The Ben Mulroney Show - How would Brian Mulroney have gotten along with Trump?

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

 Guest: Craig Baird, Host of Canadian History Ehx GUEST:  Howard Sapers, Executive Director CCLA   If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ Twitter: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ TikTok: ⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠ Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com slash Mulruni. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show on Wednesday, October 8th. I am your host, Ben Mulroney. It's a good thing the show is called the Ben Mulroney show. It's, we made it to the midweek. It's all downhill from here. And we've had, it's been an interesting week so far. But we wanted to start this hour.

with our prime minister's trip to Washington. Mark Carney went to Washington for a sit-down meeting with Donald Trump, the second time that he's gone to the White House. And Donald Trump says Carney will leave Washington very happy. And now is it because he's happy that the meeting is ending, or is he happy because he got a deal? Or maybe neither. I recently talked on this show with two people who follow politics

very, very closely, and my, our friend Regan Watts from this week in politics suggested that this was a successful trip because sometimes it's, it is important for leaders to get together and hash things out and spend time together, get to know each other, create that personal relationship last night before, before the trip ended. Mark Carney had a one-on-one, I believe, dinner with the vice president, very important person. He's got the ear of He's got the ear of the president himself. He could be president one day himself. Very important to do.

And I will, you know what? I will take, I will take my marching orders from Regan Watts on this. Because I know for a fact, as my father, I watched my dad, I know how important it is for leader to leader relations to be good. I know that. My dad once said, he said, look, when it comes to the relations, Canada, his relationship with the United States. It's not that you're going to expect them to take your call above anyone else's. It's that they will take your call.

And when they do, they will listen. You'll have a good faith operator on the other side. And with Donald Trump, I don't think you get to a good faith situation until you put in time with him. What leaders, what leaders around the world did your dad have the best relationships with that he leaned on the most? Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Francois Mitterrand.

All of them equal, a good, great relationship? Great relationship, yeah. I mean, yeah, dad was close with all of them. He became very close in the later years with Nelson Mandela. That's interesting. Yeah.

Did you meet him? I did. I was a seventh person in North America to meet him. How do you have that number? Because I paid attention. I knew that what was happening was very special. Upon being released from prison, I think he visited one European country, and then dad sent a Canadian plane to bring him to Canada. And Canada was the first nation he visited besides one European nation, I think. And I made a point to remember where I was in the lineup when he got off the plane. And I was seventh.

You're seventh. I was the seventh person in North American to shake his hand. So when you think about it, I was probably the seventh North American to shake his hand since he'd gotten out of prison. Wow. Yeah. But he wanted to come to Canada to say thank you for the pressure that my dad and his government put on the international community and on South Africa to get him out of prison.

And then he came and he gave a speech before the House of Commons. Do you think your dad would have gotten along with Donald Trump? Well, they knew each other. in a very, like, in the shallow end of social. Yeah. They knew each other from being in the same, both having homes in Palm Beach, Florida. Okay.

So then, I guess, getting back to Mr. Carney and Mr. Trump, would your dad have been sitting in that seat in that same awkward position that Mark Carney did yesterday with Trump saying some of the things that he said, which we'll get to? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know how like I honestly don't know I I don't like I said I don't I don't I don't look at anybody who has to sit opposite Donald Trump who is a the wild card of all wild cards and and and laugh at them or or take pleasure in their discomfort it's a weird and odd situation to be in and so you know I think our prime minister did as well as he possibly could um but again

And we were promised that it would go a little differently. But that's not the point of what we're talking about here. Because there was some odd, there was some odd subject matter that was broached, right? And the one that was probably the weirdest was when Trump, when Trump took on the woke world and said, thank God we got rid of all of that here, forgetting, like, who he was talking to. we have no men in women's sports we i mean basic things we're not uh we're not we're not going to take your child away and change the sex of your child we're not going to do things like that what they're doing to the country is so incredible and they got away with it with all their woke

crap and now it's stopped yeah he goes on to say like i don't uh i don't even know if we'd have a country anymore and what if you're reading between the lines there he's it's he's he's talking about the difference between America and Canada. But does he know that Mark Carney has a trans child? Yeah, well, there's no way he doesn't. I just, I don't think he cares because he cares about America. He cares about America, not Canada. He said that as he said as much.

I don't care about anything but America. And therefore, he doesn't care if anybody has a trans kid. And if they do and they're in another country, they're going to live any way they want. In America, these are his rules. Is this his way of imposing his will on Mark Carney and saying, this is my house, I'll say what I want and you can't say anything about it. And look, like, it must have, as a father, it must have been really uncomfortable for him to bite his tongue in that moment. But he's a smart guy and he's a measured man and I suspect that he doesn't

get overly emotional too too much. He probably had to tamp down on a great many instincts that would have rushed to him to defend his child, right, and to defend and to stand up for a person he loved. But he has the burden of being the prime minister. And he probably knew in that moment that I have to park being a dad because right, I'm not here because I'm a dad. I'm here because I'm the prime minister of Canada. And I've got 40 million people counting on me.

And I can go back to my child and I can talk to my child about this at the appropriate time. but the Canadian people are counting on me right now. And in that moment, if you look at it that way, and that's how I choose to look at it, what he did was quite admirable. Because a lot of people would have flown off half-cocked, and they would have defended their child in that moment.

And we would have been sitting around like, what about us? What about Canada? Like, what about the jobs? What about the economy? And he, I think he strategically did the right thing. I think he did the right thing. Let's continue about,

Mark Carney, he said, so he said something that I'm, it's still a head scratcher to me, about investing. There's a big number that you put on the table. Let's listen. We are the largest foreign investor in the United States. Half a trillion dollars in the last five years alone, probably $8 trillion in the next five years if we get the agreement that we expect to get. Thirdly, there are areas, as the president just said,

where we, I wouldn't, conflict, maybe not so much conflict, we compete. There are areas where we compete. and it's in those areas where we have to come to an agreement that works. Yeah, we're talking about putting a billion, a trillion dollars in the United States. I think the point is, we need money in Canada. And as much as we want to invest in the states, we need whatever money we have, we've got to keep here. Meanwhile, there's a liberal MP, Annie Kutrakis, who was at a committee meeting. And you can tell she was saying some stuff, and what she wanted to hear back was, good job.

That's not what happened. I am hearing that you think that the government, this current government, is doing all the right things and looking in the right direction to make sure that we do create those good-paying jobs here in Canada for Canadians in our economy. So good question. So the oil and gas CEOs have written three different letters. I think they're up to about 96 oil and gas CEOs signing on to a letter asking for five specific policy changes. None of those policy changes have yet been made. So while I think everyone, you know, when Western Canada agrees that the tone is much better and prioritizing major projects is very positive, nothing has happened. Yeah, that's, and that's important.

And like we, we criticize the Trudeau government a lot for making a big deal about the ribbon cutting ceremony and then not following through to make sure that the goals of whatever program that were being announced were, they were able to achieve. that is not necessarily what's happening right now with Mark Carney. He's just getting started, but we'll have to see. All right, don't go anywhere up next. The nicest hockey player you'd never heard of. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Time now for everybody to put their thinking caps on because it's time to learn a little bit about Canadian history in a way

that I promise you you would not have learned in school. school. Please welcome to the show. Craig Baird, the host of Canadian HistoryX. Welcome, Craig. Oh, thanks for having me. Okay, tell us the story of Frank Boucher. Well, Frank Boucher was a really interesting hockey player that a lot of people don't know about, but he might have been the cleanest hockey player in history. So he was born in Ottawa on October 7, 1901, and he had four brothers, or three brothers, all of whom went on to play in the NHL, including one who also went into the Hockey Hall of Fame. So he was playing for the Royal Canadian in mounted, or he was working for the World Community Mounted Police, and he's playing

on their team in Lethbridge when he was discovered by the Ottawa Senators, and eventually he would sign with the New York Rangers, and it was with them that he had his greatest success. He won two Stanley Cups with them in 1928 and 1933, and he was part of what was called the Bread Line with brothers Bill and Bun Cook, and he was a very skilled forward, but he was also extremely clean when it came to his play on the ice. Now, the Lady Bing Trophy is awarded to the most gentlemanly player in the NHS. and he won it every single year from 1927, 28 to 1934, 35. Wait, wait, whoa, hold on.

You got backup. Give me that stat again? He won the Lady Bing trophy for being the most gentlemanly player on the ice from 1927, 28 to 1934, 35, except for one single year. So he won it seven out of eight years. And eventually, they actually just gave him the original trophy because he won it so much. and the Lady Bing donated another trophy. So he was a very clean player,

and he retired in 1937-38, and then he coached the Rangers to the Stanley Cup in 1940. So when they went the Stanley Cup in 1994, or 1994, that was the first time the Rangers had won a Stanley Cup without him being involved with the team in some capacity. And he also actually brought in a lot of innovations to hockey, including introducing the Red Line that would help open up the game and really change hockey.

and he would eventually actually come back and play briefly in 1943, 1944, he played 15 games for the team because they were short-handed. He recorded 14 points, and he had at the age of 42. So he was the oldest NHL player in history to that point. That record's obviously been surpassed now. He would GM the Rangers for a number of years. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, and he passed away in 1977. And his reputation was that of a gentleman on the ice. I'm assuming off the ice as well.

Absolutely. And even on the ice, there were some seasons where he recorded one penalty. You know, he'd record two minutes or four minutes or six minutes, but very rarely would he take a penalty.

And where was he from? He was from Ottawa. So he was born in Ottawa, and he kind of moved around Canada. He worked for the RCMP for a time in Lethbridge before eventually coming to New York where he spent the majority of his adult life. And his other brothers who were in the NHL,

What define them? Well, he had his brother Buck. He went on to play in the NHL. He won four Stanley Cups with the Ottawa Senators, and he eventually made it to the hockey Hall of Fame. And then he had two other brothers, Bobby and Billy. He had a brother named Bobby Boucher. He did actually.

Interesting. Yeah, I never thought about it. You can do it. Oh, no, we suck again. Anyway, go on, my friend. Sorry about that. Yes. So both Bobby and Bill.

He did play in the NHL, but neither had the success that Frank or Buck had with both of the brothers going on to the hockey hall of fame. All right. Well, let's turn the page. Thank you so much for that. That's a heck of a story, Frank Boucher. All right, let's turn our attention out to this week's episode of Canadian History X. You're focusing on Jerry Potts.

Jerry Potts is one of my favorite historical figures because he's a fascinating individual. He was born in 1840. He was the son of a Cree mother and a Scottish father. And his father was murdered soon after he was born, and he was eventually adopted by a fur trader who taught him to read and write. Now, as an adult, he worked as a fur trader and a scout and a hunter for the whiskey traders in present-day Southern Alberta. He fought at the Battle of Belly River, which was the last large-scale indigenous battle in Canadian history in 1870, and he was highly skilled with his guns. He was respected, and he was feared. Anyone who crossed him typically wound up dead, but obviously with good reason.

He didn't just kill for no reason. It was if you did something to him or his family. And it was safe he could walk around a town with $1,000 in his hands, and nobody would bother him. And then after his mother and half-brother were murdered by a man who was drunk on whiskey, bots began to pretty much wipe out the whiskey traders by himself. They just started to disappear. And in 1874, he joined the Northwest Mounted Police as a scout, and he remained with them until 1895. And when he died of throat cancer the following year, he was given the special rank of special constable as a sign of respect from the police force.

for everything that he had done to help them over the course of those years. Todd, let's go back to this again. You referenced that he fought in the Battle of Belly River, the last large-scale indigenous battle in Canadian history. Paint the picture of what that would have looked like for us. Well, it was a very large battle. It was fought at what is now inside the city of Lethbridge. And it was between the Blackfoot and the Cree,

and it involved about 1,600 warriors fighting on each side. And it was a massive defeat for the Kri, I'm sorry, who lost about 200 to 400 people. It was a major battle. It was something that would obviously have happened on the prairies many times over thousands of years. But this was the last time that there was an actual large-scale indigenous battle on Canadian soil in our history. And it happened on October 25, 1870. And with a Kree mother and a Scottish father, you know, stranger things have happened than being born of two worlds, but not feeling at home in either. Where was, where did he, what was his, how did he

identify himself? Well, he kind of like he said, identified himself kind of in between because he did have that Scottish father, but he tended to lean more to his indigenous side. He actually participated in the Sundance, which was a right of passage for the Crete, and he successfully went through that to kind of become a man. He did wear European, American clothing most of the time when he was out as a scout, but obviously he would spend a lot of time with the Cree and really identified with them. And just like being, he wasn't a person who wanted to be in cities. He wanted to be out in nature and in the wilderness.

Now, I'm imagining him at six foot five. That's how I'm picturing this man. How tall was he? He was not tall at all. He was, I think about five foot six. Five years. They said his rifle was actually taller than he was, but he was somebody who had a very imposing presence.

Yeah, well, I mean, the way you were telling the story, I pictured him, I built him up in my mind to be six foot five. And I bet you to a number of people, even though he was five foot six, to a lot of people, he was riding tall at six feet. Let's listen to a clip from this week's episode of Canadian History X. It's the story of Jerry Potts. In 1873, Jerry's relationship with the whiskey traders ended abruptly, as tragedy struck once again. His half-brother, no chief, was shot and killed by a man who was drunk on whiskey named Good Young Man. When Jerry Potts heard of his mother and half-brother's death, he swore off working for the whiskey traders. Instead, he dusted off his guns and set out onto the prairie on a mission of vengeance.

This time, his target was good young man. It didn't take long for him to find good young man who knew what to expect because he fled on his horse to escape certain death as soon as Potts showed up. Jerry was an expert marksman and with one bullet from his rifle he shot Good Young Man in the head, killing him instantly as he fell off his horse. With good young man now dead and his mother and half-brother avenged, Jerry declared war on his former employers, the Whiskey Traders. This solitary figure wandered the prairie with two 44 pistols on a gun belt, a Henry rifle over his shoulder, a long blade-skinned knife strapped to his leg,

and a small gun hidden in a hideaway pocket. For the next three years, Whiskey Traders started to go missing, and no one could officially blame Jerry but everyone suspected that he was the man wiping them out. It's like, listen, there's a part of me that's listening to that and there's an element of the untouchables.

There's an element of, you know, a vigilante cop seeking street justice. But it was, and we don't have a lot of time, so I'm not asking for a big, fulsome answer here. Was he a little crazy?

He might have been a little bit. I like to think of him as like the John Wick of the Canadian person. He was John Wick. That's what he was. Yeah. He was John Wick. Yeah, look at that. Two movie references. The Waterboy and John Wick. Brought to you by Canadian History X. As always, my friend, tell people how people can find the podcast. You can listen to Canadian History X, and that's EHX on all podcast platforms, and you can listen to the show itself on the course radio network every weekend. Craig Barrett, as always, you've made us smarter. I brought us down a notch with the Waterboy, but you made us smarter today, my friend. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Welcome back to the Ben Mooruny show. All right, we got to talk about Bill C9.

This is an act to amend the criminal code for issues of hate, propaganda, hate crime, and access to religious or cultural places with the declared intent to make Canadians safer. That is what the liberal government has said they are seeking to do. Instead, however, the legislative proposals create new criminal laws that risk serious and unjustified infringements of charter rights, fundamental freedoms, including the criminalization of peaceful protest. And this is not me saying this. 37 different organizations have signed a joint letter urging the government to reverse course on C9 and to instead pursue community-based approaches that protect vulnerable groups. And so to discuss this, to drill down and to talk about what's at stake, we're joined by Howard Saper's, the executive director of the CCLA, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Welcome to the show, Howard.

Hello, Ben. Thanks. Okay, so I guess before we dig in, we got to ask ourselves, and maybe you can help me with this, what were they seeking to change? Clearly, the liberal government saw a flaw in the criminal code that they were seeking to fix. in their mind. So what, what, what in their mind was the flaw that needed to be fixed? The federal government was, is reacting, I think, to, to a public mood where there's been heightened concern around certain kinds of protests and certain kind of places that impact, in many cases people's daily activities. And, and so they, they scratched their head and they thought, okay, so what are the levers that we can pull? Because these are often, it really, really,

responsibilities of municipal governments, local police departments, provincial governments. But they have the criminal code. So they looked at to the criminal code and they saw some gaps. I don't see those gaps in the same way. This bill creates four new criminal offenses. It also removes some of the existing safeguards around how some of the current criminal code provisions are implemented. So we're very concerned that this trade-off between, you know, the rights of people to have peaceful protests and the rate of people to have peaceful access, perhaps, to their place of worship.

We think this trade-off, they got the balance wrong. Okay. All right. Now, talk, so, but more generally, do you have other issues with C-9? Well, sure. As you said in your introductory comments, there's a clear risk that this bill will lead to the criminalization of peaceful protests. And do me favor, walk me through how that could happen. Oh, sure.

So let's say you and I decide that we want to, you and I and a bunch of our neighbors decide we want to protest the paving over of a local park. Okay. And so we're out there and we're making our feelings known. The way this law is written that it actually would allow the police if certain things happened to see that as criminal behavior. So if somebody was waving a particular kind of side or somebody made a particular kind of comment, they could criminalize it. Well, that to me, Howard, like that feels to me like Canada moving in the direction. of what we've been seeing in the UK. Now, certainly not to that extent,

but it seems like it's a step in that direction. And I don't think you'll find anybody in Canada who thinks that we as a society need to be moving towards a place where people can be jailed for tweets or for liking a tweet or for posting a comment online. None of us should want to go in that direction. And it sounds like this is a step in that direction.

Well, exactly. It's exactly that kind of overreach. But I want you to think about the fact that we already have tools. There's a host of tools and powers that local law enforcement has, mischief, intimidation, criminal harassment. There are criminal prohibitions that currently are in place that are very difficult to enforce. This bill, if it becomes law, is going to make that an even more complicated process. it's going to be interpreted differently in different places by different police. When it comes to some of the safeguards that currently existed,

you know, for example, the Attorney General of Canada needed, or the Attorney General needed to consent for certain proceedings dealing with things like hate propaganda. That safeguard has been removed in this bill. So you're going to even have a hodgepodge of differences in terms of how this bill would be enforced. It's interesting, Howard, because, you know, I have my own particular perspective on the protests that have plagued cities like Toronto. And I say plagued because I think that they just, they drop into the city with impunity whenever they want. And my belief was always, the police have the tools already to deal with this if they wanted to. They are choosing not to.

And the answer isn't then to turn around and give the police more powers. It's if you want them to act on anything, I'm using the protests as an example, but it could be something else. If you want them to act on it, then they just need to have the will to do so. but their inaction is not a is not a demonstration of a flaw in the criminal code it's just it's a it's a it's a it's a directive from their bosses right and and the and the prevailing level of confusion but i want to i just want to read you one one short phrase yeah the new legislation that criminalizes any conduct and here's the quote intended to provoke a state of fear in another person so how do you interpret that if you're a cop on the street and there's a group of people waving placards? Yeah. How do you interpret that? And so in one situation, just their presence might be interpreted as intending to provoke a state of fear.

In another circumstance, it may be only when there's some physical contact with somebody else or a direct threat to an individual. Well, also, that means to not, I'm not trying to be glib here, but Halloween is right around the corner. And there are a bunch of, my friend is dedicated to scaring the bejesus out of anybody who walks by his house. He could run afoul of the criminal code. I do want to point out, I do want to point out, Howard, that this is one of the rare situations in Canada that I've seen in two years where both Jewish groups and pro-Palestinian groups are signatories to this plea, this joint letter asking the government to reverse course. If the Jews and the Palestinians can find common cause and say this is a bad idea, it's a bad idea. I would tend to agree, of course, we've seen a very quick coalition grow in opposition to this legislation. And I don't think anybody is saying in that coalition, oh, we're okay with hate.

You know, we're okay, right? What people are saying is get the balance right. Peaceful protests are guaranteed. It's our right. Canadians have that right. they have the right to assemble and to express themselves. And so let's preserve that. Let's not throw that out and then create new crimes with all these vague definitions

that are going to be incredibly hard to prosecute. Yeah. Sadly, part of the public discourse has always been, if you stand in opposition to something a government is doing, then the government will then say you stand against what we are trying to achieve rather than you stand against our policy and and in this case all of these all these groups are standing against this change to the to the criminal code they are not standing up in favor of hate that's that's a really important point to reinforce um CCLA and and none of the signatories to

this correspondence are in any way wanting to protect hate speech I mean you've got a heck of a group of I mean, this is a cross section from TTC riders to Toronto Palestinian families, to democracy watch, to Canadian Muslim lawyers, to black legal action center, to an independent Jewish voices. I mean, this is a, the Jewish faculty network. This is a, this is significant. Progress T.O. Well, the progress T.O. Anyway, but listen, I thank you very much. So, so how, we only in about 10 seconds, are you, the letter has gone out. when do you find out whether it's been successful?

Well, we'll find out when they would withdraw the bills. Okay. Well, when they do, I hope you come back and we'll toast you for your hard work. Thank you very much. We'll talk again. A kidnapped child whispers dark secrets from his past in a language he no longer understands. But a lost cassette will reveal the ugly truth. From Curious Cast and Blanchard House comes a cross-continental Odyssey to recover a stolen past.

This is Stop Rewind, The Lost Boy, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.