The Ben Mulroney Show - It turns out that the Liberals are using fear to motivate their voters

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

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Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us. And you know, this morning, I was reading something in the national post that caused me to look back in time to the letter that Jack Layton wrote to Canadians. It was, he was on his deathbed having battled valiantly against cancer.

He was a wonderful person. I'd met him a number of times, very warm, very gregarious, very personable. And he wrote, dear friends, he said, hope is better. Where is it? Hope is better.

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic, and we will change the world. Now you do not have to be a proponent of the NDP to appreciate the value in those words. And I think it's important and incumbent on us to do our best to live that way. I love that letter and he did a very, very good job with it and it speaks to me still.

So when I read a poll that says that three quarters of Canadians who plan to vote conservative said that the emotion guiding them is primarily hope for a better future in Canada to live, work and raise a family. I think that Canadian voters who are voting conservative are living according to those words by Jack Layton. And by contrast, six in 10 liberal voters say they are motivated primarily by a fear of what the future holds for Canada with an unpredictable US President Donald Trump threatening trade relations. It's a stark contrast. It really speaks to two different visions of the country. Pierre Poliev is pushing a, in my opinion, a positive vision, a hopeful vision of the

future of what we can achieve as a country, of how we can express ourselves, both internally and on the world stage, of what it means to be Canadian, of what it means to welcome people into Canada. And the other side seems to be beating the drum that we need to be afraid. We need to be afraid because there's a big bad man south of the border who wants our stuff.

I know who I'm voting for, and I know what vision I'm voting for. And I find it really rich that there are people on the left who claim that Pierre Poliev is mean and angry and wants to tear people down. That's nonsensical given this these numbers right here So I'd like to put the question to you at four one six eight seven zero sixty four hundred or one triple eight two two five Talk, who are you voting for and what is the biggest reason? Why you're voting for them. Are you voting out of fear? Are you voting out of hope? And yes, I know that there are issues a housing affordability and that sort of thing

but I'm talking about the the emotion that is going to drive you to the polls. Are you being driven by optimism and hope and the belief that tomorrow can be better than today? Or are you voting out of fear? And by the way, I don't want this to be a liberal bashing. I wanna hear from everybody. If you're a liberal voter, I want to hear from you. I'm not gonna, I'm gonna give you the time of day and I'm gonna treat you as I want to hear from everybody. If you're a liberal voter, I want to hear from you. I'm not gonna I'm

going to give you the time of day. And I'm going to treat you as I treat anybody who calls in, don't be afraid to call into the Ben Mulroney show. What is the main reason you're voting? What is going to get you off the couch to vote? Please give us a call at 416-870-6400 or one triple eight, two to five talk. And don't tell me, but don't tell me that I'm not hearing from one side of the political spectrum that we have to be afraid that this guy's coming easy easy easy. He wants to upend the the world order and he wants to come for our stuff and he wants us to be the 51st state and

That's a narrative that is garnering a lot of traction for the Liberals. It's a fact. You cannot tell me that that's not a fact. So let's take to the call. Max, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Hey, Ben. Thanks for taking my call. Absolutely. Just out of your screen there, I'm voting for Pierre. I think he represents a very positive outlook, very positive for our future. And not only that, but I got a call from a representative from the Liberal Party from my local area, and they asked me who I was supporting.

And I said to them, I said, look, I'm not set voting for anyone in particular if I'm given the right reason. So I want to give you the opportunity that me, a young, straight, white male, entrepreneur, small business owner, what reason do I have to support your party? And she could not give me an answer. Genuinely said, I don't I don't have an answer for you. And I'm not sure what to tell you. No way. Are you being serious? Yes, 100% swear on my life, swear on my mother, Ben, then to

be in total fairness, I do believe that she was just somebody on the phones, working on my mother, Ben. And to be in total fairness, I do believe that she was just somebody on the phones working the war room or whatever, I don't know the internet. Yeah, this wasn't the candidate. This wasn't a polished communicator. So we'll give them the benefit of the doubt. But if you can't come up,

if you're working for a campaign and you can't come up with one positive reason for somebody who represents a pretty large chunk of the population to vote for them, then that's saying something. Max, thank you very much for the call. Let's welcome Rob to the Ben Mulroney show. How are you doing today? I'm good. Great. I'm going to vote for Pierre Poliev. And can I ask you what's getting you off the couch? Are you motivated by fear or frustration, anger, or what? Well, I'm angry at what the liberals have done to our country, and I'm in hope that

we're going to be able to turn Canada back into the country it once was. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, two things can be true at once, I guess. Rob, thanks a lot. I really appreciate the call. Let's who's got who's that? Jim, Jim, thanks so much for calling into the Ben Mulroney show.

Hi, Ben. Thank you so much. Yeah. So I'm going to vote for Pierre Poliev. Yeah. And the reason, surprisingly enough, is fear because I'm afraid. And, you know, I think that's fine. A prime minister, I think Mark Carney could be. I'm going to vote for Pierre because I think the West

is very angry right now. And I think we need to unite the West with the rest of the country. And I think vote for Pierre is the best way to do that. And you know, we're going to be talking about that a little bit later on the show. And that's a whole other kettle of fish. Thank you for the call. The fact that there are, there are forces aligning, uh, in Western provinces that are quite literally, we, the, the alarm bells are being sounded. There is an iceberg and we are being told, if you don't take these things seriously, then what is what is a small movement could turn into something significant that could pose a risk to national unity. And if people don't take that seriously, when they go to the polls, you know, I know that those people are going to turn around and blame somebody else. If that in fact turns into an actual Western separatist movement that causes a national unity crisis. They're not going to blame themselves. They're not going to

they're not going to blame the fact that they voted knowing that the West said, Please don't do this. But but it's a reality that I think people have to have to deal with. Mario, thank you so much for calling. Happy Wednesday to you. Happy Wednesday to you too. Where do we start? I'm voting for Pierre out of fear because I don't trust Carney as far as you can throw him. I don't understand what people mean by saying that Pierre's mean. He's not mean what you see is what you get. He's being straightforward, non-nonsense, it doesn't beat around the bush. I work in organized

labor. I've worked in organized labor all my life. And he's very pro union labor. And it because he knows he needs us. Okay, I don't trust Carney because he moved his business to the United States. He's investing in pipelines in the United States. But he says he's going to keep 80% of ours in the ground. How are we going to get out of this mess? Well, exactly. That's that's that's one of the reasons I'm voting for Pierre and thank you for your call. But I don't just want to

hear from Pierre Poliev supporters, although I do appreciate the calls. And I know I've got some of you on the line. I want to hear from Mark Carney supporters, I want to understand what's motivating you to go to the polls. And I promise you if you call, I'm not going to attack you. I just want to talk. I just want to chat. The best way that we can move forward as a country is if we we have we communicate. So give me a call at 416-870-6400 or one triple eight two to five. Talk. Laurie, thank you so much

for calling into the Ben Mulroney show. Hey, Ben, thanks for having me. I am voting for Poliev. And I'm for hope as well. I just seen too many changes in the country in Canadians identity. And I, I feel this is the only way to get Canada back on track. Yeah, I listen, I think a lot of people gave the liberals a shot one time, two times, three times. And, you know, if you want to give them a fourth shot, that's your absolute democratic right. I don't understand if from my perspective, how anyone would at this point, I mean, you can always change your mind in four years

if you don't like the direction Pierre has taken us, but we've had 10 years of this. And just because you changed the guy at the top doesn't mean you changed the party. It doesn't mean you changed their values. And you certainly haven't changed their caucus. That's for sure. Thanks so much for the call.

Leo, Leo, thank you for calling. Oh, hi, Ben. Love your show. Thank you. You get better and better each week. Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you. I am learning on the job, to be fair. There is a learning curve

and I certainly know I can always improve, but I really appreciate you calling in and saying that. You're amazing. I listen to you every morning. Anyways, but my point is, unfortunately this year I have to spoil my ballot because I don't like the conservative candidate that's in our riding.

And I don't vote for the leader, like I guess in the state you vote for the president, right? I vote for the party and the person that's going to represent my riding. Can I ask you don't have to give me the name of the riding or the candidate, but can you tell me what issue you have with one candidate or another? Well, I find now the way politics and it's all parties, they're parachuting in candidates and they're taking the grassroots votes away from the members to select who's going to represent them. Yeah. And we had a conservative parachuted in.

The liberal was nominated with quotation marks, right? Nobody else could run against them. So, like the the grassroot vote means nothing. The party's pushing ahead and we found out last night with Ed Fass coming out in BC. Oh, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Hey Leo. You know, democracy and the grassroot votes means nothing to the parties anymore. And I don't blame the leaders. It's the executives of the parties that want to manipulate the candidates. Right? Yeah, Leo, thank you for that perspective. I really appreciate it. And I hope you have a great day. Sean, welcome the show.

Hi, I'm voting for Carney. Okay, can you tell me why? Yeah, I think he's, he's with with, I think whip smart. He's Yeah, I think he's, he's with with, I think whip smart. He's right now we're looking at at an economic crisis. And Carney has proven himself in the world as far as economic crisis go. He's looked at leaders in the eye and dealing with them telling them information they don't want to hear. Pierre I like the fact that he's a civil servant his whole life there's there's admiral notions in that. But it's been a rather unremarkable social service life, or civil service life rather he hasn't proved anything to anybody. He's proved he can keep it going for a long time. And it can I ask, can I ask,

and thank you so much for calling. And like I said, I want this conversation to be respectful. People know that when I speak on my own, I tend to be bombastic. But when I engage with you and you take time to call in, I want you to feel respected and heard. Is there nothing about the conservative vision that they're laying out that you view

as something that might motivate you to vote for them? You know what? I grew up in Edmonton. I grew up in the 60s, 70s, I guess. And I've been through oil booms and oil busts. I voted conservative almost my whole life. And I tend to vote now with the individual rather than the party. And one last question for you,

and then I'll let you go and I thank you for your call. But where do you stand on sort of the last 10 years of a liberal government? Do you believe that this clock starts with Mark Carney or is there anything that has happened over the past 10 years? They really should answer for this. That's fair question really is. Yeah, the the recent I guess administration kind of pooped on the sheets there for a long

time. But this is a different animal. You're bringing a Canadian expert on finance to take care of a finance problem that's already ballooned, it's gonna be a worldwide thing there. Pierre just does not have experience in worldwide issues, which this is rapidly becoming. All right, Sean, why thank you for your call. I really do. And I hope you call back again sometime soon. Take care. I will take care. All right, let's welcome Dimitri to

the show. Dimitri, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Hi, I'm for it's important to say that I'm nonpartisan. I'm not in favor of any party. I'm not bigot like some voters. And when I vote, I consider what is best for Canadians and people like me, ordinary people. Generally, I support liberals because I think they're more sociable and more fair. But for the last 30 years, I have voted only once for liberals and ever since I'm voting against them because I don't like and I don't expect them to improve the quality of life of Canadians.

Now in this election, my vote would depend on the polls. And what I have found, and I believe you are going to agree with me, that when we have majority government, we all lose. Maybe first-past-the-post is a good system, but only if we have a great, skilled leader of the party. But we don't, and we probably will never have. So if we have majority government, whether it's conservative or liberals, we are stuck for four years with one leader and they're going to do whatever they want. We have seen this one with with Trudeau for the last nine years. So yeah, so Dimitri, so you're you're hoping that wherever you're wherever you park your vote, it's to ensure a minority government. I want to thank you. I've got a lot of calls

to get to. Thank you very much for your call, Dimitri. Jim, welcome to the show. You're voting liberal. Yes, I'm voting liberal. And can you tell me why? Yeah, the reason is, so if you remember back when Trump was first running, everybody was screaming out, you know, he's not a politician. He's just a businessman. He's going to look out for himself. You know what the states are doing pretty good. Then when he was in power before and now within the 100 days.

So I look at Kearny as being a businessman as well. Well experienced, well nationalized. Brookfield is an amazing company. And I even believe that they have dealings already with different projects within the United States and Canada, pipelines and all that good stuff. So we need a businessman with a businessman. So Jim, Jim, let me ask.

Career politician. OK, let me let me ask. Let me ask. And I thank you for for for telling me that. But let me ask you this, because over the weekend, a group of 30 business people in Canada, some of the biggest people represent the biggest companies in investment, in real estate, in mining, in energy, in banking, 30 of them all lined up to say they've looked at the liberal agenda, they've looked at the vision that the conservatives have, and they are supporting Pierre Poliev.

And these people know him, they know Mark Carney. A lot of them actually know him personally. I'm sure they've been around boardrooms with him. Does that say anything to you that the business people of this country are saying Pierre polio vision is the one that we should back? No, no, not at all. Because if you want to go with that, what was just released, something like there's like nine or 10 companies within Canada that have gotten caught with illegal labor and

immigrants. So we need somebody that can get rid of that stuff. Poliev is too soft for that stuff. I've heard Pierre be accused of a lot of stuff. I've never heard him be accused of being soft. Jim, thank you very much for your call. Let's keep these calls coming in. Mike, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Good morning, Ben. Yeah, voting for polio. I was in Oshawa at the rally. I watched his interview with Lily last night and,

you know, he's very specific of what he wants to do. Very specific. You get word sells with Carney and the liberals want to talk morality. I just have to say town signs button gate and how many times currently been caught exaggerating. Mike, Mike, are you, are you motivated by an optimistic view of the future or are you motivated by a fear of what could come? I'd say I'm motivated by optimism for the conservatives getting the majority and I'm operated by fear for the conservatives getting the majority. And I'm operated by fear if the liberals get in. All right, we'll leave it there. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Sonia, thank you so much for taking time to call us today.

Hi, Ben. Hi. What an honor. Wow. Thank you. The honor is mine. The so what I wanted to say is I'm voting conservative for a future for my kids, mainly because my parents came here as immigrants during the Trudeau, the original Trudeau government. And they worked hard, they didn't ask for any assistance from anybody, worked hard to make sure that their kids had a better life than them. And that's what I want for my kids. And with these last nine and a half years, it's not happening. Both my kids are in the trades and, you know, they're shifting from job to job because, you know, you never know. You know, there are no new projects starting.

Right. Yeah. So I have to vote. And also if the first time I'm voting, I'm actually assisting with the conservative campaign. Oh, good for you. Good for you. Listen, anybody who gets out and participates beyond a vote and actively works,

I have the utmost respect for, regardless of their political affiliation. Thank you so much, Sonia. My best to your kids. Robert, welcome to the show. Hey, Ben, good to talk to you, brother. Ben All right. So who are you voting for? And what's motivating you to get off the couch? Robert I'm voting for Pierre. And I'll tell you why. Yesterday, as I see every day on CP 24,

two more shootings. Unbelievable. The crime is out of control. Every time I listen to Carney, he says, I'm worried about the charter rights of criminals. I'm sorry, if you want to put Paul Bernardo on your Christmas card list, that's your own problem. Don't affect the country this way. It's unreal. Yeah, the crime issue is, it feels that this is a, it seems like the liberals have just given it to the conservatives, at least on that front.

Robert, thank you so much for your call. And I want to thank everybody for calling in, liberal and conservative alike. Like I said, this is a show that sure, you know where I'm coming from, but that doesn't mean I don't know how to have a respectful conversation. And I truly appreciate all the input from all of our callers. Hi, I'm Donna Friesen from Global National. Life moves fast these days, and we want to make it even easier for you to get the news you need. That's why you can now get Global National every day as a podcast. The biggest stories of the day with analysis from award-winning global news journalists. New episodes drop every day, so take this as your personal invitation to join us on the Global National Podcast. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music,

and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And I want to take your calls on a completely different topic than what we were talking about before at 416-870-6400-1888225. Talk there is a piece in the National Post with some alarming numbers in it. one triple eight two two five talk. There is a piece in the National Post with some alarming numbers in it. Canada's birth rate has dropped to a historic low of one point two six children per woman in twenty twenty three.

That's according to stats can. And we join an exclusive club of ultra low fertility countries like South Korea, Spain, Italy and Japan. Now, this is this is despite the fact that parents can receive a caregiver tax credit of up to $8,000 per child, hundreds of dollars a month in the form of the Canada Child Benefit, subsidized daycare if they can get a spot,

paid time off of work, and in some provinces like Ontario, even offer free daily play centers for babies and toddlers with high quality toys and programming. But all of this seems to have failed. The birth rate just keeps declining. So I want to hear from you at 416-870-6400 or 1-888-225-TALK. What is the fix to our fertility crisis? How do we get people having more kids or is immigration

the only solution to grow our population? Now, look, I think one of the knocks against having babies in this country is how hard it is to buy a house. If you can't afford a place to grow a family, you're not gonna have a family in the first place. And so part of the solution has to be solving the housing crisis. Every, I mean, it's in our DNA as sort of people

in the Western world that you grow up, you's in our DNA as sort of people in the Western world that you grow up, you fall in love, you get married, you buy a house, you have a family. And if you take one of those parts out of the equation, out of the sequence, the whole thing falls apart. And I mean, I remember years ago thinking to myself, you know, they keep building these condos with one and two bedroom condos.

That's all they were building in the city of Toronto. And I thought, I wonder if that's gonna affect decisions that couples make in terms of how big of a family they want because it's either buy a condo that you can afford or move out to the suburban. Some people really wanna be city dwellers. And so they're probably going to choose, they're gonna choose to have a smaller family in the city than move out into the country. And I always thought it was interesting that

housing could determine the size of a family. Well I think it's even more prevalent today with the fact that you can't even afford a starter home to start your family and then move up the real estate ladder into a bigger and bigger home as you have more money and as you want more kids, it's just not part of the of the arithmetic that couples make these days. Chase, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Hey, Ben. Hey, so I think part of the issue is, you know, I'm a young family and I have two kids and I want more kids. But one of

the issues that we had with our most recent kid this year is EI. So my wife's income gets cut by half and then she's only really there for a year for the kids. So I think expanding, you know, how long you can have a family member at home for the kid and maybe raising the amount that you can receive while you're away from work on top of housing is another big issue, you know, like we're still renting a townhouse, you know, it's three bedroom, but the price is still crazy. We're trying to save up to buy a house.

Well, exactly. That's what I was just saying, like the pressure on on a young family like you and like, has, have you had those conversations like, well, we can't have another kid until we can own our own place, or we can't have another kid until we can afford to rent a bigger place. Is that a conversation that you and your wife have? Yeah, it is. It is. And like, we both have good jobs, Like our household incomes pretty, it's in the six figures, our household income. So I think it's, you know, the food cost, the rental cost and all that stuff, you know, it adds up, it gets

expensive. And then, you know, after we're actually coming to the maze for the loss of income, which is now also slowing us down. Yeah, of course. I'm having kids that we want to have kids young, we don't want to wait till we're 40 ish, 30. I have kids who want four or five kids, but it just you want four or five? Wow. Yeah, yeah. If I if if I was able to, I would but you know, with the cost of everything is are we even have to wait like six years between our first and second kid, we got our first kid young and look, if you do go down that route

and the sort of the economic financial climate that exists right now in terms of how much more expensive cars are gonna get under this new Trump reality we're living in, you're gonna have to upgrade to a new car at some point. And that's another additional expense that'll be more expensive than you probably anticipated. Well, exactly.

We already talked about upgrading cars. We are personal car, because I have a work car, we have a personal car. A personal car is pretty small, it's a matrix. It fits five, but really like when you're trying to haul groceries, or you need to haul the car, see everything. We've already talked about upgrading,

but when we look into upgrading to a newer car, you're still spending like 20 grand on a used car. Hey, Chase, Chase, I'm gonna have to leave it there with you. But thank you so much. I think you gave us a really great snapshot in terms of the pressures that couples are dealing with people who want to have babies. These are the roadblocks that are put in front of them. And I really appreciate Chase sharing that story with us. Megan, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Good morning. I honestly think 100% it's financial. I mean, obviously, there's going to be people who either want kids or don't want kids. But you know, me and my husband, we just recently purchased a house last year. Congratulations. Thank you. We were expecting our first kid in a month. And honestly, I'm a little nervous about the finances, because yes, the government gives you EI and whatnot, but I'm only going to be making 30% of what my take

home normally is. Yeah. And my baby bonus is going to be making 30% of what my take home normally is. Yeah. And my baby bonus is going to be affected because of what I make. Like on paper, it looks a lot better than what your take home is because of the taxes and whatnot. So I think it is a lot financial again, you know, you need to think about purchasing a new vehicle, all this stuff for the kid. And again, daycare, if you can find a spot and whatnot. So I think, you know, I think people are realizing that, you know, do I want to put pressure on my family in my life? Or do I want to just, you know, Yeah, do you have a smaller family, something that you can manage and enjoy? Or do you do what you had

always dreamed of and have a big family, but you know, then you're cash poor, you're house poor, you're, you can't, you can't give the family the things that you want to give them that validate you as a parent, you know, if all of a sudden you can't take your family on vacation, or you can't save up for university, and you're asking the family to make sacrifices because you can't afford all those things that weighs on a parent's identity, that weighs on a parent's mental health.

Pressure now to to put your kids in sports, have name brand stuff and it's like, you feel like, you know, if I can't give my kids that, then I'm more or less a failure as a parent. Yeah, what does that say about me as a parent? Megan, thank you so much and I wish you the very best with your pregnancy. Thank you so much, have a great day. All right, Frank, welcome to the show.

What do you have to say? Hey Ben, how are you? I'm well. So as Tony Screiner, the country of Hungary, they've implemented a policy because they're having to drop the birth rate was low, that for every child that you have, you pay 25% less income tax. 25 for one, 50 for two, 75 for three, 100% for four kids. You pay zero income tax. Interesting, interesting. People talk about that financial incentive. If a woman knows or a family knows,

you won't have to pay any income tax and that's a big chunk of change. Yeah, yeah, that's a pretty bold vision. I'm gonna dig into that. I'm gonna look into that. Thank you so much for the tip, Frank. I really appreciate it. Kyle, we got a little bit of time left for it.

So tell me what's on your mind. Hey Ben, how you doing? I'm well. Good, I got a son of twins. twins are 10 months old now. I think 100% it comes down to finances. Yeah. I think about their life and their future. I was very fortunate to get into the housing market at a good time, but I know they're not going to have that same luck. And I know as a parent, I've got to help them get into that market. So that weighs heavily on my mind and my wife's mind as well. And we know that we're stopping at two because we can't afford to help more than

than two kids. We'd love to have a bigger family. It's just not going to happen. Well, from the from one father of twins to another, I wish you the very best to you and your wife and your kids. Thanks so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you to everybody for calling in. That was a heck of a conversation. and that was a heck of a conversation. I'm ready to eat. Want to kick your cooking up a notch?

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