The Ben Mulroney Show - Is it time for major Canadian cities to start investing in Bitcoin?

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

Guests and Topics on Today's Show -City of Vancouver to probe investing in Bitcoin, accepting it as payment with Guest: Ken Sim, Mayor of Vancouver  -Less than 1% of EV owners switch back to gas-powered cars after making the purchase with Guest: Raymond J Leury, President, Electric Vehicle Council of Ottawa -Spies, Gangsters, and Murder: Canada’s Wildest Diplomatic Showdown Yet with Guest: Sushant Singh, lecturer in South Asian studies at Yale University 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

Hey everybody, it's Ben Mulrooney. We had a packed show today, including an EV study that may change the way you think about electric vehicles. A major Canadian city goes all in on Bitcoin and spies, gangsters and murder. Canada's wildest diplomatic showdown yet. Enjoy. So our next guest has been on the show before. I thought he was in, I said twice in two weeks. No, it's twice in three weeks. I'd like to welcome to the show the mayor of Vancouver, Mayor Ken Simms. Welcome to the show. Hey, Ben. Thanks for having me today. Okay, so we're talking today at Vancouver City Council has voted to explore ways to make the municipality a Bitcoin friendly city. What does that mean? Well, it could be a bunch of things. But basically basically we want to embrace Bitcoin. It's an amazing technology. It's been around for 16 years. Vancouver is actually a leader in Bitcoin adoption. The first

ATM worldwide for Bitcoin was actually based in Vancouver. And we can explore how to use it, how to sort of help the ecosystem here, and also look at the financial implications of, you know, maybe exploring how we put it on our balance sheet as well. So are you looking at ways for, say, you know, if I have a parking ticket in the city of Vancouver, I could pay with Bitcoin? Is it stuff like that? It could be. So I just want to be clear what we asked our city staff to do.

And it's really to go and really research, you know, do the work on how we can incorporate, you know, transacting in Bitcoin and putting it on the balance sheet, just to name a few things. And so in your example there, yeah, you know, there's a whole group of individuals that are unbanked and they can use Bitcoin as a means to, you know, pay a parking ticket or, you know, even in the future, pay their property taxes with. I mean, how big of a problem are you looking to solve here, Mr. Mayor? I mean, how much trouble is sort of the Canadian dollar giving the city of Vancouver that you're looking to make this sort of change?

Well, I actually think all households and governments and organizations, not just in Canada, but around the world are facing significant challenges due to the basement of our currencies. And so, you know, I'll give you an illustrative example. If I told you that the average house price in Vancouver hasn't changed in 100 years, you'd probably think I was nuts. But when I actually looked at the data from 1995 to 2022, house prices in terms of dollars went from $500,000 to $2.43 million, or that's an increase of 381%. But when priced in gold, if you're able to buy a house in gold in Vancouver in 1995, it cost 958 ounces. And at the end of 2022, it cost 957 ounces. So it didn't change in price. And so this is a big challenge for all of us. And I'm deeply concerned, even if we do everything we

said we're going to do and make this place way more efficient, and we're fiscally responsible, if our currencies are losing value, and we can't keep up as a city, we're going to be faced with the decision in the future, or do we cut services or do we increase property taxes significantly to provide those same level of services and so this gives us another avenue to look at um to help us um combat this debasement and it's by the way it's not just a thank you for problem it's a problem for every city across this country again uh again i'm i'm um i appreciate that the the value of Bitcoin has been exploding, but it is still volatile. It's a volatile commodity. Is that a concern for you?

I think it really depends on perspective. So it does look volatile. If you have a long-term view, and you know, look, I'm not qualified to give investment advice. I'm not a CFA or I haven't written my Canadian securities course. So I'm not, I want to be very clear, I'm not giving financial advice here. But if you, I'm not a trader personally. I don't believe that in that. I don't think anyone can time the market. And so if you take a long-term view, what do we know? Well, the technology has existed for 16 years. It's actually existed in bits and pieces for over 40 years, but Bitcoin has existed for 16 years. Over that time, it is the number one performing asset on the planet. And so I think it would be irresponsible of any jurisdiction who

is managing financial resources to not at least look at it. Yeah. Well, one of the things I think makes Canada and countries like Canada that exist sort of in the democratic arena, magical in a lot of ways, is sort of the collision of ideas in open debate. And so I love the idea of testing an idea like this at city council to see where it lands. How are people lining up at city council? What's the appetite like to explore this? It's actually interesting. It's prompted a conversation and not just in Vancouver or Canada. It's actually prompted a global conversation.

I think we're the first city of significance to entertain this conversation. So we're actually leaving the world. And so as Canadians, we should be pretty proud of that. No, there's a lot. There's a lot of conversation going around this. And what I would say is it seems like the people who have done the work in Bitcoin, they're raving fans and they can't get enough of this and they want to support it. And for other individuals who haven't started their journey yet, they're, you know, they pick up the soundbites they get from friends or in the media that may not be super informed. And they're, they're pretty passionate about that as well. And by the way, that comment wasn't a knock on media. I'm just saying, you know, you know, however you consume your media or how you get your information, you know, so it prompts, you know, there's like this, from that perspective, there's a negative visceral reaction.

But what I can tell you is when people do the work and, you know, I'm a big believer in like, don't trust, verify, actually do the work. Yeah. Get curious and learn about it. And I think every single person, except for maybe the first hundred people that actually were at the beginning of Bitcoin, I was a pessimist like everyone else. In 2018, my son came up to me and he said, Dad, I want to buy Bitcoin. I literally said, you touched that and you're an idiot. I used harsher words than that. It's like

there's nothing behind it. It's just a bunch of computer code. It's used for nefarious reasons. It's bad for the environment, etc. The same talking points as everyone else. But then I did the work. I read 12 books on Bitcoin and adjacent

issues. And even like when money dies, it talks about the Weimar Republic in 1930s Germany. Mr. Mayor, I want to, I want to jump in for a second. Cause I,

you know, you're not, you know, you, you, you might be leading the world in terms of municipalities, but El Salvador adopted, uh,

Bitcoin as its currency in 2021. And they're sitting on $300 million in pure profit right now. The, uh, they, they, they, They bought in when Bitcoin was sitting at what, $36,000 and now it's screamed past a hundred thousand. And the IMF is looking at them to have a economic growth of 3% this year. So it's not it's not, it's not the necessarily the boogeyman, uh, that people think about it. I guess the devil's in the details, isn't it? It totally is. And so El Salvador, they took a, you know, they, they, they were put in a very challenging position, uh, as a country, like there was mass chaos there and their currency was failing. Um, so, you know, El Salvador was the first, Bhutan actually has over a billion dollars in Bitcoin, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Texas just announced they're, they're going to create, they want to create a strategic reserve. The U S wants to, you have BlackRock, Fidelity, ARK Investments, um, um, all, uh, coming in. Um, you have what, 15 of the biggest 20, um, 20 biggest ETFs on the planet or Bitcoin. Mr. Mayor, we're going to have to leave it there, but I hope you, you, you keep in touch 15 of the biggest, 20 biggest ETFs on the planet are Bitcoin related. Mr. Mayor, we're going to have to leave it there, but I hope you keep in touch with us as the experiment continues. And I hope you have a great weekend. Awesome.

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That's K-N-O-W-M-O-R-E dot C-A. This message has been approved by Kidsplain. A message from the Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association. I still drive a regular car. It's got an internal combustion engine. And I've always said that when the lease is up on this one, I'm going to look, I'm going to give a good hard look at an EV. You know, I don't know that I'm the type of person

who could have one car and that one car be an EV, given the type of driving I do. I have ideas in my head as to what an electric vehicle is capable of. But that change is coming. There will be a day when most of the cars on the road are electric vehicles. And I have a lot of friends who love their EVs. Love them. They can't get enough of them. And let's be honest, some of them are the prettiest cars on the road. And they're tricked out with some of the best technology as well. And so there was a new study that came out, quite a significant study, a survey,

the global survey of electric vehicle drivers from 38 countries representing 64 organizations and over almost 25,000 respondents in 18 countries to get their general thoughts on their electric vehicles. All the people who responded are people who drive electric vehicles regularly. And the results are quite stunning, but not the least of which is that 97 percent of almost 25,000 respondents are satisfied or very satisfied with being an EV driver. That that shocked me. Not a lot of regret from people who have invested in this this technology and this this new way of getting around so we're joined now by raymond lurry the president of the electric vehicle council of ottawa raymond thank you so much for being here well thanks very much for having me ben yeah this is a 97 i mean i knew people would like their cars a lot a lot of people who who invest in

in an electric vehicle do so as a deliberate choice. They do it because they want one of these vehicles. So they're probably predisposed to liking it. But sometimes things happen and the car doesn't live up to your expectations. 97% is a huge number. Yeah, it definitely is a huge number. It does, however, reflect what we see when we talk to EV owners. When you're not an EV owner, as you just said, you get preconceived notions of things that might be issues with owning an EV.

But once you have an EV, you see that it's actually a more practical and a better solution to the personal transportation problem. So, for example, in my case, I get home, I plug my car into the charger in my garage, and the next morning I've got a full tank of fuel, essentially, right? So this is something I could do without having to go to some special place, you know, maybe when the weather is bad and, you know, and then have to chase the price to try to get the best price possible and maybe stay in line at Costco for 30 minutes to get a few cents off of every litre of fuel, right? So in many ways, EVs are a much better solution. The only exception is if you're doing long distances, and you have to – the problem there is you have to wait a bit longer to fuel your vehicle.

But that being said, in my case, I, you know, I say... Are you a city driver? Well, I do a lot of driving outside the city. I do about 40,000 kilometers a year. That's a lot of driving. It's about three times the national average. And I've done plenty of long trips. And, you know, what I tell people is the range that's important is my bladder.

Yeah. Yeah. At my age now, I have to stop pretty well every three hours. And that's more or less, you know, the range you would have to charge. So if you're going to stop anyways. Yeah. Well, look, the numbers are really significant. Not only are 97% satisfied, but according to this survey,

if an owner of an EV had to replace their EV tomorrow, 92% of them would get another electric vehicle. That's a huge thing. Now, some of the other numbers in here as we drill down are very interesting. 72% of all charging is done at home. The vast majority of them believe that there are no disadvantages with having an ev um they say it takes um more does it take more planning to take an ev trip than with a gasoline or diesel powered car most people strongly agree that it does take more planning so it is i guess you have to you do have to reconceive of how you travel. But once you do, once you lock into that, then.

Yeah, but things are relative, though. If you think about that, right? I mean, if you're using a gas car, you don't think about we're going to stop for gas because it's available everywhere, right? And we're going to need that in Canada, right? That's one thing that's lacking here, that they have a far more robust network of charging stations in the United States than we have here. I wouldn't necessarily say so. Actually, we do have a pretty robust network here. The thing that's going to make a big difference in North America is that everybody now is going to the Tesla plug, right?

So what's going to happen is every single vehicle on the road is going to be able to charge at the Tesla network. And that's a very, very reliable, very fast and very plentiful network, right? So that essentially, from my perspective, solves the problem of having enough infrastructure because there's already lots and lots of Tesla supercharger locations, right? And yes, the U.S. in some locations, if you look at California where sales of EVs are very strong, there's a lot of charging options. And because the density of the population is bigger on the East Coast of the U.S.,

there'll be more charging per area of territory, right? But we do have, you'd be surprised how much charging there's today. Most people don't see the charging locations because they don't advertise them. They don't need to, because your car or we'll tell you, we'll tell you. Yeah. Now Raymond, you know, we're, we're staring down the barrel of a, of an EV mandate in this country where every car produced, what is in 2035 needs to be electric.

So we're looking to phase out um the internal combustion engine uh but but the uptake the the the um we're not getting uh the enthusiasm uh that that we're going to need to ramp up to get to a place where everybody is adopting this what do what do we need to do to reframe the EV so that it does become the default attractive option for people today? I think it's really a question of perception. And actually, you know, there's a narrative in the media right now that EV sales are slowing or slumping or whatever. And that's actually not the case. So if you look at the latest numbers we have from StatsCan for the third quarter of this year, sales compared to last year are up 27%. Okay, so if you're looking at a mature market like the auto industry,

27% is a huge increase, right? And almost 16% of new car sales in Canada in the third quarter of this year were electric. So that's growing in line with projections that we've done and projections that other people have done. And, you know, it with projections that we've done and projections that other people have done. And, you know, it's normal that when you have something new that it takes some time before adoption becomes widespread, right? And in the case of EVs, one of the issues we had back when I got my first EV in 2013 is there were very few choices.

Oh, wow. You were an early adopter. Yeah. And the choices were very limited back then, right? But now the choices are plentiful and you have cars in almost every price range. The only price range where we have an issue is the very least expensive cars where there aren't any competitive options at the moment. But otherwise, there are tons of options available. So, you know, it's a question of time when you talk to your friends like you did and they tell you they have a great experience with an EV. Well, that will encourage you to try it's a question of time when you talk to your friends like you did and they tell you they have a great experience with an EV. Well, that will encourage you to try it.

And then you'll see that an EV is a better solution, like I was saying earlier. Raymond, what first attracted you to the electric option? Well, so back then, the main reason I got an EV actually was to have something that was cleaner, right? That didn't have tailpipe emissions. That was the main motivator for me at the time. But, you know, if I talk to other people, and I've been talking to people for well over 10 years doing advocacy for EVs, and most people, it's really the convenience and the operational costs that are the things that will get them to, that will sway them. You know, the environmental benefits are, it's yet another good thing. It's not usually the first thing that will attract people to buying an EV.

Raymond Lurie, President of the Electric Vehicle Council of Ottawa. Thank you so much for your time today. Thank you very much. If you are somebody who follows Canada-India relations, then you more or less have understood for years that the Trudeau-Modi relationship has not been a good one. It's been tense and it's led to some barbs and insults and the like. But you'd be forgiven if you didn't have the following story on your 2024 bingo card at the start of the year you'd be forgiven if you never would have fathomed that the canadian government would have accused the uh indian government of colluding with gangsters to murder diplomats in Canada. And you would be forgiven if you didn't feel that Modi was that Modi would denounce Canada as cowardly.

And so to lay all of this out for us, to talk about how things got to where they are. We're joined by Sushant Singh, lecturer in South Asian studies at Yale University, Indian journalist and the author of Spies, Gangsters and Murder, Canada's Wildest Diplomatic Showdown Yet on thewalrus.ca. Sushant, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for inviting me. So, you know, I think the best place to start is at the beginning. How did we get to where we are? So it all began last year when a Sikh gentleman who was asking for a Sikh separate state of Khalistan inside India conducted some referendums.

And he was assassinated in the parking block of the Sikh temple in Brampton. And that is where it started. And then eventually it came out that Indian agents or criminals associated with Indian agents were involved in that assassination. Simultaneously, an assassination attempt was also made in New York, and the U.S. Department of Justice was also able to find connections to Indian intelligence agencies

and were able to get the middlemen. They had very hard evidence about it, and both these things were connected. And thus it came to light that Indian government officials, Indian intelligence operatives, and certain Indian criminals or criminals with Indian background were involved in targeting Sikh leaders, Sikh separatists who were looking for a separate state of Khalistan inside India. But you've got two parallel issues going on. You've got, as you discussed, you've got the issue of criminal behavior, potential alleged criminal behavior in New York, and then you have what happened in Canada.

And so you've got these two investigations going on at the same time. But on one hand, the Indian government is cooperating with the Biden administration. And on the other hand, they are not cooperating in Canada. What's the differentiator? I think the big differentiator is the power. The United States is a major power,

is a superpower. Canada, I think in Indian government's calculation, is a middle power. And they can afford to, if I may put it crudely, show a finger to Canada, but cannot afford to do that to the United States. So therefore, for the same evidence, similar kind of allegation, India has virtually conceded everything, opened an investigation, and has been very polite with the Biden administration. But with Canada, it has been very aggressive

and very strong in its behavior. Where does the buck stop in India? Meaning, if criminal behavior is demonstrated to be insidious in the Indian government, does it get all the way up to Prime Minister Modi? So, I know it's very tough to say where the buck stops, but the fact of the matter is that in the DOJ indictment in New York, which was made public, the Prime Minister's office is mentioned, that the gentleman,

the intelligence operative who passed the order, used to work in a department which is connected to Prime Minister Modi's office. So in that sense, there's an indirect connection. And of course, as the head of the government, as the head of the political executive, it is something where you can say that the park eventually stops with him as the leader. But if you're going to say that, do we have any direct evidence of connection with Modi, Modi passing these orders, etc., no. But his number two of the person who has been closely associated with him politically for the last three decades, Amit Shah, who's India's home minister, and perhaps India's second most powerful person, his name has been invoked by the Canadians. And Canadian officials have said

that they have serious evidence to show that Mr. Shah was involved in passing these orders, which led to these transnational operations. So, Sean, what is it about Justin Trudeau and Modi that they don't get along? Because they never have got along, and now things have been turned up to 11. But what is it about their personalities, or maybe it has something to do with our policies, that they just can't see eye to eye? So I think there are differences between Mr. Trudeau's politics and Mr. Modi's politics. Mr. Modi is a hardcore Hindu conservative and authoritarian right wing populist nationalist leader, whereas Mr. Trudeau is a very liberal kind of a person, very liberal politics. So

ideologically, they are completely two different spectrums. It's almost like Trump and Trudeau. So that's the big mismatch. And secondly, when Prime Minister Trudeau speaks about freedom of speech inside Canada, people can do what they want to do. Mr Modi thinks that this is

allowing people who are working against him, working against India, some space in a foreign country to target him, to target India. Those are the primary differences. But I do not think it is primarily about the differences between Mr. Modi and Mr. Trudeau. I think there are there are larger issues here where two countries, two states, intelligence agencies, law enforcement agencies are involved. So then how how do we get the relationship back on track? What's going to have to happen first? I think the relationship will only get back on track once we have closure for what has gone on. And a closure can only come once some justice has been served, once the investigation and the charge sheet and the judicial process has been completed.

Once the judicial process has been completed, probably then we can hope for or expect for some compromise, some way to move forward. And the only other way we could probably move forward is if governments change in both the countries. If Mr. Modi is no longer in power in India and Mr. Trudeau is no longer in power in Canada, maybe the two sides would then decide to come closer and compromise with each other. At this point, it seems very tough because institutionally, intelligence agencies of both the countries are involved, law enforcement agencies are involved, and it looks very unlikely that they would be willing to work with each other or coordinate with each other after all the bad blood that we have seen between them.

I'm the eternal optimist, so I like asking the question, how can we get it back on track? But it's also entirely possible that things could get worse, couldn't they? Definitely. If more names are named, if more people are charged, somebody close to Mr. Modi or his office is named in the Canadian judicial process, things could get worse. Or if there are further attempts at assassination inside Canada, which the Canadian government believes are linked to India, things could definitely get worse.

And if that happens, diplomats could be called home or expelled. But could this end up entering sort of the economic realm? Could trade between our nations be affected? So I really don't think so, because even after all this, the intelligence cooperation agreement that is there between Canada and India has not been shelved, has not been terminated. And trade is something where the two countries recognize that they can continue to trade with each other. So to give you an example, India and China had a

major border clash four years back. There were more than 50,000 soldiers deployed across the border, and China was India's biggest trading partner. So trade, I think countries nowadays, countries like India, countries like Canada, do recognize that while they can be militarily or strategically or geopolitically be fighting with another country, but they continue to trade with them. So I don't think trade is under any threat, bilateral trade is under any threat because of what's going on. Sushant Singh is the author. The title of the piece is Spies, Gangsters and Murder, Canada's Wildest Diplomatic Showdown Yet. And we are living it in real time. Sir, thank you very much for telling a story that most people in Canada don't know.

But if they were to read it, they will not be able to stop. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for inviting me. Thanks a lot. Thanks for listening to the podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you'll be with us on Monday with another loaded edition of The Ben Mulroney Show.