The Ben Mulroney Show - Hot Take Alert: Is it time to phase out the Auto Sector?

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Has New Brunswick found a solution to the doctor shortage with Guest: Dr. Nadia Alam, Family Doctor and Past-President of The Ontario Medical Association  -If the trade war hobbles Canada’s auto sector, let’s just phase it out with Guest: Christopher Worswick, Chair of the economics department at Carleton University and a research fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute 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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And yes, it's a new era in Canadian politics. Mark Carney, the 24th Prime Minister of Canada, a new cabinet, a new outlook perhaps. But as we say hello to the Right Honourable Mark Carney, we say goodbye to his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. And as we say goodbye, so too does he. Let's listen to Justin Trudeau's goodbye message that he shared with all of us on Twitter. I am so proud of Canadians.

I'm proud to have served a country full of people who stand up for what's right, rise to every occasion, and always have each other's backs when it matters most. This may be my last day here in this office, but I will always be boldly and unapologetically Canadian. My only ask is that no matter what the world throws at us, you always be the same. Look, I'm not trying to be petty and I'm not trying to be mean. And there will come a day where we will look back dispassionately

at Justin Trudeau's time in office. And there are things that he can hang his hat on for which he accomplished what he set out to do. You will be able to debate whether those things are net positives or net negatives. But in this moment, as he is leaving, I'm very angry. I'm very angry at the spot he has put our country in. And so when I hear those words, all I hear,

besides the condescension and the breathiness, and is a word salad of standing up for Canadians being unapologetically Canadian. You apologize for being Canadian almost every day you were prime minister. You demanded for the rest of us to apologize for being Canadian. So don't say you're unapologetically Canadian.

Find a different thing to say because that doesn't square with reality. And like I said, it would be very nice to take the high road here, but I just I don't want to hear from him for a very long time. And I hope it doesn't sound petty. And if it does, I don't care. I don't care. Life has become very hard under this government. And so I don't I'm not the sendoff. The sendoffs over the sendoffs over. I wish you very good luck. I hope you spend a wonderful time with your family

and you find your way in a post-political world, but you gotta go. You gotta go. Please no more tweets and please no more speeches. That's my wish. So Mark Carney has said that we are in a trade war and existential threat to Canada with the United States. The Prime Minister in his first official,

first official trip abroad has not decided to go to Washington to address the greatest threat that our nation is facing since, I can't even remember since when, but instead is going is going to go to Europe. He's going to spend some time in Europe. I've been venting about this all day, but I think the premier of Saskatchewan Scott Moe said it best.

I noticed this morning already that his first planned international visit is to the European Union. Not good. Not good. We don't have a trade war with the European Union today. We are in the midst of a trade war with the United States of America and China, the two largest economies in the world and our two largest export markets and trading partners. To choose to go to the European Union is beyond what I could understand as being in any way impactful or representing Canadians. And so I would ask Mr. Carney to reconsider that, engage immediately with the Chinese government, continue and engage and lay his plan out with respect to how he is going to engage with the United States of America.

This is a head-scratcher of a move, a head scratcher. I'm sitting here trying to figure out the reason behind not going down to Washington and doing everything you can to have the threat of these tariffs removed so that we can grow our economy once again. And I think I figured it out. I think that Mark Carney knows that if in his first official act as prime minister, he goes down to Washington, he runs a significant risk of being belittled, besmirched, denigrated

and insulted by not just Donald Trump, but his entire cortege of yes-men. And given the fact that he has not yet introduced himself in any meaningful way to Canadians, those those epithets and that characterization will stick. So rather than do that, he will travel to where he has two passports, Europe, where he will be feted and celebrated as a world leader. I think he wants to go to Europe for the performance of looking Prime Ministerial, so that he can have those photo ops and the videos that he can use on the election trail. This to me is, it's performance over policy. It's party over country.

It's the same stuff, different leader. That's my hot take on this. Because if he was serious about fixing this problem, he would go down there no matter the slings and arrows. He would, no matter the insults, no matter the nicknames, he would be in Washington knocking on doors until they opened. And the fact that he is not the fact that he's choosing to go to a place where we do not have any problems.

There is no clear and present danger coming from Europe. The clear and present, the, the house is on fire and he's decided the best way to put out that fire is to go on vacation. There's no other way to explain this that makes any sense to my brain. I'm open to hearing suggestions. If you want to hit me up on Twitter at Ben Mulroney, you let me know, but that's how I see things.

Meanwhile, what were the people who actually are concerned with this crisis are Doug Ford and Dominique LeBlanc, finance minister at the time, who sat finally with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who then reports back to Donald Trump. And here's what Premier Ford said about this initial meeting. We feel that the temperature is being lowered. We feel the temperature is being lowered. And we've also agreed that we're going to have another meeting next week. And I think it's going to be very productive as well.

We want the best outcome for both countries. We're part, we're like a family. And sometimes there's tension between families, but that was an extremely productive meeting. And I just want to thank, you know, the Secretary for the opportunity to go in there and stay this long and communicate. We shared a tremendous

amount of views back and forth. I take him at his word. He has been consistent. I believe he's been an honest broker. I believe that when he speaks, he speaks with conviction. And I believe that he is not steering us wrong. When he says that that was his assessment of the meeting, I believe that that's exactly what happened. Prior to the meeting,

Donald Trump couldn't help himself and had these choice comments that, let's be honest, are unhelpful. And to be honest with you, Canada only works as a state. It doesn't, we don't need anything they have. As a state, it would be one of the great states anyway. This would be the most incredible country visually. If you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it between Canada and the U.S. Just a straight artificial line. Somebody did it a long time ago, many, many decades ago, and it makes no sense.

It's so perfect as a great and cherished state keeping, oh Canada, the national anthem. I love it. I think it's great. I, again, unhelpful. And I think a lot of people who support Donald Trump are sitting there saying, what the hell are you talking about? What the hell are you talking about? And you can't have it both ways, Mr. President.

The border between Canada and the United States can't be an artificial line that somebody drew a few years ago. But the border between the United States and Mexico is so important that you need to build a wall to protect your side of it. Pick a lane, sir. Because I'm getting dizzy. If you use ChatGPT, it really is quite a marvel, right? Like I really thought, oh, it's gonna be an iteration.

It's just gonna be whatever I've been using before, whatever tools I use online, it's just gonna be an iteration on that. No, no, no, it's a completely different beast. It is, it's a revolution. And so a few weeks ago, I had Dr. Nadia Alam on the show, and we were talking about how more and more Canadians were availing themselves of, you know, WebMD, for example,

because they don't have access to a family doctor. But then I asked myself, well, if AI is so much better than anything that preceded it, maybe the chat GPT version of WebMD is light years ahead of what was available just a few short years ago. So to talk about this, let's welcome back to the show, Dr. Nadia Allam, she's a past president of the Ontario Medical Association and a family doctor.

Doc, welcome to the show. Hello, how are you doing, Ben? Well, I'm great. But so here's the intellectual exercise. As a doctor, is chat, is Dr. Chat GPT something that I, is it a, is it a good thing or a bad thing? So, I think it's kind of double-edged sword, right? Chat GPT can provide you with really good information, but the thing with artificial intelligence

is the data it's trained on. Chat GPT, we don't know what data it is trained on, particularly when it comes on medicine. Basically, artificial intelligence takes a whole bunch of information and then condenses it for a person. So you can see this on Google when you do Google searches, an AI summary will come up. But if you look at where that information comes from, the source can be good, the source can be

bad, right? There's misinformation, disinformation online, as well as really good information. So I love that patients want to be informed about their health. We've got so much information on the internet. I remember the days when we had no internet. So we've democratized information to a significant degree. It's beautiful, but it's a double-edged sword, particularly if you're in a situation like you described, where you don't have a physician or an expert to help you navigate that information and point out where chat GPT is right and where it's wrong. Yeah, and you know, I wasn't even gonna bring this up,

but it occurred to me because you and I are potentially working on a project together called Relief AI, which is an AI avatar for mental health. And we'll talk about that at a later date, but essentially what I think we're getting at here is if, cause here's my question for you. If there was an AI model that was trained specifically on medical information, as is the case with Relief AI,

could it be a very, a really reliable tool that doctors would even tell their patients? Yes, that can be the first place you go before you come to me. Yes. Yeah. Cause we know that AI tools are already used in a number of areas in medicine. They're used in cancer care. They're used in particular aspects of cancer care.

They're used in radiology. They're used in internal medicine, cardiology, to various degrees, right? It is very focused, much like what you're talking about with Relief AI. It is based on specific, reliable, validated information that's up to date. And because of that, it is a valuable tool. All right, I want to-

This is a takeaway for patients. Yeah, that's good. So those tools could become available, right? So that's good. So yeah, so those tools could become available, right? So that's that's good. So stay tuned watch this space Meanwhile, you know, we always talk about best practices and you know, because of the health care issues we have around the country We should really be looking when we hear good news We should study it figure out why it's working and see if there are ways to adapt it to other areas and New Brunswick Seems to be doing something right

when it comes to family doctors. They're bringing in new family doctors through an international program. Talk to me about this. All provinces have been looking at how to address the family doctor problem. And various governments have done it with a lot of success. In BC, they welcomed 700 new family doctors. So not just people

who have graduated and live in BC and have gone into family medicine, but also new graduates, Canadian graduates. There are two ways of becoming a physician in large terms in writ large in Canada. One is to study in Canada, one is to study outside of Canada and go through some sort of assessment process to start working in Canada, like bringing those international skills to work here and be able to follow Canadian standards of care. In Ontario, the ability to become, to be a foreign trained physician and international trained physician, and be able to work in Ontario is very challenging. It takes years because you have to write a number of exams, you have to have a number of supervisors

who test you. But but but doctor, why? I mean, you you're the head of the Ontario Medical Association. Why? What is so specific to medicine in Ontario that, say, in New Brunswick isn't the case? I don't believe New Brunswick feels that they are putting the patients of the province at any more or less risk than the government of Ontario. So why so many hoops in Ontario? Is it just because they're there and we haven't looked to get rid of them or streamline them? So the hoops in New Brunswick have changed to be more practical, right? What they do is essentially do a field assessment where a clinician, an international

trained physician, is monitored by a local physician to make sure that there's quality control, standardization of good high quality care. Ontario can follow that example, right? I think Ontario really does have to revisit, does have to revisit how they allow international graduates to work here. Because I agree with you, the standards of care in Canada are the standards of care in Canada. So we should have some,

we should have similarity across how these international medical graduates are assessed. Yeah. Right now, it's kind of all over the place. It's different from province to province. Yeah. It's one of those, it's in its own way, it's an inter-provincial trade barrier. And there is, there's a desire to break those down in all sorts of ways. So here's hoping it comes to the medical community as well, to the benefit, by the way, I would add, of the people who are paying enormous amounts of taxes to get health care that is simply not up to snuff right now. So I really do hope that that seed finds purchase.

I agree. I wholeheartedly agree. And I know that the CPSO is looking at it. The question becomes how long does it take to look at it? Yeah. All right, let's look at British Columbia where kids there are not meeting Canada's movement guidelines or even getting enough sleep. So the children should be getting at least one hour of physical activity every day and eight to ten hours of sleep. also no more than two hours of recreational screen time a day that's easier said than done but it and BC which it has the reputation of being a healthy province people are outdoors they they're one with nature that only 14% of children met the daily screen

time recommendation and only 26% met the guidelines for physical activity. So that's a little scary. Oh, it's terrifying. The habits you set in childhood are the habits you carry over in adulthood. And we know that a sedentary lifestyle where you spend most of your time on your butt rather than walking around doing stuff in general as well exercise, has a huge impact on your risk for heart disease, risk of stroke, risk of that first stroke, risk of a diabetes diagnosis, risk of cancer even, right? So physical activity is a necessity in our lives.

But as we've become a society where we've moved from being blue collar workers and farmers to more white collar workers, more office jobs, we've become more sensitive. And look at what happened during the pandemic. Social media use skyrocketed among all age groups. Sedentary lifestyle skyrocketed. And unfortunately we've carried that over post pandemic and we need to go back to what we were aware you know like like you and I've talked about before kick the kids out of the house for a couple

of hours go play in the park go hang out with your friends come home by dinner time exactly hey doctor enjoy the outside doctor we're gonna leave it there but thank you so much for joining us I hope that you have a great end to your Friday and a great weekend. Thank you so much, Ben. You take care. Welcome back to the show. And you know, it's really funny. You never know what when you're reading something, you never know if it's going to stick with

you or not. And when I was a senior in high school, I read an essay written by a writer and clergyman is it was Jonathan Swift. It was written in 1729. And it stuck with me forever. It's called A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public. And essentially, it's an essay that suggests that poor people in Ireland could ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food to the rich. And it's commonly

referred to as a modest proposal and it's satire, right? It's trying to prove a point. It's trying to make you think about the problem in a different way so that maybe you can solve it. And so every now and then I read something that I find on its face so shocking, I wonder, is it a modest proposal? Is it shocking so that we then have a reframe the conversation? And this morning I read an op-ed in the Globe that said, if the trade war hobbles Canada's auto sector, let's just phase it out. And here to discuss this hot take is the author Christopher Worswick, chair of the economics department at Carleton. Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks Ben, happy to be here. Now listen, I'm not assuming that you wrote this for shock value or that it was satire in any way,

but it is a pretty bold pronouncement. Yeah, no, I think that's fair. And that was one of the reasons why I thought it was worth bringing up the, you know, I'm motivated by Australia's experience where they phased out their auto sector because they realized they just couldn't be competitive. Now, I think our, I think the Canadian sector within the North American framework is competitive, but that relies on us being able to work with the Americans and if that vanishes, if the Americans put on tariffs and stick to it, remains to be seen. But if that happens, I think we're much more like the

Australian situation and maybe we'd be better off to just phase it out and import cars and focus on other sectors where we have a comparative advantage. Okay, so you're gonna have to, I mean the devil's in the details, right? To say we phase something out is, it's great in theory, but the Canadian auto industry is a major economic driver. I mean over 18 billion dollars in GDP, more than a half a million jobs, 128,000 of them in direct manufacturing. That's a, that's a, mean, how do you phase that out? Well, I think the companies themselves will will end up shutting down the plants, right? I think,

I mean, they've said that I think once these tariffs are on, you know, so many parts moving across the borders, I think the the companies themselves will set up plants, presumably in the US and they'll lay off those workers and we'll have to deal with that. I mean, we'll have to have, you know, the EI system will support them searching for new work, that kind of thing. So Chris, I just wanna, I wanna make sure that we're on the same page

because I don't wanna lose you. So you're saying that this is, you're coming at this from a position that if these, if we live in a worst case scenario and these tariffs do not go away, then, then we're not going to phase it out anyway. The plants are going to close on their own. So it's what we do next. Yeah. I think that's basically right. Like we're not, I guess what I'm arguing for is let's not bail out an industry that's not competitive. I see. I don't think, yeah.

So it's not an active thing that the Canadian government would do, but I do think that governments right now, I mean, Canadians are angry as you know, about this unreasonable tariffs from the U S but I think there's a risk that we could make the situation much worse. And in fact, I think a day or two ago, the Australian Prime Minister announced that they were not going to do reciprocal tariffs because they're committed to free trade. And that is a different policy, you know, it's much different policy than what I'm suggesting. But it's, we don't have to match things, we don't have to bail out existing industries. Yeah, you're right. The auto industry is very large, but it's, you know, it's one percent, it's contribution to GDP is 1%. Right. So it's not, you know, energy, the energy sector is about 10

and a half percent, to put it in perspective. Well, yeah, but you I mean, I guess it depends on what numbers you look at. I mean, vehicles are the second largest Canadian export by value, reaching 51 billion in 2023. So so I mean, it's it's yes, 1% of GDP, but that's still significant. I think the $51 billion number would include inputs from the U.S. Yeah. So I think when you look at the GDP number, like the net effect, like if we're buying parts from the U.S., putting them into Canadian cars and selling them back to the U.S., I think you want to look at the difference.

Yeah. Right, that's where the GDP contribution is. Have you given thought in this thought exercise of yours to the cost associated with retraining half a million people and, you know, cause let's not forget the knock-on effect of if an auto plant goes down, the town itself dies? Well, my guess is it would be less than 500,000 people. I mean, I think you'd want to look

at the direct employees. And some of them, one thing I argue in the piece is that, you know, some of them could be absorbed into the construction sector, not all, but some, which is booming. And I do think we need to start thinking seriously about investing in military production given the uncertainty in the world. So, I mean- Well, you're absolutely, you're gonna have somebody, you got a fan in that idea in me, I can promise you that.

Yeah, so, and the thing is, you know, that could be, I mean, I think there was a piece in one of the newspapers yesterday about, maybe it was the Financial Times about, you know, green industrial policy is becoming like gray as a military gray, naval gray industrial policy. But the idea could be the government, the federal government would need to make strategic investments in military production. Those plants could be placed in the towns that are hit.

That's one way you could lessen the blow. Yeah, you know what, like the more you talk, the less I do like that, what she says like this, this may be a choice that is forced upon us, right? We may be in a, we may be forced if these tariffs don't go away. We may have to make a decision like this, not that anybody I'd necessarily want to make it, but you're right. If all of a sudden the supply chains are, are, are interrupted and the tariffs are making it so that the plants are moving anyway,

the question then is, what do we do? Do we double down and try to save an industry that is looking to move south of the border anyway, or do we take advantage of skilled labor and retrain them to work instead of on a car, maybe on a tank. Exactly. You know, I'm not an expert on cars or tanks, but it seems to make sense. And, you know, everyone's saying that the American president, US president's strategy is to impoverish us. Well, let's not help them do that. That would be my suggestion. Like that's, let's make choices

that make sense, you know, and try to, you know, not spend a huge amount of money on bailouts of industries that just can't last. Yeah. Remind me the last time we bailed out the automotive industry, how much did it cost? That during the financial crisis? Yeah. I can't remember. It was a lot of money. I know that. Yeah. And, you know, first of all, we don't have that money right now. Any money we have is borrowed money at this point. And so it's not that, listen, like I said, it's not a choice I would want to make

and I certainly wouldn't wish it on any of our leaders, but I'm not gonna lie, you've made me think about this. Quite a amount, I would like to, oh, it's $3.3 billion. That was the bailout package for the automotive industry, primarily to support GM and at the time Chrysler. So yeah, that's a, I would have to assume that whatever number would be required for a bailout here would be much bigger than that today.

And that was 16 years ago. Yeah. Or 15 years ago. Yeah, it's a lot. Have you heard back from anyone on your story? Have you heard any reaction to it? Just a little bit on social media, not too much. Well, like I said, no, listen,

I came into this thinking one thing, and now I'm thinking, if we are in that position and we're at a fork in the road, maybe we should give some substantial thought to which way we go and remembering this article that you wrote in The Globe. I appreciate it. Well, thanks a lot. Yeah, thank you. Have a great weekend, Chris.

You too, Ben. Yeah, that was Christopher Wordswick, the chair of the economics department at Carleton University. time comes. Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk. Business.