The Ben Mulroney Show - Business and Politics with Kevin O'Leary

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

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Hey, it's Ben Mulrooney, and welcome to the podcast. Kevin O'Leary joins me today to talk about some of the biggest stories in business and politics. Enjoy. Years ago, during I believe the 10th anniversary, the debut of the 10th season of Shark Tank, I walked into the Shark Tank for a promotional thing, and I gave a pitch for a real business, and almost came away with a deal with our next guest. I'm very pleased to welcome to the show Mr. Wonderful himself, Kevin O'Leary. Kevin, welcome to the new Ben Mulroney Show. Great to be here. Thank you so much.

Kevin, a lot to talk to you about, but I think the thing that sticks out to me is this really big and bold, ambitious investment of yours in a new $70 billion AI data center industrial park that's proposed for northwestern Alberta. Talk to me about this, because the visuals of what this could be are quite spectacular. Talk to me about what it means. So the way you have to think about Canada, it's emerging from a Trudeau-induced economic coma. It's been on the country for almost nine years. And you know that by the amount of capital that's not been invested in Canada, GDP per capita collapsed.

Competitiveness measure against G20, we're in the bottom quartile now, about a 50% reduction in invested capital per capita. A complete collapse in anybody outside of Canada investinging Unit. And what's really almost shameful is if you look at CPP or any of the large Canadian pension plans, case they pull all of it, they don't invest in Canada either. And there's a lot of reasons for that. But I can only blame one person. That's Justin Trudeau. And I've been vocally very critical, but I feel that the end is near for him, which is a very good thing. So I'm just trying to get ahead of it by running around the world and saying, look, everybody, we can light up Canada again. Let's start with this $70 billion idea in a place that has unlimited power, which is what you need for AI.

Let's go. Where are you going to draw the power from? So let me give you the metrics. They're staggering. If you want to build a hyperscaler AI data center, the kind that Google or Amazon or Microsoft would want, you need one gigawatt of power. That course, nobody's going to build anything there. But what people don't know about Alberta, and my job is to tell the world about it, is we have 200 trillion cubic feet of sweet, clean gas in northern Alberta that can be converted by turbine into electricity in a very, very clean way. And these new turbines, these, these two cycle turbines are going to power this first 1.4 gigawatts that we're going to start building in a couple of months. And so it's really about Alberta's ability to compete with power because there's no AI without power. You've got to have power. And does the cooler temperatures in Northern Alberta help as well? Because you

have to cool these AI supercomputers. Oh yeah, yeah you're right and it's way better than texas way better than many other competitive places because the cost of cooling is also part of the cost factor so you've got for nine months very good climate very dry climate very cool climate but you also have fiber you also have people and here's the thing that most don't understand about data centers you're going to have 200 to 250 people working there a lot of them high-paid engineers where do they live where do they go out for dinner where do their kids go to school where's their hospital where's their dry cleaner you can't just build one of these things in the middle of nowhere when people have been thinking about doing that because people have to live around them and so

what we've got in grand prairie in Greenview is a complete community, a university, a town, a great place to live. I mean, look, Alberta is just killing it in so many different ways. But now we have to promote this location and we've got to get the power lit up. So you're saying shovels in the ground in the next few months? Yeah. Well, the next stage is we have to acquire the land with the next few months? Yeah, well, the next stage is to, we have to acquire the land with the permits, and obviously the Premier and Lulich and many of the ministers are working with us. Then we have to get the orders for the turbines, 14 of them, because for a gigawatt, you need 1.4 giga power, you need redundancy. These data centers, just so your listeners

understand, they're called five nines. They have to be up per month 99.999% of the time. That means they're down only 14 seconds a month. Gotcha. And it's aptly named Wonder Valley. I love that. Hey, Kevin, what I've noticed is you've been making the rounds on American TV because you have a footprint in both Canada and the United States. We're currently living in a very dramatic time between our two countries. You are ideally suited to talk to the Americans about this situation in Canada. And one thing that that's sort of getting to a lot of Canadians is, you know, the jokes that Donald Trump has been making at our expense, especially about being the 51st state. Most recently, he went to Truth Social and said it was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the great state of Canada.

It's trolling to the nth degree. And people are wondering why? What is the point? I don't know that there is a point. My take is that he just when he looks across the table at Justin Trudeau, he does not see strength and he responds to strength. And in the absence of it, he's going to fill that with jokes and punching down. You know him better than most people listening. What do you know about Donald Trump and why he's doing this?

Well, this is a personal speculation on my behalf, but I don't think I'm wrong. He doesn't like Trudeau. He didn't like Trudeau because of the criticism he took during his first mandate. And I suggested publicly that he shouldn't waste his time with Trudeau at all. There's a new leadership coming in in Pierre. You should be inviting him down as the opposition leader right now. We know that Paul Vier is going to completely change the landscape by erasing a lot of Trudeau's policies, strip away the moratorium on pipelines so we can build

pipelines again. Number two, get rid of the carbon tax so we're competitive with Texas. Number three, invite investment in Canada. You know, the great thing about what is about to happen is you won't remember who Trudeau was, and that's a good thing because you've been in a coma. The country has been in an economic coma. I keep using that analogy because it's true. We have desperately got to get rid of this guy, and I think Trump that he's saying why am i wasting my time with this guy it doesn't matter he won't be around to negotiate nafta 3 which is coming so we need strong leadership we'll get that in pierre and he'll get a majority mandate in my view because even liberals are trying to get trudeau out of power i mean the analogy i've used so often is trudeau is like a mouse

running around the kitchen you know and they got a broom. His own party's got a broom. They're going to get the little mouse soon. It's going to happen. Something interesting is also happening on the world stage. Donald Trump is probably the most activist incoming president that I've seen in a very long time, behaving as if he is already president. And the world seems to be accepting that. This is a very unique time, don't you think?

Yeah, it is. And I think he won a very strong mandate, strongest majority in 39 years. He controls the Hill completely. I mean, it's a tight majority, but it still is. So for the first two years, he doesn't face a midterm election. He has extreme power. And so he'll be using it. And all this discussion about tariffs in Mexico and Canada, that's just a pre-negotiation for what's going on in NAFTA III, which we'll be negotiating in the next six to eight

months. And, you know, Premier Smith knows this. That's why she has been spending a fair amount of time in the U.S. and traveling abroad as well. I've gone with her to some sovereign wealth funds because we have to raise a ton of money for Alberta, A lot. $70 billion is a lot of money. And it's got to have attractive returns. And we can provide that. I mean, the message for every Canadian is, look, we've got to open up our business again. This country can be so competitive. We should be punching so above our weight because we have all the power, the water, the minerals, everything, the paper, everything people need, we have it. It's just that our policies have been so confusing and we have such a miserable leader that we've got to get rid of him.

Well, I think our prime minister once said only an idiot would have the resources that Canada has in the ground and leave them there. Well, I think a better way to put it is richest country on earth per capita run by idiots. That's exactly what we've got. And we should be beating Norway, actually, in terms of wealth per capita. Hey, 60 seconds left, Kevin. Bank of Canada is set to make its final policy rate decision of the year on Wednesday. Read the tea leaves for me.

Well, there's a real conundrum now because no one was anticipating trump's win and he's not going to raise taxes so freeland proposed a cap gain increase which makes us completely uncompetitive with the u.s now that's going to be stalled i assume until she's out of there and the bank of canada has this very difficult bridge to negotiate during this period of political uncertainty so do they drop another 25 basis point is that is the question I don't think they will but we we need to get a real finance minister I never understood why we can't afford a real finance minister somebody to an a bank I don't know what a journalist is doing

in there it's very important to get rid of her too I'd like to get a spatula into Ottawa that place is such a mess Kevin'Leary, chairman of O'Leary Ventures, Shark Tank's Mr. Wonderful. Good luck with Wonder Valley. If you can pull that off, it could be sort of a template for others to stake their claim to the North and build out

Canada into an AI superpower. I wish you the best, my friend. Take care. Thank you. Thanks to Kevin O'Leary for the interview, and thanks to you for listening to The Ben Mulroney Show.