The Ben Mulroney Show - Housing isn't the only crisis youth are facing... turns out they can't get a job

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Manitoba’s youth exodus: The alarming trend no one is stopping with Guest: Kevin Klein, President of the Winnipeg Sun, political columnist and former Minister of Environment for Manitoba under the conservative government -Housing isn't the only crisis youth are facing... turns out they can't get a job with Guest: Sabrina Maddeaux, Political Commentator, Broadcaster and Writer 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

Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for spending this shortened week with us. That means we had a long weekend. Hope everybody had a wonderful, wonderful Victoria Day weekend. Weather was here in Toronto. I mean, it was nice, but it was cold and still cold. I don't know when the heck we're gonna get

into that time of year where you can finally wear shorts and a t-shirt, but these are problems I'm willing to take. Lots going on in the world of news. You know, a lot of us were really hoping that when Mark Carney assumed the role of prime minister and formed government, that he would get right to letting us know how things would be different from an economic standpoint now that he was in charge.

You know, let's not forget we had somebody at the head of our government for 10 years who believed that budgets balanced themselves and it's important to grow the economy from the heart outward. And this was going to be a guy who was gonna do things differently. He told us like even though a lot of his team members

were the same, it was gonna be different because he was different. And now he's prime minister and he says, no federal budget coming into the fall. Here's what he had to say about that. There'll be a budget in the fall. In the short term, it's a very short parliamentary session that is coming up. The speech from the throne is on the 27th, as people know. The House is due to rise under the House's rules by the 20th of June, so it's really three weeks. We have some very clear priorities, which, as you know from following those who followed

the campaign, those who followed my remarks, those who followed my opening press conference, would include the federal government taking all the steps it can to help create one Canadian economy out of 13. In addition, initiatives such as the middle class tax cut, but there will be a budget in the fall. Now I know that a budget doesn't solve everything. It's not the end all be all. It's part of it's one thing that a government does, but it's an important thing that a government does. And we are currently, according to our prime minister, what got him elected was the narrative

that we are living in the crisis of our lifetime, which is why he came into politics in the first place. That's what he said. He said he wouldn't have jumped into politics if we weren't in this crisis. And he felt he was the best person to navigate this country through this crisis. And a lot of Canadians believed him. Enough Canadians believed him that he is on the precipice of a majority

government. So it's not a good look to just say, you know what? It's coming. Keep in mind, fall goes until December 20th. That's the final day of fall. So I don't think it's cynical of me to think that we could be, we might not get a budget until December, a full federal budget until December. That doesn't sit well with me. And that explanation by our prime minister feels like an excuse. Oh, well, the house has its own rules. Well, also, Pier Poliev had said

on the election campaign trail that were he to form government, that MPs would get no summer vacation. They would work through the summer. And so the rules are only there because they have been adopted and accepted by the government. If the government wanted, if the government wanted to sit through the summer,

they would sit through the summer. What does it tell you about this crisis that we're living through? That the MPs are coming back for three weeks and then they're going, then the house won't sit until the fall. That tells me a lot about the priorities of the government.

It also tells me something about this quote unquote crisis that we're living through. Maybe it's, I mean, it's important, it's significant, but maybe it's not the crisis of our lifetime that we were led to believe. Somebody who is indeed going through crisis, and my heart goes out to him and his family, is former president Joe Biden,

where he has just been diagnosed with prostate cancer. And it's not it's not good, not only is does he have cancer, but they found that it is spread to the bone. And look, my dad passed away just over a year ago. And watching his health fail, it's not specific to me. And we all, we all watch loved ones weaken and, and wither and pass away. So that is not special specific to me. Uh, but, uh, which is why my heart goes out to his family. Absolutely, but let's not forget that the seminal book on the cognitive decline of Joe Biden written by Jake Tapper, I think it's called Original Sin is out today.

And it documents what many believe to be a massive coordinated coverup by a number of people in the Democratic Party to keep hidden the fact that the president simply did not have the cognitive wherewithal to be president. And let's not forget anybody who said as much prior to this book was tarred and feathered

and weakened and disparaged. And some people are trying to figure out what the end game is. Look, I'm not the one saying this. I don't have expertise in this, but I did hear from some medical experts over the weekend who said that there are tests, I'm only 49, but apparently at 55, it becomes standard, at least in the

United States for men to get a specific type of prostate exam, which is supposed to catch these sorts of things far earlier than what we're told was just discovered. In other words, feels very weird to me that somebody who's supposed to go through routine checkups as the vice president and the president to make sure that the president is in tip top shape and able to carry out his duties in great health, feels weird to me that this would just pop up out of nowhere.

And the fact that is metastasized in his bones tells me he's had this for a while. It doesn't tell me, it tells these medical professionals who are saying it. So when given the fact that there's this book that just came out that says that there was a cover-up of his cognitive decline, is it so unreasonable to think that maybe they knew about this earlier than they actually are letting us know? And if that's the case, you know, there are people who are suggesting that

there was a bait and switch that was gonna be done. That Joe Biden was gonna become president, and then at a certain date, perhaps this date, it was gonna be announced that he had prostate cancer and was gonna have to step down to then allow Kamala Harris to assume the presidency. Had this book not come out, that would be probably in the realm

of the conspiracy theorists and the tin hat crowd, tin foil hat crowd. I think it's less so given the fact that we're dealing with this book that is a bombshell that we're gonna be dealing with for a very long time. Somebody who has been banging this drum for a very long time, and I think acquitting himself quite honorably on that file is Scott Jennings of CNN. Here's what he had to say about the cover up.

If I had a nickel for every time I had heard an anchor or a fellow commentator use the phrase the big lie. After the 2020 election, I'd be a rich man. But I wonder what they have to say for themselves now about the lies that we were told about Joe Biden. Oh, behind closed doors, he's fine. He's riding unicycles and juggling knives and doing trigonometry blindfolded. What would they say about the enormous conspiracy that was required to cover up this impairment? What would they say about the coordinated smear campaign against anyone who dared question it?

And what would they say about the clear fact that unelected people were making decisions in a constitutional republic in the name of a president who had no idea what was going on. Okay, a couple of things. One, there have been speculation that Scott Jennings will ultimately run for Senate, the Senate seat in Kentucky when Mitch McConnell steps down or retires or expires. He's had his own, he's had his own senior moments over the past little while. You'll remember the blank stares upon receiving questions in a scrum.

It's happened more than once. And so, yeah, Scott Jennings, that to me sounds like somebody who's gearing up to run for something. But, and there were some chuckles in what he had to say there, but let's never lose sight of the fact that the single most important job on the planet is the president of the United States. And there was a man running things or at the top who was not running things. And that is something that is there's going to

someone's someone or a number of people are going to have to answer for that. And I do hope that they ultimately do. and I do hope that they ultimately do. What matters? Save time and earn $1,100 in average value each year. The PC Insider's World Elite MasterCard. The card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit PCFinancial.ca for details. Value is for illustrative purposes only. The Hot Honey McCrispy is so back at McDonald's. With juicy 100% Canadian-raised seasoned chicken, shredded lettuce, crispy jalapenos, and that

completely craveable hot honey sauce, it's a sweet heat repeat you don't want to miss. Get your Hot Honey McCrispy today. Available for a limited time only at McDonald's. One of the hot topics that dominated the public conversation was the idea of the brain drain of Canadians moving south of the border, where the pastures were greener, where the paychecks were bigger, and where the ability to live the most successful life you possibly could, that's where you went. And there was this real fear

that there would be a lost generation in Canada where the skills that we needed to grow an economy and just as importantly, the tax base that we needed to grow an economy and just as importantly, the tax base that we needed to grow the economy would disappear. And it turns out that is not just a problem that goes north south, but the province of Manitoba is experiencing its own brain drain, a youth exodus, and it's been going on for a significant amount of time. It's really important for us to talk about this and the person who's highlighted it for me, and I'm very thankful for it because it's been going on for a significant amount of time. It's really important for us to talk about this. And the person who's highlighted it for me, and I'm very thankful for it,

because it's been written about in the Winnipeg Sun, is Kevin Klein. He's the president of the Winnipeg Sun, as well as a columnist and former minister of the environment for Manitoba under the conservative government. And so welcome to the show, Mr. Klein. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you very much for having me. And please call me Kevin. All right, Kevin, I will. So Kevin, how long, how big of a problem is this and how long has it been going on for? Well, I think we've been seeing this happening since the eighties, to be quite honest. And it's been getting worse and worse.

And in recently, 22 to 23, we lost over 10,000 people. Now that is quite significant for a province our size. Yeah. And of course we're gaining some of that back with immigration. We're kind of flattening out, but our young people, the people with energy, the people with innovation, the people that are going to build the province, they're not staying. Yeah. They're taking off.

So if you're telling me that this has been a problem since the 80s, has there been a period in that, has there been a hiccup in there, a period sometime between the 80s and today where people have returned to the province? Because my next question is, what can be done to reverse it? Has there been a period where something was done where young Manitobans either said, we're sticking around or people from outside the province were saying,

we're gonna move there. Well, we have a blended family. So we have six kids. Now, four of them have moved out of the province. They have gone elsewhere. For what reasons? Now they left for opportunity. Now, some time ago,

the province offered the graduation tuition tax rebate. So young people, if they came back, they got a $25,000 tax relief. That was big. That was an opportunity for somebody to make, to come back here, even if they were schooled outside of the province, come back to the province and start working. That is gone. But other provinces are offering that. So they're finding reasons to leave. They're also finding better jobs. They're finding jobs in the newer industries. There's a lot of new exciting industries that we should be banging on the doors of, of Manitoba. The AI companies, because we have so much power, we have green energy,

we should be knocking on the doors of these people. Well, that's, I mean, just a few months ago, we were talking on this show about how Well, that's right. I mean, just a few months ago, we were talking on this show about how Kevin O'Leary had been working with the Alberta government to build a massive AI park in, I believe in Northern Alberta. I don't know why there's nothing specific about Alberta that makes it that AI parks that this size, I mean, we're talking tens of billions of dollars in investment, that there's nothing specific about Alberta, where why why AI should be built there, why it should be the home there. You could build a hub in Northern Manitoba just as easily and as effectively. Well, I think we could build it probably much more effectively, right?

We have a multiple amounts of land here. We have the energy, we have the climate for it, right? We have the right climate for this, but we're not doing what it takes. We're not, we're not making the sales calls. We're not banging on the doors. We're not, we're not hammering on doors down. So saying, look, we have what you need. We can offer you this, we can offer you that. And I think that that's what young people are seeing. And they're saying, well, I'm going to have to go elsewhere. I'm going to have to take off somewhere.

And look, I mean, if we know why, how important keeping young Manitobans is for the province and we're, and they're not doing it. Does that speak to a larger structural problem in Manitoba? And look, I'll just, I'll put the question out there and it's a good faith question, is there, is there a modesty in in Alberta and in Manitoba that doesn't exist elsewhere? An unwillingness to pump your own tires? Is there something about the character of being a Manitoban that makes it harder to go sell being a business coming to Manitoba?

Absolutely. Biggest problem we have we are so afraid to talk about how good it is here. Yeah. And how good it can be here. I mean the the quality of life here, I'm sure you've been here, Ben. Actually, I think you were here when they were doing Canadian Idol, you were here for a little bit. I mean, the lakes we have here, the parks that we have here, we have wonderful opportunities to raise a family. Housing is affordable, believe it or not. You can buy a house in Manitoba. So there's lots of reasons to live in Manitoba, but we're not keeping the young people, we're losing them because we're not taking that step to say, you know, let's give them the programs, let's give them startup and innovation

grants, let's do job matching. We should be doing job guarantees for doctors and nurses going through our school system here to make them want to stay here. We had this talk on one of our podcasts where I called it the Northern Exposure Method, right? Yeah, yeah, sure. I remember that show. Yeah, we'll pay for your schooling, but you're staying for 10 years. I don't see a problem with that. Then they'll put down roots. They'll love it here. The lakes, as we talked about, let's give them reasons to stay here. But we, you're absolutely right. We have to get aggressive and we have to brag about what we've got in Manitoba.

Kevin, it seems ironic, or maybe he just hasn't had enough time, but you've got a young, dynamic, popular premier in Wab Kanu who just, he could be the face of that. I mean, you look at him and he's he's very, you know, you look at him and you compare him to say a Doug Ford or a Legault and he seems, he could embody the idea of young people in the province of Manitoba. What does he say about this, what seems to be a provincial crisis?

Well, we've heard him talk a lot about doing job creation to keep young people here. He wants to promote our cultural activities and such, but we're seeing a lot of talk. He is great. He has a lot of charisma. He's very good on TikTok. He's very good at reaching younger generation. I'd like to see him now go to the businesses and start banging on the door saying, we need to keep our youth here. We need to do something with the, with the tuition tax. Maybe he needs to bring that back. Yeah. Maybe that's what he does with young people. And that's how he connects with the young people

and said, here, we'll give you that graduation tuition tax back, but you stay here. You stay with us and we will make this the place you want to be forever and ever. So you said you have a blended family and how many did you say have left the province? Four. Four. And any chance that they're going to come back? No, no, no. What was, you know what? Yeah. But let me, let me, let me reframe. What would it take to get them back? That's a really good question. Um, I would hope family would bring them back, but I think family guilt, family guilt. I tried it. It doesn't work. Your mother's, your mother keeps asking for you, she's lonely.

Yeah, if you need somebody to babysit the grandkids, you're gonna have to come here. But you know, we jump on the plane and we go out there. They're enjoying where they are. They have a good quality of life, they have opportunity, and that's really what it is, they have opportunity, they're proud to be where they are. They love Winnipeg. They love Manitoba

But if you nailed it, we are so afraid to talk about how good we have it It's almost like we're afraid someone will take it away. Yeah, but we need to brag about how great Manitoba is Geographically, we are in the perfect position when it comes to clean energy We are in the perfect position when it comes to clean water and the abundance of water, we are in the perfect position. We have a coast, you know, we have the opportunity to have a port, an ocean port, where we can ship goods to Europe. We have everything that every province needs, but we're not promoting it enough to keep young people here. Well, Kevin Klein, I think one of the, that's, I think we've cracked the nut as to what the problem is.

And the solution, I guess, with that ambition in mind could take many forms. I feel optimistic that a guy like Wab Kanu could be the embodiment of that. And hopefully he'll hear this conversation as well as others I'm sure that you've been having, and come up with a plan to keep young people where they belong in the province of Manitoba, because we need every province to be strong, especially in the world that we're living in. I appreciate it, and I hope to talk to you again soon. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

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What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over deliver. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us. In an earlier segment today, we were talking about how youth in Manitoba have been exiting the province in search of greener pastures elsewhere few and far between in this country. Just for context for you, there is a labor force survey from StatsCan

that says that the national unemployment rate for 15 to 24 year olds is 14.1% in Ontario. 16.4% in Alberta, it's 17.2%. So to discuss why this is, what the problem is, where it lies and how we can fix it, we're joined by the author of the article in the Toronto Star, Sabrina Medo. She is a political commentator and a broadcaster

and writer, Sabrina, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on, bud. So yeah, so I had a great conversation with somebody who was highlighting this very problem in the province of Manitoba, where people are leaving because they're looking for jobs, young people have been leaving for jobs elsewhere, but you're saying there's not a lot of jobs anywhere.

Yeah, the problem is really spanning the entire country. It's the worst in Ontario and Alberta right now, where you just read out those pretty disastrous stats we're seeing. You know, in Alberta,'s 17.2% unemployment rate for 15 to 24 year olds. That's one out of every six young people. So really the numbers here are quite a bloodbath.

And this isn't something that's just popped up in the last month or two, although it's been getting worse and worse. We've really been seeing this youth unemployment rate spiking for well over a year now, and it hasn't been getting the attention it deserves. And it's not just unemployment that's a few extra weeks or even a few extra months looking for a job. We're

also seeing long-term unemployment spike in this age range, which are young people looking for jobs for six months or more and even people leaving the workforce entirely, whether that's just giving up or going back to grad school. So the numbers are really quite bad here, both whether it's teens looking for part-time work or students looking for work, but also new grads and young professionals who are really suffering to get that first leg

into the workforce. Well, even summer jobs, even summer jobs. I mean, you write this, summer jobs on the search engine indeed, we're down 22% in early May versus the same time a year ago. So what are some of the structural problems that are leading to this, this job desert for the youth of Canada? The biggest one, it's a failure of immigration policy. And

we've seen how unsustainable immigration levels have impacted the housing market, especially the rental market for younger people, and now it's also come for the job market, especially when it came to the Liberals policies on uncapped temporary foreign worker visas, which a lot of employers just ended up using to find cheap labor that they could more easily control, and then sometimes this labor ended up in predatory situations themselves. And also uncapped student visas and allowing them to work more and more hours in a week. And also when immigration levels in general are too high, you're bringing in a lot of young labor to compete in areas where employers have claimed there are labor shortages. But as we've seen now in hindsight,

those labor shortages didn't necessarily exist. Again, they just wanted to stagnate wages, but now young people in Canada can't find jobs at all. So, Sabrina, I think generally speaking, there seems to be a consensus to what the problem is, right? And you just described it really, really well. But the question I have is, how do we fix it and how long does it take to fix it?

Yeah, unfortunately, it probably will, like when anything reaches a crisis of this level, a little bit time to unwind. But the sooner we address it, the better the key is, we can't let this be like the housing crisis where, you know, we saw the data, saw the anecdotes, young people were crying out for pain and politicians ignored it for years. The biggest thing is we still have to work on our immigration policy. Now, Carney has taken a few steps to reign that in, but we're not there yet. That has to become much more targeted and get those numbers down. But on top of that, there are other things we can do. We have to fix competition in this country, right? Make businesses invest in innovation and competition. We can help young people by removing barriers to entrepreneurship, right? Yeah. Helping the innovation sector start up

so that people invest and hire young people again. And of course another big thing is the economic mobility in this nation. It's very hard because of the affordability issues for young people to move to where jobs are. Yeah. And some of the most unaffordable places are where jobs are. And some of the most unaffordable places are where jobs are. So we have to also continue to fix housing and affordability so young people can be matched with employment. Yeah, you brought up something that sort of stuck with me.

If we could create a more entrepreneur friendly environment, like if the jobs don't exist, then we should let the youth create their own jobs. We should create the fundamentals so that if somebody has an idea for a business, it's a lot easier for them to start that business. And then they can, they can be the engine that hires other people. 100%. And that's the problem. They can't find jobs elsewhere. And they also can't start their own businesses. You know,

we're one of the only Western countries where entrepreneurship rates never rebounded after the COVID pandemic. So why is that? It's because there's so much red tape, so much over taxation there. And these are problems that we should be able to solve. I've got to wonder Sabrina, what this does to the psyche of a young person. You know, for years, the narrative was, you know, people have a certain generation are lazy. They don't want to work. They want that work life balance balance where people of say my

generation or your generation are willing to roll up our sleeves and do what we needed to do to climb the corporate ladder. And it seems based on this data and the conversation that we're having, that narrative is wrong. Oh, it's definitely wrong. You know, it reminds me of, but just buy fewer avocados and you'll afford a house that we heard a few years back. Maybe travel to Positano one fewer times this year for your Instagram pics. You'll be fine. You'll own a house with a little bit of avocados. I kind of feel bad that that's what I thought. I didn't really think it, but it was a narrative that was easy to get behind. The reason you're not working is because you don't want to work. No, young people want to work. And if you go on social media, on Reddit boards,

if you just talk to young people, there's so much frustration because they've already been, you know, in this economic sea of despair for so long with affordability and housing. And now on top of that, they can't find a job and it feels, you know, increasingly hopeless in this country for young people and they feel like they have nowhere to go and we're already seeing just such high rates of disenfranchisement and disillusionment and anger, like righteous anger from young people. And the longer this goes on, I mean, when you have people who have no stake in a market

and no stake in a society and their communities, that can lead to some really dangerous outcomes, both individually but for broader communities and society at large. Oh yeah, no, I mean now that I'm thinking about it, there's an entire generation, they lost the last few years of their high school existence, some of them didn't graduate because of protests on their college campuses, now they can't get jobs and they're living in their parents' basements, if they want to start a business they can't because as you, there's red tape there. I don't even know what this would do

to your idea of self-worth. If you'd been told your whole life that once you grow up, you get a job and you start providing. And if you can't do any of those things, and every step along the way, your experiences were diminished or watered down or turned into something else. I don't know what that would do to me. I know it wouldn't be good. No, not at all. Of course, these young people are angry and they have a right to be because

really the social contract has been completely not even just broken, but torn up to shreds to a point where you're right there sitting at home and then what takes that place? Do they end up getting involved in there's online gambling these days, there's all these online silos filled with missing disinformation. So that can lead down some bad paths. But even if they do end up finding work after a year or two of being out of the workforce, that has lifetime consequences. That's fewer savings. You're lower on the wage ladder. You're further away from even buying that home or moving out of your parents' place, starting a family. We see delayed family formation. So there's all these role on consequences. I've already taken a toll on society and Canada's

unity and ability to get things done. And this is something we really need to pay attention to. And I do think that older generations aren't connecting with it and seeing it the same way. Yeah, because if you look at the stats, the older you are, the more likely you're to be insulated from this crisis. You know, the 55 plus age group is the only one not experiencing a decades high unemployment rate. I'm not suggesting that Pierre polio have had all the answers, but you definitely see that there was a difference. There

was a disconnect between how older voters viewed the issues facing Canada versus younger voters. And so if both sides aren't talking to each other, hopefully, I'm gonna give this new government the benefit of the doubt and say, now is your chance to define yourself as being a truly national government. You got that older vote and now do something

for those who may not have voted for you. If you can do that, you know, you have the chance of being viewed positively in history. Sabrina Maddow, thank you so much for joining us. I hope you come back soon. Thanks for having me. I've just been to Specsavers and upgraded my lenses to extra thin and light with 50% off. Now, what else can I upgrade? My cat? Meow! Pffft!

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