The Ben Mulroney Show - Hot Takes -- Poilievre's future and a plane flip flop for Ford

Episode Date: April 21, 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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The refined Tiguan, you deserve more style. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SUVw, German engineered for all. Forward guidance with Prime Minister Mark Carney. We were treated to that yesterday. An economic pep talk in the words of the globe and mail to the country, using social media to make a direct appeal to Canadians, frustrated by Ottawa's deteriorating trade relationship with the United States.

I watched this thing, and I can't. make heads or tails out of why, why now, what does it really mean? So to read the tea leaves and read through in between the lines, we're joined by our good friends, Demetri Soutis, and Max Fawcett. Guys, welcome to the show. Happy Monday. Max, what did you, what did it mean to you? What was this, forward guidance by our prime minister? What did it mean to you? Oh, can't hear you. I think we can't hear them. So let, here, we'll go to Dimitri first. Yeah, well, we wait for Max. So from a political communications perspective, this was prepositioning for two things.

The first and the obvious one is absence of the concrete results that Prime Minister Carney offered Canadians more than a years ago to move at lightning speed on a wide range of issues, both domestic and internationally. There has been some incremental progress, but it remains incremental. And I think the second component of why he did that yesterday, which was his first major kind of pre-positioning after getting majority government, is to say that tough times are ahead. And I plan on doing this regularly, giving you an up-to-date on where things stand. The challenge right now is obviously delivering on all these promises. You know, inflation numbers came out today. Inflation is slightly up.

there hasn't been a real move of the needle on cost of living, the housing crisis. You know, at the liberal convention a couple of weeks ago, one of their speakers even considered an exit tax if young Canadians... Oh, I heard that. They got a pony up 500 grand. Obviously, it does not seem to be liberal policy at this time, but it just comes to show that there has not been significant progress since forming government. Max, you want to take a crack at it again, see if we can hear you? No, not yet. No, we're going to try to fix that.

What's your take, Ben? Yeah, well, I think, oh, so he dropped off, so hopefully we'll get him back and get him in there. My take is, you know, a big chunk of that was telling us how great we are. And as a country, you know, and we heard it at the convention as well when Canadians work together. We can change the world. I'm tired of having my tires pumped. I'm really tired of that. I've 10 years.

I mean, this was, that was the performative nature of Justin Trudeau. This is a guy who's supposed to be about the numbers. about moving the needle. And I don't want my tires pumped anymore. I want the gas tank filled. And I'm tired of this thing. Stop telling me how great we are. Put us in a position to manifest that greatness.

And he's back. Can we hear you now, my friend? Well, let's see. There we go. Success. Okay. Miracle of technology. I promise I wasn't trying to duck out on the question. Look, I think Dimitri is right.

I think a lot of this is prepositioning for the lack of a breakthrough on the USMCA deal that's coming up this summer. I think part of it is just extending his brand. You know, you have Donald Trump firing off a thousand crazy tweets a night. You have Pierpoli up doing, you know, bro-y podcasts and going to UFC. And I think Mark Carney wants to kind of expand his image as a calm, you know, FDR-like voice of reason. You know, the title, you know, forward guidance, very banker-like, very reassuring. You know, Deb Yedlin, who's worked with him.

She's the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce here in Calgary. She said that she liked it. She thought it was, it was, you know, a plea for patience. It was, you know, a bit of preparing Canadians for a tough road ahead. I think he's, he is largely where a lot of Canadians are on this issue. They don't expect good things to come out of negotiations with people like Howard Lutnik and Donald Trump. And I think this is what they want to hear largely from their government. Just an explanation of what they're doing, where the problem,

are and how we're going to get through it. There are no silver bullets here, Ben. No, and I'm not expecting silver bullets, but I was expect. Look, he said it on the campaign trail. I just, I wish people wouldn't have the memory of a goldfish. And they would remember that he said, I would not have presented myself in politics, were we not in a crisis? I'm the Churchill of the moment.

He said it in a pub. I remember seeing it. He was in a pub, I think in Ottawa. Like, I know it's hard, but you said you were here because you knew how hard it was. And then to turn around and say, yeah, I don't know if I can do this. Like, I don't think if anybody could do this. And then we all sort of give them a pass.

I don't, I kind of want more from my leaders than to just throw their hands up and say, I'm preparing you for bad news here, guys, but all our strengths that we used to have, those are now weaknesses. So, so tell, listen, if I'm wrong, I want to, please make me

wrong. Okay, well, show me a country in the world that has done a trade deal with the United States under Trump. in the second term and it's gone well for them. All of the trade deals that were signed, all the promises, all the pledges have been a disaster. There are no good outcomes here, and we are the most exposed to this tornado of terribleness south of the border.

We are the most vulnerable. Yeah. So what could we have done in the last year? Higher Mark Carney. That was it. We were supposed to hire Mark Carney. He was the antidote to Donald Trump. He was smarter than he.

Mark Carney is smarter than Donald Trump is chaotic. That was the bargain. That's why he... I mean, I don't think I'm overselling the man. We were told that. Anyway, go on, Dimitri. I take Max's point on, you know, nobody can control Donald Trump.

Everybody said it so often that we're starting to believe it. But what about the plan to unleash Canada's potential? And that is where there's a stark difference between the conservative caucus and the liberal caucus. The challenge with Mark Carney is that he still has to deal with what's left of Justin Trudeau's caucus. He cannot move forward in an aggressive way on natural resource exploration, on mining,

because he still has to appease the left wing of the Liberal Party. Whereas the Conservative Party of Canada says, get rid of C-69, one environmental assessment. So it was ironic, because I heard Premier Ford earlier today say that during his first meeting with Mark Carney, Mark Carney told him that he was more conservative than Premier Ford. The challenge right now is that he's still dealing with a Liberal Party that does not want

these things to actually happen. He's dealing with a Liberal Party that does not want to see extraction of oil and gas. He's dealing with a Liberal Party that does not want to see pipelines getting built. And the reality is he committed to move at speeds never seen before on things we can control. Remember, we don't control Donald Trump, we don't control what's happening with the negotiations, but we do control what's happening here. And I will leave it at this. Interprovincial trade barriers.

While the federal government took down interprovincial trade barriers, which were minimal, the vast majority of interprovincial trade barriers, which would add 2% to our GDP, if not more, between the provinces. Provinces have still not taken them down. Counterpoint, Max Fawcett? How much time do I have?

You got a minute and a half. So Ben, you mentioned earlier, you wish we didn't have the memories of goldfish. And I could not agree more, because it's like we're forgetting the lessons of that. of the Harper era around, you know, regulatory reform. If we just get better regulations,

if we just rubber stamp these oil and gas projects quicker, we would have so many things get built. It didn't happen under Harper. The exact opposite happened. They got backed up. Opposition grew to them. There was a backlash because of the attempt to do an end run around indigenous rights

or environmental rights. We have completely forgotten that lesson. I promise you, Mark Carney has not. He is moving as fast as you can move in this country. Sorry, folks, for the ethical oil people out there. Part of having ethical oil means having the rule of law, means having courts, means having indigenous rights that have to be heard and can't be steamrolled.

You have to make peace with that if you want to live in this great country called Canada. So, yeah, we are moving as fast as we can. We can't move at the speed of light. All right. Well, listen, we're going to leave that one there. We've got lots more to get to, including I'm going to ask you guys, have you ever seen a flip-flop as quick as we saw on Air Ford One? So that's coming up next right here on the Ben Mulroney show.

Don't go anywhere. We'll be back away. with hot takes after this. Welcome back and welcome back to Max and Dimitri. What's in a headline, guys? The same poll that was looked at

by the star and the globe have completely different headlines. The globe says more than half of conservative voters want Poliyev to lead the party into the next election. Same story in the star. Poll suggests more conservative voters now want to replace

Poliev as a leader. And then the star also has Mark Carney would likely keep his majority of an election was held now. I thought he got his majority, so we wouldn't have to worry about an election today, Dimitri. You can always worry about an election. Obviously, the Prime Minister now with his majority

has even less justification to call an election. But beware, I take you back to the precedent of 2000 when Stockwell Day dared Jean-Cretchen to call an election. And Jean-Cretchen called this bluff, called an election. and won another majority government. So the biggest mistake right now would be for the opposition to dare Mark Carney, any opposition leader to dare Mark Carney to calm election. What these numbers are showing is a slow and steady decline,

poll after poll, of conservative voters that wish to see Mr. Poiliev continue on as leader in the next election. It is entirely in his hands to convince them to change their mind. and I can tell you that these are the types of polls that caucus members, and I guess it's Jean-Cretchen day, but he used to call them nervous Nellies, caucus members look at and influence their mind frame. Max, your thoughts? Yeah, I think to Dimitri's point,

there are probably a lot of nervous Nellys in the caucus right now, and that's who Mr. Pollyev should be worried about. I don't think he needs to worry about voters or the base. He certainly shouldn't be daring Mark Carney to have an election. I think that would be a bluff that would be called instantaneously. But, you know, this routine now where he's going after Mark Carney's economic credentials. Yeah. If you're a more moderate member of the caucus, if you're any member of the caucus,

you have to look at that and wonder what he's thinking, what he's imbibing, who is advising him? Because that is, to me, that is the path to a conservative vote chair that starts with a two, not a three in a future poll. And that's when I think things get really bad. Well, what I, what I, what I, I just don't get that argument. Like, you can, you can attack the results of his policies. You can attack his, you know, how he gets to a place where he thinks that, you know,

Canadians are better off today and there were a year ago. But, but to suggest he's not well educated. I mean, I would say, you know, as well educated as you are, we still need you to do some work that may, that helps Canadians. And thus far, we as conservatives don't think you've done that work. I don't, I don't, I don't understand. the logic behind attacking his credentials, which Dmitri are sort of unassailable. They are, and what a beautiful opportunity to turn his credentials against him.

Instead of saying that Mark Carney is uneducated economically, instead of saying that Mark Carney has no economic knowledge, why not say you have so much knowledge, you are so well educated from the top schools in the world, why aren't we seeing the results? Take his strength and play judo with it, rather than try and convince Canadians that an undergrad, a master's, and a PhD in economics from Harvard and Oxford,

compared to Mr. Pueleev, who has an undergrad and political science from the University of Calgary, that he wants to compete with him on that. I call this political judo, and it seems that Mr. Pueleev literally just punched himself in the face on this one. Well, from political judo to whiplash for an entire province on Friday, Max, I don't know if this news made its way out to Alberta, but we were told by the Toronto Star that the progressive conservative government of Ontario had purchased a private jet for official government use.

And then by this morning, they were, Doug Ford had done what he's done before, which is a walk something back and say, we're going to sell it now. I don't know what you think about it there. You can make a case that the government needs to be able to get places and the government officials need to get places where they can, where they don't have to rely on air Canada, where they can have confidential meetings on a plane. They need to be able to get there on a moment. So you can make that business case.

But this, this whiplash is, I think we're all whipped into a frenzy and we're to get nothing out of it except probably the cost of selling this plane at a lower cost than what we bought it for. Well, I mean, credit to Doug Ford. He is very good at feeling when the winds are blowing against him and acting accordingly. There are other politicians on both sides of the aisle who could learn from that.

I just find this stuff around government planes so frustrating. We had a similar thing in Alberta a decade ago where Allison Redford was using the beat-up old government of Alberta jet or plane that Ralph Klein had, you know, covered in cigarette smoke and all the rest of it. And she nearly got thrown out of office. for using this plane and supposedly abusing it. And if you're the premier of a province,

you have an important business to do. You have places to go. You are like a chief executive of a large company, and your time is valuable. You have to stop nickel and diming elected officials. Correct. Yeah. And treating them like they're priests and people who have taken a vow of poverty.

They're doing the people's business, give them the tools to do it. Yeah, I agree with it. And just so it can be said, when Mark Carney travels abroad, wherever he travels, I want him traveling like, you're right, like the chief executive of a G7 country.

I want 21 gun salutes. I want him living in a house that will instill awe in whoever joins them there where he can host summits and host other leaders and not be embarrassed. And it's stuff like this. It's nickel and diming like this that prevents us from having a home

that our prime minister could actually live in. But I do think that this could have been rolled out Dimitri, and you know, with your background in communications, I don't know if you agree or not, but had they, instead of having, waiting for the Toronto Star to ask them questions and then them confirming it, they should have come out proudly

and said, this is not 2019, and he's being attacked for going back on his word from 2019. The world is different. I need, we need to be places. And so we've made this, this purchase on behalf of the people of Ontario. This is a purchase that will, you know, whoever

wins the next election, they will benefit from this as well. by extension, everyone in the province. And instead, they were playing catch-up and they were trying to rest control of the narrative that they could have had had they just announced it themselves. Yeah, and I will give you my top 10 of reasons. But I will start off by saying, if we are going to continue being a G7 country, we cannot behave like a banana republic. And what I would have done is number one, talk about operational efficiency.

because this is not just for the Premier, it's also for the ministers. They have to manage schedules that are incompatible with commercial flights. Ontario spans over 1 million square kilometers. You can fit the United Kingdom five times into Ontario. Security and confidentiality. Senior officials routinely handle sensitive files, labor disputes, public health emergencies, crisis response and rapid deployment. So governments don't operate on commercial schedules.

You know, a natural disaster in Northern Ontario. Going to Northern Ontario and remote communities, making it a lot easier. There's also the cost benefit over time. You know, on a per-trip basis, charter or private flights appear expensive. But if you actually analyze this, it would cost less. International and intra-provincial competitiveness, coordination across cabinet. And also, the most important thing, continuity of government. When Doug Ford is flying on a chartered plane or on a commercial flight, you cannot reach him.

So in an emergency, require the rapid return of the Premier or even communicate him while he's in flight, you basically don't have access to him for two, three hours. And this is not for Doug Ford and his cabinet. It's for the next Premier of Ontario and so on. So I hope cooler heads will prevail, and this plane won't be sold because at the end of the day, I'm fed up. I remember when we were in government, we used to land at the coffee, at the Commonwealth Summit, at the Francophony Summit, and countries that receive aid from Canada,

the leaders of those countries, had the best planes in the world, and we showed up with a plane that we used to call it the flying goose. Yeah. You know what? That's the perfect way to end this. You're absolutely right. There are countries out there that you're right,

that receive aid from our country, and they have their leaders live in palaces, and they drive around in limos, and not to say, I don't necessarily want that stuff, but I want our leader to be, there are trappings. We're not,

it costs, it costs money to run a country. And part of that operational cost comes into taking care of the people who run the country. But guys, thank you very much for being here. I hope you have a wonderful week.

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