The Ben Mulroney Show - Canadian Patriotism at an all time high but will it last?

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Just 5% of small businesses saw a sales boost from the GST/HST holiday with Guest: Dan Kelly, President of The Canadian Federation of Independent Business -How NAFTA Changed the Way We Eat with Guest: Corey Mintz, Food Reporter -Calgary company sees spike in Canadian flag sales amid ongoing trade war with Guest: Angelique Macleod, VP of sales for Process Colour Print  If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms and conditions apply. Hey, it's Ben O'Hara-Byrne filling in for Ben Mulroney. We had so many great conversations on the show. Here are some of them. Ben O'Hara-Byrne sitting in for Ben Mulroney. The other Ben, Canada's tax holiday is set to end on Friday. Remember that one, the GST break began back in December,

December 14th ended on, it's ending on February 15th. I guess it's coming to an end on Saturday technically, but I think Friday is the last day of it. This was the move by the Liberal government to remove the 5% federal GST for purchases such as children's clothing, video games, restaurant meals, and so on. Now the parliamentary budget officer at the time warned it could cost up to $2.7 billion. We're not sure what it's going to cost yet because it turns out that most businesses didn't see much of a boost in business. Were there more sales? Probably not. Now this data comes from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

They surveyed many members, about 2,300 of them between January 9th and 31st, and they found that the majority of them saw very little change in sales. So was it all was it all a waste of time and literally was it a waste of time because there was a lot of time wasting involved in this as well. Dan Kelly is president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Dan, thanks for your time as always. Glad to be with you. Not much juice for the squeeze on this one at least according to your members. No, no. Well look, the squeeze was the administrative cost to put this in place. Businesses spent about a thousand dollars and that's not a complete expense yet, just to

reprogram their point of sale machines and again as you pointed out this weekend they have to do that fun again. On top of that, the other major struggle was that they had to try to figure out what was taxable and what wasn't under this very, very confusing list. So they had all of those costs, but only 5% of them saw any increase in sales as a result of this tax holiday. Do you have a sense of why that would be? I mean, I guess I can't figure out. I never heard anyone talk about it, which is part of the problem. It was so small that you didn't notice it when you went to buy things. If you were planning a big purchase, maybe. But it felt like, I mean, from your point of view, you knew your membership was going to have to do all this work. Where do you think it fell down? Yeah. Well, look, I think the temporary nature really did limit it. It's also an incredibly narrow range of goods.

Yes, it included restaurant meals and some of the taxable food items that snack foods and drinks and things that we buy. But the challenge for small business owners was trying to figure out the list beyond that of the retail items that it applied to because it excluded toys and children's clothes. So we had business owners trying to figure out, you know, some of the categories were bizarre and had never ever been contemplated before. So dolls for play were tax-exempt, dolls for collecting were not. Lego sets oriented at somebody 14 or under were tax exempt, above that not. My favorite example was a model airplane set.

It depends not only on what was in the model airplane set, but who it was labeled to be targeted at. So business owners had to go through, I had one Toronto hobby store tell me they had to go through 75,000 items and try to figure out by hand which ones were taxable and which ones were not. And then of course, if they make a mistake, there is great fear that the Canada revenue agency is going to send them a

giant bill in the spring upon audit. Yeah. It sounds like one of those books you've read about bureaucracy gone wild, Dan. It really does. I mean, I think the idea sounded plausible, you know? But you know what? Even the bureaucrats hated this. This was done entirely for political reasons. This mean, I think the idea sounded plausible, you know? Even the bureaucrats, this was done entirely for political reasons. The NDP had suggested a permanent trimming of the GST list, GST HST list, and at least if they had gone with that approach, then business owners would have had to do this one time and figure it out and then forever, those items would be tax-exempt. But they didn't do that. Instead, what they did is they made a temporary holiday

on a grab bag of goods that were done really for political purposes and that's our complaint. I never complain about business people saving money. That's not the point, but we need permanent tax relief, not temporary one. Yeah. And also, as you mentioned, all your membership has to turn around and do this again over the weekend, right? Once it's lifted, your restaurant buddies seemed relatively happy about this, I think. I mean, they seem to say that it led to a surge in business. It's hard to tell, I guess, who knows, but they seem to be a little bit happier about it. There is some conflicting data on that front.

Restaurants Canada has suggested that they have some evidence that shows that there was an increase in sales. Monaris, one of the big payments brands, has said actually they saw a drop in restaurant sales. And our data is, our data kind of is somewhere in between. CFID, our members, which are in every sector of the economy, of our restaurant members, only 15% of them, small restaurant owners, told us that they saw an increase in sales as a result of the

holiday. Look, I can get that. If you're going out for dinner, you're used to paying 13% on top of the entire bill, but it's now 13% less than you expected. Maybe you add dessert, maybe you add an extra drink that you wouldn't have otherwise. So I suspected there might have been some incremental value in the restaurant setting, and for them,

all of their products essentially became tax exempt for this period of time, so they didn't have the hassles that retailers had to try to implement it. Right, if you were to do this over again, would you have just put in a, I mean, clearly it would have been more expensive, but just a blanket? Say, listen, okay, we're gonna do this

for the month of December, Merry, you know, happy holidays, Merry Christmas. We're gonna give a full on GST rebate on everything, and that's that. Look, for me, I would say that the defining thing is, if you're gonna do anything on the GST, do it once and for all. And Restaurants Canada is advocating right now

to permanently exempt restaurant meals. And that would be a much, much better recommendation to go with. The other approach, but the research on tax holidays, temporary tax holidays is super, super clear. This has been done by a ton of states in the US, and all of the studies of it after the fact have shown that it simply shifts sales from one period to the next.

So people stock up on things, buy them during the holiday period, and then stop buying them after. And I suspect that's what many businesses are going to see in the next couple of months, because there are gonna be some consumers, other than perhaps food, some consumers that are going to say well wait a minute I bought all those things to avoid the tax and now I'm good for a bit. Yeah and you're hoping that the federal government will cough up some money to your membership for all the money they've

spent making all these changes to introduce to sort of make way for their GST holiday. Yeah you know what for most businesses this holiday? Yeah, you know what? For most businesses, this holiday that the government announced will actually cost them money because they've had all those expenses to put it in place, but very few of them saw any incremental revenue to offset those costs. So we've suggested that the way to do that, our data shows that the average business spent $1,000

just to reprogram their point of sale machines. These are hard costs, not soft costs. And that we think is unfair to impose on the businesses that are just out there trying to make a living. Uh, and so if, if government wishes to, uh, it wishes to try to make this a little bit smoother for businesses, our view is put a thousand dollar credit in every merchant's HST account that had to implement this temporary holiday. Yeah. And any reaction, I guess, well, the government isn't sitting. Any reaction to that?

They're parodied, of course. This is a problem, yeah. I mean, there's about three other tax files with intentions on the part of government, but they can't actually do it because parliament isn't sitting. That's why 81% of small business owners today want Parliament reconvened to address the tariff issue and some of these other things that are outstanding. Yeah, makes sense. Dollars and cents. Dan, always thank you. Anytime at all. Dan Kelly, President of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. This is one of those situations where this is the law of bad planning, right? You do something rushed because you're plummeting in the polls.

You remember those $250 checks they were gonna send everyone, they got rid of that, thankfully. I mean, it's nice to get a $250 check, but not if you're further taking your already huge deficit. This GST holiday, I mean, it sounded fine, right? A couple of months, you're not gonna charge GST, fine, okay. But the reality of it, the implementation of it for a brief period of time,

according obviously for small businesses and for others, was a disaster. It was a disaster because it is complicated. Imagine owning a hobby shop and having to figure out what Lego you could sell, what Lego got at GST rebate and what didn't or a toy store for that matter. If it was complicated and over 12 or 14, it wasn't rebated.

If it wasn't, it was. Or collectible dolls versus play dolls. I mean, it just boggles the mind sometimes. I mean, I'm sure they sat down to figure this out and no hate to the bureaucrats who were probably tasked with doing this very quickly. But sometimes when governments are desperate, they do things that just reek of desperation.

And this one, this one you think, okay, I'm glad restaurants, a few restaurants on uptick in sales. That's fantastic. Every little bit helps. But next time you do this, try and think about the unintended consequences, right? Just try. It's part of your job. This is Carrie the fire. I'm your host, Lisa Laflamme. Carrie the fire, a podcast by the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation featuring inspiring personal stories about what happens when world-leading doctors, nurses, researchers, and their patients come together to ignite breakthroughs.

Carry the Fire launches Monday, January 27th, wherever you get your podcasts. Go back in time and think about what avocados were like. So when older generations started to make fun of millennials about their avocado toast, part of it was a reflection of how we thought of avocados. They were expensive. They were a luxury item. Well, post-free trade, post-NAFTA really, they weren't. They were everywhere. The Americans started buying them by the boatload. The Mexicans started growing and selling them by the boatload. The cartels got

involved. That's kind of a different story. But it's an interesting phenomenon that somehow free trade, a very wonky textbook-y kind of subject, we talk about the, you know, cars and borders and so on. But imagine how much of that free trade wound up on your plate. Corey Mintz is a food reporter and his article for The Walrus is called How NAFTA Changed the Way We Eat. Millennials May Have Popularized Avocado Toast, But Free Trade Made It a Sensation and Corey joins me now. Thanks for your time. What a cool, what a cool story. Good morning. Yeah, I mean this is one of those things that seems, I mean if you think about it, it seems so obvious, but there was a really dramatic

shift in what was available to Canadian shoppers between say you know the late 80s and the mid 90s. Take me back in time, what did it look like back when Big Hair and Madonna were super popular? Well to go back there, you know, for context, I mean we're also talking about it. Like I was a kid at the time, and I remember the big debate at the time in Canada, or at least in Toronto was, should shops be open on Sundays? You know, that was still a conflict. And free trade was the big discussion all through that era. And when I was researching this piece, the number that caught me, you know, questioning like how has our diet changed was, you know, before that in the 80s,

Canada imported about seven, I think seven million kilos a year of avocados and all from the states. Right. And the states had an import ban from Mexico. And then we, you know, we erected this trade deal where we'd all trade with each other equally without tariffs. And 20 years later, Canada was importing 80 million kilos of avocados and almost all of it from Mexico. That's a big change in avocados. I mean, that is the perfect example, right? They went from being a rarity to something that was readily available. And it's interesting because people's diets changed in response to this.

Absolutely. I mean, it's exactly as you said, they were a rarity. They were in health food restaurants, you know, over a bowl of brown rice. They were expensive. You couldn't just go out and find them everywhere. But I think, you know, in that piece, and you know, this is the Walrus republished this piece, but this is already a bit of history there. I wrote that piece six years ago during the first Trump presidency, a phrase I never thought I'd hear. But avocados are one way of looking at it,

like one good that we used to have a little bit of, and now we have a lot of. It's so easy to understand. And that's really, that's just kind of just one side of how it all broke down the other piece of produce I looked at in that story was blueberry, which kind of shows you that it's a much more complicated web when you think of something like blueberries, which used to be sort of in season or out season.

And these days, like, you know, in the winter, it's cold, you go get blueberries, they're coming from Peru. You know, a little later, they're coming from Chile and Mexico. In the spring, they're coming from Florida, then Georgia and California, New Jersey, Washington. Finally in the summer, we're growing them in BC, so much so that their season is longer

and they can export some. But all of that, crossing all those borders back and forth without any tariffs, considering that, what happens to products like this when they incur a 25% fee? Before you get to that, just think of the question you asked, our culture, our expectation,

that like, yeah, they may go up or down one or $2, but they're just sort of a thing you have in your fridge and you pour over your cereal or your granola or your yogurt you're not thinking about this complicated web of agreements that is kind of fundamental to the expectation that all this produce is available all year round yeah i mean the blueberry example was even more to me even more fascinating because the avocado examples obviously just one of something becoming abundant that used to be scarce. The blueberry one is this incredibly detailed almost handoff a baton passing of blueberry growth from the south in Peru as you mentioned up to BC and each

one of these markets each one of these growing markets replacing each other as they go out of season so that blueberries are always in your grocery store what happens when you disrupt that? Yeah, I mean when you talk about the word that springs to mind when you think about all that it's just cooperation and my brother's a produce wholesaler so it's something I'm always you know thinking about and I used to order when I was working in restaurants I would call you know distributors, oh can we order this for for next day? And the prices go up and down based on, oh, we're done with this Chilean blueberries, now Florida's not ready yet,

so now we're importing again from Peru and it's double the price. It's so complex and we don't think about it because we've gotten so used to it. And I think there's a case to be made that this was not a good thing either for our diets, the fact that we get less variety because we're used to it. And I think there's a case to be made that this was not a good thing either for our diets. The fact that we get less variety because we're used to something.

My daughter's used to there being strawberries all the time. She's five years old. She isn't aware of the idea. Maybe we should just eat these in the summer, but it's horrific from an environmental point of view. The fact that we say we must have this all year round. So we're trucking these up from as far away as Peru. That's bizarre.

Yeah, not to mention the avocado trade, which has been, you didn't bring this up in the article, but of course the avocado trade is well documented as having been sort of taken over by cartels, not exclusively, but you know, there's, there's, when there's big demand for things, it becomes, it becomes what it becomes. Yeah. And we'll see that, you know, we've seen, I wrote this piece for the Globe last week about fryer oil. We, you know, Canada produces or in the States, they produce like $5 billion worth of cooking oil. Well, Canada sells them almost $5 billion worth of canola oil. The primary use is in their deep fryers.

So like what's going to happen to the price of French fries? But you know, to what you're alluding to, we've already seen stories of people stealing fryer oil because it's become such a commodity. Even before this, the price of fryer oil has just gone up so much. It becomes an incentive for organized crime. Yeah. I mean, I was reading an article that the price of a Big Mac in America will skyrocket because everything that goes into a Big Mac relies on Canadian fertilizer to grow. I mean what you pointed out in the article I think is even more poignant now that these tariffs are such a real threat is just how interconnected NAFTA made food and when you start to toy with it, these systems in place aren't easily replaced. They're not. And we had complicated

systems before this. It's hard to look back, but you're talking about, you mentioned you couldn't just go to the store and find an avocado. There was also invisible levers ensuring, there was protectionist levels, levers. there were tariffs that were seasonal, that made sure, you know, when certain things like cauliflower were being grown in Ontario at that time of year, there was an import tariff on cauliflower to ensure local sales. So there was another invisible web that we the consumer were never thinking of. But all of it has to be thought out. And that's what's not happening now. You know, the directive is coming from clearly

someone who's not thinking this out, but as part of, at least from my amateur perspective, a negotiating tactic. And as a result, you know, lives are being thrown into chaos. We're discussing, of course, the sort of interesting academic perspective of how will our diets change,

but of course people are, you know, losing jobs over this. Yeah jobs over this. Yeah indeed again I don't think Donald Trump eats a lot of avocados. Cory I appreciate the article thank you so much for your time. Thanks for having me. Cory Mintz food reporter his latest for the Walrus is called how NAFTA changed the way we eat. Millennials may have popularized avocado toast but free trade made it a sensation. You're listening to the Ben Roel Rooney show. I'm Ben O'Hara Byrne. I mean, this is something that we've gotten very used to having products available in our stores that back in the day were purely seasonal.

I don't remember buying blueberries in January ever when I was growing up. I don't remember seeing an avocado growing up. It's amazing. Now even things like blood oranges, which used to be very rare. And I think from Italy, now you see them all the time. Things have changed and if tariffs come in who knows we may buy more local but it may also change for the worst. Ben O'Hara burn in for Ben Mulroney on this Thursday. You may have seen Team Canada in action at the Four Nations in Montreal on Wednesday night, a big win in overtime over the, over team Sweden.

Overtime, I mean, they almost, they almost blew it. Sweden came back twice, but it was Mitch Marner who scored an overtime goal. So there was a lot of patriotic fervor going on. There was a huge cheer for the Canadian national anthem. And having grown up in Montreal, I can tell you that's rare, or at least it was back when. It was sort of received

with a certain amount of lukewarmness over the years, especially when I was growing up in the 80s and the 90s. But there was a huge roar for the Canadian national anthem at the game. And it reminded me of just how much people have been talking about Canada, showing off their Canadian pride. We talked, of course, on my show Conversations, which you can hear from 7 to 10 on 640 in Toronto, and right across the course, Radio Network, check your local listings or listen on the I Heart Radio on my show Conversations, which you can hear from 7 to 10 on 640 in Toronto and right across the course, Radio Network, check your local listings or listen on the iHeart Radio app. We spoke to Sean O'Shea, the Global News reporter who was down in Mexico and he was saying that he wore his Canadian shirt everywhere, was being talked about handing out Canadian lapel pins to

people. Something's happening. The 51st state stuff, the tariff threat, has united Canadians in a way that perhaps we haven't seen happen in quite some time. And it all happens as Flag Day approaches on Saturday. It is the 60th anniversary. It was in 1965 that the red and white, the maple leaf, became our official flag, replacing the red inside. So it's all coming together. And so what's going on if you own a flag store? It turns out you're selling a lot more of them. And I suppose that would make a certain amount of sense, but who better to ask about a sort of renewed patriotism

than a flag store itself. And there's one in Calgary that's doing booming business these days in Canadian flags. Angelique McLeod is VP of sales for Process Color Printed in Calgary, she joins me now. Thanks so much for your time, joins me now. Thanks so much for your time Angelique. Thank you so much for having me. I was noticing there was photos of people hard at work, hard at work making these flags. It's nice to see they're being made here.

They are. They are being made right here in right here in Calgary. We're very proud of the work that we do. I don't know if you know much about process color, flag works, but we have been the largest flag manufacturer in Western Canada for well over 20 years and are also the most significant installer of flag poles in Alberta and Saskatchewan, so yeah. There you have it, flying the pride. So what's going on? How much has, how much sales changed of like, what's going on? How much is how much sales changed? What's going

down? Oh, a lot. You know, I think that most of our most of the calls that we're getting recently have been all about flags. You know, we are more than flags. We have the division outside of flags that's for large format display solutions and fleet services. But it has been completely focused recently on just flags. People want as many flags as they can get their hands on and all Canadian flags. But we noticed an uptick in our flag sales just on the heels of Trump's tariff negotiations,

which is a really hot topic, obviously. And the conversations that are, you know, we've been having with even our customers have really been a transition from let's talk about our brand and how we can elevate it to, you know, how can we lock arms as Canadians and support Canadian manufacturers and really just elevate ourselves as Canadians. And Flags has been a big part of that conversation just because, you know, the Canadian flag is just such a powerful symbol. It represents our roots, our freedom and our peace.

Yeah. And it's Flag Day coming up, of course. So I assume that there's some on 60th anniversary on Saturday. So there must be something in there too. What are people buying? Are they buying the massive ones? Are they buying little ones? Are they buying ones to hand out? What are you seeing? It is the full spectrum. We've got everything from like the little handheld flags which are really cute all the way to yeah six foot by twelve foot heavy heavy flags you know and it's it's just whatever whatever people like I said

have space for but um I think it's it's a really beautiful symbol of unity. Yeah is this I mean is this something you hadn't seen in the past as it compared to any other any other times or is this something you sort of out of the ordinary for you? This is totally out of the ordinary like completely out of the ordinary for you. This is totally out of the ordinary, like completely out of the ordinary. Obviously we had seen some uptick previously when there was the, well in our recent history, obviously the convoy, but this is a far different vibe. Yeah, so how are you gonna keep up?

I was noticing, of course, you have to keep up with demand. And again, great that you make them here. I'm always asked that, where did you get that flag? Is it Chinese? I mean, that's always what you get asked, but great that you make them here. How are you gonna keep up with demand? Are you gonna bring in extra people?

We have, this is what we do. We have constant, we have our manufacturing always going. We always make sure that we have back, you know, enough flags on hand that we're able to backfill as we need to. But yeah, those ladies, they work, they worked so hard on all of those flags. And so we've, we've been preparing. The second that we started getting these phone flags. And so we've been preparing. The second that we started getting these phone calls,

we've kind of been in overdrive. Yeah. Well, Angelique, thanks so much for filling us in. Interest, a fascinating development considering what's going on. Go to a flag store if you want to know how people are feeling about their country these days. Thanks so much for your time. Thank you so much, Ben.

Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much, Ben. Daniel Blanchard is no ordinary thief. His heists are ingenious. His escapes defy belief. And when he sees the dazzling diamond CC Star, he'll risk everything to steal it. His exploits set off an intercontinental manhunt. But how long can CC Star stay lucky for Daniel?

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