The Ben Mulroney Show - It's time for a National Conversation on how to Make Canada reach it's full potential

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

It's time for a National Conversation on how to Make Canada reach it's full potential If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I think we all need to be drinking a funky cold medina right about now, maybe two. Everyone was worried that with those 100 executive orders that President Trump signed on day one, we worried that one of those would inflict severe damage to the Canadian economy with tariffs that did not materialize. Now he said that he's thinking February 1 could be the day which is just over a week from now. Later on in the show, you're going to hear a conversation that I had just a few minutes

ago with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who was at the inauguration, she has spent more time with Donald Trump in the lead up to him assuming power for the second time than any Canadian leader. She has insights that nobody else can offer. And she believes that he misspoke on that February 1st deadline, that she thinks it's closer to April 1st. And she believes that he misspoke on that February 1st deadline, that she thinks it's closer to April 1st, and she'll explain why in the interview.

A truly insightful interview. But let's assume for a moment that February 1st is the date. Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, spoke about needing, as the premier, needing a strong mandate to govern in a post tariff world. These tariffs are coming. I need a mandate and I will spend tens of billions of dollars to protect people's jobs

here in Ontario with the support of the federal government. We make we have to make sure that Ontario has a very loud voice down in the US, which we're making sure we're heard loud and clear. We also need to have a loud voice in Ottawa and working with all the other provinces. Premier, back in 2018, the first time there were tariffs, you didn't call another election. So why do you need to call an election now?

The tariffs were the same then as they- Well, you know, Colin, good question, but I'll tell you one thing it was night and day that Donald Trump 1.0 is a lot different than Donald Trump with a massive mandate with a popular vote controlling the Senate controlling Congress and and the White House. Yeah he's uh listen that's that's an. I think that there's an element of political opportunism as well. But politics is opportunism. So I don't want to go to the polls. But if we go to the polls, we go to the polls.

I don't know what to say about that. Meanwhile, look, I think a lot of people listen to this show. I think newsmakers listen to this show. A couple of last maybe last week, I was mentioning Sir John A. Macdonald on the show, and how he's important to our history. He was a flawed man, but a great man. And the very next day, out of the lips of Pierre Poliev comes very similar words. I don't know if he listened, or we just caught the same bug at the same time, but I said it

first. And yesterday, we were talking interprovincial trade barriers on this very show and the need to get rid of them. And interestingly enough, yesterday, Melanizha Lee had this to say. Our long-term response, because we know that we are over-reliant on the American market. So we need to make sure that there is less commercial barriers between, for example, my home province of Quebec

and Ontario than actually Quebecers or Ontarians exporting to the U.S. We need to make sure that there's no hurdles across the country. We also need to diversify our markets across the country. And so we have a really good team of different ministers working on that. I mean, listen, it's great to hear, but you've been in power for nine years.

For nine years. I tweeted about this nine years ago. I said on Twitter nine years ago, the prime minister who solves the problems of national reconciliation and interprovincial trade barriers will be viewed as one of our great prime ministers. This is this this should be the low-hanging fruit. I believe I told the story last week of a vineyard I went to in in New Brunswick and the the owner of the vineyard told me that it was easier for him to sell a case of wine to China than it was for him to sell a single bottle to his neighbors in Nova Scotia. That's the fact that entrepreneurs and business owners across this country deal with from coast to coast to coast. Now look, a true leader is able to look

at a problem and view it as an opportunity. Unfortunately, I think this conversion that we're seeing from the Liberal Party in Ottawa is comes way too late. You know, the belief now that we can't tax our citizens into changing the climate. And we, you know, so gone will be the carbon tax. And oh, inter provincial trade barriers need to go away. And oh, you know, so gone will be the carbon tax and all inter-provincial trade bearers need to go away at all. We need to strengthen our border and our immigration like this. It's too late. It's too late.

I think everybody appreciates a redemption story, but you got to fall first. People didn't get on the Tiger Woods bandwagon until his life fully collapsed. He we didn't want to see him redeemed until we saw him truly fall. It's how this it's how it works. You know, you can't you can't be an underdog until you're literally the underdog. And so all of this stuff that they are saying as a party. I don't think people will buy until they've spent some time in the political hinterland. It's just not it's not going to work. Now, some people may

come back into the fold some, some liberal voters who weren't comfortable going to the conservatives. Like as well, at least Christie is here, at least Mark Carney is here, at least Ruby dolla is here. But I don't think enough to make too too much of a difference. And this notion, oh, we have to diversify. The option has been in front of you for years. You have turned it down. As I've said, we always say Canada,

from coast to coast to coast, what good are those coasts if you've effectively rendered us a landlocked nation, only able to trade with our southern neighbor? I've never seen a country so willing to hobble itself, so willing to be the smallest version of itself, so willing to to compromise what it has in terms of resources and advantages because either it's not fair to the environment or it's not. And look, Switzerland is a landlocked nation and they realize with no natural resources, what we have to do is we have to be able to provide

world-class goods that nobody else in the world can replicate. What do we do? We've got lumber that we send abroad that gets turned into a table that we then buy back. We have oil that we send away that gets turned into gasoline that we buy back. I've never seen a country so willing to be the smallest version of itself.

I want a national conversation to emerge from this crisis where we finally realize that if we tear down interprovincial trade barriers, if we extract what is below our feet and in an environmentally sustainable way, and we share it with the world, we will be the richest, most powerful version of Canada that has ever existed. And from there, we can project Canadian values

of which we are all so proud. That's what I want out of this crisis. We'll have the most robust social safety net in the world. Child hunger, child poverty will be a thing of the past. Our hospitals will be world class people. The right people around the world will want to flock here and we will be able to house them and we'll be able to educate them and we'll be able to protect them. That's the Canada I want to live in. we'll be able to educate them and we'll be able to protect them.

That's the Canada I want to live in. But we've been fooling ourselves for nine years. We have been fooling ourselves for nine years thinking we could do it a different way. My God, I'm excited about the future. If that's the future, I'm excited about it. So, yeah, we are in a crisis right now. These tariffs could come tomorrow, they could come on February 1st, they could come on April 1st. But for the love of God, the people in power in this country need to start having adult

conversations. We do not live in fantasy land. Canada could be a leader on the global scale on so many files if we just had the willingness to accept the riches that God gave us. And that's all I have to say about that. She has partial retrograde amnesia. She can't remember the last eight years. Tuesdays.

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