is not real. I do believe the fentanyl thing is real. I do think you know, when you have 56,000 Canadians die, or you bust the largest lab in Alberta here in Canada, it's not a it's not good. Like, we obviously want to address those things. And I think, in many ways, you do it not because the Americans are asking you to do it, you do it because it's the right thing to do for Canada and Canadians. And so good, good that we're able to address that. But the question, central question still remains, what do you want?

I think you're spot on in saying this was identified as the way in which the executive branch could usurp the power of Congress to be able to impose tariffs and to deal with trade. I think what you're going to see in Washington over a period of time is when the honeymoon kind of slows down here, Congress will have to reassert itself over the executive branch. So this is about them, it's not about us. What is about us is we have a trade agreement with you

that you're violating. We should advance the renewal of that. Let's get to the table, all of us, so we can strengthen North America, leverage the supply chain. Now you look at the auto announcement. What exactly does the president think will happen in 30 days? Right.

That what companies are going to shut down their plants in Windsor and move to Detroit? They won't be able to move there in his term, let alone the next 30 days. Bingo. You'd be lucky if you could do it in five, never mind the fact that you don't have the labor in America today to do any of this. It's just, as you said, he needs his wins. Let's figure out what those wins are. But at the same time, let's not waste this moment

in terms of what we can do as a country to wake up and leverage the opportunities that are before us because never short Canada. I mean, you know, as I know- I'm very bullish on Canada as well. When the puck goes in the corner, a Canadian comes out with it and I don't know that. I'm talking to Goldie Heider,

the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Business Council of Canada. We've'm talking to Goldie Heider, the president and chief executive officer of the Business Council of Canada. We've been talking Goldie about this economic uncertainty and how it's bad for business. Is there, for your organization, is the political uncertainty that we've been living with since parliament was parodied, is that a problem

for business in this country? Well, I believe the politics of the politicians and the timing and all of that. What I will say is if ever the country needed a strong, stable national majority government, this is it. And we need that as we, as we go forward, as Canadians enter into an opportunity to, to, to make that choice. I think we need to be thinking about how do we ensure that we're going to be in a position of strength? The reality is, and I say this with the greatest of respect, but there's no surprise in what I'm about to say, but there is no love lost

between the president and the prime minister, and I suspect it's reciprocal. And you saw some of that in the president's social media posts just yesterday, which is disrespectful at the very least. But the reality is that's not something he's going to be able to point to after March night. There will be another Prime Minister and at some point in time we will have an election and Canadians will choose one. But I do think it's really important that this election reflect the seriousness of the times in which we find ourselves.

I'm calling on our political leaders to rise to the moment and acknowledge that this is no longer about what was, it's about what is. We have a legitimate threat. Let's build consensus in our country, business, labour, government, indigenous groups, our provinces. Let's truly work together as Canadians for not just our country, but the future of our country.

And I think this is the opportunity. And Goldie, what does the Business Council of Canada want to hear from anyone looking to be the Prime Minister of Canada? What are you hoping to see as priorities? Well, we've just put out a paper, effectively on ambition and action. And much of it is about urgency. It's also about tone. As I mentioned, let's work together. Let's have a partnership here. You can see it in other countries. And Mexico is a great example of that business, government, and labor working together.

Secondly, we have to get our fiscal house in order. I'm a little concerned. Everybody's getting a little excited about just, you know, like let the spending start on all kinds of supports and things. We have liquidity in our country. We have employment insurance in our country. We have work sharing.

We have mechanisms by which to make sure that we soften the blow should things get bad. We're long ways from that happening so let's not get too excited about running the country into deficit and most importantly let's diversify our markets which means we need permitting reform, we need to be able to build things in our country again, we need to be able to get the minerals out of the ground, we need to be able to sell to more than one customer. Those are the lowest hanging fruits available to us. And you know what?

That could be a game changer for our country's economic prosperity. I had someone on the show yesterday who posited that one of the things that could spur growth in Canada would be for us to essentially open up Canadian markets to all sorts of international competition that are traditionally protected,

the airlines, our telcos, and that sort of thing that would drive down price. Now, we may lose an airline and we may lose a cell phone provider, but the benefit would come in in more money in the pockets of Canadians. What do you think of something like that? Yeah, look, I would just caution on the sort of populist rhetoric behind that, right? The truth is we're a country of 40 million people. No member I work for, no CEO is an uncompetitive one. They want to compete with anyone. What they will say to you is two things. First is, create a level playing field. You can't have me compete with others with one hand tied behind my back.

Secondly, they would say to you that it's in fact government policies that make us uncompetitive. When you look at the telcos, they are forced to collect and effectively flow through tax in terms of spectrum costs. Japan, Korea, zero costs, half the price, most of the money going back into innovation. You look at what's taking place in the airlines. A $1 flight from Ottawa to Montreal or from Edmonton to Calgary will get you an invoice for about $171 because all the rest of it is nothing but taxes.

Yeah, yeah. Service charges, right? And they can go down. And as far as the banks go, A, there are many American banks that are here in Canada. Remember, so there's a lot of them. Sixteen of them. Hey, Goldie, we're going to have to leave it there, but I'd love to chat with you again soon.

Thanks so much. I'll record. Great. Thanks for having me. At Desjardins, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes.

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. And I'm joined now by one of my favorite guests is Mohit Rajan's Mediologist and Consultant with ThinkStart.ca Mohit, welcome to the show. Hey, how are you? I'm good. Let's let's jump into some of these conversations that I see these I see these stories pop up and I was like, oh, this is going to be a good one to talk to Mohit about. And one of them is Google co founder is one is talking about the 60 hour work week.

What does this mean? No, the headline is one of those grabbing headlines, right? This idea that oh, wait a minute, this big company called Google that thinks that they're going to interrupt our lives with whatever they're doing with AI, et cetera, is actually maybe set out to make the person work more, make us all work more. And that's what the headline lets us to believe. But the truth is that what he's alluding to is actually really on brand for what Google has tried to do for people is basically working smarter is going to make you feel like you're not working at all.

Okay. We're using their tools will make you feel like that you will be spending all of this time working in your most optimal way. Yeah. Optimal environment. And so not, you won't necessarily be adding more work hours to your life, but you will be working 60 hours a week because you'll be loving what you do. Okay. Can you, listen, I love that idea and, you know, if you believe that if you love what you do,

you don't work a minute in your life, then this could be sort of accessory to that. This could be a spinoff idea of that, but I'm going to need to know what that means in practice before I think this is just, because this could be just bluster or this could just be their way of selling me their products that I probably don't want and don't need. I think what's happening right now is a lot of tech companies have to move to this idea of what is the height of productivity, right? And so, Sergey is really trying to implement here that we're never, we might even get to a point where we're not even looking at the clock when it comes down to the work that we're doing. One of the things that I found interesting about this is this idea of, you know, do we

even work 40 hours a week? Are we always kind of on in our connected environment? And do we maybe if you look at all the screens combined, do we actually already work 60 hours a week between commuting and getting to places? So I think it's opened up a conversation from a concrete perspective. He's really talking about efficiencies. This idea that, you know, you might be able to free up more time in your month eventually, but when you're focused on productivity, you're going to be working at about a 60 hour work week level. But let's be honest,

Ben, you and I both know that a lot of the times the tech companies' predictions for the way that they're, that we're gonna adapt to their environments don't really pan out. I wanna talk about this sort of the debate between Instagram and TikTok. There's a lot of overlap between those two apps. Some people view them completely differently. I have no time for TikTok in my life.

So as far as I'm concerned, they are an aggle, an aggle, an aggles, they are one in the same. But I remember back in the day, Instagram tried to buy TikTok, right? And I don't think they, they obviously didn't succeed. And so they tried to create a competitor on their own platform in the form of Reels. And now there is a rumor suggesting

that Instagram could spin off reels into a standalone app. What are you hearing about that? And I always heard that the special sauce of TikTok wasn't the fact that it was video, the full video, it was the algorithm that made it so special. Yeah, what we're seeing right now is a communications battle essentially,

because there really was a drop off for TikTok as a result of all the political conversation of its potential to be banned. What we didn't see necessarily was a natural migration of all of that audience to Instagram for everything that Instagram has been able to offer from Reels to Threads. So we're not necessarily seeing Facebook and Meta coming out and saying, hey, we're here to be the successor. We're your diet Pepsi to the Pepsi. They're not necessarily seeing Facebook and medic coming out and saying, Hey, we're, we're here to be the successor. Where your diet Pepsi to the Pepsi. They're not saying any of that. But what they are hoping is that people who are have been turned off because of the conversation around TikTok, the uncertainty around whether it's going to be around,

we'll understand that they can still be fulfilled in that environment. But the truth is exactly what you said. No one's been able to replicate the effect that TikTok has been on social media in the past five years. And so they're all jockeying for position on this promise. But the truth is, maybe we don't need another TikTok. Yeah, maybe we need something new in our lives. Exactly. So yeah, so I don't think necessarily that this is much more than a communications play. Gotcha. Hey, I want to play some audio for you and for our listeners that will, I don't know what it's gonna make you feel, but it's not gonna make you feel right. Gavin Purcell, who's the co-host of the AI for Humans podcast, posted an example on Reddit where there's a human being pretending to be an embezzler and he's arguing with a boss,

and it's dynamic. One of them is AI and one of them is real. I can't tell the difference. Let's listen. Listen, I don't have all day. You got something to say or are you going to waste my time? Oh, I got something to say. I got something to say to you, something big. I've been embezzling from the company for four frickin years and you haven't figured anything out. And you know what? You're not gonna tell anybody because you have been doing super illegal things across the board and I know.

And you're gonna keep paying me and I'm not gonna work here anymore. You're kidding me? Embezzling for four years you think you can just waltz in here and dud me? You got some serious nerve, punk. You think you're the only one with skeletons in the closet? Ooh, tell me your skeletons,

because I know them. You better tell me some skeletons. What do you got? Okay, like I don't even it doesn't matter which one is the human and which one is the AI. Because one of them is and that to me is in real time with no prompts, the AI is adjusting to the conversation. That is freaky. Mo hit. We are at such a new level of interaction right now. We're exactly, you know, this debate that you're having online, what we're seeing is many people interacting with these voice agents just to do exactly what you're talking about, just to see if people can figure out the difference between whether

it's real or synthetic. It's getting very scary. And here's another level of where it's getting scary. The personalization of it is being embedded in a lot of things like gaming and the way that people can interact with certain apps. If we don't start seeing where the the timestamp is, or at least the authenticity stamp is, or where we can at least verify some of these voices, it's going to be the wild west for a little while. And I hate to think what some of this technology is going to be able to do when it's used nefariously.

We are talking specifically, I think, about Sesame AI, which is there. This is the breakthrough one that a lot of people are talking about viral from a viral perspective. And that's an example of what you just played. And Sesame AI is another breakthrough. And it's showing that conversational AI is here. It's accessible on your phone. And people will start embedding it in more and more things. It's a question of whether we are

going to be able to identify it with our naked ear, as they say. And just like everything else, every single tool can either be used as a shield or as a sword. It can either be used as a weapon or as a way to help people. And I don't know how much, like we've got this story we're talking about here about teaching critical media literacy skills to people,

but in order for them to avoid online scams and misinformation. But the tools are getting so sophisticated that I don't know how much education, like I don't know how you educate people to not believe their eyes and ears, especially their ears, like the example we just had. I don't know how much education, like I don't know how you educate people to not believe their eyes and ears, especially their ears, like the example we just had. I don't know how you defend against this.

I don't know either. And it's so interesting that you say that because every time I've had to do a school conversation, I've had to update it with the new rules of the road. And that's every year of change that we're seeing, the changes we're seeing are happening every year, at least with social media. It took a while for certain things to sort of bubble over

and become things that we needed to pay attention to. Right now though, I will say that, that it'll take a very, very coordinated effort for tech companies to be able to understand that the guardrails have to be put in place. Otherwise it is going to become very, very messy. I mean, we just heard, sorry, we just heard about the grandparents scam recently that swept this country and how there were just recently arrests of it

and millions were lost. And I just fear what some of this technology can do. Well, yeah, I mean, all it's going to take is for one deep fake of Donald Trump to go viral. And it could upset markets. It could start a war. I mean, the audio is at a point where I can't tell the difference. The video is almost there. Mohit, I mean, this is getting to a point where it's quite frightening. But the other side is it's going to help in things like healthcare and personalization

and language barriers and all of that stuff. Mohe, we're going to leave it there. Thank you very much. Mohe Rajan's, mediologist and consultant with thinkstart.ca. We'll talk to you soon. Take care. Earlier this week, I was on Twitter and I follow Craig Baird from Canadian History X. He's our regular guest on Wednesdays. And he had a whole thing about sort of a moment in time from years ago

where tariffs were looming from the Americans and I thought I know we're gonna talk about something else as well but we couldn't miss the opportunity to drill down on this moment in time in 1890 with Craig Baird so let's welcome to the show the host of Canadian History X Craig Baird. Hello. How are you, sir? I'm doing well. How are you? I'm well. So take me back in time to 1890.

Yeah. So 1890, William McKinley in the United States, at the time he was a congressman, he brought in tariffs that actually put tariffs of about 38 to 49% on Canada. And the reason they did that, they said, was because they wanted to, you know, help the economy in the United States and things like that. But there was another side to it, and part of it was the annexation of Canada and turning Canada at the time into the 45th state. The 45th state, okay. So certainly echoes from the past are reverberating today. Okay, and but you say, obviously backfired,

we didn't become the 45th state, but in the immediate term, what happened? Well, yeah, it backfired quite heavily. So what actually happened was that Canada started to become more nationalistic, kind of like what we're seeing now, and we turned more to Britain than the United States. So our exports to the United Kingdom increased immensely, and then it went down in the United States. In the United States, people actually suffered, farmers suffered because of these high tariffs. And then in 1892, the Republicans lost the presidency,

the House and the Senate. So it was a disastrous decision for them, and it failed horribly. Oh my God. How long did this last? How long were these tariffs in place? They were in place for four years total, but they were, you know, tariffs were part of just policy at that point. And the United States actually lowered the tariffs in 1894

back down to relatively normal levels. I've got to ask, were we as a nation, did, I have to assume it hurt us economically? It did a little bit at first, but once we started shifting our trade to the, uh, to Britain, we actually fared pretty well. So we, we pivoted quickly. The ones who were hurt the most was the United States. But the fact that, uh, that McKinley kept them in for four years, despite the fact that they, they weren't giving him the outcome that he saw, that, that, I

mean, it was a pretty, pretty big swing, right? Like the, you know, he wanted to weaken the country, he wanted to annex the country. And after four, I mean, the fact that he didn't get that result after one year, two years, three years, and they still stayed in place, I don't know what that speaks to. Yeah, I mean, he was known as the Napoleon of protectionism

and he very much felt like the United States and Canada should be one country and it cost him. Although he did become president a few years later but then that didn't end well for him either. And at what point in our history did did we resume you know more friendly relations with the states? I would say we started to by the 1900s the early 1900s because by about 1911 we were actually looking at free trade which wasn't popular at the time and actually led to the Liberals losing the 1911 election. Gotcha, gotcha. Well this week on Canadian History X you're taking a look at the Empress of Ireland, a beautiful name. What does it, what's it

all about? Yeah the Empress of Ireland is a very famous shipwreck that nobody seems to know about. I mean it happened right in the St. Lawrence river and there was 1400 people on the ship and over a thousand died. It was this horrible tragedy. What? But yeah, exactly. But because it happened two years after the Titanic and a few months before the first world war, it kind of just got forgotten about.

Even though it was a, like it was within shore of Quebec, it was so close to Canada and it was just this terrible tragedy. The ship was struck by the store, Stad in heavy fog. And it was just, it was just, it was within shore of Quebec. It was so close to Canada, and it was just this terrible tragedy. The ship was struck by the store-stad in heavy fog and sank within 14 minutes. So it had more than enough lifeboats because the Titanic had happened two years earlier. We kind of learned our lesson with that. But it sank so fast that people just couldn't even get out of their bunks in time. And how far was it from shore?

Because I lived right on, I was one block away from the St. Lawrence River in the old town in Quebec City when I was in law school. It was only about maybe a kilometer away from shore. It's only 40 meters below the waves. Like it's not that deep. If you're an advanced diver, you can definitely explore that wreck.

Was the Empress of Ireland sort of of a, an elegant ship. Oh, absolutely. It was a beautiful ship. It was used to bring immigrants from the United Kingdom to Canada, but then also take people to the United Kingdom for visits. So when it was sailing on its last voyage, which was its 96th voyage, it had the entire second class was pretty much the Salvation Army who were going to this big event in the United Kingdom. So it was one, it had the entire second class was pretty much the Salvation Army who were going to this big event in the United Kingdom. So it was a very beautiful ship. It was called the world's greatest transportation system. Really? And the numbers are stark. 1477 people on board, over a thousand were killed, 138 children were on board, only four survived. Of the 310 women

on board, only 41 survived. This is, this, what a tragedy and I can't believe nobody knows about it. Why don't we listen to a little bit of the Empress of Ireland on Canadian History X. Throughout the Empress, passengers were sitting in their rooms trying to figure out what happened. Some poured into hallways to talk to fellow passengers who were just as oblivious as to what that monstrous noise was. On the bridge of the Empress, the crew tried desperately to keep the ship with the storestead which was fast moving away with the current. Within seconds, the two ships were meters apart. The storestead was still

afloat. All of its damage was in the front of the ship and there was little danger of it sinking. But it was a completely different story for the Empress. The five-meter gash in the starboard side of the ship was now open to the water. A thunderous 60,000 gallons of water per second began rushing into the ship that is nearly as much water as goes over the American side of Niagara Falls every second. There was nothing that could be done. The ship was going to sink, and it was going to do it. Fast. Captain Kendall sent out a message on the wireless. Empress of Ireland, stopped by dense fog, struck amidst ship in a vital spot by Storstad.

At Father's Point Marconi Station, the telegraph operator picked up the message and then immediately lost contact with the ship. He didn't know it in his quiet telegraph station on dry land. But the telegraph room on the Empress was already filling with water as the operators fled for their lives. Craig, it's so fascinating, but I want to zoom out a little bit and ask you, what are we doing wrong in this country that stories like this aren't taught or we just don't know about, we don't learn about them?

What are we doing wrong in terms of building our history and learning our history and sharing our history? I think a big thing is we just don't seem to share our history as much as we should and whether that's we want to distance ourselves from the Americans who share a lot of their history or not, I don't quite know, but I think a lot of it is also regional. I mean, I grew up in Alberta and I learned nothing about Eastern Canada and the history there and I think it's very much the case in Eastern Canada, not learning much about Western Canada. So I think that plays a lot into it. And things like this, you know, when it happened was just an unfortunate time. It was between two huge historical events and kind of just was completely forgotten

because of that. But we're past that now. And the fact that, I mean, listen, you're doing God's work here by sharing this stuff, but it shouldn't have to rest on your shoulders to educate us. These are the sort of the cultural touchstones that bind a country together. Learning about a tragedy like this

should have as much importance out west as it does in Quebec City, in Quebec City where the tragedy actually happened. Just like, you know, the Halifax explosion is something that every every Canadian should learn about. If we all know that, then there's a shared identity that we have that is tightened up, that is comes more into focus. Absolutely, we definitely need to do more to protect our history and learn from our history. I mean, the site of the Empress of Ireland where it's, where it is, that was only protected in 1999. And by then it had been, you know, almost stripped clean by treasure hunters and things like that. So yeah, there is definitely an issue with not protecting our sites and also not learning about a lot of the aspects

of our history beyond things like Vimy Ridge and you know, the summit series and these big events that everybody knows about. Yeah, but it doesn't have to be big for it to be important. I mean, Canada's economy isn't big, but we like to think it's important. And look, I'm going to just put this out there. I think manifesting is a thing. I think whoever opens the next, runs the next government should hire you

as our Canadian history czar. There's now a thing that we're doing with czars. You should be our Canadian history czar, working in conjunction with thing that we're doing with czars. You should be our Canadian history czar, working in conjunction with all the provinces to make sure that we are sharing a national story and a national history. Craig, where can people find the show? You can find the show on all podcast platforms.

And then on the weekends, you can listen across the chorus radio network. Just check your local times. Craig Baird, host of Canadian history X and the future Canadian history czar. Appreciate it. Thank you so much my friend. Thank you. This moment in time, this crisis that we as a nation are enduring in these 25% tariffs that are sowing chaos and making us worry about the future of our economy and our country should be viewed simultaneously as an opportunity. An opportunity to find ways to make our country stronger, more resilient, more prosperous.

And there is a think tank that is calling for Canada to unilaterally drop non-tariff trade barriers, whether Donald Trump is in the picture or not. Here to discuss it is the author of the call, is Vincent Jaloso, economics professor at George Mason University. He's the author of the study. Vincent, thank you so much for being here. It's a pleasure to be here.

So tell me what you mean by non-tariff trade barriers and why Canada should be dropping them unilaterally. So we have to understand one thing that's super important. Protectionism is economic poison. Doing counter tariffs is doubling the dosage of poison. So it's not, you can't treat poison with more poison. It doesn't work this way. The antidote is free trade.

Canada has low tariffs, but Canada has really high non-tariff barriers. That means that we prevent, for example, foreign airlines from providing services between Canadian airports, which brings prices up. We prevent foreign companies from providing cell phone services, which pushes prices up. We prevent foreign companies from providing cell phone services, which pushes prices up. And we do this in multiple sectors, the dairy sector, the chicken poultry sector. We do it in transportation. We do it in mining. We do it in so many sectors that essentially we've raised protection as barriers around roughly a third of the Canadian economy. And Vincent, I think a lot of Canadians, I think, given the world of free trade that we've been living in since the late 80s, there is this misconception, I think, that we are, our economy is as liberalized as it possibly can be, but that's not the case. That's not the case at all. The Canadian economy is relatively liberal by world standard, but it's not that liberal. And there's still a lot of room to do it.

And I'll give you an analogy, that's the choice that we have right now as Canadians. In 1900, Canada and Argentina were deemed to be the 20th century's potential champions. And both of them had a choice to make at that point. Canada made the choice of free trade, and Argentina made the choice of protectionism. And the difference is Argentina is a poor country today and Canada is a G8 country member because

it's a prosperous nation. The choice is the same again do we want to take more of the poison which would lead us the path to Argentina or good times are bad we take the best policy possible and that means opening up our markets creating situations where we reduce costs for consumers, that we create situations that make businesses make investment, that raise productivity and raise wages, and make us a nation so prosperous, so prosperous and productive,

that we can even ignore the threats of foreign nations to engage in protectionism, because our productivity is our vaccine against future retaliatory threats from foreign nations. And well, Vincent, what do you say? What do you say? What do you say to those who push back and say, okay, you want to open up our country to competition in say, the airline sector, that would sign the that would be a death blow to Air Canada to Porter and to WestJet. And therefore, we would be weakened as a nation because we wouldn't have our own airlines.

People who are doing this are only looking at one side of the coin. Maybe Air Canada falls a little bit of business. Maybe it changes, but that's not the right standard. The right standard is consumer welfare. If Canadians have more money in their pocket because they're paying less, this is more money they can spend in other industries.

Well, that's, you know, industries. Maybe we lose Air Canada, but maybe we get a champion of technological innovation in sectors that we do not yet understand. I'm glad you said that because I've sort of been beating this drum for a little bit myself as well. The health of a nation isn't determined by whether or not we have an airline that has a maple leaf on it. And no disrespect to Air Canada. I use Air Canada all the time. I'm just singling them out by way of example. But a few months ago, I had to fly from Ottawa, from Toronto to Ottawa, and I had to buy a last minute plane ticket.

It cost me $700 to go from the national capital to the financial capital. And then a couple of weeks ago, I had to buy a last minute ticket from South Florida to Toronto. And I bought that ticket on an American airline. It cost me the Canadian equivalent of 250 bucks. So if we could make air travel, if we could make cell phones, if we could make so many aspects of life in Canada cheaper,

then that money could go towards building the economy. That disposable income would go towards building a stronger country. That's what matters to me, not whether or not we've got these mascots that have the maple leaf on them. Listen, I want to trade jobs with you. You've said everything I'm saying in my own job, so I'm willing. It seems you're saying exactly what I'm saying. I would have no disagreement with anything you've said. Full agreement. Yes, free trade

is the guarantee of prosperity for a nation. And there is no other way around. And I'll just pile on to what you're saying. There's a famous paper in economics that says, what are the three things that guarantee a nation poverty? One of them is war and destruction, the second one is socialism, the last one is protectionism. These are the three guaranteed ways to be a poor nation. Right now what we have as a choice is do we want to get one-third of the way towards poverty and the answer is no we shouldn't and our answer is to commit more hardly as we have had in the past, commit to the ideal of free trade, of open markets, which are the guarantee of a prosperous and

productive nation, and that productivity is also our shield for sovereignty, that we can exert our sovereignty. No poor nation can assert its sovereignty as effectively as a rich one. I'm speaking with Vincent Joloso, the economics professor at George Mason University authored the study that says that we as Canada as a country should unilaterally drop our non-tariff trade barriers as a way to inoculate ourselves against some of the chaos that we're dealing with because of these tariffs. Vincent, people might listen to you and say, all of this makes sense to me.

I'm a big fan of all of these ideas But the idea of doing making these massive structural changes to the Canadian economy Unilaterally with nothing coming back to us from other countries seems like a Massive leap of faith. We'd have to have a heck of a lot of confidence in the outcome Well, the reason why I have confidence in the outcome is we have the weight of history behind us. Nations that pick free trade constantly enjoy faster economic growth. The reason why is protectionism is a thing that people do to hurt themselves. There's an old quote that says, protectionism is what we do to ourselves and is what enemies

would have wished to do to us in wars. Protectionism is self-destruction. Doing the same thing as Americans is not a good idea. Obviously, we would like to liberalize altogether. The ideal world is we liberalize altogether. The second best world is we do it on our own. If they wanna reciprocate, they can do it, but doing it on our own is our only way forward.

And I want to reiterate that I understand the imperative of doing something now, but the best something we can do by opening up our market, we also attract investment. And that means capital moves to Canada and it moves away from the United States. And there is a large empirical literature in economics showing that governments are far more responsive to capital mobility than they are to goods mobility. Allowing investment into Canada would probably put more pressure upon the US government than counter tariffs. Vincent, I only have a minute left, so I'd love your answer on this final question quickly. But where do we land in this conversation on cultural institutions?

And we as a country have always viewed, we haven't viewed our artistic community as a commodity like Hollywood. It's something that needed protection for fear that it would be subsumed and consumed by the American behemoth south of the border. Protectionism and cultural matters is the equivalent to culture,

what taxidermy is to animals. You're not creating any dynamism inside cultural innovation. The reality is culture and cultural vibrancy requires markets as well. It requires rich collectivities that can invest through philanthropy. It requires the ability to expose ourselves to different ways of thinking and where we can remix ideas. Cultural protectionism is as bad as all other types of protectionism. No nation is culturally strong by being poor.

All right. Vincent Jaloso, thank you so much for coming on. I think you've made a hell of a pitch. And as you can see, you and I see eye to eye on a number of points. So thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it. It's a pleasure, and I'm very happy to hear at least I'm not alone in the universe.

Thanks for listening to the Ben Mulroney Show podcast. We're live every day nationwide on the Chorus Radio Network. 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. Hi, I'm Donna Friesen from Global National. Life moves fast these days, and we wanna make it even easier for you to get the news you need.

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