The Ben Mulroney Show - Is a Universal Basic Income an idea worth exploring in Canada?

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

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You chill, Mom. I'll load the dishwasher. Awesome! Exclusions apply. See Specsavers.ca for details. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney Show, and you know the old expression, if it's too good to be true, it probably is. Every now and then you hear political promises from the campaign trail from one party or another, and it turns out that for whatever reasons, those promises don't materialize. Now some of them, they may not affect your daily lives like Justin Trudeau promising to plant a billion trees. I don't believe we planted any trees. I don't know that that affects your pocketbook one way or another. I mean, from a guy who thought that the world was burning, that could have been a good one to fulfill, but he didn't. A little ones like that to other ones

that for whatever reasons you can't, you know. Oh, well, let's remember Justin Trudeau's three modest deficits and then going back into the black. That didn't happen. That affects us all pretty severely. But all that to say, look, for some reason, sometimes you make a promise and it doesn't come true. We went into the way back machine all the way back to 1993 to find a campaign promise that so many people voted for. It was the top reason that the liberals wanted you to vote for them in 1993.

And well, listen, listen, this might be familiar to you because you may have you may have voted for them in 1993. And, well, listen, listen, this might be familiar to you because you may have voted for them in 1993 for this reason. Why don't we get back in the way back machine and go back to the 1993 federal election campaign. If there was any doubt that Jean Crétien might try to back away from his pledge to get rid of the GST, he pretty much put that to rest today. The liberal leader said that's a promise he will definitely keep. No ifs, ends or buts. And Kretzschian said voters should toss him out of office if he doesn't get rid of the tax during his first year in power.

But as Keith Bogue reports, he's still not saying what he'd replace it with. And it appears Canadians won't know until after the election. This week a newspaper column described the Liberals' plan to replace the GST as empty, something that needs filling in like a hole in a doughnut. Perhaps today we will find out whether that hole will be filled with jam or cod liver oil. It was a pointed comment. It reflected how people are still not convinced the liberals will scrap the GST, or if they do, whether they can find a better system to replace it.

But today was not the day Kretjian was going to fill in the doughnut. In fact, all he made absolutely clear was that you'd have to elect him first. You'd have to elect him first. It reminds me of the moment in the office where they're looking for somebody to replace Michael Scott. And they have a candidate on the opposite side of the table as they're interviewing candidates. Will Arnett played the guy. And he says, well, I have a foolproof plan. I think it's like called six point plan that will double your sales. And they said, OK, well, can you tell us your plan? He said, well, I'm not going to tell you my plan. I'm not gonna tell you my plan until you until you hire me, you give

me the job, I'll give you the plan. He said, Well, we can't just give you the job for all we know you're making the plan up. He's like, I'm not making the plan up. Of course I have a plan. And anyway, all that to say, all that to say every now and then somebody promises you the world and they don't deliver. And that's I'm not I'm not trying to single out the liberals. I'm simply trying to tell you, be rational when you vote. Don't be emotional.

People hated the GST and they voted with their emotion. And guess what? Today, you're still paying the GST, which I don't have a problem with, by the way, just for the record. Meanwhile, a lot of people are still trying to figure out how Mark Carney's liberals are going to be different from Trudeau's liberals when he's got so many members of the team behind him, so many of the same people running for him. Well, here's Mark Carney separating himself from Justin Trudeau.

I'll give you a few examples. You know, over the course of the last 10 years, the pace of government spending, particularly operational expenditures, rose by an average of 9% a year, 9% year after year after year. That's about twice the rate of growth of the economy. The level of government support for industry and business investment and housing and other factors will be considered. You'll see when we release our detailed platform, our platform chiffre, that level of support is much lower than the level of support that we are going to give it. So we are focused on a government that spends less so that Canada can invest more. That we can invest more in defense.

We can invest more in new trade corridors. We invest more in energy, clean and conventional. We can invest more in building new houses. All of those things. Spending less means cutting something, no? Yeah, I mean, there's going to have to be cuts. I would very much like to see that costed out platform as soon as possible because we're running out of runway here.

But playing keep away is the stock and trade of the Liberal Party. And so I don't know that we're going to see that anytime soon. He did say, however, that big changes are coming from the previous government. I felt we needed to focus on the economy almost without fail and rebalance that focus. So address the housing crisis, the cost of living crisis, the productivity challenge, and now, of course, what has come with that is this great economic crisis, tariff crisis that the Americans have brought on us. So in a sense, relative to the years of the previous government,

these are big, big changes. These are not small changes. These are not changes in words. These are enormous economic changes, and they're exactly what's necessary. Okay, fine. I take you at your word. I take you that this is a net positive. I'll let's concede that point. But at what point does this party acknowledge that they made the wrong decisions for 10 years? I just, I don't understand this. There's a word called dissembling. To disassemble means to create chaos and then present yourself as the agent to restore order.

The chaos was created by this party to turn around and then say, big changes are coming. Big changes from what, Mr. Carney? From the 10 years of the party that you lead. And it is antithetical to the notion of accountability that you think that you get to claim victory when the defeat is yours to acknowledge. that you think that you get to claim victory when the defeat is yours to acknowledge. And I'm not seeing that.

I'm just not seeing that. It's not the only problem I see and I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing it. The Globe and Mail's Robert Fife was on a show called Primetime Politics. And he said that Mark Carney is the only political leader still hiding, yes hiding, his private investments and possible, and I stress possible, conflicts of interest and why that's a problem. I think the big fail for Mark Carney is his refusal to make sure

that we know what he has got declared as a conflict of interest. We don't know how much money he's worth. We don't know what's in the blind trust. We don't know what property or anything. We know nothing about the financial disclosures that we do know for every other political leader because they're in Parliament. And before this election is over, we should see that. But clearly, they're dragging their feet on that.

And I think that is a failure of leadership. Yeah, and to be clear, I acknowledge that Mark Carney is playing by the rules. He has not broken any rules, but I believe he's broken the spirit of the rules, because the rules were not created for a person so unknown to Canadians who had never previously served to be, not parachuted, didn't he, won his leadership race? I put that in air quotes. But he came in and the runway wasn't long enough for the disclosure rules to be followed, the spirit of the disclosure rules to be followed to their conclusion.

In other words, there is an expectation that by the time we elect somebody, we will know what their holdings are, and we will know whether there are any conflicts of interest that need to be addressed. And because of the timing and the lack of runway, we won't find out what he's holding, what his investments are, how much he's worth until after he is elected Prime Minister conceivably. And that to me is a failure because it flies in the face of the spirit of the rules. And if you're not going to follow the spirit of the rules, you might as well not follow the rules.

Universal basic income. It is a big idea that pops up every now and then it's had some really interesting proponents in the past, including people like Elon Musk, who suggested that universal basic income in 2018, he said was really important to consider given the fact that there's going to be massive job displacement due to AI. You have certain American politicians like Andrew Yang, who in 2020 ran on a platform for president to give Americans a universal basic income of a thousand dollars US a month,

calling it a game changer. My father was a proponent of universal basic income. And basically the idea is everybody gets a minimum amount of money every month, and that will help bring people out of poverty and free them up to focus on being as the most productive versions of themselves as they can. Opponents tend to say, hey, if you're getting free money, you're not going to work. And I think that's a fair, fair worry to have. Well, there was a study, a German experiment rather, that followed 122 people in Germany

for three years and it guaranteed them just over $1,300 a month. And what it found is that people were more likely to continue working full time even when they received no strings attached universal basic income payments. And so I'd love to talk to you give us a call at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. I mean is it time that we discussed universal basic income? Are you completely against it? And if so, why do you support the idea?

Do you think that it will motivate people to work harder? This experiment in Germany suggests that that is the case, but look, 122 people is by no means a fulsome study. It's an experiment as they called it, but there could be some interest in it. And as I said, my dad was a supporter and I don't speak for my father, but were he here today, I would suspect that he would say, you know, when times are good, it's something that we should try.

When we have the money to, to, to bring to bear on a, on a pilot project, we should, we currently live in a world where we have no money and therefore I don't know that it's, uh, I mean, it's a, it's a nice to have, but it's not a must have right now. We have some must haves that we have to deal with as a country. We have some serious, hard choices that are going to have to be made by this next government. And whatever those, whoever forms the next government, I guarantee you, they're going to make some people very unhappy with some of the choices that they have to make because those choices are stark.

We have run out of money. Our kids have run out of money and our grandkids have run out of money because the previous liberal government spent it all. But that being said, universal basic income, it's a conversation that I think maybe we should have Dave, what do you think of UBI? Thanks, Ben. Hey, pleasure now. Thank you. It's good and it's bad. Okay, there has to be some certain stipulations, like there has to be a performance when people are doing their work, they have to be able to put out the same all the time. are doing their work, they have to be able to put out the same all the time.

Because in the real world, if you don't, you're down the road. Well, in this study, Dave, the study participants worked 40 hours a week and stayed in their employment identical to the studies control group that received no payment. So it turns out that the the whether or not you receive this universal basic income, you still participated in the workforce at the same level as if you hadn't. So it didn't make people lazier, and which I find pretty interesting. Again, 122 people is not a study. It's just an experiment. Tom, what do you think of UBI? I was always against it. And now I'm tending to lean toward it. And here's the reasons why, but we have to be very critical. The underground economy in this province, in this country is mind blowing. If everybody were to declare their income, we would not be deficit.

Well, I'm sure the government would find ways to spend it. So you get caught cheating, you lose that income for five months, or sorry, five years, or however severe it is. Interesting. Yeah. Those that rat you out get a ward. Oh. So, financially, somebody can gain by people screwing all those taxpayers over.

Yeah. And the thing is, you won't need student loans anymore. You won't need welfare. You don't need ODSP. You can get rid of all those bureaucrats, all those people and save a crap load of money just from those alone. Yeah. Yeah. So, so long as, so long as a system is created that avoids graft and grift,

you would, you would support something like that. That's very interesting. Thanks so much for joining us. Let's talk to Brett. Brett, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Good morning, Ben. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. My thoughts are this is why don't why doesn't the federal and the provincial governments actually cut our what our income tax is at the beginning. So I think right now it's like 16,000 for federal and 8,000 for provincial. Yeah, so the first $50,000 or the first $750 per week is tax free.

Yeah. Now you got people who are in lower income jobs, even in jobs that are, you know, the minimum wage jobs, they're not paying tax. Yeah. They're not paying. And so what's that? What's that going to save them on a monthly basis? And where's that money going to go back into the economy, which is where it's needed? Yeah. And I see your point there as well. Rather than send it to the government only so that they can send it back to us, why not just allow them to keep it? I made the same argument when I heard the liberal government

under Justin Trudeau say that they were gonna set up a billion dollar program to feed our kids at school, feed them breakfast. And I said, with all due respect, Mr. Prime Minister, how about you give us our money back so we can feed our own damn kids? And so, yeah, I can absolutely see that side of it. Brett, thank you so much for the call. Dennis, welcome to the show. What do you think of universal basic income? Well, you know, you quote these studies, I say we've already had a grand social experiment when it comes to this. It was called CERB. Remember how that works?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was, but that to me is also- Employers couldn't find anybody to show up for work because everybody was like, well, I've already been paid, so I don't need to do anything. I mean, yeah, listen, I take your point. I would be very gun shy as well after the CIRB experiment. You're absolutely right that that's a cautionary tale, but perhaps it could be used as a lesson on how not to build a program in the future. Exactly. It would need a lot of guide rails for sure. Yeah. Perhaps it can be used as a lesson on how not to build a program in the future. Exactly. It would need a lot of guide rails.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, the problem is the government will never look at anything they did wrong. You're right. That's right. I mean, if you can't, if you can't look at what failed with a critical eye, you're never going to improve. You're absolutely right. I mean, that was such a disaster. I, the stories that we all heard, Fred, were just God awful of, I mean, that was such a disaster. The stories that we all heard, Fred, were just god awful. I mean, I heard about people using their CERB checks to buy skis and, you know, it was crazy.

Unless you build something with intention, it's going to be used for anything people can imagine. And again, grift and graft will be part of the system, Fred. But I think you're right to highlight that we haven't done it right in the past. And before we ever embark on such a monumental undertaking that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, with the hope that there would be a knock-on effect

in the economy, we got to make sure we don't repeat the mistakes of the past. Oh, is that Fred? No, no, thank you for your call. repeat the mistakes of the past. Oh, is that, was that Fred? No, no, thank you for your call. Now let's say hi to Fred. Fred, welcome. Hey, how are you, Ben? I'm well, I'm well.

So what do you think? Is this a good idea or is it a boondoggle in the making? Listen, where would the money come from? We're already taxed at debt. Two trillion dollars, trillion. Yeah. Is this Prime Minister-in-Law? Two trillion dollars in debt. I mean the previous Prime Minister, Prime Minister Pretty trillion. Yeah, this Prime Minister love $2 trillion in debt. I mean,

the previous Prime Minister Prime Minister pretty boy. Yeah. And you want to give universal basic income which in essence is glorified welfare for people not to work. Okay, well, hold on, hold on. Hold on. First of all, I'm not saying I want to do it. I'm asking the question, should we do it? No, no, no, no. I'm saying people who think that two callers ago, he said, I think I'm leaning towards it. Really, really? And I'm already taxed to death. Yeah, no, again, I don't think that the time is right

at all to be doing something like this. We've got a lot of issues. But let's just reframe for a moment, Fred. If we were living in a time where the deficit was non-ent, and the debt was under control, and people's taxes were lower, is it something that you would consider given the fact that the only the only evidence I've stated is this German experiment that suggests that

when people accept a universal basic income, it doesn't prevent them from working. In fact, they work at the same level as they otherwise would. Yeah, I don't buy them from working. In fact, they work at the same level as they otherwise would. Yeah, I don't buy it. The reality is this you want people to work, make money, cut taxes, because capitalism is the only thing that's really going to get people out of poverty. All right, hey, opportunity to be to be entrepreneurs to work for themselves. The government doesn't make things the

government takes things. We're gonna leave it there. Fred, thank you very much for your call. Thank you to everybody. Like I said, sometimes we start these conversations and I don't know where they're gonna go. I don't necessarily have a hard and fast position, but I always appreciate our callers for coming in telling me what they're passionate about. Helps me make a more informed decision a little bit later on. Want to transform your space and your Sundays? Well, Home Network is giving you the chance to love your home with $15,000. Whoo!

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