The Ben Mulroney Show - Canadian youth pro-Ayatollah?? / Canadian rocket dreams!

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

GUEST:   Adam Trumpour, founder and president of Launch Canada GUEST: KIM MOODY /  tax columnist and expert 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

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Happy St. Patrick's Day, and I could try to read you a passage of a beautiful Irish blessing, but I butchered it last hour, so I'm not going to do it again. Instead, I'm going to wish you, happy St. Patrick's Day, family guy style. Question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do you punk? Oh, Mr. Harry.

You're really not going to like what I have to say. The Irish don't mind when you poke fun at them. Just saying. A few months ago, we pointed out the irony of all ironies that on the day that is chosen during Pride Month that was going to showcase a FIFA World Cup game in Seattle, one of the most progressive cities in North America. The draw dictated that one of the teams that was going to be playing was Iran and a game celebrating pride.

Just sit with that. It's the theater of the absurd on a soccer pitch. And we were wondering, they were very upset about it, but the draw is the draw. Egypt wasn't very happy either. But now with the war going on in the Middle East with Iran, I mean, their leadership is decimated, but there's always, always new people to come up the ranks, I guess. They're wondering, is this a bridge too far? And Iran's embassy in Mexico announced that Iran is negotiating directly with FIFA to move its World Cup matches from the U.S. to Mexico.

And the request comes after President Donald Trump discouraged Iran's team from attending the tournament citing safety concerns. It's unclear whether FIFA is actually engaging in such talks. The organization did not respond for requests. But I guess they have to do this. They were invited to play. They earned a spot.

But they are technically at war with the United States. So sending their team there. But I think they're also worried about the team members. I think that's what they're worried about. Well, I mean, we saw that in Australia with the women's team. Yeah. And that's a huge, huge issue. You know that they're going to have a lot of minders,

but then the United States will probably limit those as well. So, yeah, it's a shame, though, because that game in Seattle was going to be a must watch. It was going to be fun to watch. I mean, back before, this was before it was a war, it was just let's, but you know, I'm looking at it differently now because now that I see what the women's team did, and being in defiance. Like I don't know if the men on the team are, I don't know whether they are supporters of the IRGC

or whether they are part of the millions upon millions of people demanding their freedom from this repressive regime. But it's entirely possible now that they don't want them there because they don't want to, they don't want them to try to defect. It'd be very interesting. Yeah, they might not even have enough players

to the fielded team by the second or third game. Yeah. But anyways, we'll be keeping. keeping an eye on that. You know, that's the way the Ben Mulroney show does sports. We're not going to get granular on who's on the field and, you know, the power rankings, because we don't know those. But we will let you know about things like that. And the flags in the stands as well, because that's what's going to be interesting. Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. Okay, we got to talk about this poll that came out in the National Post that at first blush you're going to find shocking,

but it's probably not as shocking as you would think. Let's listen. So Goldie Gamari was a former member of the Ontario Provincial Parliament. She is of Iranian descent, and she has become quite the popular supporter of the people against the regime on all, on Pierce Morgan, on CNN. And she was also on with Brad Smith of 640 Toronto. Here's what she said. Oh, well, I should read the poll to first. The high-level stuff is that.

When asked about whether Canada should politically support Iran's current regime, the current regime, not the Iranian people, current regime, people age 45 to 54, 55 to 64 and 65 plus, by and large, were the same, 3%, 1% and 0. That's the margin of error. So anyone, 45 until they die, entirely is against this regime. when I tell you that Canadians 18 to 24% show up 20% for the repressive theocratic regime that represses women and kills homosexuals and chance death to Canada. And let's listen to what Goldie Gamari said.

I find it appalling and I think it is a huge failure of Canadian journalism that they would actually think that something that a totalitarian dictatorship says is true in any way, shape, or form. I have a lot of time for Goldie. And, you know, she has the lived experience of an Iranian. So I'm not going to dispute that. But when it comes to who to blame here, most people, poll after poll shows us that most people of that age in that demographic, they're getting their news from social media. The failure of the news agencies to remain relevant to this generation.

That's a problem. but we're past that now. So the question is, what's going on on social media? And I wanted to give you a little brief history lesson. And I'm going to do it real quick, and I'm not going to go down a rabbit hole. But after the Second World War in 1948, after the creation of Israel, Joseph Stalin was very excited because Israel had roots in socialism. And he thought with a little push, they could become,

they could be openly communist. But here's the thing. The people of Israel found out that he killed 20 million of his own people. And they thought, you know what? You kind of remind us of a guy we didn't like. So with all due respect, no thank you. And Stalin was not happy about that. He was not happy about that at all.

So he went all in the other direction. And he told the KGB to start a plan to make, to make the already burgeoning anti-Semitism in the Middle East, let's turn it up to Nazi levels. And Operation SIG was born. And I'm going to read to you some of the tactics, like the tenets of this, and then ask yourself, does it remind you,

do you see the consequences of that in what we've seen in our streets and on our college, on our university campuses? So the four tenets of Operation. S-I-G, distortion and deception. So out and out lying, as well as taking a nugget of truth and twisting it into something different. How many times have you felt when talking to somebody of that cohort? They're just not getting it.

They're not speaking about a reality that I know. Repetition of a lie. That's tenant number two. Genocide, genocide, genocide. Baby killer, baby killer, baby killer. apartheid, apartheid, colonialist, imperialist, all that stuff, right? Yeah, that's tenant number two. Tenet number three, defamation and misdirection.

So blaming the victim. Remember how October 7th wasn't a one-day Holocaust? No, no. When you're a genocider and you are a colonizer and an imperialist and you've been promoting apartheid, well, this is just an uprising. And the hijacking of emotions is the fourth leg of the table of Operation SIG. And just ask yourself, when you have heard these kids, when you've heard the chance and the marches, do you feel that you're talking to or that person is level-headed and willing to take in new information,

new information that would maybe alter their worldview? or are they single-mindedly blinded by their slavish emotional devotion to a cause? I would I would postulate that that that's exactly right, that Operation SIG was a success. They were able to raise the anti-Semitism to, in fact, Nazi levels in a lot of ways in the Middle East. and they were so successful at that, they got exported to our college campuses, and we in the West let it happen. We let it happen. We welcome these students in.

We let these tenured professors corrupt our kids, misinformed them, and now we're dealing with 20% of that cohort believes that we should not be siding with the Americans, but we should be siding with the Ayatollah. This is Canada in 2026. Well, I've told you before that I am jazzed for the new season of For All Mankind, as well as the launch of Artemis 2, where human beings are going to be launched into space and they're going to go farther out than any human being has ever gone. This, to me, is appointment television.

And so when I hear news that we will be launching satellites into space from Canada, I stand up and I take note, this is a big deal. The announcement came from our Minister McGinty, who says that we've selected a location in Nova Scotia. And it is going to lead to massive job landscape improvements and opportunities for talent in STEM. And so to talk about this, we're joined by Adam Trump War. He's the founder and president of Launch Canada. Adam, welcome. Thank you, Ben.

Great to be back. Yes, indeed. When I saw your name pop up, I was like, oh, when is the next? Because launch can, tell everybody what launch candidate is. Yeah, so we are a not-for-profit that runs the largest rocket engineering competition in the country. So we're all about creating opportunities for students, mostly university and also high school, to gain these practical skills and know-how for, you know, how you solve really hard problems, like building rockets.

Which is, if you've watched Apollo 13, that's what makes NASA and that's what made, like, it's everyone's solving a problem. Solve one problem, move on to the next problem. Solve another. And so you're building those people in the real world. It's really awesome. It's really awesome. Exactly.

So what do you make of this announcement by David McGinty? This is huge. I miss words. It's words on this. This is a really big deal. It is obviously something that. for myself and for a lot of us who have been kind of advocates for rocketry and space launch for a long time.

You know, we've been waiting for this. I think it's really important for the country as a whole because we've had these niche areas in space that we're known for. We obviously have our astronauts who are really good. But up until now, we have never had the ability to put our own things in space. Right. So explain that. So if we've wanted to put a satellite in space...

We'd have to, what, send it to the states to get its shot after? We would have to send it to another country. And as soon as you do that, you know, you suddenly become subject to all kinds of geopolitical realities that can be well outside your control. Well, you're a client, right? You're a client. Exactly. And Space Launch is something that's always been so adjacent to various national security issues.

if you're sending your technology to another country, you know, space technology is really, really high technology. It kind of reflects the technological prowess of a country. And the people who are launching it are going to look at it. They're going to know what it is you're doing. They're going to have a lot of intelligence about what your capabilities are. And that's not ideal. Yeah, it's not ideal. And so I think a lot of us were probably surprised that we didn't do this already.

and so now they've decided they've picked a location in Nova Scotia. And the minister said one of the reasons was because it was close to the open water. But, you know, the Artemis II original launch date was scrapped because the weather was right now. And they found something wrong with like one of the, I don't know, a pipe or something like that. Do we have a low, the weather in Atlantic Canada can be pretty unforgiving. But because we'd be shooting rockets in the air and not people, do we have fewer safety concerns? Is that why we are confident that we can build a successful cottage industry, if you will, in Atlanta, Canada? Yeah, absolutely.

And I mean, rocket launches are always going to be weather-dependent, and usually coastal locations are prone to some pretty severe weather. So it's something that you're never really going to get away from. But you look at other things when you're choosing launch locations as well. One of the big ones is you obviously don't want to drop rockets on people. Right. Yes, that's a big no-no. That is usually frowned upon. So if you are launching to the east from the east coast, you've got huge downrange distance where you've got empty ocean. so you're not concerning yourself about, you know, the possibility of dropping a rocket on a town or something.

Yeah. And you've all, so go on. Yeah, so based on the way the continent curves as well, you can launch in a really wide range of different directions from the eastern tip of Nova Scotia. Wait, what, I'm sorry, I'm a nerd, but I'm not like a rocket nerd. So you with your depth of nerdy knowledge, and I say that with deep respect, I hope you know that. What are you talking about because the curvature of what and the angle of what? Okay. Yeah.

So rockets of this type are there to put spacecraft in orbit. So those satellites are going to go around and around the Earth. And there are different orbits that you might want to put a satellite in depending on what that satellite is going to do. Some will orbit kind of north to south around the poles. So we call that a polar orbit. Others will go more east to west sort of equatorial, and there are lots of different orbits sort of in between. And then you've got the geosynchronous orbit.

See, I know words. Exactly, yeah. You've got all kinds of orbits that can do things like allow your spacecraft to effectively hover over one point so that as the world turns, it's moving at a similar rate that kind of keeps it above one area. So you can do a lot of things depending on what you want your spacecraft to do.

And to be able to launch your satellite into a given orbit, you generally want to be able to fire the rocket in sort of the direction of that orbit. So let's see, I want to finish up with you. I want to talk about the people involved the young nerds that you have

in the launch, in launch Canada, because I love their passion. I love how dedicated they are. And like I said, I love that they are in their own smaller way doing all the things that the best people at SpaceX and at NASA are doing every day, right? Is this, do you think, this building of this, because not just a launch pad, it's all the science that goes into launching these things.

You're going to need people like the people in Launch Canada. when they're ready and able. They'll certainly be eager. Absolutely. Well, and in fact, it's these former launch Kansas students that have actually been disproportionately making up the workforce at a number of these new Canadian

rocket startup companies that are trying to do this. So this has become a really important talent pipeline. And now for the first time, a lot of these students are seeing that the country is actually getting behind this. They really have a prospect of being able to stay here and do what they've gotten good at and passionate about. Well, because the politics shouldn't be lost on anyone, right? I mean, the Americans are aggressively pursuing the moon with a goal to get to Mars.

There are resources on Mars. China has tried to beat them to the punch. So there's a lot of factors there, and we are going to get left in the dust if we don't contribute in a meaningful way. And more than that, Adam, is we're going to, if we don't get our acts together and start building out opportunities for the best of the best, they're going to leave and they're going to go populate NASA and they're going to go populate SpaceX. And then the brain drain continues. Exactly. And I think there's a growing realization that, you know, when there are capabilities that are critical to Canada as a nation, then we can't. rely on others for these capabilities. And launch

is really foundational to everything we do in space. And what's been the reaction from those young people at this news? I think it's fair to say that they're pretty much over the moon on this one. Over the moon. I see what you

did there. Oh, well done. Well done. All right. Adam, Trump, founder and president of Launch Canada, I'm going to be keeping an eye on that next launch that you guys are doing. But thank you so much for joining me. I love talking to people who are enthusiastic about stuff like this. I really appreciate it. Wishing you the very best. My pleasure anytime, Ben. Well, it's tax season and nobody wants to be in tax season, but here we are. And we're here every year. And the more information you have and

the more uncomfortable conversations you can have, the better prepared you'll be for it next year. And Kim Moody is a tax columnist and expert. We've spoken with him before, and he's written in the financial post. Canada should follow St. Patrick's lead on taxation. I love that. Kim, welcome the show. Thanks, Ben. Nice to be here. So you've said, what did you say here? You said tax policies are good economic tax policies work much the same way St. Patrick's influence did in Ireland and worldwide. They develop slowly over decades of perseverance, patience, and long-term thinking. First of all, I love that. Thank you for writing that.

But implicit in that without reading the entire article to everybody is that we aren't doing that here. What are we doing in Canada? Wow, we're passing out sugar, right? We're passing out candy, both on tax matters and on non-tax matters. And that was the basic point in my article. And I've been saying this for a lot of years. But, you know, and you're no stranger to politics, a lot of us are not. But, you know, politics, unfortunately, has, you know, as it relates to tax policy, is really simple politics these days.

So a lot of what gets proposed, like the 1% reduction, you know, that's so not what we need in Canada. But it's touted as a massive change that's going to benefit people's lives and it's going to put 1,600 bucks into the pockets of a family of four. Yeah. Yeah. That's total BS. And if I'd say the whole word, I'm sure you'd cut me off. But it is just total BS. It's intended to make people excited and it's just not true.

And so that's the whole point of the article is to get people to really dig in and understand what's going on and demand better policies. You know, as I said in the article, we need to be planting policy acorns that all. ultimately can grow into the economic oak tree. And that doesn't take, you know, that that takes a lot of time. Yeah. But planting those policy acorns today is the right thing to do. Okay. So if you, let's live in a hypothetical where some politician gets into office and they have the bold vision,

which is adopted, you know, they win, they win the election. And they've promised we are going to do away with the entire legal framework, tax framework of Canada and we're going to build something new from the ground up. If the goal is to build out the most robust middle class and have the healthiest business environment to attract investment and to allow entrepreneurs to succeed, what do we have to do? Well, that's an excellent question. It's unfortunately unrealistic given the political scene that we have where it's always, about getting voted in the next cycle. But what,

I hear's, Kim, I want to ask because what wouldn't be appealing to tell Canadians we are going to do away with the overburdened tax system that we have?

The tax code is too complex. The system doesn't make any sense. It's got all these loopholes and tax credits and it's hindering our growth. So if you elect me, I'm going to simplify it, you're going to pay less.

There's going to be less of a bureaucracy, so less money just goes down a rat hole. And we're going to be collecting more taxes because there are going to be more businesses out there generating revenue. Yeah, I totally agree with you, Ben, but when you have people that have vested interest in the status quo,

which there's no shortage of those people, and you mentioned one group is bureaucracy, right? As an example, the Canada Revenue Agency has grown in the last, I've got to remember my stats here, roughly seven years, up to 59,000 employees, by far the largest federal agency in Canada's federal government. But if we simplify the tax code, Kim, then those people, sure, they'll leave a government, but then they will start businesses because we have created a more appealing environment to do so. Well, you would hope so, right?

But the reality is a lot of people don't want to start businesses or don't have the skill sets or are scared to. And they really like the position they're in. And so at least from my perspective, Ben, that's certainly what I've seen is status quo is very comfortable. And frankly, you know, that's why I think Carney got elected is, hey, let's keep the status quo. We don't want much change. we like what's happening. And I think that's the biggest impediment to tax reform is there's too many vested interests, there's too many people that benefit off the existing system, whereas all the benefits

that you talk about, which is certainly what I keep trumping as well, is really what would benefit all Canadians, regardless of vested interests. But it's those vested interests that really do make things difficult politically. Well, okay, well, short of having some. visionary leader come in and just say we're going to do away with the tax code and build build back better to use the parlance of the left. But are there things that we could do, like plant some acorns today, that could in a few years yield real positive results?

Oh, absolutely. And, you know, there's been a number of people, including me, that have written about it for a lot of years. The best report I've seen in a long time is a report. released by Jack Mintz, Dr. Jack Mintz, with his colleagues at the CD How. And they released it last week on what could be done with so-called Big Bang tax reform. And for any interested reader, I would suggest you just Google CD-Houb big bang tax reform. You'll find it.

And what he talks about is reducing personal tax rates down to roughly 45%. Yeah. Increasing the GST by 2.8% in order to cover some of those costs. Of course he advocates for huge government expenditure reduction. He talks about revamping corporate tax because corporate tax can be a real burden to the wage earner. A lot of people don't understand that, but it's absolutely true. And so he talks about two things in corporate tax reform, either reduce the rates by 5%, which would make us very competitive with the United States.

That's number one. And number two, which is an alternative, is to adopt an Estonia-style type corporate distribution tax. So overly simplified, corporations wouldn't pay tax, wouldn't pay corporate tax, if they reinvest all the profits back in the company. Right, because we've seen that there are some massive companies out there that they sit on their earnings and they don't reinvest it. I think Apple sit close to a trillion dollars or something like that. Yeah, and so But if you, so the proposal would be like Estonia does. Estonia is pretty generous.

Like they have the Apple style where if you sit on a bunch of cash, they still allow deferral. Whereas what Jack is talking about is if you reinvest back into business assets. And I'm oversimplifying his proposal, but if you reinvest in business assets and people, then there's a deferral until that money is distributed out. Yeah. I think that would be using his language, a big bang for Canada. as economy. And frankly, we need thinking like that right now. Our productivity is so in the toilet. And our standard of living is declining as we speak. And it's, it's, you know, in the post that I,

you know, in the article I wrote today, or published today, it's, it, I worry about our youth. And that's really the theme of, you know, the article is what happens to our youngsters. Yeah. And I really do worry about that. I mean, look, we already have a pretty high unemployment rate at 6.7%, but theirs is even higher. Youth from 15 to 24, 14.1%. Yeah.

If they can't get into the market, at 24, if you can't get into the market, and you've been trying for years, it's not a recipe for success. But yeah, we need big thinking. And so we're fortunate to have a guest like you, Kim Moody, coming on and showcasing some of that big thinking. Thank you very much, my friend.

We'll talk to you soon. Thanks a lot, Ben. All the best. And, well, that's just a reminder. If you want more BMS, we put out a podcast every day, and you can find even more content on X, on Instagram, and on YouTube. Firefighters rest their lives every single day. Fridays on Global. I'm going to get you out of here, bud. This is the greatest job in the world. A whole new fire country.

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