The Ben Mulroney Show - How Canada and the U.S. drew up the borders around the Great Lakes

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Guests and Topics: -How Canada and the U.S. drew up the borders around the Great Lakes with Guest: Craig Baird, Host of Canadian History Ehx -The ‘singles tax’ of going it alone on saving for retirement with Guest: Emily Latimer, Journalist and writer of this Article in the Globe and Mail -Canada outlaws another 179 types of firearms, announces classification review with Guest: Tony Bernardo, Executive Director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association 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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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey, it's DJ First Dibs. I notice you've been listening to a lot of summer vibes lately. I get it. You're dreaming about vacations. Ooh baby, that's my jam.

With Sunwing's first dibs on summer savings, let us curate something stronger than what you've been listening to. Because while your playlist screams, I need a vacation, my algorithm suggests book before March 30th. Remember Sunwing, save more, do more. Book with your local travel advisor or at Sunwing.ca Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and you know when it comes to history one of the reasons I learned history is they say it you don't know where you're going if

you don't know where you've come from and Sadly in this country too many people Don't know where we've come from and it has become incumbent upon one man one brave Well researched man to teach us And it has become incumbent upon one man, one brave, well-researched man, to teach us clueless hordes about our own history. And so let's welcome to the show. And by the way, this segment on our podcast gets so much love. People love hearing from him.

So please welcome to the show the host of Canadian History X, Craig Baird. Craig, welcome to the show yet again. Oh, thanks for having me. Now, we're going to talk about borders in a moment. Canadian history X, Craig Baird. Craig, welcome to the show yet again. Oh, thanks for having me. Now, we're gonna talk about borders in a moment. And before we get to your thoughts on it, I wanna share with you a little history lesson. Here is some audio of an attack ad from the early 80s,

or maybe mid 80s on my dad. This was, I don't know if it was a political party or an interest group that put this out there. Let's listen to this attack ad on Brian Mulroney. Since we're talking about this free trade agreement, there's one line I'd like to change. Which line is that? Oh, this one here. It's just getting in the way.

Just how much are we giving away in the Mulroney free trade deal? And one thing that is that you can't tell because it's radio is that line that they're referring to is not a line in a budget. It is the border between Canada and the United States and the American is erasing the border because apparently that was what was going to happen. And by the way, I've seen the exact same imagery being used these days on attack ads on Pierre Poliev.

We're not gonna get political with you, Craig, but instead I wanna talk about a thread of yours that I saw on Twitter, X, about how the Great Lakes borders were drawn up, because I think we just take it for granted that these are bodies of water that are shared between Canada and the United States, but it's more complex than that.

Oh, absolutely it is. I mean, these are immense lakes, and a lot of other countries would try and claim all of the lakes for themselves. But Canada and the United States really started working very early on on how to share these lakes, even pretty much from the very beginning of the United States in the 1790s and onwards. And it wasn't just one treaty that kind of defined this. It was several treaties that figured out where the border was, how these lakes were going to be used.

Even the fact that we chose to not really have any warships in the lakes and kind of created as a peaceful zone for trade was way ahead of its time. Now were these were the borders drawn up lake by lake or because there's a number of treaties that you list. Do the do the treaties just keep going deeper and deeper into the Great Lakes as a whole or did we break them down lake by lake? It was pretty much drawn all at once. So we did we knew where the Great Lakes were.

We didn't have perfect surveying of them. So we didn't know the exact borders. So it was more or less kind of figuring out the middle part of it, at least when we first signed what was known as the Treaty of Paris, which kind of ended the American Revolution. But then as we get into the 1800s, and we have people like David Thompson, they're actually figuring out exactly where the border is. And that's when we start getting treaties like the Webster Ashburton Treaty of 1842 that resolves these issues and sets exactly where that border is going through the Great Lakes.

You know, and I love that you talk about this because it was such a timely thread, because you know, you've got this narrative that are trial balloon of a narrative that Donald Trump is seems to be floating south of the border that this is just an artificial line that could very easily be deleted or excised when in point of fact there was deliberation and thought and reasoning and meaning behind each and every one of these treaties therefore there is value and importance to the border. Absolutely and I mean every border is technically an artificial line that's been drawn but there's so much that goes into it there's treaties

they're surveying there's you, figuring out what parts belong to what countries. That's why we have that kind of unique little spot just west of Lake Superior where it seems like the United States just juts up a little bit into Canada because we didn't know exactly where the border was when we were signing a lot of these treaties and we kind of just figure things out as we go and parts of Alberta were parts of the United States at one point and that had to be swapped with Britain for another part so it's definitely a long process to really figure this out it's certainly not somebody with a ruler just kind of drawing a line through the through the country. Well I urge anybody listening that that you know your show is

fantastic but so is your so is your Twitter so how can people find you on Twitter? You can find me on Twitter by just searching for Craig Bear. That's C-R-A-I-G-B-A-I-R-D. All right, let's move on to the show this week. And you took a historical look at, is it Canada's unofficial sport or second official sport, but curling? Yeah, I would definitely say it's kind of

our unofficial winter sport. But I did look at curling beginning with the very early history when it was brought over here by Scottish immigrants. We like to think that curling was invented by Canadians and we have invented a lot of sports, but curling is not one of them. So I look at the history of curling, the history of the Briar and the history of the Scotties and just show why this is such an important sport to Canadians. Let's listen to a little bit of the snippet

of curling on Canadian history X. The company donated the McDonald-Brier trophy at the Manitoba Curling Association Bondspiel and sponsored the winners in 1925 so they could travel east to play exhibition games. A year later Manitoba played in the Quebec Bondspiel. The matches proved to be very popular and the company decided to sponsor a full national championship. The Briar, as we know it, was born. You're probably asking, why Briar? It refers to the woody root used at the time to make tobacco pipes. It was also a brand sold by McDonald Tobacco. And wanting to put their stamp on the tournament so to speak, the company called it the Briar. McDowell also created the Briar Tanker Trophy, which was originally named

the British Consul's Trophy. The heart-shaped patches, awarded to tournament winners, were modeled after a tin heart that was pressed into the centre of McDowell tobacco plugs with the slogan, the Heart of Tobacco. Alright, Craig, one of the things I found really interesting was that how Scott Paper Towels began sponsoring the Women's National Tournament in 82 and it became known as the Scotties. And it reminded me of the Blue Jays. They got their name because the main sponsor was going to be LeBat Blue. And so they wanted the word blue in the name so it could be LeBat Blue J

Baseball. Yeah, we have a lot of things like that that the sponsors really play a part in in creating and even in the even the Maple Leafs, they are named the Maple Leafs, but their colors came from Con Smythe's colors for his gravel hauling company. I didn't know that always plays a part. Oh, I had no idea. Lastly, I want to talk to you.

Now we talk oftentimes about the oligarchs of the old world and we talk about, you know, Russian oligarchs and the oligarchy that controls everything. And again, my eyes were open to a piece of our Canadian history that I did not know that Canada had its own oligarchy that pretty much controlled everything from the 1790s until the 1830s in what was called the family compact. Yeah, so what that was, was essentially a group of men over time who pretty much controlled everything from religious matters to the law to education to business, all of it. And it was all centered around these few individuals who controlled the Executive Council of Upper

Canada and the Legislative Council of Upper Canada and could make all of these decisions to really benefit themselves. And it really stifled progress in Canada as we move towards responsible government. And how did the responsible government wing wrest control from the family compact? Well it actually started with the upper and lower Canada rebellions of 1837-38 and that kind of ended the family compact's power because reforms came in soon after in the 1840s, the province or the upper Canada and lower Canada were united into the province of Canada, which further eroded their power and then responsible government finally came in in the late 1840s,

which took gave power back to the people and away from this small group of individuals at the top. A hard power can sometimes morph into soft power and quiet influence. Are those the families that existed as part of that compact? Are they still present? Are they still influential in Canada? Not to not to suggest anything nefarious, but just wondering if they still if they're still around? Not so much. No, a lot of these people were more politicians than business people. But not so much. But the family compact would eventually

evolve into the political parties we have today. So all of the political parties can really trace their origin back to this oligarchy that existed 200 and some odd years ago. Something tells me the People's Party of Canada was not part of the family compact of the 1790s. That's just probably not. Craig, remind everybody, where can they find your show?

You can hear my show on the Chorus Radio Network every weekend. Just look for your local listings and you can listen to the podcast Canadian History X and that's EHX on all podcast platforms. I hear on Twitter quite often people who do not like me say they feel dumber when they listen to my show, but I suspect that is not the case when they hear this segment because you sir make me feel just a little bit smarter. Really appreciate your time and looking forward to our next chat. Thanks for having me.

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and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. We're living in tough times. We're living in tough times where it's harder to make a dollar go as far as we need it to go. And it's so for a lot of people the idea of investing is It's it's it's a nice to have it's not a must-have right now food is a must-have for example and Increasingly given the times we're living in people who are living alone people who don't have a partner in life are finding it even People who are living alone, people who don't have a partner in life, are finding it even harder than those who have the economies of scale of two incomes in the home. And to discuss the singles tax and going it alone on saving for retirement,

I'm joined by the author of this Globe and Mail article, Emily Latimer. Emily, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Okay, so I hope I laid it out in a fair way. You know, I'm, I'm a, I'm, we're a family with my wife. And so we've got, you know, we've got income from various sources, but that's, I never really tried to put myself

in the shoes of a single person. Every time I think of a single person, I think of somebody with the freedom to move laterally and make choices unilaterally. Unilaterally and therefore there must be an empowerment that comes from that. I never looked at sort of what the liability could be of going it alone. Yeah, the people that I spoke to were really super open with me about how honestly saving for investment was like for their retirement was the last thing on their mind.

They were just trying to pay rent, honestly, and then groceries, of course, and utility, internet, gas, like transportation costs, all that stuff, which typically if you were a couple person, you could split with someone else. So that was definitely into their retirement money that they thought they might be able to save, maybe if they had someone else pick up half bills bills. Now let's level set for everybody. Are we comparing a single person to a couple or are we comparing a single person to a couple who may have kids because kids are expensive and they're not

really bringing a lot to the table as far as income? That's a good point. It was definitely just single people versus couples. It didn't really say whether or not in the study that the story was based on that they were talking about people with kids. But I know that that is definitely a drain on finances as well. Yeah. So where does the expression singles tax come in? Because to me, that implies almost a systemic pressure on a single person, on an individual. pressure on a single person, on an individual. Yeah, and I have to give my credit to the Globe copy editors for that one. I didn't invent that thing, but speaking with the person from Cooperators who did the survey, she mentioned to me that singles are often left out of

retirement conversations and this is kind of an unfair disadvantage for them. And after I wrote the article, I actually got a bunch of emails from people who said, it is a systemic problem. And especially for older Canadians who are single, maybe they're divorced or widowed, or maybe they just never were married ever. They were emailing me about the tax implications,

like they don't get some of the same tax benefits as people who have a marital status, which I thought was interesting, maybe for a different article, something to look into deeper, because like you, I never really considered that older Canadians were also struggling to piece together their income month to month as well,

and also kind of subject to higher tax taxes. How bad is it in terms of sort of the inability to invest for single people today? I mean, have the numbers just shot up drastically over the past few years? So it seems like well, first of all, they're actually more single Canadians than you know, 2030 years ago. And there are also more single people living alone in Canada than ever. And that can be due to a bunch of things, but basically people are delaying starting their families, getting married, all those milestone achievements, and they're more so living alone. So they have higher expenses, of course. But this

survey that I was basing the article off of said that they're, they're putting aside like 44% of single, they're putting aside less than $25 a month for investing. Yeah. And that really doesn't move the needle much. No, and less than $5,000 saved for retirement total. So that's not very much to go off of. Well, I'll tell you why this is an eye-opening article for me is because as, you know, I just turned 49 and I've got three kids and a wife and a mortgage and a dog. Whenever I read stories about younger generations, I'm reading about people who value travel and experiences. And it's this notion of having a disposable income on a level

that I can't imagine. And so to hear that there is a very serious problem affecting very serious people who just happen to be single is something is as a part of the conversation that I think has been lacking. And that's what everybody I spoke to for the story said. And the one man that I interviewed, he was 34 and he's in group chats with his buddies who do invest.

And they're also probably coupled as well. And they have the extra money, maybe they make more money too, and they're investing in stocks and having like these chats in the group chat. And he's like, he has nothing to add to this conversation. And it did to them feel like they're being held back from milestones like buying property, things like that.

Well, I've been in conversation with Emily Latimer. She wrote a piece in the Globe called The Singles Tax of Going It Alone on Saving for Retirement. Emily, thank you so much. Like I said, I hadn't thought about this before. Really appreciate that you brought it to my attention. Thanks so much. All right, let's turn our attention to Kevin O'Leary.

Mr. Wonderful, who has positioned himself in recent months as, so the go between, between Canada and the United States, explaining Canada, sometimes accurately, sometimes not so, to Americans. Here was Kevin O'Leary talking to Fox News' Jesse Waters about how now is the time for our two countries to make a deal.

We're in a little bit of a tiff, Jesse. Is that what they call it? A little poo poo right now. A little poo poo? Because there'soh-pooh right now. A little pooh-pooh? Because there's an election going on in Canada. Right. You've got to give them another 60 days to choose a new leader. And the guy will have the same mandate that Trump has, a majority mandate for four years.

And then let's start negotiating a union of the economies. He's not, can't sell. Listen, what really happened was Trudeau really, for lack of better words. Excuse my French piss Trump off He's gone. He got whacked on Sunday. He is El Morte gone. He's gone. He's history. Let's forget about him and Freelan who really made Trump crazy those were toxic Dysfunctional relationships, but he's gone. Let's focus on the next 60 days, let Canada elect a new leader, and let's cut a deal. Let's stop this crazy stuff.

Well, exactly, and he's actually right on this front. There's some other stuff he said that I think are untethered from practical reality. But on this front, if Donald Trump found an off-ramp that allowed him to claim some sort of victory and this threat of tariffs was lifted and certainty could return to the markets and Canada could finally get its act together and elect a government with a mandate. Then we could sit down as equals, one government to one government with

mandates from their people to renegotiate the trade deal that is so beneficial to both of our countries, but with this threat of tariffs the stock market is still is going to consistently tell Donald Trump you have you have picked the wrong move and It does not behoove anybody to live in an environment like this, especially when this is a self-imposed an environment like this, especially when this is a self-imposed, self-imposed chaos that we're dealing with. So good on Kevin O'Leary for highlighting it in a way only Kevin O'Leary can.

One thing I've noticed over the past few weeks is how terribly performing the Tesla stock has been. It's one of the worst performing stocks in the market right now. And I was curious to understand why there's the public perception of Elon Musk and how close he is to Donald Trump. And a lot of people don't like that. And there's a lot of reasons.

Fundamentally, it is a strong company. But when I saw that Donald Trump selected had a new Tesla in the White House driveway to show his support for Elon Musk, when the image of him getting into the Tesla made its way out into the world, Tesla's stock was up 5% in the market. That speaks to the strength and power of Donald Trump. It also speaks to, I mean, right, I mean that's lobbying if I've ever heard of it, but I don't think that

matters for Donald Trump. Anyway, congratulations if you own some Tesla stock today. You're feeling a little better than you did yesterday. some Tesla stock today. You're feeling a little better than you did yesterday. Welcome to the Ben Moroney Show. Thank you for tuning in across the Chorus Radio Network. I hope everyone is having a happy hump day. It's Wednesday, but we're going to go all the way back to Friday for this next story because as the entire country was focused on tariffs and Trump and the liberal leadership. The liberal government did what is called a Friday news dump where when nobody was looking, they quietly outlawed another 179 types of firearms. And because this is how you keep us safe. Don't forget, just a few hours later, three gunmen opened up firing into a crowded pub

injuring 12 people in the city of Toronto. There is no doubt in my mind that that was done with an illegal firearm that was brought over the border from the United States, but by all means, let's keep banning guns in Canada that were owned and are owned by law-abiding Canadian citizens. To talk more about this, let's welcome to the show Tony Bernardo, executive director

of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association. Tony, this is a cynical move if I've ever seen one. Yeah, it is all about election. That's what the whole thing is about. As you probably noticed, it wasn't duck hunters that were shooting up the pub that night. The police in Toronto are beside themselves. I mean, they keep telling the federal government where the problem lies and it's gang guns being imported illegally from the United States to the two

in the internet now saying like over 90 percent. When you consider it's common in the criminal element to take like a junkie old single shot shotgun and saw off the barrel. Yeah. You know that that's that's common and not near as common, apparently, as the ones coming from the US. Well, Tony, we always have to go back and look at the lay of the land when we hear news like this. And the lay of the land is that the government,

first of all, every single year, when the anniversary of the mass shooting at the École Polytechnique comes up, they use that as a political reason to either ban more guns or remind people that if you don't want to ban the guns, then you stand with the shooter who killed all of those women. It's a cynical and terrible and toxic ploy, but it happens every single year. Meanwhile, 179 more firearms are banned, except correct me if I'm wrong,

the people who own these guns are still in possession of these guns. That's correct. As a matter of fact, the last, I guess, four sets of bans, none of them have been collected yet, except for a small number, about 75,000 guns, I think it is, from the dealers. Now the dealers, this is to their benefit because they're sitting on four-year-old stock, they can't sell, the government has now put a prohibited sticker on that, and so the insurance rates for the dealer to insure the stock are through the roof. Yeah, we talked about that on this show. But like I can't, I wish I had somebody from the liberal government on to explain to me how if these guns are of such vital importance to be banned, why are they still in the possession of the gun owners themselves?

Like somebody has to make that make sense. Well I could make it make sense. The reason is because liberals don't have anybody to collect them. The police unions have all said, no way, we're not going to be the bad guy in this. And these aren't the crime guns. So why are we expending? Like we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars minimum to collect these guns. And I would project that even into the hundreds of thousands. You know?

Yeah. Well, let's talk. But we're talking. I'm speaking with Tony Bernardo, the executive director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association. We're talking about how Canada has now outlawed another 179 types of firearms. Talk to me about these firearms.

I didn't even know there were 179 types of guns to ban anymore. I thought they were the number of times I've heard of banning. What's getting banned at this point? We must be scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Well, we really are. We're talking about a bunch of shotguns. We're also got over 20 models of 22s. Now for those listeners who know anything about guns, 22s are like farm guns, they're plinkers, you go out and shoot tin cans with them, ammo's cheap, they're not very powerful, and no criminal is using them. Okay, 22 rifles. And this is what's happening. In the last ban, there were all kinds of firearm banned that were African hunting rifles.

These things are highly engraved, extremely expensive, some into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and chambered for cartridges suitable for shooting very large game. They're mostly collector's pieces now, of course, because those hunting activities don't really much exist anymore. Well, the liberals certainly love their performances,

and this to me is nothing but show and artifice and drama, and with absolutely no meat on the... Look, for the record, Tony, I'm not a... I'm completely indifferent to guns. I think I've shot two in my life. One of them actually kicked back and the scope hit me in the face. I was the only thing that bled that day.

And so I have no opinion one way or the other. If I never saw a gun for the rest of my life, it wouldn't matter to me, but I do appreciate that there is, you know, there are traditions and cultures associated with it. it for a lot of people in the lifestyles that they lead they are responsible gun owners and and to infantilize those people who are responsible and registered and have taken the courses and have never done run afoul of the law ever to turn them into

potential mass shooters is such a divisive thing. For the 2.3 million lawful gun owners in Canada, this has become very much a freedom issue. Yeah, yeah. The government is attacking us for absolutely no reason. And this has been going on now for almost 30 years. Oh, and they're playing, they're using the scare tactic as well. If you elect a Poliev government, there are gonna be guns all over the streets

and all the guns that have been banned are gonna be back in the hands of the people who bought them, nevermind the fact they're still in their hands because as you said, there is no manpower or plan to take them away. But it's another scare tactic and it's just, it's exhausting. But I wanna thank you, Tony, for being here. I'm sure that they'll ban a few more

before this government bereft of vision is out of office, perhaps to be replaced with a new liberal government. We'll have to see. But thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, Ben. Always a pleasure. Well, Mr. Wonderful himself, Kevin O'Leary,

who has positioned himself as the Trump whisperer on Fox News, was speaking with Jesse Waters about the notion of erasing the border. A lot of people are thinking that that's what Donald Trump wants to do. Here's what he thinks should actually happen. You know, I've always said this about Trump. Ignore the noise, look for the signal. He talked about it multiple times now.

Join the economies. You can't, they're not going to sell the country, but if you join the economies, it's the largest economy on earth China will never catch up because US is the largest consumer market on earth and Canada is the richest country on earth of all the things everybody needs every day So let's stop this crazy stuff because what really Trump wants is reciprocal tariffs If you want to sell butter out of her montage Quebec, 243% tariffs, so that's reciprocal. All the tariffs have to go.

Zero tariffs. Erase that border in terms of the economy and join the economies and everybody's going to do really well. It's like an arranged marriage. It should be because at the end of the day, Canadians and Americans are 95% the same DNA. Everybody's got family on both sides of the border. Yeah, Kevin O'Leary has to stop saying things like this. They are the largest economy, most powerful and influential country on the planet. Any arrangement that that interlocks

our economies and erases the border economically is an economic takeover of the United States by of Canada. Simple as that. Their regulations become our regulations, their rules become ours, their money becomes ours. That's how that's what happens. Now if you want to talk about what Doug Ford, the Ontario Premier has been talking about, about creating Fortress Amcan, about deepening the trade ties, lowering tariffs, lowering the hurdles by which Canadians can work in the states and vice versa. Those are things that I'm sure a lot of Canadians could get behind. But when you start using words like erase the border economically,

you are talking about an economic takeover of Canada full stop and there is nobody in this country that is down for that. manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk. Business.