The Ben Mulroney Show - How do we break through these interprovincial trade barriers and unleash our economy?

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Guests and Topics: -How do we get through these interprovincial trade barriers and unleash our economy? with Guest: Jean Philippe Fournier, Former Policy advisor to Québec’s Minister of Finance -I guess the Tech Revolution doesn’t apply to everything: Tim Hortons brings back the cups for Roll Up to Win contest with Guest: Mohit Rajhans Mediologist and Consultant, ThinkStart.ca -Welcome to University. Good Luck Finding a Place to Live with Guest: Katrya Bolger, Journalist whose work has appeared in the Walrus, Globe and Mail, the Montreal Gazette 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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with iGaming Ontario. So we're on the other side at least for 30 days of the terror threat So we're on the other side, at least for 30 days, of the terror threat. And now we've got to figure out what to do next. Because we dodged a bullet, but it also exposed a lot of flaws in our Canadian Federation. François Legault, the Premier of Quebec, was very clear about what he sees as some needs moving forward. What do we do? Anyway, if there is or not some tariffs, we need to have diversification of market. So it includes working better with other provinces, but also with Europe, with other countries than US. We have 71% of our exportation going to U.S. It's a lot too much. And we have also to increase our productivity because

right now my big fear is when you compare Canada to United States, there's something like 30% of difference for the productivity. So we really need to work all of us in Canada on our productivity. Please welcome to the show Jean-Philippe Fournier, vice president with Teneo strategies and communication, the communications business, and also former policy advisor to Quebec's minister of finance and free market enthusiast. Jean-Philippe. Welcome to the show. Hi, Ben. Thanks for having me on. So, so all right, if I when I heard when I heard the the premier of Quebec speaking that way, I said, oh, we may have an opportunity here of to really dig into these interprovincial trade barriers that has been the the story of the day for the last few weeks. Because correct me if I'm wrong,

but it feels on the outside looking in that Quebec would be the hardest nut to crack in terms of some of these inter-provincial trade barriers. That's definitely true in terms of Quebec being a laggard. And there's a whole bunch of reasons for that. But one thing that's encouraging is that this whole tariff situation has kind of put these interprovincial trade barriers back into focus. And the upside and the costs that these barriers put on provinces is such a staggering number and has such potential

to get rid of them that, yes, terrorists are scary. Yes, they're coming. They might not, who knows, but if they do hit, they'll hit hard. That even that provides an excuse to look to remove the barriers that honestly have been in place on various forms since confederations right 150 plus years Then any excuse is good, but you're right. Quebec is Quebec has been a laggard You know for a bunch of reasons and maybe we can talk about those but you know, one of them is for example language, you know Nurses can't come work to Quebec unless they speak French which you know, one of them is, for example, language, you know, nurses can't come work to Quebec unless they speak French, which, you know, in and of itself is kind of a de

facto barrier of basic competency, right? But even when you look at the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, which was signed about six, seven-ish years ago, Quebec is the one with the most number of exceptions. It has about 36 of them. And then you have, you know, the number of exceptions per province, you know, they vary wildly. Some provinces are laggards, like Quebec, right,

with 20, 30 exceptions. They have others that are leading the pack, like Alberta. Alberta only has six. Well, let's let's level set with everybody, because you did a great service to Canada in your, your Twitter thread a few days ago, I think it was a couple of days ago, where you laid out your experience trying to take these, these provincial trade barriers down, you explain what they are, why they exist, why they become so onerous. So why don't you give everyone a Coles Notes version of that thread? Yeah, so the one thing, the one takeaway from interprovincial

trade barriers is that unlike tariffs, where it's essentially a flat number of attacks, it's, you know, if you import this thing, it's going to cost 25% more, that's your tariff. Inter-provincial trade barriers are a little bit more sneaky than that. It's kind of a knock-on effect of a diverging set of regulations that has been over the years, piled on one after the other without any really regard as to what impact that would have on inter-propential trade. So for example, the one example that I used on that Twitter thread was this stuffing for seat car seats and not just car seats, it's also for,

you know, you know, any kind of chair or whatever. But essentially in Quebec, there was a different set of regulations saying that the kind of stuffing that you can put into your chair had to meet certain set of criteria. It had to be synthetic, et cetera, better for the environment, et cetera. Whereas in Ontario, which by the way,

is the province that makes all the cars and has a huge manufacturing sector, they could put kind of whatever they wanted in terms of materials to stuff your chair and so you couldn't bring the chair made in Ontario into Quebec because it wasn't the stuff that was put in it wasn't allowed to be used. Yeah and you lay it out very well that they probably started with the best of intentions, but now everyone's gone off in their own direction and they can't work together because everyone is so far gone down their own path. Exactly, exactly.

And that's, you know, getting to work on that is so much harder than just getting a tariff off which is clear, which is a number. It's finding them, it's identifying where they differ between provinces and then it's- And then dealing with the pushback from stakeholders. That's another thing that you brought up. It's that this is going to make a lot of people angry. And these people who are gonna push back against it

are gonna feel like they are the exception. They should get the carve out. But if we did that for everybody, then we'd be exactly where we are today. Well, exactly. Everyone, everyone already has a car. Right. Everyone already has gotten those exceptions. And now we have the equivalent.

And just for Quebec, it's the equivalent of a 25% tariff. There's various. So where do you have the 25% tariff? But it's from barriers. Yeah. Right. So we're we have the 25% tariff? But it's from barriers, right? So we have this huge upside to get rid of, but you're going to get people yelling and screaming and, you know, and the big thing as well is that every single one of these people who

have their protected area of, you know, over trade manufacturing, they think they're operating in, you know, Canadian or Quebecers or Ontarians best actress. Yeah, yeah. They think that this is, this is a good thing, right? They're doing a service to the country, but it's, it's not, we're driving up costs. They're protecting their small little piece of the pie as opposed to sort of relinquishing control and accepting that the pie can grow. Exactly. Right. It's, it's, it's concentrated. that the pie can grow. Exactly right. It's it's it's concentrated. It's a diffuse benefit, very concentrated downfall for a few people which costs them money. Right. Now what do you think of Pierre Poliev's suggestion that when he becomes prime minister that he's

going to offer free trade incentives to each province for every trade barrier they take down? incentives to each province for every trade barrier they take down. Yeah. So he came up with the video just the day after of publishing that thread and it is great timing. And I think it's fantastic because it hits this two most important things, right? It hits labor mobility with his blue seal, which is, you know, it's crazy when you look at, you know, the doctors who want to want to work from one province to another or construction workers or whatever, and the regulatory side. And those are two very different set of things to fix because the incentives are very different. And Pierre seems to propose something that

would finally hopefully get people to start moving and reducing the barriers and that's giving the financial incentive to get rid of it and I think that that could hopefully get some provinces to take a second look and say like okay maybe now I'm ready to you know confront these lobbyists or these special interest groups because there's a little bit more in it for me. Because in my experience, when provinces look to remove these barriers, it's really hard to see the immediate upside. Jean-Philippe, we've got to leave it there, but I thank you so much.

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Mohit, welcome back to the show. Ben, nice to hear your voice. So everything that is old is new again. And we're seeing it play out in real time. People love the roll up the rim to win. I don't roll my R's when I say that, but Tim Hortons and people were, they're heartbroken, crestfallen, if you will,

Mohit, when the physical rolling of the rim was taken away in favor of technology. And I guess it was an app for a while or something to do with the Tim Hortons app. And now it looks like they're bringing back the cups for the roll up the rim to win contest. Yeah, so what's interesting about this conversation is that I was actually there, let's say on site, when these conversations

were early have happening between this transition between, you know, are they going to put out cups, where you can roll up rims and have an app? Will they both live in the same time? And there was a two three year period where both of these sort of options existed for the roll up the rim franchise. For anyone not familiar, the Tim Hortons Roll Up the Rim campaigns are phenomenally successful and almost patriotic for some people when it comes down to how they play it with these coffee cups. And for the last five to seven years, the actual physical rolling up has been negated and people can only play with

the app and that they're actually losing traction with they found that people were not actually participating as much in the roll up to rim to win even though the digital adoption has gone higher in the world yeah well because we are we are a tactile people like we like to touch things we like to feel things you know if we're if we're close i remember there was a scene in the movie, Star Trek First Contact, where they go back in time to this pivotal time in history and there's a rocket ship that's gonna take off and then they're gonna meet the Vulcans

and that's gonna change history. And Data, the robot, is with Captain Picard and he, Captain Picard puts his hand on the rocket and Data, who's a robot, doesn't understand. He says, why are you doing that? He says, it makes it more real. And Data doesn't understand that because touching it shouldn't make it any more or less real. But in this instance, there's satisfaction from rolling up a physical rim. It makes it more real. Okay. But it's also very disgusting. And it's more like biting up the rim than it is rolling up the rim.

I have never seen some sort of interaction with, you know, have you seen somebody try to hand in one of those coupons? I still feel like we're putting ourselves back a little bit from the actual point. Mohit, this is a bed that Tim Hortons made. Nobody told them to offer up something called roll up the rim to win. They did it. They made us fall in love with it. And then they tried to take it away. So this is their lot in life. And they got to suck it up.

Yeah, I agree. I think that we're in a situation right now. It's going to be very funny to see people go back to rolling up. But what some people will be disappointed when they realize their cups aren't the ones. It'll be interesting to see. But in all seriousness, one of the things I should say is that people who actually are into loyalty points and programs and all that sort of stuff, they'll continue to use the Tim Hortons app the way it was meant to be. This is just not the contest that actually found success with it. All right, let's move on.

People who listen to this show know that I repeat time and time again that I'm a best practices guy find something that works out in the world. And I don't care if it's from the left or the right. If it works, I will support it. And it feels to me like we have found a best practice as it relates to what to do with the scourge of cell phones in schools. Okay, so it's interesting that you you Bolly it up that way, because I think that you and I have spoken enough and we have our own children and where we kind of like I feel like we're making concessions now here a bit when it comes down to letting kids have cell phones in classrooms and figuring out what the optimal rule could be to

have academic goals achieved when technology is in their class. But the truth is even when we look at what we're talking about right now the the McKinsey Price, this two hour learning revolution that they're talking about giving the ability to keep kids away from devices for up to six hours at a time to really reclaim their minds when it comes down to education. Even when you have that in play, we are still in a situation where it's not consistent. So we will see certain societies start to use

and manage their cell phone use inside of classrooms properly. And therefore their kids being educated in a different way. But we can't necessarily think to ourselves that just locking things away for a six hour period is going to be the answer for our kids being just as ready for the real world problems. I don't know, Mohit. I don't know that my kids need to be educated through the prism

of a cell phone. They were born with a cell phone in their hands. They know how to use a cell phone. We don't need to teach them through a cell phone. So the idea of putting the cell phone away so that their brains can develop the way nature intended is, I think, the goal here, no? A great point. And I'm not advocating for your kid to be having a phone on their hip early in life.

Instead, what I'm thinking a little bit more about is the fact that, you know, what's the difference between a laptop and a phone? And what's the difference between, you know, kids who find different ways to message each other on one app versus the other one or one gaming system. We can't unfortunately blame the phone anymore. And it's not the social media anymore. It's several different apps. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I feel like we're playing that weird game where it's just like, oh, we can't watch, you know, but all the more reason to get rid of it. Mo hit that there's so many distractions on that phone. And it's a game of whack a mole.

If you ban WhatsApp, another app will take its place. If you ban Snapchat, they'll be on TikTok. So might as well just take them away and have them connect on a human level as opposed to friending somebody through an app. Yeah, I agree. I think one of the things that we ended up seeing through this study that we're speaking about is that it gave teachers the feeling that they could prioritize teaching and not feel like they were constantly disciplining kids. I think we forget that as people outside of the classroom sometimes about how disruptive this world can be.

Also the emergency communication with kids was reinstated through the office system, which I find interesting because for the longest time that had fallen off in certain schools thinking that there was direct contact with parents. So I like a lot of things that we see for mitigation, I just think that we need to see a way forward and not just a screenless one. Okay, let's talk about the revolution in wearables, specifically glasses, augmented reality glasses, we the first time I ever saw augmented reality glasses was the Google Glass.

And that was not long for this Earth. I think it was a great test of what the technology could become. But that was that. And then there's all sorts of AR and VR headsets. And now Apple is scrapping their AR glasses, backing out of competing with Meta's Ray-Bans. Yeah, so this is interesting because I tried to contact Apple

to get verification on this. I think one of the biggest problems that ends up happening with Mac-related products is there's a lot of insider talk about things and products that don't necessarily ride the official train, especially through their website. So this project, for example, isn't the Apple Vision Pro, which came out earlier, which people might confuse as being sort of their foray into XR and VR. Instead, this was a project

codenamed N107 that's being reported as being completely scrapped, something that was supposed to rival what Meta was putting out with their Ray-Ban. The idea now is that there was supposed to be less need for you to be carrying around your phone and that you could have your virtual world be something that you wear as simple as your sunglasses. I think the biggest problem that I've heard about through the reporting is that it had excessive battery power, you still needed a monster amount of connectivity and the world necessarily wasn't begging for another Apple product to be a certain price range to get into their ecosystem. So whether they've actually used this and their Apple vision pro to stop and say this

market's not thirsty for this yet is one thing. But I do think that there's a monster opportunity right now in the training side of things, Ben, where all of this technology has to come together because that's the only way I think that people will start to see real value of it. I don't think people want to put on these big headsets and just immerse themselves like they're in a movie theater each time. Oh, I don't know. I think, I think in a few years, the Apple Vision Pro, for example, is going to be half the size and half the price. And it's not, it's, yeah. And you're not going to be wearing it the same way.

But you know, the way I look at it is if you wanted a 100, a 100 inch screen in your living room, it would cost you what, five grand? And yeah. And $250 to move it. Yeah. And exactly. And meanwhile, you can get the exact same experience five grand and yeah and two hundred fifty dollars to move it yeah and and exactly and meanwhile you can get the exact same experience wearing the Apple Vision Pro plus everything else that the Vision Pro does I'm super excited about

that potentially we should look back at this archive tape to see for that much further because you know as well as I do it'll be lineups around the corner if we can get to that place Mohe Rajan, thank you so much for joining us. Always a pleasure. Take care. I remember my first day moving into college. It's a rite of passage for so many people. I remember being in my dorm with my parents and putting my room together. My dad couldn't care less and my mom cared way too much about the color coordination of everything in the room.

And then at one point they gave me a hug and left. And that is the, that moment symbolically when you are out on your own. Obviously not on my own, but that's the symbolism of it. When you're in your dorm and your parents leave and all of a sudden you're not living at home anymore. And for so many people, that was the thing. That's what you did. If you went to college, you moved into a dorm. You might have moved off campus in your third or fourth year, but that was an option. You could avail yourself of student housing or not. And well, that's not the case anymore in Canada

because there is a poll that's in 2022 at many Canadian universities. Residence beds were available to only 10.3% of the student population. 10.1 out of 10 students has a bed on campus. All of this information came to light to me in an article in the Walrus entitled, Welcome to University. Good luck finding a place to live. And we're joined now by the journalist whose work has appeared in the Walrus, Katria Bolger. Welcome to the show. Hi, good to be with you. So that that I knew that there was a housing pinch on university campuses. I did not think it was 90% of kids.

If they want a bed on campus, they are SOL. Absolutely, it's certainly a striking number. And we do know that Canada falls behind some of its Western counterparts, such as the United States and the UK, when it does come to providing student housing. And I think a lot of the discussion last year surrounding the international student cap and the so-called pressures that placed on the

local rental markets and certain Canadian cities has really ramped up the urgency around this issue. But so you know when I read it my my mind automatically went to the housing crisis but that's not what this is the student housing crisis it has completely different pressures on it than the actual housing crisis. So what caused this crisis? They're different crises, but they're certainly related. This crisis for students in particular has not happened overnight. So this has been in the works for decades now. We've seen since the 1980s that government spending for universities and colleges across Canada has

decreased significantly. So, one report that I came across from the Canadian Centre from Policy Alternatives found that government funding fell from around 80% in the 1980s to closer to 50% in 2012. So, this has significantly impacted university and colleges capacity to build more student housing. And at the same time, we've seen these institutions really ramp up enrollments, particularly amongst international students. Over the past decade, we've seen those numbers for international students double. The fact is, student housing has not kept up.

It has not kept a pace with these numbers. And this leaves a lot of students really scrambling when it comes to finding housing close to the university. So what's the solution? Because I'm looking at this, and it seems to me that the best solution is to take this whole thing down to the studs and start again. So, like you said, there are around residents' beds available for 10% of the student population in Canada, but this is simply not enough. So one market research firm that I came across said this figure needs to be closer to 400,000 to keep up with the demand for students seeking this affordable and more accessible

option. Housing advocates I spoke to had different approaches to tackling this issue, and we do see some action from different levels of government. Now the federal government, for example, last year launched a part of a program called the apartment construction loan program and this allows private developers and universities to take out low interest loans for housing for students. This is both off and on campuses between the different provinces in Canada. We see different approaches. The Nova Scotia government, for example, put forward a one year funding agreement for universities in the province last year, and this included a very clear requirement for universities in Halifax and Cape Breton, both very big student hubs,

to create more student housing. And if we look to the west coast and British Columbia, we've seen the government since 2018 take more proactive steps towards solving this. They now have a policy whereby schools can borrow money directly from the provinces to build more housing. And they have a very ambitious goal to build 12,000 residents beds by the year 2028. So with collaboration between the government, between schools and even private developers, there is a sense that this could be solved, but it certainly won't be overnight. You know, my heart goes out to kids in a particular cohort who,

when they were during the pandemic, when they want to be with their friends, they couldn't be. And now that they're in college, and for a great many of them, they still have to live at home. They wanna be with their friends. They wanna build new connections. They wanna form a community at their university,

but they can't, and instead they have to stay home. And it's a complete upending of what a lot of people believe is, I mean, these are formative relationship building moments in their lives, what happens in high school or what happens in middle school, and what happens in college. And my heart goes out to them. It's tough. I mean, your first year of university can be stressful and isolating enough as it is. So the fact that students are now being forced to live either at home or perhaps, you know, hours away from campus, you know, we have reports of certain students in the

Greater Toronto area who are commuting over two hours a day to get to campus, that cuts a lot into your time available to study, to socialize. And we know from certain studies that have been conducted on first year students in Canada, that they do lose out on social and academic benefits. Everything from their grades, the retention rate, to their graduation rate at the end of the day. So compounded with all the pressures of being a student, the cost of living crisis, the growing

student debt we see amongst the student population can create a very high pressure environment for students who can really benefit from being within a community of peers at a key point in their transition to adulthood. So, Katra, how long until, like, let's assume everything goes according to plan. How long until we have the housing required for the students who are studying in our universities? Mm-hmm. Well, most policies are aimed towards getting enough student housing towards the end of this decade,

which is perhaps not enough time, according to many post-secondary students who are looking for housing right now. I think there are also forces that are beyond the control of universities and colleges, like the whims of the commercial rental market, where we're seeing skyrocketing rents, like the cost of living crisis, which are all sort of compounding these issues. So I think that's hard to say, but perhaps it'll be easier to tell in the years to come. What housing advocates have told me though is the steps that are being taken now just over the past year, while some see as being a bit too late, are still promising and represent a good start for student housing in Canada.

Ketra Bolger, thank you so much. It's a great story and I urge everyone to read it in the Wallers. Thanks so much for having me. Home Network is here. I love it. Discover the best shows and your favorite trusted experts all under one roof. Are you kidding me? Every Thursday, watch heartwarming programs like an all-new extreme makeover home edition at 8. We are so lucky to be a part of this. And Honest Renovations starring Jessica Alba and Lizzie Mathis at 9. Changing these homes we can change families. There's no place like it.

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