The Ben Mulroney Show - Has Mark Carney resurrected the Liberal Party and is it time for the Conservatives to pivot their message?

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Has Mark Carney resurrected the Liberal Party and is it time for the Conservatives to pivot their message? with Guest: Anthony Koch, Managing Principal at AK Strategies and former National Campaign Spokesperson for Pierre Poilievre 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

So where's the urgency Canada? Where's the fire that's lit under our butts in terms of dealing with these tariffs? We know what we have to do. We've got a job to do. We've agreed to make some changes to our border and to to the fentanyl and to migration. We've committed to a fentanyl czar. And that was days ago, days ago, where's the urgency? Justin Trudeau has gave a not to the he didn't talk to the press. He didn't do a press conference. He didn't do a sit down one on one. He was at a private event. It was caught on camera, where he says that Team Canada must use the next 30 days to think tactically and strategically to show America that the fentanyl problem is tiny. You know, Donald Trump says it's huge.

No, no, no. We're going to instead we're going to fight them on whether or not it's big or not. Let's listen. We need to both start thinking tactically and strategically. On the tactical side, we need to talk about tariffs. The 30 days extension been given on the border or fentanyl tariffs is something we need to use. We need to be very deliberate about how we continue to engage closely with the United States to make the case and demonstrate that Canada is responsible for a tiny part of the North American fentanyl problem, but that we are also bitterly touched by this tragedy.

We also want to be part of solving for this. And over the next 30 days, we will demonstrate that even the tiny amount that is Canada's responsibility into the United States is going to reduce even further by working together, not just across our border, but internationally as well. Okay, so a couple of things that stood out to me. He said, we're going to need to, we need to think strategically. The implication is we're not doing it yet. That we were going to start doing it at some point in the future.

That's the plan. The plan is to do it. In other words, we're not doing it right now. And he said over the next 30 days, it's not 30 days anymore, Mr. Prime Minister. The clock started days ago. And what he did say was actually quite meaningless. He spoke in platitudes. He spoke in sound bites.

There are no policies. There's no meat on the bone. He's not telling us what is happening. And he's calling it this is the Team Canada approach. The argument is if you don't line up with him on this plan to have a plan, then you are somehow traitorous to the nation. I'm sorry. If you have found it to be derelict in your duties, I'm going to call you out. You are not doing a service to this country.

You are asleep at the switch. And people on Team Canada started to notice not the least of which is Doug Ford, the Ontario Premier. You know what the Trump administration wants? They've been very, very clear. They've been clear to me, they've been clear to everywhere in North America. They need to tighten up the border. It's been four days, the federal government says we're going to get a border czar. That's what the Trump administration wants. What takes four days to figure this out?

And now it's a border czar. We need to see the helicopters in the air. We need to see the drones in the air. We need to see, make sure we have the boats in the water. We need to see the boots on the ground. That's the action the Trump administration wants. They've stressed it to everyone. They've been transparent. They've been out there. Let's stop the flow of drugs going back and forth across the border. If the boots were on the ground, if the drones and the choppers were in the sky, if the boats were in the water, we would have seen them. Those are easy layups for any government

to show that they are actually doing what they say. And the fact that we haven't seen a single image or a single video is probably because those things aren't happening yet. The easiest thing in the world would be to name a fentanyl czar. And that hasn't happened. Danielle Smith, the who has acquitted herself, I think magnificently through this entire saga, went to Twitter, went to Twitter and said as much. It has been a full week since U.S. President Donald Trump and the Canadian

government reached a border security agreement and included a 30 day window to demonstrate our nation's commitment to securing our shared border against fentanyl trafficking and illegal migration. A key part is a fentanyl czar. Alberta is perplexed and concerned by the delay in appointing this fentanyl czar and calls on the federal government to do so without further delay. There is much work to be done and while efforts to strengthen border security and crackdown on fentanyl trafficking have begun across the country, these efforts will have limited effect without a federal lead to coordinate the national response. Tell me where she's wrong.

Tell me where she's wrong. It's been a week and we don't we don't know what's going on. Our prime minister is at an AI conference in France. And at the top of this segment, we talked about how the prime minister is talking in platitudes. Well, there's a man, David Astor of the Hudson Institute, who told Rosemary Barton on the CBC. He got very specific on the issue where where our prime minister said the fentanyl issue is very small. He got very specific. This fentanyl issue is far bigger than our prime minister wants us to believe. Several months ago, you had the biggest lab in the history of the world, you know, taken over by the Royal Canadian Mountain Police in Vancouver. I mean, we'd never even seen anything like this. taken over by the Royal Canadian Mountain Police in Vancouver.

I mean, we'd never even seen anything like this. Made Breaking Bad look like, you know, minor league. Okay, so that, you know, and definitely where there was Chinese organized crime, possibly Iran as well. You know, the facts have not been released by your government. It's sort of astonishing that they haven't provided more information publicly, but I think they know they're sitting on a big scandal here. The fact that this thing emerged and it's tied

to these biker gangs who've been hired to go down to the United States in some cases and assassinate people like my former boss, Secretary Mike Pompeo, President Trump and others, this is another whole level of scandal involving it. But the key thing to focus on is that there, you know, someone was making over 100 million doses of deadly fentanyl in a little that you didn't know about right under your nose. Now, how many other labs do you think you have going? But Mr. Asher, our prime minister, says it's just a small amount of fentanyl

that's going across the border. What do you say you have going? But Mr. Asher, our prime minister, says it's just a small amount of fentanyl that's going across the border. What do you say about that? There's very little border enforcement. So we don't 42 kilograms. It's a nonsensical number. We don't have the most of the drugs are going from Mexico to Canada and then being brought south into the northwest United States on ships. You have almost no court enforcement with police.

So we have no idea, except from our sources, what's going on, and we hear some bad things. And so are we supposed to take Donald Trump seriously or not, literally or not on this issue? What say you, Mr. Asher? Well, I take him literally, and I think literally he says it's about Fennel literally and I think literally he says it's about Fentanyl and I think it is. I mean, we're losing, you know, 80 to 100,000 people in North America

between the U.S. and Canada. We got to stop this nonsense. We got to target these Mexican cartels. We need to focus on their money. So the key thing is to target the banks that are behind it. And of course, you've got a sort of tragic situation where TD Bank was laundering billions of dollars for Mexican cartels. And now it's being hit with one of the largest fines literally in the history of IAMI laundering. So, you know, it's not blaming Canada for me. I love Canada. Canada is a great country. We need to work together. We've got our own problems with our banks laundering money too in the United States. So we got to break the bank on fentanyl

trafficking for these cartels and bring them down. He also makes another point that that bears talking about. He said, you know, our laws need to change if we if if if the Americans ever come to the Canadian security services and say we like to tap someone's phone, we believe that they're involved in illegal activity. Our law, according to this man, dictate that we have to let that person know that their phone is about to be tapped. Now how on God's green earth does that allow for intelligence gathering? How on God's green earth does that allow for undercover work to be done?

Again, I've said it before and I'll say it again, on very serious issues, we are not a serious country and that needs to change The people in the states have taken notice. It's about time we took notice at home I've been saying a lot of people have been saying that Justin Trudeau's choices over the past few months have been political and politically entirely They he has not been factoring in the national interest one bit. He's only cared about the political interest of his own party.

And it looks like the politics of that are to a certain extent paying off with the liberals rising in the polls and support for a conservative majority to be softening. And so to talk about this and whether or not it's now time for the conservatives in order to save the possibility of a majority whenever we go to the polls. We're joined by Anthony Kosh, managing principal at AK strategies and former national campaign spokesperson for Pierre

Poliev. Anthony, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me on. So yeah, listen, I don't think anybody is surprised that whenever there's a leadership race, there's more interest in the party having that leadership race. And so to a certain extent, the Tories should have baked in the knowledge that they would have lost a little bit of support. But has it gotten to the point now that they maybe should look at pivoting from their carbon tax drum that they've been beating? Well, listen, there's no question that Donald Trump has dropped a number of bombs that have

completely changed the Canadian political landscape. And that's being reflected. Like you saw today, I don't know if you had the chance to watch it, Pierre put out his plan on Twitter and other social media outlets about the need to protect Canada's North. Yes. Right? And the investments that need to be done protecting Canada's sovereignty. So the interesting thing is a lot of these are not even necessarily new announcements.

So for example, Mr. Poliev has been taking the drug and fentanyl crisis seriously since long before Donald Trump told us that we should, right? That's part of the whole thing going on. So a lot of this is re-emphasizing previously made commitments, but yes, it's also understanding that the framing, I guess you could say, of the national conversation is very different than what it was six months ago, or even two or three months ago, because the president of the United States has decided to insert himself in our national politics in a very substantial way. And Canadians have a lot of questions, concerns, and they want

them to be answered by the people who are vying to be the next prime minister of the country. Well, there's also a normal and acceptable. There was a poll, I believe last week, it might have been late the week before, that suggested that, I think it was 44% of Canadians felt that Mark Carney was the right person to negotiate against Donald Trump. And I think Pierre was somewhere in the high 20s, which concerned me because I don't think people

even know who Mark Carney is. Exactly, which is why I'm much less concerned than you, right? So Mark Carney is the kind of person, if you look at his CV, right, if you're trying to hire him in the private sector, he's a kind of guy, he's been governor of two central banks, he's got a lot of different things going on. It doesn't really speak much to the policy that he actually believes in, and why they'd be disastrous for Canada. And this is sort of the point too. Most people don't know who Mark Carney is, or if they do, they've heard about him in

passing. He hasn't really been defined in the public mind just yet. And I think that that's going to be coming very, very, very soon. But it's also important to keep in mind, right, we still got another month of this liberal leadership race. There's many things that can happen. He hasn't even been on a debate stage against his own fellow liberals, let alone against Pierre Paulia. And again, man, as you might well very well know, Mr. Prime Minister's Turner and Prime Minister's Kim Campbell both experienced extraordinarily surges in the poll right before your father and then Jean-Claude Kretzschia absolutely sent them packing in the election that soon followed. So I think everybody who's panicking needs to take a little bit of a deep breath. Listen, he's not Justin Trudeau. That's clear. The liberals are a very effective political operation. Anybody who thought they were just

going to lay over and die was lying to themselves. It's good. It's healthy. It's democracy. We got to bring the fight. What does it mean, though, that the Hill Times is reporting that there's this new Conservative Canada first rally that's going to be going across the country and they're suggesting that it's going to it's going to lead to a Pivot or a rebranding of sort of the messaging coming out of Pierre and his team Well, I think it's appropriate I think like we said the issue set in a large part of the framing of those issues has definitely changed.

And it's only natural that Canada's politicians and those who are vying to become the prime minister to get the top job should respond in kind and speak directly to the very real fears and concerns of the American public, of the Canadian public, I should say, sorry, vis-a-vis what the American president is suggesting and reiterated yesterday, whether how much of this is just trolling, how much of this is serious is still yet to be seen. But the fact of the matter is, I think there is some polling coming out today showing that Canadians have already responded by changing their commercial buying habits in terms of prioritizing Canadian products over American ones. So it's clear that a conversation is happening and Canada's perspective leaders need to be an active part of that conversation and speak to what Canadians would like to see happen over the course of the next months and years.

I think there was a collective sigh of relief by Canadians when it looked like we had averted the tariffs. Donald Trump said he was going to apply across the board on Canadian goods and services. And then since then, not a whole lot's happened from our government. We've heard a lot of plans for plans. I believe at a private function just over the weekend, Justin Trudeau said, "'We're gonna need to think tactically and strategically.'

And when I hear that, I was like, "'We're going to need, shouldn't we have done that already?' Why aren't we doing that?' And then, you know, there's cracks in the Team Canada approach with Doug Ford coming out quite forcefully, saying, where the heck's the borders are? Where are the drones in the sky? Where are the boots on the ground?

And I think those are fair questions to ask. Time is of the essence, and are we going to find ourselves behind the eight ball yet again in 20-some-odd days? Yeah, well, this is my concern, right? Like obviously myself for a number of reasons was very happy to see that the tariffs were delayed for at least 30 days.

My big fear now is that we're gonna end up in a never ending cycle of 30 day delay. Yeah. Where there's never gonna, and that's the thing, uncertainty in many cases, every bit as deadly as the actual implementation of the tariffs. Because you've got businesses that are making decisions in the short, medium and long term. And they're just saying, you know what, this risk appetite is too high for me. You know,

there's a great company out of Montreal, Midday Squares. They were about to make a massive investment in a Montreal production facility. And they've decided that because of this risk, they're probably going to make their investment somewhere in Ohio. Really? That's just, yeah. probably gonna make their investment somewhere in Ohio. Really? That's just, yeah. Yeah, I know that company very well. Yeah, yeah, they're great. Montreal Jews, yeah, exactly.

But at the end of the day, man, you've got a lot of businesses, not just Canadian, but elsewhere, who were either considering making strategic investments or are in the midst of making strategic investments in Canada, who are now afraid at the possibility that they will no longer have the kind of access that we would have had to the American market.

And they're making business decisions that reflect that. And that's very concerning for the Canadian economy. Yeah, but I've got to wonder, like why isn't that absence of movement from Ottawa, from this current government, why isn't it sticking to them? Why aren't people, instead of them going up in the polls, why isn't this driving people away saying,

no, we need someone definitive. We need somebody who's speaking with authority. We need somebody who has been against fentanyl since time immemorial. I'm at a loss to understand that dynamic. I think it's gonna start to come. I think the other thing you have to do, Ben, is you have to look at the breakdown of those polls and what you're seeing is a very large

generational divide that's popping up. So underneath the age of 45, Pierre Pauliap is like 20 point lead still on the Liberals very high. What's happened is that 45 plus even more, even more pronounced 55 plus crowd has gravitated back towards the Liberals. I think this is sort of a bit of a house effect, which is for a lot of people in that generation, the party of Canada, for better or for worse, in my case, for worse, is the Liberal Party. They're the ones who wrap themselves in the flag,

and that's sort of the identification. I think it's natural that in the medium term, when there's a crisis, a lot of those people feel their natural home is in the Liberal Party of Canada. But again, that immediate response, I don't think has staying power. Obviously, you know, many things can happen between now and the next election. But to all the conservatives out there who feel the need to slam the panic

button, I'd say take a few deep breaths. Lots of polling shifts have happened in response to crises and leadership races that then turned up to be flashes in the pan, not to do a comparison with the American election too, but I seem to recall Kamala Harris coming up with quite the lead at one point. And then over time, once that initial bump from the change of leader came in, things sort of balanced out again and we all know what happened with the result of the election down south. So I think everybody needs to refocus, understand that polls move and shift. But in the long run, the issue set is still very much the same.

And like you said, those arguments you just listed are going to be made. And there's also a massive fundraising advantage for the conservative. That's right. Anthony, we're going to have to leave it there, my friend. But thank you so much. This is Carry the Fire. I'm your host, Lisa LaFlamme. Carry 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.