The Ben Mulroney Show - Canada Needs to Move on Data Centres Urgently

Episode Date: August 29, 2026

On today's episode of 'The Ben Mulroney Show,' Ben welcomes Ian Brodie, from the University of Calgary. They discuss the importance of data centres for the future of Canada. If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠   Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and sacrifice to new generations. and their dedication to supporting veterans and their families from coast to coast to coast. Celebrate this enduring legacy. Find the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Legion $2 coin today. Well, David Hurley is a Canadian political consultant. He's worked for the Liberal Party of Canada. His whole life practically. I think he was the campaign co-chair for a few years.

I think he worked on the Ontario leadership. He worked for Kathleen Wynne at one. point. But now he's probably best known to this generation as the host of his own podcast called the Hurley Burley. And the episode this weekend was tremendous because it brought together a member of a conservative voice, an NDP voice, and a liberal voice to talk about this trade war and these tariffs. And on the conservative side was our next guest, Ian Brody of the University of Calgary. There's a long... professor in the Department of Political Science

and a fellow of center of military security and strategic studies, senior advisor, New West Public Affairs, and also formerly of the office of Stephen Harper. And Ian, welcome back to the show. Ben, good to talk to you. It was just such a fascinating listen to have three very strong, divergent political views coming together

to talk about this really important moment in Canadian history and what to do next. And it was at the end of the show where you laid out what you said, was your prescription for what we as a nation needs to do, what Mark Carney needs to do now. I wondered if you might be able to sum it up for us right here because it was a heck of a case.

I got very, I got goosebumps while I was walking to work listening to it. Because like if he did this, if he did this, I mean, I don't know, a conservative that wouldn't line up behind Mark Carney. Right. Look, I mean, there's nothing we can do about what goes on in Washington and there's nothing we can do about what goes on with Trump. That's good, whatever he's going to, whatever he's going to want to do what he's going to want to do. So the question is, what do we do in response? And I think the case I said

was there's a dozen, a couple of dozen projects waiting at this major projects office in Ottawa for the prime minister to approve them. That's how that process works. There's no magic mechanism in the major projects office. The question is, is the prime minister want them to go ahead. Frankly, he should have approved them all on Monday. The conservatives say there's another 500 projects or so waiting for federal permits of this, that, or the other thing, that would have been business for Tuesday, you know, get the lawyers, get the pen, get the permits out, get them out on Tuesday. And then I would have had Parliament back on Wednesday for a big budget with tax reform, capital gains rates coming down, full costing for capital investments, whatever you needed

to do to encourage businesses to invest their resources in Canada. And then you get every company that's got a project in the United States that's being held up by some state governor or some federal regulation or whatever, we've got a list of these things. You get the prime ministers, ministers calling all of them and saying, what do we need to do to get you to move here this week? Not a two-year permitting process, not a 10-year permitting process. You've got a project. You're trying to build the states that's being held up. What can we do to get that here this week and just make the decisions needed to bring those resources here? You can do retaliatory, sure that hurts us, it hurts them.

It's hard to keep track of the implications of that one way or the other. We're going to move on this. We've got to take control of our own economic destiny here, and that was the pro-growth agenda. And that was on Sunday, right? That was recorded on Sunday. I'm sure stuff is happening. Of course, it's a government. It's big.

There's lots of people. I'm sure calls are being made and stuff is happening. But don't you think, you know, you've worked for a prime minister. Part of the job is to project velocity, right? You want people that, you want the Canada to feel that you're doing things. And one of the ways to do that is all the things you just said. Doing those things out in public projects the image of a government that is busy building the country at lightning speed. And I haven't seen that.

What does that say to you? Well, I think there's a small group of people around Mr. Carney who are making the key decisions here. There's a big government, but it's not clear to me that there's much being harnessed outside of four or five people around Mr. Carney. Instead, he's going back to his comfort zone, so he's flying to Europe to speak to the European Parliament or EU another speech to another gathering of European leaders. There's nothing wrong with that. But that's, this is more of the same thing we've had over the past years. We've got lots of time to get this thing under control. We have to be patient.

The Europeans will move eventually. I gather they're hoping that the Europeans will make some statement about favoring our side of these negotiations. You know, that will make us feel good, Ben. I get that. Everybody likes to be loved. That will have precisely zero impact in the United States. It will have precisely zero impact on the Canadian economy. Look, I didn't go crazy when the prime minister went on vacation to Italy before these talks.

Because, yeah, with technology today, of course, he's going to stay on top of things. But the image wasn't a good one. And the fact that he is prioritizing sitting in the European Parliament before calling back the people's house, the House of Commons in Canada, to give us an account of where we are and where we need to go and how we're going to get there. symbolically, it doesn't look good. Now, I appreciate he's got the wind in his sails and the people in the minds of a great many Canadians he can do no wrong. But to me, this is wrong. He's acting like he's got all the time in the world.

It does not. The thing that moves fastest in government is time. Every day is the precious day. And every day that you spend doing something other than moving your ball down the field, you're wasting the time here. So he set a target for our response tariffs September the 8th. Maybe it thinks we drags that out. People get, you know, a little bit of their, the bile out of their system and so forth. Maybe that means there'll be some negotiations over the course of the Labor Day long weekend, possibly.

But in the meantime, good economic news today from economic growth, compound that by laying the groundwork for growth for the next five years. by moving some of these big pieces. Look, Ben, we know what they are. They've been floating around the Canadian economy for years. We had 10 years of shrinking economy per capita. No growth, no investment. 3% growth over the course of three months is not enough to make up for the hole that we dug ourselves in over the course of the last 12 years. Yeah.

It's shocking that it just feels like, because there's, there's a, there's performance to it, right? Like there's, there is, politics has an element of performance to it. it. And the performance I'm seeing is, yes, he's a steady hand. He doesn't get riled up. But, but we need to see the country moving. And he's the only one who can put his foot on the gas to get it done. You're not the one, and I'm not the one who said on Saturday that the country is now at war. Yeah. You're not the one, and I'm not the one who said the country was attacked. But the country's been attacked. And if the country's been at war, and look, we didn't ask for any of this, right? We didn't go out courting a trade war with the United States. That was somebody

else's decision. Nonetheless, we're in the middle of it now. Time is of the essence. The end of the summer is coming. We've had a year and a half since Mr. County became prime minister and nothing is getting built. It's timed, I think, to admit that a year and a half ago, legislation he passed, we're going to tear down interprovincial trade barriers.

They're still working on that. And this major project, obviously is going to move at speed we haven't seen in generations. It hasn't happened. We've got to move up the pace of action now. Otherwise, the Americans are going to run ahead of us. and that means running us over. And for those of us who very much want these things to happen at lightning speed, there has always been in Canada what slows things,

what slows things down and there's not a judgment on the value of them is consultations with stakeholders, right? Either First Nations and labor and that was something you touched upon on the Hurley Burley. How hard would it be to get those stakeholders on side to, forego the classic back and forth and get them on side to say, these are the things we have to do. If you want there to be money

for you, you got to let us make the money first. How does that happen? Look, I think everybody understands that the country's in a bit of an economic mess. And anybody who's lived through the last 10 years of inflation and no growth gets that. That's union leaders. That's indigenous leaders.

Everybody gets the same thing. If you're going to get a bigger piece of the pie, the pie has got to grow as well. well, the issue here is now, can we get some insistence at this, you know, we need some of these deals to come together between now and September the 8th and to turn to the courts and say, look, guys, we're going to come to some agreements here. You can't let some disaffected group tie us up for the next three years in court. Yeah.

There's an emergency. I don't think the courts are going to say no to the prime minister. He says that sort of thing. And then that lays the groundwork for getting some construction done. Ian Brody, I was so glad that you agreed to come on because I really wanted to, I want to close the loop on on what I thought was a really fabulous conversation that you had with you and your colleagues on that podcast. Thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks, man. All right. Just a reminder, if you want more BMS, we put out a podcast every day. We actually put multiple podcasts out every day. And you can find even more content on all the social media platforms.