The Ben Mulroney Show - Divorce coming for Donald Trump and Elon Musk?

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Divorce coming for Donald Trump and Elon Musk? -The Homeownership Journey Is Broken. Policymakers Need to Repair It with Guest: Mike Moffatt, Economist, Founding Director, PLACE Centre. Co-Host, "Missing Middle" 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

When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer, so download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three orders service fees exclusions and terms apply Instacart groceries that over deliver

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much for joining us on this Wednesday, July 4th a real pleasure To build this show with you It says we're still early days with the Ben Mulroney Show and we're so glad that we are building a community both, well, in a lot of places, on the radio, on streaming apps, on podcast platforms, and now on YouTube. Just search up the Ben Mulroney Show and you can find daily content on YouTube

and enjoy it at your heart's content. So Mark Carney has been very, very busy getting his feet under him as his as his new government sort of take shape and we start appreciating, you know, what their priorities are. They just finished up with a very successful First Minister's Conference in Saskatchewan. If those in attendance are to be believed and things how they were the only ones there, you got it. You got to believe it was a home run. There was also a meeting, a closed door meeting that he had with executives from the natural resources industry sector and the energy sector. And

there are people who are in that room who truly believe that he is going to be quite transformational on that front and good on him. Like I want him to succeed. I didn't vote for the guy, but his success would be my success, would be all of our success. So in these early days, I am in good faith with a critical eye, paying attention and wishing him well. But there's something that happens when he's in the House of Commons that I think we need to talk about. Let's listen to an exchange between conservative member of parliament, Kelly McCauley, and the prime minister as they went at I think we need to talk about. Let's listen to an exchange between Conservative Member of Parliament Kelly McCauley and the Prime Minister as they went at it during question

period. Take note of last night's motion. But what Canadians deserve, what Canadians deserve, what Canadian provinces deserve is a health care transfer, is a transfer for child care, is a transfer for dental care, is a transfer transfer for dental care. There's a transfer to support affordability. That's what's in the main estimates and we expect the support of members opposite. The right Honourable Member for Edmonton West. Mr. Speaker, I realize he's new here, but all those things would be in a budget if he paid was set. Mr. Speaker, this year alone, this government is going to spend a staggering $26 billion on high-priced, Liberal-friendly consultants, an eye-watering $1,400 for every Canadian family.

They'll present no budget, no departmental plans, and zero transparency. They won't even stand in this house and tell Canadians what the deficit will be this year. Will the Liberals come clean? Table the spring budget as this house has demanded. Yeah, I think, listen, a lot of those complaints by the Conservatives, I think, are absolutely fair game. We are supposedly in the crisis of our lifetime. And nevermind the fact that the house is going to rise in a matter of weeks, right? Nevermind that you should be working all summer if this is a crisis, right?

Pierre Poli have promised had he been prime minister, nobody takes a vacation this summer because we got work to do. So already there's that that's an issue for me. But the fact that originally we weren't going to get a, we weren't going to get a budget this year at all, but a mounting pressure forced Mark Carney to to say we'll get one by the fall Come on. This is oh, well, it's a new government. Not really everyone is still in place that was there before

I get that some people have moved around but people move around all the time That's par for the course for any government even with a new new leader at the top, even with new people and new portfolios. I don't accept that. I'm sorry, I don't. And to ask for permission to spend half a trillion dollars, of which 26 billion is consultants, nevermind the fact that we have the largest public service bureaucracy we've ever had,

what do we need $26 billion of consultants for? And so for the Tories to simply say, give us the lay of the land, let us know what the balance sheet looks like. What's the national debt? These are, these are, this is low hanging fruit that we should have answers to. So here is a Mark Carney's response to that last exchange. Mr. Speaker, unlike the member, unlike the member opposite, I know the difference between main estimates and budget. Unlike the member opposite, unlike the member opposite, I know how to grow. Unlike the member opposite, I know how to grow this economy. It got a little loud. It got a little tense.

The speaker had to stand up and calm everybody down. Okay. This is going to wear thin. This I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world.

I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world. I'm the smartest guy in the world. It got a little loud, it got a little tense. The speaker had to stand up and calm everybody down.

Okay, this is gonna wear thin. This, I'm the smartest guy in the room and you know so because I told you so. That only works if you fix things. Like it, yeah, like it's as simple as that. Reminding us how smart you are, me thinks thou doth protest too much. us how smart you are, me thinks thou doth protest too much. It doesn't, it's not going to matter to everyday Canadians that you know how to grow something, that you know how to build something,

that you know how to solve these problems if you don't solve them. And the antidote to the criticism that you're getting from the opposition is not to tell them that they're dumb and you're smart, but it's to actually listen and And look, I know you don't want to I know you don't want to open the books The books are a mess your predecessor made sure of that. All right I guarantee you it's worse than any of us could possibly imagine and so you don't want to show them to us I get that you're playing keep away for a bit. That's fine. But this idea of constantly You're playing keep away for a bit. That's fine. But this idea of constantly responding to opposition calls, which are by the way, fair and I think in good faith and in these early days, come on, come on. They're not asking for the moon here. They're asking for basic accountability

from parliament or to parliament. And your response is to perpetually push back and remind people that you're smarter than the other guy, that is going to wear very thin very quickly. I would urge the prime minister to recognize that question period is by nature confrontational. It shouldn't be personal, it sometimes gets personal. I get that, But ideally it is a pushback on values. It's a pushback on priorities and on policy and reminding people that, hey, you said one thing once and now you're doing something else. That's all fair game. Nothing of what the Tory member said was over the line in any way.

It was basic requests for accountability. And if your reaction is to immediately go to what is essentially an ad hominem attack, you're gonna develop a reputation and it's not gonna be a good one. And this is, it's a humble suggestion. As somebody who's watched a lot of question period and knew a guy who's really good at it,

this is not a tactic for long-term success. Unless, of course, you have a magic wand that is going to solve all of our economic ills right now. If you do that, sir, you can remind me that you're the smartest guy in the world every day. I'll be shouting it from the rooftops. You solve all our problems. You turn us into an economic and an energy superpower

right now. I won't shut up about how smart you are. But until then, this just, this smacks of condescension and it's not a good look. Meanwhile, we're living in Donald Trump's world of tariffs whenever he feels like levying them. And he just signed an executive order doubling the tariff on steel and aluminum coming into the United

States. Canada is obviously the largest exporter to the United States in steel and aluminum at just over $7 billion a year. Here is what Carolyn Levitt, his Donald Trump's spokesperson, said about this new tariff. You've got US business leaders begging for certainty. So why did the president suddenly decide to hike tariffs on steel and aluminum again? You also have U.S. business leaders begging to meet with this president and begging to come to the White House to talk to him because they know that he is a negotiator in chief,

that he's making good deals on behalf of the American worker and the steel worker, in particular when it comes to the steel and aluminum tariffs, which he discussed in his speech at length at Pennsylvania and the need for them. Yeah. Okay. So she didn't really answer that question, but I do want to move on to the big, beautiful bill, this thousand paid spending bill that just passed the House of Representatives by a razor thin margin. There is a war brewing on the right and it's not looking good. Elon Musk is positioning himself

against Donald Trump on this. He tweeted, I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong, you know it. So, and he's not the only one who agrees with that position. Here is news reporter Peter Ducey asking Carolyn Levitt about those comments. This across, Caroline, how mad do you think President Trump is gonna be when he finds out

that Elon Musk said, I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive outrageous port filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know, you did wrong. You know it. Look, the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn't change the president's opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill and he's sticking to it.

It's a dumb name and this is going to cause a lot of problems inside the Republican party. Mark my words. The Ben Mulroney show marches on on this Wednesday. Thank you so much for spending a bit of your day with us here at the show. If you believe that a problem is serious, and you want to solve it, I think it's incumbent upon us to examine it from as many different angles and interpret it through as many different lenses as possible. That's how you understand the problem better. And the better you understand a problem, the more armed you are to attack it,

deal with it, and solve for it. And so I'm very glad to be joined by our next guest. He's an economist, Mike Moffitt. He's the founding director of Playcenter and the cohost of Missing Middle, because I had always viewed home ownership as an act. And then you buy another house and that's a separate act. But he and his group are viewing home ownership as a journey.

And so to discuss that and what that means and how we maybe could look at the problems differently, we're joined by Mike Moffat. Mike, thanks so much for being here. Oh, thank you for having me. Mike, thanks so much for being here. Oh, thank you for having me. Yeah, up until I read this piece from the Missing Middle Initiative,

like I said, I thought, okay, so you buy a house, and that's great, now you're on the real estate ladder until you're able to save up enough to move up the ladder, and it's just a series of separate isolated acts. But reading this is, you've got an example of one common middle class housing pathway. Someone starts by living with their family, then they rent with roommates, then they rent alone or as a couple, then they own a one or two bedroom home, a one to three plus bedroom home large enough for a family,

and then owning a smaller seniors friendly house. It's all part of one organic journey. Yeah, it is, or at least it's supposed to be. And that's how things work for a long time. I think both you and I are Gen X. And that's how a lot of us got started, where we lived with our parents and maybe we went away to university, rented with some roommates, rented a loan,

and then late 90s, early 2000s, bought our first condo, saved up some roommates, rented a loan, and then late 90s, early 2000s, bought our first condo, saved up some equity, then use that to buy a three-bedroom home where we can raise kids. And what we say in the piece is that that journey, you can think of it a ladder, you can use a number of descriptors, that's broken for a lot of millennials in Gen Z.

They might get up to the point of renting, though many aren't, and staying with their parents, but those ownership steps have just been eliminated for them, unfortunately. And so, fully eliminated, or is it a choke point that's slowing it down? Where are those eliminated points as you see them? Well, I think a couple things.

So, there is that choke point, I think, between staying with your parents and then kind of going out on your own, though most are eventually making that jump, but it's taking a little bit longer than it has. I think there's a couple of really big choke points. The one is the sort of first time home buyer going from renter to owner.

A lot of it is that rents are so high, it's hard to save up enough money to get that 5% down payment. So that first time home buyer problem. But what we say in the piece is there's also a second home buyer problem where we're not seeing people being able to move from owning a condo to a larger home, unless they have, you know, a lot of family wealth, their parents are able to help out or something like that.

But if they're on their own, they're not making that jump. Yeah. I was, I was lucky enough to get some help from my family. It wasn't that I was prevented from buying a house. It's that had I bought it on my own, I literally

would have been house poor. I wouldn't have had, I wouldn't have been able to buy groceries. And so they were able to help me with that. And yeah, the bank of mom and dad is a real thing for more and more Canadians, but not for everyone. And so yeah, it does exclude people from that journey. It's, I was really stunned because you opened my eyes

to another problem as well, which is how seniors are prevented from downsizing when they are empty nesters, or they may want to have some more money in their pocket to fund their retirement. Talk to me about that scenario, because I hadn't thought about that one. Yeah, we are seeing that.

We are seeing seniors, not just age and place in the sense of not going know, not going to, you know, a facilitated living community, but actually staying in their large suburban homes. And a lot of that is due to the fact that it just doesn't make financial sense to, to downsize. So let's say you're in the city of Toronto, you downsize, you get hit with a 2% Ontario land transfer tax, a 2% city of Toronto land transfer tax. There's all of these fees.

So yeah, you're, you're, you know, cashing out of your home to go into something smaller. You might think, okay, well that's a windfall, but not after you pay all of these taxes and fees. Yeah. And oftentimes the places you're going into do not necessarily meet seniors needs. They're like a high rise, you know, on the 37th floor downtown, where seniors often want something smaller and more community focused. And actually, it's really interesting that you bring that up because the narrative that had been

pushed on me was that seniors were selfish and they weren't selling their home, which could then go to a younger family. They want to stay in that house that they didn't need. But you're pointing out that in a lot of cases, it might have something to do with the financial disincentive to move. Yeah, absolutely. So some of it, you know, people want to stay in their own house and it's their home. If they want to stay there, we shouldn't call them selfish or otherwise. They worked hard for us. But I know there are a lot of, I use my parents as a two person focus group.

My dad has threatened to move every year for the last 25 years and has never done it. Because when he looks at, he starts to look around, he can't find anything that meets his needs. Or if it does, he says, I'm just gonna get dinged so much on taxes, so much on condo fees, it's just not worth it at the end of the day.

So there are a lot of folks like my parents who would love to downsize, but those options aren't there and taxes and fees just make it not worthwhile. So is the sort of the general solution that we would be looking for, sort of a reduction of those taxes and regulations to give those seniors the mobility that they might want, to give them the options that they currently don't have?

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll give you an example. British Columbia has a exemption on land transfer tax if you're going into a new home, a newly built home. And what that does is it lowers the price of a new home, it gets more new homes built, but it also causes those fees to go down, it becomes more attractive. So those kinds of lowering land transfer taxes, looking at things like enhanced GST rebates. Right now the federal government's talking about it,

but only for first time home buyers. That helps them, but it doesn't help those second time home buyers I mentioned, it doesn't help those seniors. What is the reticence? I always hear, I heard it from everybody on the political spectrum in the election campaign. It was like, it was always, everything was for first-time home buyers. And I didn't understand that. Well, like, this is a crisis that defies one silo over another. It's

not just a crisis for first-time home buyers. So why aren't we addressing this writ large? for first-time home buyers. So why aren't we addressing this writ large? Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I think there's an over-focus. I think sometimes comms kind of gets in the way of policy where it's easier to kind of express, you know, the needs for first-time home buyers and that infects policies.

But you're absolutely right that this impacts all of these other groups as well. And kind of ironically, this might actually end up hurting first-time homebuyers. Because what we're hearing from young people is that, hey, I really one day want to own that three plus bedroom home. If I buy that smaller condo today, I lose all of those first-time homebuyer privileges. I can't access them again. And they're so much more valuable to me. So I, yeah, maybe maybe I'll rent and hope I can skip that, that rung on the ladder and go from renting right into that, into that forever home.

Well, exactly, because you get a much better, bigger GST rebate that that way. So it's these unintended consequences when you make policy a little too targeted, a little too cute. So that is one of the big fears that I have, that in a lot of markets, this is actually going to reduce first-time home buyers because millennials are smart, Gen Z's, they're smart, they do the math and say, it's just not worth it. I'm gonna continue renting

and then I'm gonna use those first-time home buyer benefits when they're really valuable and that's buying the three bedroom home is there. What's what's the solution you would bring to bear on that first part that we address that renting the renter trying to get into the condo market, but they can't because rent is so high. They can't save anything up. What's the solution there?

Yeah, so there are a few things to do besides just getting rents down. Some provinces like PEI have a program where if your credit rating is good enough, and you've rented for long enough, they will actually front you some of the money, they will loan you some of the money for the deposit. Is that tends to be where the challenge is getting that 5% Mike, Mike, I wasn't watching the clock. I do apologize. I'd love to continue this conversation at a later date. Take care, my friend. Yeah, you too. Take care. to win the ultimate fan experience. By watching new episodes of Days of Our Lives, you and a guest could win a three-night stay in Los Angeles,

a VIP Days of Our Lives set tour, a helicopter ride over LA, and so much more. Watch Weekdays at One and look for the weekly code word to enter. Days of Our Lives, all new Weekdays at One, only on W, stream on Stack TV.