The Ben Mulroney Show - Hot Takes Monday! New political realities in Canada

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

Guest: Dimitri  Soudas, Former Director of Communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper   Guest: Max Fawcett, Lead Columnist for Canada's National Observer -  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

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Must be 19-plus Ontario only. Play responsibly. Concerned about your gambling. Visit connectsonterio. Well, I'm so glad I've got these two guests on now because they're going to help me take some pressure off of my throat, which has been, what's the word I'm going for? CACT, that's it. Cact. Welcome, Dmitra Soutis and Max Fawcett to the Monday edition of our political panel.

Thanks so much. Thank you for having us, Ben. Okay, this first story starts in Toronto. It's an Ontario story, but it could, it should be something that everyone around the country knows about. It's obviously about Nate Erskine Smith. once a rising star in the Trudeau government, that star has set under Mark Carney, even though he got an endorsement by Mark Carney,

to essentially leave the federal fold and make his way in Ontario politics. His goal was to find himself a seat, provincially, in a by-election, to then be able to have the clout to run for Ontario liberal leader. And all of that got scuttled over the weekend. When he lost, despite the machine he has around him, he lost his bid for the nomination to somebody who had more,

I'd say he was of the community. He was of the community, the Bengali community that he was running for. I think over half of the nomination, the people eligible to vote, were of that ethnic community. And there's so many ways to pull this story apart. Let's start with you, Max. Sure. I mean, this is politics in a nutshell, right?

He set himself up in a place where he put a big target on his back. He allowed the other leadership contenders in the race to have an easier way to get him out of the race than in an actual leadership contest. And they were better at politics than he was. So he gets to exit stage left or stage right, whichever it is, and go on and do other things. This has happened many, many times in politics. I don't think it has anything to do with the composition of the rioting in terms of ethnicity or citizenship. This is just Naderzkin Smith was not very good at politics here and the other leadership contenders were better.

Dimitri, your thoughts? So there's an old saying in politics that says before you jump in the pool, make sure there's water. So the makeup of Scarborough Southwest wasn't a surprise to Mr. Erskine Smith. So 62% of this writing identify as a visible minority two predominant languages other than English are Bengali and Tagalog. I will maybe take the flips out of the coin.

You described Mr. Erskine Smith as a rising star. I may describe him as a legend in his own mind. Because if you cannot win the nomination in any writing, it was 700 and change versus 700. The difference was 19 votes, basically. So nobody forced Mr. Erskine Smith to run in that writing. While he was collecting his federal member of parliament salary, he was campaigning to run in that by-election

because clearly he does not want to be left jobless by the taxpayers between being a federal MP and a provincial MPP. The big question here is, what is he going to do now? Mr. Carney, Prime Minister Carney did a video with him, basically saying, the door hit you on the way out. So is he still going to run for the leadership race of the Ontario liberals? Hold on. We've got

a little audio here. Let's listen to Nate Erskine Smith following the vote where he said, this is how he described it. They said they've never seen anything like it. There were at one table, it was 50% of the people that had ID issues saying they'd lost drivers' license. They just moved in the area. So look,

I don't know. It's unfair for me to specifically speculate. I got no idea. I don't know. I mean, it's like he might, Sounds like he might be looking into. He's speculating. He's speculating, but I think he's laying the groundwork just in case he wants to, I don't know, challenge this. I don't even know what to do with that. Please, go ahead, Max.

Yeah, I mean, to Dimitri's point, if you can't get more than 700 and change votes in a, you know, well-populated GTA riding, you're probably not cut out to be the leader of the Ontario Anything Party. You know, you're certainly not cut out to be competing for Premier. It should be easy for someone who is a rising star or, you know, potential future Premier to get 3,000 votes in a leadership race. Like it shouldn't even be, or in a nomination, excuse me. It shouldn't even be close. And the fact that it was close doesn't say anything about the writing or its composition.

It just says everything about the leadership team and the guy himself. He did ask people to step aside and just give him the nomination. He said it would be a lot easier for everybody if they just step. up to side and allowed him a clear path to the nomination. So maybe not. Maybe not. I think Mr. Erskine Smith wreaks arrogance, to be honest with you, Ben. Because even that scrum that he did in the parking lot, back it up. Yeah.

You had scrutiners inside the voting location. So people, Dimitri showing up and saying, oh, I forgot my ID. Mac's showing up and saying, oh, I forgot my ID. They gave their names. So presumably, you're scrutiners. Listen, we've all done nomination races. At least I have and many of them. And let's be clear, you have people in there making sure that everything, at least your

voters vote and your opponent's voters, you challenge them. So I call BS on this, sour grapes of a sore loser that basically is not used to losing. So too bad. Sorry. All right. Let's move on. Go ahead. Max.

Well, just quickly, you know, it's easy for Dimitri to bag on him because he's on the other side. I've written columns saying very nice things about Nate. I thought a lot of his politics. I think a lot of his ideas. I thought he brought an energy that was missing from the Trudeau government certainly. And look, he's got to take his medicine here. He lost, plain and simple. And politics is tough. But you can't complain about the process. You can't complain about shenanigans. You know, I've been in lots of nomination races where the losers talked about shenanigans. I don't think any of them ever got overturned because that is just the way it goes. All right. This is

an interesting one. A Senate bill that's headed for the House of Commons floor proposes to give the federal government explicit powers to confiscate the assets of foreign states that are held in Canada. Essentially, this is about Russian assets. It could be used to fund Ukraine's reconstruction.

Is this a power of Mark Carney wants right now? It feels to me like this is just, I mean, it's great if he had it. But does he really want to be picking fights with Putin? And I'll Max, I'll start with you. Sure. I think picking fights with Putin is always a good thing, especially when there's new evidence coming out that the Russians are actively interfering in our politics, actively interfering in the Alberta separatist movement here that is threatening to pull our country apart and really do a lot of damage to my province. So, yeah, pick a fight with Vladimir Putin. Apparently I was listening to Peter Mansbridge's podcast today with Janice Stein.

It sounds like Putin is ailing. It sounds like he's sick. He's on the rope. So yeah, let's go after those Russian assets and the Chinese ones and all the other state actors who are interfering in our democratic processes. Get them all. Dimitri, that was a heck of a pitch. What do you think? Here, here. So I guess if you look at this bill, the important thing to maybe understand or comprehend is that the key distinction here is actually legal. So Canada has something called the State Immunity Act, which currently shields the Russian government.

itself from being pursued through Canadian courts. So this new bill would actually create a pathway for the federal cabinet through something called an order in council to be able to confiscate foreign state assets. So in other words, Canada already has the tools to go after individual oligarchs and sanction entities, but not the Russian state. And this bill would close the back. So the gap, sorry. So again, here, here to everything that Max said. Yeah, listen, that's, and if that money could go into the reconstruction of Ukraine, I think we're all for it. We're going to start with this story now. And if we have time, if we don't have time, we'll finish it on the other side.

But we've heard this story before, $673 million to keep Canada posts afloat. What are we doing here? Because if we've got that money, I could make a pitch that that money could be best served in my hands. So, Dimitri, what are we doing? It seems like we have a plan for a plan for a plan. for Canada Post, but no real idea as to what exactly we should be doing here. Well, thank you again, Justin Trudeau, for for canceling Stephen Harper's plan to basically change from at-home delivery to community mailboxes. Mark Carney reversed Trudeau's reversal.

So I have some bad news. Canada Post will likely need hundreds of millions more to make it through the fiscal year. So the fundamental problem isn't going away either. Let's not forget, between 2018 and 2023, Canada Post lost $3 billion. And in 2006, households received an average of seven letters per week. That number is dropping. So we need to ask ourselves, why do we have Canada Post and can it be modernized? All right.

We're going to hold that. Hold that. That is the dangling Chad that we'll pull at. When we come back from the break, this is the Ben Mulroney Show. Some crimes are so shocking. They don't just make headlines. They forever change our society. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's most infamous crimes.

Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases. Each case unfolds across multiple episodes. Release every Tuesday through Thursday. From the first time that something was wrong to the moment the truth came out or didn't. Listen to and follow America's most infamous crimes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music or wherever you listen to your podcast. Welcome back and welcome back to my guest, Dmitri and Max. We're talking about Canada Post receiving another $673 million just to stay afloat.

And Dimitri, did you have anything you want to finish with? You asked some very good questions at the end. But Max, I'll say the most troubling thing from this article in the Globe and Mail that I read was a quote from a spokesperson who said, as Canada Post starts its transformation, It continues to face significant financial challenges. Now it goes on and on. But the fact that they acknowledge that it's 2026, and nobody there had the foresight to start their transformation prior to now.

Like it's shocking to me that we're now in a place, but they're this far in the hole, and they realize, oh, we're in a hole today. Yeah, that's the problem. I think Dimitri makes good points. I think there is a role for Canada Post as a government-owned, entity but that role is different than it was 10 years ago certainly and and and even you know two or three years ago the business is just changing well i think you know rural parts of the country where

where certain forms of delivery aren't going to be economically viable you can't privatize that part it'll simply disappear so fill the gaps that are actually gaps and and leave the parts of the business that that can be done by the private sector to the private sector and maybe collect some money in the process while you're at it. But they can't be starting their transformation right now. They need to be finishing it. And if they're not, the prime minister needs to get them a swift kick in the ass. Yeah, this is.

Dimitri, that to me is the most telling thing. You want to see where the rot is? It's all over that place. And nobody in the leadership position over there has been able to even acknowledge there was a problem clearly until now. If transformation remains within delivering mail, Canada Post will slowly die because it's not solvent. If Canada Post truly chooses to transform,

maybe they can expand into the insurance industry. Maybe they can expand into banking. Maybe they can expand into telecommunications, which, by the way, is what has happened in other countries, in Europe and Asia, because what is happening to Canada Post has been happening to the Canada Posts of Europe and Japan, for example. So unless they modernized, Canada Post will not be around 20 years from now.

That's an interesting. Yeah, that's a, why is it taking this crisis max for us to like why weren't they doing this why weren't they being proactive on this stuff for years it's that that to me is the shocking and most disappointing part that we talk about how trusted and vital Canada Post is how come the people inside Canada Post didn't didn't acknowledge that that they had this vital and sacred trust with certain people from around the country in order to keep them solvent and keep them afloat they were going to have to do things like reinventing themselves and going into different

businesses. Instead, it's left us to just keep paying. It's a failure of leadership. Yeah, I think it's similar to the failure of leadership that you see at the CBC, where there is a clear need for a transformation. There's a clear rule that it can play a public good. And instead, the leadership has kind of sat on their butts and let the problem get worse. And so, yeah, I would love to see Canada Post embrace things like postal banking, insurance, you know, ways to kind of create create structure and value for rural parts of the country. But it does not appear to be doing that. And I think it is going to run out of time and patience,

you know, both from the government and the public, to bring those sorts of innovative solutions forward. All right. Well, this last story was one that came to us courtesy of Max. There was a Canadian conservative confab in Ottawa. Pierre Poliev gave a speech. some are calling it low energy and in typical fashion

there's it seems like there's a stopwatch on and there's a short list of people who have not declared they want to be leaders for a leadership race that has not been declared against a leader who says he's not going anywhere but that list is there Max I'll give to you first

well yeah I mean that I have to say this part out loud because it was in the national post in John Aviccans column but that list includes your brother your brother Mark Mulroney I think the sense I heard from folks, and again, it's not just, you know, quote-unquote, lip tarts like me. Like it was true blue conservatives, you know, journalists like Adam Zivo at the National Post. They were all picking up on the fact that Pollyab just sounded defeated.

He sounded like the same guy who had not learned a lesson, who had not evolved with the times. And that conversation is not going to go away just because he wants it to. It is going to continue to percolate and circulate, circulate, excuse me. And I do think we're going to start to hear more names, outsider names, people who are perhaps not actively involved in politics right now, as the conservative movement looks to find someone who isn't going to drag them under the water. Because, you know, the Conservative Party of Canada is still reasonably popular in this country. It's just the leader who isn't. Dimitri, what do you think of that? And by the way, any time I've asked my brother if he's running for anything, he says he absolutely is not.

but but then again I'm a member of the press so you probably wouldn't trust me with the truth so so there's no doubt a couple of takeaways from from the conference that took place in Ottawa last week the number of people that attended was half of what attended a couple of years ago definitely wasn't this super energized crowd in Ottawa as it was two years ago so the names that are circulating and what caucus is basically saying caucus is saying, well, okay, we don't see a path to victory with the current leader, but who? So names that are floating around are those of Jason Kenney, James Moore, Mark Mulrooney. From within the caucus, names like Michael Barrett is starting to be discussed, who is a

serious member of Parliament, who has good credibility. So the question, and yes, we all heard that speech, and I think even Mr. Pauliev is tired of his own slogans. So one thing he needs to consider is a laser-focused approach rather than a scattergun approach and throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks. And I'll give you an example. Go to his Twitter feed yesterday. On a day like yesterday, only two tweets.

Happy Mother's Day and Go Habs go after the Montreal Canadiens won the hockey game. Every five hours, it's something new, something different, sneaky carnie. Just another liberal. So it's all about having a laser-focused approach and playing the long game. Short-term victories in the current state of affairs are just not going to show up miraculously. So we'll punt this conversation to August because that's what caucus is waiting for in terms of what public opinion polls will say in August prior to the House coming back. Is that what is the magic date, like August is when we should be paying attention? We should be paying attention to the polls in August because caucus and many members of caucus are saying he has the summer to turn it around.

Well, summer's also where the stampede happens. And that'll be an interesting one, Max. I mean, think about it. You've got apparently an ascendant Mark Carney in that province with Daniel Smith showering him with accolades. It could be a very interesting, a very interesting pancake breakfast on the grounds. stampede with Mark Carney this year. I think it's going to be wild. And it's always the big political event of the Calgary summer.

But yeah, you have a liberal prime minister who is apparently more popular than the conservative premier and the federal conservative leader. And you have a separatist movement that is being aided and abetted by the conservative premier. So look, if Pierre Pahliav is looking to win back his caucus to change the public's mind, He should listen to Dimitri about not trying to dig up a new scandal every five minutes and have a bit of a longer game mentality. But also, how about standing up for Canada?

How about really sort of being clear and uncompromising in beating down the separatist movement in Alberta and making it clear that everyone here is better off in Canada than not? Jason Kenny's doing that. And Jason Kenny may be trying to steal his job in the process. That's interesting. I haven't, I'll be honest, I haven't followed that. one as closely as I should. Is the suggestion that Pierre is not doing that?

Because that's in his backyard. That's in his riding's backyard. Well, he is an Alberta MP. Last I checked, he was also born and raised in Alberta. And I can tell you that, you know, that silence or that half silence. Because there's been a few instances where obviously he's had to confirm that he is pro-Canada. But I think that putting pressure both on the federal liberals, but at the same time, unequivocally stating at every opportunity that Alberta thrives within a United Canada is something

that some are asking for, at least. Well, gentlemen, I want to thank you very much for joining me here today. I hope you guys have the rest of a great week. And we'll see you back here next time. Wayfair's Victoria Day clearance is on. And right now at Wayfair, you can get up to 70% off everything home. Shop Wayfair's Victoria Day Clearance. Now through May 25th at Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home.