The Ben Mulroney Show - How can we jump-start the economy after an abysmal decade?

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Can we jump-start the economy after an abysmal decade? with Guest: Tony Chapman, Host of the award winning podcast Chatter that Matters, Founder of Chatter AI -B’Nai Brith’s Shocking Audit of Antisemtic Incidents with Guest: Rich Robertson, B'nai Brith Canada's Director of Research and Advocacy 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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for dot CA today. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much for listening to us on the chorusorus Radio Network. We appreciate you finding us wherever you are. You might listen on a podcast network. You might listen on a streaming app. I don't care where you are. I don't care how you find us. I'm just glad you did. I was away over the weekend. I was in Washington for work. I was there as part of an organization that my father was a member of. And because of that, I get to rub shoulders with some very successful people from all walks of life, philanthropy, business, government, you name it.

I get to talk to them. And I was very curious to get their take on liberation day and the chaos that has ensued. And by and large, the sentiment was, this is a very big bet that the president is placing, and I don't know that you bet an entire economy on a theory. And so if it is a bet and it does prove right for Donald Trump, then he will be viewed as a visionary.

That's what some of them said. However, a lot of things have to go his way and he has to have the runway to get it done. And I don't know that he necessarily has that runway with the yet again, the stock market opening in the red today over a thousand point drop right off the bat. We'll have to see if that tide is stemmed in any way. There are some indications that certain countries

are wanting to negotiate down the tariffs on both sides with the EU actually stepping up and saying that they are in early talks with the US to do just that, but it's not a straight line between here and there. It's not a straight line between the status quo and a tariff free relationship. There's a lot that they have to get through.

And again, timing is everything. How much time does the president have? I don't know how much time he has. It doesn't seem like he has that much time. There are already forces lining up against him, louder voices that are coming out in opposition to this bet that he has placed. And we'll have to see whether he has the political coattails to weather this self-inflicted

wound that is the demise of trillions of dollars in market evaluation and people's investments and we'll have to see time the only thing that's going to prove this out one way or the other is time and fortunately we've got that on the Ben Mulroney show and we will keep you apprised as the situation develops. It's also interesting, I was down in Washington when Alex Ovechkin beat, beat Wayne Gretzky's seemingly unbreakable goal scoring record. He tied it when I was in Washington, he beat it yesterday. Let's listen to the moment where he became the all time a breakable goal scoring record. He tied it when I was in Washington. He beat it yesterday. Let's listen to the moment where he became

the all time goal scorer in the NHL. Send in Wilson on the flank, cross eyes, Ovechkin fires, score! The chasing days are done! Alex Ovechkin is the greatest goal scorer in the history of the NHL. Alex Ovechkin is the greatest goal scorer in the history of the NHL. Alex Ovechkin is the greatest goal scorer in the history of the NHL, but he is not the great one.

He is not Wayne Gretzky. Wayne Gretzky was on hand for the baton passing and that was, I think, very magnanimous of him. And we're going to be talking with Wayne Gretzky in the next hour of the Ben Mulroney show at 1117 Eastern Time. We're going to talk to him about this monumental moment. We're also going to ask him about sort of this, the precarious position that he's found himself in, where people with political axes to grind or political agendas are using him one way or another.

He is not an overly political person and it's going to be very interesting to get his insights as to how it feels to be ascribed motivations that he probably doesn't have. So Wayne Gretzky joins us on the Ben Mulroney show in the next hour. So tune in for that. As we look back at Donald Trump and his tariffs, look, he promised everybody that it would be, everybody would be on easy street when he got elected. You saw the explosion in excitement that and bullishness that people had on the future when he was elected. You saw it with the stock market skyrocketing upward.

You saw it in commodities, you saw it in Bitcoin. Everywhere you looked, people were aggressively positive about the future and the U.S. economy. Well, that is not the case right now. And he's trying to get people to not look at the stock market, even though he used that as an indicator of how great he was as a president up until this moment. Now he's saying that the tariffs are economic medicine,

despite trillions of dollars in value being wiped out of the US stock market. And look, Ben Shapiro has the ear of the president. Ben Shapiro is one of the biggest podcasters in the United States. Ben Shapiro is one of the biggest podcasters in the United States. Ben Shapiro has millions upon millions of followers and listeners.

Danielle Smith, the Alberta premier, has been derided for going down to talk to him and for going down to plead the Canadian case. You saw last week and the week before that those conversations clearly found an open mind in Ben Shapiro because he then advocated for the Canadian position on his show. Here's Ben Shapiro talking about how he believes that this tariff policy is misguided. President Trump declared that it was in fact Liberation Day, his giant tariff policy that

he just dropped on the market unilaterally, probably unconstitutionally. Trump's reciprocal tariffs impose hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes on Americans, be the largest tax increase since the Revenue Act of 1968. One of the biggest tax increases on American consumers in the history of America. And it's going to cost American consumers. It will cost American producers who use inputs from other countries. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted immediately more than a thousand points. The S&P 500 plummeted more than three percent. The Nasdaq plummeted immediately more than a thousand points. The S&P 500 plummeted more than three percent. The NASDAQ plummeted almost four and a half percent.

There are real world implications for this sort of stuff. Trade wars are in fact not good and not easy to win, particularly if you don't actually have a plan. It is predicated on a bad idea of how international trade works. A fundamental misunderstanding of trade deficits. Trade deficits are a, they're an accounting procedure. Trade deficits have pretty much nothing to do with the health of an economy. Yeah, I think he goes on and points out that the last time the United States had a trade surplus was the Great Depression. So one doesn't necessarily have anything to do

with the other. And just, I aired that for you because I wanna show you that there are voices, loud voices, influential voices, and not just the predictable voices that you would expect from the other side of the political spectrum, lining up, pushing back on Donald Trump to say, this is not a policy that will yield the results

you think it will. The problem, however, is Donald Trump is genetically allergic to reversing course or apologizing or saying he was wrong. So how this plays out over the next few days, weeks, I don't know if it's gonna go on months, we'll have to see, but this is a self-inflicted wound due to one man's vision.

And you know, I suppose you could say he earned a mandate that allows him a little bit of leeway, but has he been given that leeway? Has he exceeded that leeway? Well, that's for others to determine. That's for the Americans to determine this is this is a mess that they started and they're gonna have to figure out a way to clean it up. Our own mess is the election and Mark Carney, Mark Carney has a French problem. I don't think that's a rude thing to say.

I saw him give a speech once where he spoke very well in French. I didn't realize it was because he was speaking off of prepared notes when he needs to speak extemporaneously. It doesn't come across as somebody who's spent any time trying to improve his French. And Quebec is important to the liberals. If they want to get a majority and one third of francophones think that his French is not good enough for him to be prime minister. Now there's some people saying, oh, two thirds think it's great. No, they don't. I guarantee you that of those two thirds, they're waiting to see how he acquits

himself in the debate, which I believe is next week. So we'll have to see about that. Meanwhile, he is being touted as the only guy who can fix the problems that we've got because he's got this resume and he's a banker and an economist. Let's listen to what he had to say in 2020 about deficits and inflation. Let me ask you a question from your history as a banker. Are you worried about the deficits at all? Are you worried about rising potential inflation?

And do I worry about inflation? Look, I in the in the horizon of normal central bankers, central bankers, two to three years, the horizon for monitoring policy, it is it is unlikely to materialize and to a serious extent. In fact, we need some inflation to to come off. In 2020, he said that inflation wasn't going to wasn't on the horizon. Does this sound like somebody tethered to a reality that is going to bet better your life? Good faith question. Love it. Answer. Okay, this next segment, I want this to be a positive

conversation. There are a lot of people they may be supporting the liberals right now, who also acknowledged that the last 10 years have been a disaster. people, they may be supporting the liberals right now, who also acknowledge that the last 10 years have been a disaster, and yet they feel that sticking with this horse will change that. That's fine. We're going to stick a pin in that debate. Instead, what I want to do is I want to look forward and I want to talk about what can we do as a nation to improve?

What are some of the big picture ideas that maybe defy policy, maybe they defy politics? Let's talk about the things that we as a nation can do so that the next 10 years look nothing like the last 10 years. And someone I love talking to about these sorts of things, Tony Chapman, host of the award-winning podcast, Chatter That Matters, as well as the founder of Chatter AI. Tony, welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show and happy Monday. Happy Monday. I love talking to you as well.

So that's what I want to do. I don't want this to be a rag on the last 10 years. Let's acknowledge that there have been massive failures that have put us in a hole. And let's look to the big ideas that could spur investment, get us moving as a country. And let's, so I throw it to you, my friend. Well, the first one I would look at is tourism. It represents 10% of the world's global economy. It is the last bastion for hiring workers that sort of are immune from AI. And Canada has some of the most beautiful places in the world. But just instead of just relying on geography, if we focus on the place to be the experiences, and I give you cite two examples,

upcoming podcasts, Fogo Island, where they took a finger out of Newfoundland and created the Fogo Island Inn that's now world renowned. Everything that goes into that inn is owned by the local people, the rugs, the furniture, the food, it's created this circular economy and it's kept young people there. I would argue the same thing with Cabot. If you're a golfer and you look at it... Oh, I've been there. It's a special place. It's a special place and people from all over the world come and when they do, they share it on their social media. And this is what Canada first and foremost... Tofino BC?

Tofino BC is a great one for surfing. And there's so many of them that we could be looking at beyond the fact that we have a high tower in Toronto and we have Niagara Falls. What are the exp- and they're great places, but what are the places to be human again? Longevity, rediscovering yourself, nature, everything that Canada offers, present that to the world, build it and they will come. Yeah, no, I love that idea. Also making it easier to get to those places and maybe having, look, Fogo Island is great if you can afford it, but what they've proven there

is that experiential model could work perhaps on a more budget conscious scale. So if you could have some sort of smaller, cheaper analog to Fogo Island somewhere in that area where people could experience and enjoy that that what we have naturally in Canada but on a on a smaller budget I think those are the types of things that could actually help as well. Absolutely and again you can't be all things to all people there's certainly places in Canada that are very much sort of that, you know, the youth economy that really wants to see Canada

for $25 a day. My point is it's got to be about the experience. It's got to be memories that last a lifetime. That would be my first one. The second one I would call is old and new. So we've got these old resources sitting in Canada. Let's harvest them. Let's provide them to our allies. But as we extract them from the ground, let's also take some of the royalties that we earn and fund a new economy, intellectual resources. So we're combining both to create this new wealth for Canada. What I mean by intellectual resources is entrepreneurs, there's 100,000 less entrepreneurs today than there was 10 years ago.

That is one of the most horrific statistics because entrepreneurship is going to power the new economy. I want these ideas staying in Canada. I wanna capitalize in Canada. I want entrepreneurs around the world to say, to get first mover advantage, I'm gonna come to Canada. And if we have that capital pool available, people are gonna go, where else would I wanna build

my dreams than a country that is as beautiful as Canada? So that would be my second thing. It's really focused on. I wish that the conversation around than a country that is as beautiful as Canada. So that would be my second thing. Yeah, and I gotta say, I wish that the conversation around natural resource extraction wasn't do we do it or not? I wish it was, how do we do it? How do we do it in the most environmentally sustainable way? How do we do it to have the most impact on Canadians?

How do we do it so that we are selling it in a way that helps spread Canadian values around the world? How do we do it so that we are selling it in a way that helps spread Canadian values around the world? How do we do it so that we can then take the earnings and fund our social safety net? But as you just said, also with an eye towards the future and building the next economy. I think like that to me is how I wish that conversation was going. And it doesn't because it's either one way or the other. Think about the peace of mind to an ally that says, my house is being heated by Canadian liquid natural gas versus a state that wants to destroy me. How about Canadian food?

And I don't want to just sell commodities. We've got the largest reserves of uranium. Why aren't we leading in the new micro nuclear reactors? So we combine the two and say, listen, let's go upstream with these commodities, Canadian food around the world. Where are you going to want to have your food from the efficacy of Canadian soil or water or fresh air, or in a farm that's being manufactured in a country that has zero interest in terms of what you're eating and all that just focused on the profit they can make from it. So this is what Canada can stand for

and really revitalize. One last one, Ben, look at your show. You've become one of the top podcasts already in Canada. You're heading that way in North America. We're very good at content. You got one of the top commanders in George. Why aren't we creating content and exporting it around the world? Instead of subsidizing CBC,

say, CBC, look at BBC with Downton Abbey, with Top Gear, some of the shows that they've produced around the world that they're making a fortune on. Why don't we use Canadian content creators and export our content to the world versus just subsidize for a local news that might have lost its value and relevance? That's what CBC should be doing. Okay. What do you mean by take the long game on health? Well, here's the and relevance. That's what CBC should be doing. Okay. What do you mean by take the long game on health? Well, here's the other thing, like family doctors, we have three choices,

beg them not to retire, find a way to bring more in or build more medical schools. That's one solution. How about the other solution is the long game is AI. In the future, 99% of what a family practitioner does can be done by AI. As long as you've done diagnostic testing, as long as you have genome mapping in your body, as long as they know precisely who you are, that AI can prescribe 95% of the reasons you'd go to a family doctor. And more importantly, it can point you in the direction to a specialist. And the family doctor can be revitalized and reinvented again, go upstream and solve big medical problems because they got access to AI as well. So instead of

just being this sort of facilitator and curator that moves people painfully through a system that still relies on fax machines, for God's sake, let's use AI and say we're gonna lead the world. There's a company called BioAero de Calgary that knows it's possible because guess what? Canadian technology has been sold to Singapore and Saudi Arabia as we speak versus Canada would be leading at it. Re-imagining education, talk to me about this. And we only have about a minute and a half left for both of these. We spent so much time on ideology and horsehair blankets and all the things we've done wrong in the past and not enough getting our youth to be focused on what is it going to take to compete in the future where jobs are in the cloud, AIs in every corner of the marketplace, collaboration, creative, critical thinking. That's the ideas that we need to foster. And I want to draft these kids in high school based on their interests, like we draft them in high school based on their sports and athletic ability, move them through a system where they graduate without any education expenses

and hit the ground running. That's the future of education. So there's betting on the winners. That also sort of seems to dovetail into this last one of reward the builders. Yeah, reward the entrepreneurs. I want $10 million that your capital gains is tax-free in the United States. Reward people for building a business in Canada. You keep it here for 10 years. You hire people. We're going to provide you capital and we're going to let you to take your rewards tax-free because you took the risk.

And you've spread that risk in terms of building our economy. And for that, we thank you. We want to be the home, the epicenter for entrepreneurship around the world. Tony, I want to have an optimistic conversation that's steered away from the partisan politics that we have to deal with because there's an election. And I think you hit the nail on the head, man. That was an aggressively optimistic view

on how we can build the next 10 years. I want to thank you very much. I think you've set a great tone for this week for me here at the Ben Mulroney Show. And I'll talk to you soon. All right. Bless you, my friend. When I was growing up, I took great pride in the belief and the knowledge that no matter where you were from or what you believed, you could come to Canada,

start a life and you were welcome and you were welcome to be who you were. Diversity was our strength is what I believed and I still believe. However, unless you have been living under a rock, or you have turned a willing and blind eye to what has been happening in our cities, in this country over the past couple of years, as it relates to our Jewish brothers and sisters, Canadian citizens, and the fear and the violence and the threats under which they have lived, then I can't help you.

I can't help you. You got to realize that something has fundamentally changed. And I'm not speaking from a place of feeling. There are statistics to back it up. And just a little while ago, B'nai B'rith Canada issued a report. They gave their annual audit of anti-Semitic violence in this country.

For the record, I have a professional relationship with Benet-Brieth, but they revealed some startling, disappointing, and sickening numbers that need to be addressed. And here to talk about that audit and what it means for our country. I'm joined by Rich Robertson, the Neighborhood Canada's Director of Research and Advocacy.

Rich, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for having me on again, Ben. Okay, so, I mean, listen, it's a very detailed audit, but I think for the purposes of this conversation, why don't we talk about the top line issues that are highlighted in the audit, the things that every listener should carry with them over the course of today.

Absolutely. So we saw a 7.4% rise in antisemitism compared to 2023. And we've seen a over 120% increase in antisemitism since 2022. And this is extremely troubling then because there's a new baseline, a new normal for antisemitism in Canada. And it's absolutely unacceptable that we are tolerating sustained levels of antisemitism like the ones that were witnessed in 2024.

Yeah, a lot of us hoped as we watched this violence and this harassment and these threats unfold, we hoped that things would go back to normal. After this uptick, everything would come back down and we would go back to being the Canadians that we used to be. And instead, what you're saying is the research bears out that no, no, the baseline has now moved up.

Now we're living in a world where it just, a normal day for the average Jewish Canadian is that they have to deal with far more many threats and harassments and threats of violence than they ever did in the past. That is absolutely correct. The statistics do not lie. We witnessed an average of 17 incidents per day

of Jewish hatred in Canada. That is an affront to this nation's morals and values. This is not the Canada that I know and love. This is not the Canada that Jewish people immigrated to from around the world to pursue a better life and to contribute to this society. The gravity of the anti-S, which we saw is also worth noting. We're talking about arson, fire bombings, shootings, bomb threats, willful promotion of hatred in the advocating of genocide. These are things that are having a profound impact on the day-to-day lives of Jewish Canadians. And meanwhile, the number that sticks out to me, besides the 17 daily incidents up from eight in 2022, is 6,219 incidents of antisemitism in 2024.

Can you give us a sense, like what is the definition of antisemitism that Bené Brith uses? So Bené Brith uses the IRA definition of antisemitism. That's Canada's definition of antisemitism. It's the definition of anti-Semitism. That's Canada's definition of anti-Semitism. It's the definition of anti-Semitism that has been adopted by the majority of provinces in this country. And it's a definition of anti-Semitism that we feel is best suited to identify the contemporary anti-Semitism that we're

witnessing, which includes your traditional anti-Semitic tropes, but also instances of anti-Zionism that manifest as anti-Semitic tropes, but also instances of anti-Zionism that manifest as anti-Semitism. And you know, I got really sick and tired a few months ago of hearing politicians and their platitudes saying, this is not who we are. And you know, what the numbers are saying is, no, with this new normal, this is exactly who we are.

And it's shameful, but those people saying, this is not who we are, that it's it's shameful but those those people saying this is this is not who we are that's like to me that's akin to people in the United States offering hopes and prayers for for for people after a mass shooting that that's people who don't want to do anything about the problem but want to sound like they care that's exactly correct we've become tolerant of anti-semitism in, Ben, that I don't think the Jewish community here in Canada ever imagined would be possible. And the time

for platitudes has long since passed. We need meaningful action from all levels of government, from all stakeholders. The reality is that Jewish life in Canada is being compromised. And that means that Canadian values are being compromised and we have to do better. Bené Brith is an organization that fights intolerance in all of its forms. And is it's inaccurate to suggest that it is an organization that only focuses on antisemitism. But there will be some who hear this interview and they'll say, all right, now do anti,

or now do Islamophobia. And while I have no doubt that the numbers of, the numbers for Islamophobic issues have in fact gone up over the past few years, I don't have the data, but maybe you do. This is not an equivalency worth pursuing. In the case of antisemitism, we have fewer people being targeted more

than any other type of hate as far as I'm concerned. That is correct. Per capita, Jews have been the most targeted religious minority here in Canada. And we have to fight all forms of hatred and that is what the neighborhood of Canada is committed to doing, Ben. But as my colleague David Meadis said earlier this morning during our press conference, we have to put the worst first. Anti-

semitism is often considered the canary in the coal mine and a worsening crisis of anti-semitism is indicative of a worsening crisis of hatred in general. So we have to fight antisemitism in order for us to confront hatred and racism in all of its forms. But then, you know, I look to what I saw on social media over the weekend, where yet again, protesters took over a major intersection in the city of Toronto, one person climbing scaffolding to light an

Israeli flag on fire. I heard another protester say that these protests will never end. And I've got to wonder, you know, that we have tools, we have levers of power, we have people in authority who could exercise the bare minimum of their power to, to tamp down on these things. And they seem unwilling. I don't, they're not unable, they're unwilling to do the work.

We're being held hostage as a society by a virulent minority. And we need to come to terms with that. And we need to confront this minority. The statistics indicate that the vast majority of Canadians do not harbor the views that are being propagated by this caustic cohort within our society and it's up to all of us to speak up and to not remain silent. Silence, sorry Ben, in the face of this worsening crisis. Yeah, you know, and what I like to point out is cities like Toronto and Vancouver

and Montreal and Ottawa, they are they are exceptionally multicultural to a point that it's been a point of pride for us as a nation. And I ask the question, what would happen if every single cultural community imported the outrage from their country into our city and took to the streets every time something happened on the other side of the world that they felt was was so egregious that they did had the right to paralyze a city, we would cease to exist as a society. That's correct. We are a society built on multiculturalism on

pluralism on tolerance and respect for different values. And unfortunately, that tolerance, that respect is not being given to Jewish Canadians at this time. And it's maligning not only our way of life, but it's maligning the entire country. Rich Robertson of B'nai, British Canada. If people want to read this audit, where can they find it real quick?

You can access it through our website. You can access it through our social media. And I would encourage everyone to read this audit because it's a start wake-up call. Thank you very much, my friend. I appreciate it. This is our national shame. And if we don't deal with it, it's going to become absolutely who we are.

There's no limit to how far criminals will go to cover their tracks, but investigators will go even further to uncover the truth. I'm Nancy Hicks, a senior crime reporter for Global News. This season on Crime Beat, I'll take you from the crime scene to the courtroom and inside some of Canada's most high-profile cases and some you've likely never heard of before. Search for and listen to Crime Beat on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever

you find your favorite podcasts.