The Ben Mulroney Show - It's time to start taking energy production in this country seriously

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

Guests and Topics: -It's time to start taking energy production in this country seriously with Guest: Heather Exner-Pirot, Director of Energy, Natural Resources, and Environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Also Special Advisor To The Business Council Of Canada 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

A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces An airline ticket to romantic places And still my heart has wings These foolish things remind me of you You're listening to the Ben Mulrooney Show. Yeah, before you take in my annoying voice, I wanted you to hear the voice of another Mulrooney who sings far better than I and whose deep, deep baritone was, I believe, the voice of the greatest living orator in the English language until his passing last year. That's my dad. And today's his birthday. Today he would have been 86.

And when the show is done, I am off to join my family in Montreal at a commemoration of sorts where Canada Post is unveiling a commemorative stamp in his honor. And I just thought it'd be nice to hear his voice today. Happy birthday, dad. All right.

It looks like we're finally, finally gonna get what we have been, the majority of Canadians have been clamoring for, for the better part of a year. Mark Carney is expected to call a snap election. The Globe and Mail is reporting April 28th, but it could come a week after that. I'm hearing disputing claims, we'll have to see. And then we'll be off to the races.

We have been in a sort of de facto state of electoral readiness for a very long time. And now it looks like it's finally gonna come. And we always say, and I always say, election campaigns matter. And so wherever the polls are today, nobody should be comfortable. Nobody should be comfortable.

Not the liberals, not the Tories, not the NDP. I don't know how things are going to go for the NDP. The Greens are the people's party. But the top two, really, anything could change with a speech, with a policy announcement, with a misstep. So I'm very glad that we are finally going to be in a place where our democratic rights to hold this government to account

and to decide to judge them, right? Because that's what this election should be about, the last 10 years. I know that the liberals want to make it about Donald Trump and they want to make it about their rebranding. I'm not here for that. Some may be, some may want to look at the last 10 years, the last decade, the lost decade,

and say, you know what, that doesn't matter. That's not this party. I choose to believe that this will be a referendum on how, their stewardship of our economy. And finally, we will be able to do that. And if they win, they win. We'll get the government we deserve. But I just, I look at those polls

and they don't make any sense to me. I don't know, I don't understand them. So we'll have to see, we'll have to see and I'm glad we're finally gonna be in an election campaign. There's some disturbing behavior that I've been noticing in the United States, we all have with people showing their disregard and their disgust with Elon Musk

and his proximity to Donald Trump by vandalizing and sometimes exploding Teslas. And it looks like that really gross behavior has migrated north. And it looks like now two people have been arrested after spray painting Teslas in a car dealership in Montreal. And there's so many, there's so many

adorably hypocritical things about that. Like, this is an American thing that Canadians have imported. But, and that's okay, that's okay. But the second you say Canada first and the Americans have said America first, that's not okay. But this is okay. Vandalism is okay. And I find it really cute, really cute that members of the progressive left are posting on social media how they have sold their Tesla to buy a different car,

to buy a Hyundai, that's one I saw today. I sold my Tesla to buy a Hyundai and I think it was tagged with, go to hell, Elon. And somebody rightly pointed out, so I guess the environment is no longer in peril, right? We don't need electric cars anymore. We certainly don't need the most popular one. We certainly don't need the one

that really revolutionized EVs and made them a viable commercial product, right? No, no, no, now, now, now, now we hate Elon so much that we're putting our, you know, our defense of the planet on hold. Not to say these things haven't had an impact, not to say that Elon's cozying up to Donald Trump, his incessant tweeting about the government and the ills of the government

and the expenditures of the government and his work on Doge where they're firing people and shutting down programs and cutting off funding. A lot of people are very, very upset by that. And I think that's one of the reasons the Tesla stock, which was sitting at $479 US in December, is now down to 235 bucks. It is an astonishing drop of over 50%. And look, the fundamentals of the company haven't changed. How people perceive the company has changed.

And perception changes very quickly. I don't think Elon is worried too, too much about his bottom line. I think he's doing just fine, and I don't think he's going to stop the work he's doing. And I do think these people are fickle. They're going to find something else to be upset about any day now. But the precipitous drop of the stock is what surprised me. And if you want an example of how bananas the United States actually is right now, here's some audio of US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick telling Fox viewers to buy Tesla stock.

To build the next generation technology. I think if you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla. It's unbelievable that this guy's stock is this cheap. It'll never be this cheap again. When people understand the things he's building, the robots he's building, the technology he's building, people are gonna be dreaming of today.

And Jesse Warder's been thinking, gosh, I should have bought Elon Musk's stock. I mean, who wouldn't invest in Elon Musk? I am shaking my head at this. Yesterday I heard on this very radio station that there's a study that came out that said America is six months away from not being a democracy.

Now I personally think that that is hyperbolic. I'm very bullish on the American Republic. But that doesn't mean that it can't descend into sort of a farce and almost an insult of what the republic stands for. Look, just put it in Canada. Mark Carney's finance minister stood before cameras or sat with CTV telling people to buy Brookfield Asset Management stock or a stock associated with somebody that Mark Carney knows and Mark Carney knows everybody, right?

And told them, go out and do this. I'm pretty sure we'd open investigations. I'm pretty sure lawsuits would fly. I'm pretty sure it'd open investigations. I'm pretty sure lawsuits would fly. I'm pretty sure it's illegal in this country. That is so wrong on every level. I mean, I just told you, Elon's going to be fine. He's like, the market will figure it out. Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary of the U.S. government government is pumping a stock owned by somebody who works

for Donald Trump. That's insane. It is an affront to democracy. And I don't say that lightly because I'm not, again, I just told you, I'm bullish on America, but this is disgusting. This is absolutely disgusting and tacky, if I can say. It's frigging tacky. Someone who has been accused of being tacky, if you've ever seen his apartment in New York City

is Donald Trump. He really likes gold. Really, I love gold. And he had Laura Ingraham of Fox News in the Oval Office and he gave her a little bit of a tour. Reagan. But here's what they're like more than anything. So this is the Declaration of Independence. Wow. And they they ask that this be done. It's never been up. It's been in the vaults for many many decades and

they said we have to do something like drapes or something because the light eventually affects it. Yeah, you know, we cut it off there. He actually got them to pull out the original declaration of independence and put it in his office. They have to cover it because it's so delicate. I mean, it's in his office. Do you think he's ever read it? Do you think he's actually ever read it? I don't know. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. If you remember last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford congratulated Mark Carney in his ascension to the role of Canada's Prime Minister and he said, congratulations, I look forward to working with you. Now get out of our way in the Ring of Fire. And for those of you who don't know, the Ring of Fire is a deposit of critical

minerals worth billions upon billions upon billions of dollars in Ontario's north that is currently undeveloped due to years of restrictive policy by the Liberal government. Well Pierre Poliev heard that ask, I assume, because just a couple of days ago announced that a Poliev government would in fact get out of Ontario's way and allow them in short order to develop that rich deposit of minerals. Something similar happened when energy CEOs wrote an open letter to federal political leaders on how to boost production and increase and improve Canadian sovereignty. It's quite a bold vision asking what they want,

what they need, what they think Canada needs. And it's not directed to any one particular leader. But to discuss the contents of the letter as well as who we think maybe might answer the call is Heather Exner-Perot, Director of Energy, Natural Resources and Environment at the McDonnell-Laurier Institute, also Special Advisor to the Business Council of Canada. Heather, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Good morning. Thanks for having me. So what are the key takeaways from this letter? Yeah, so there's six main points. I'll just say it briefly for your listeners. One is regulatory. So in particular, C-69 or the Impact Assessment Act, people might have heard, which was quite a burdensome regulatory process and really interferes kind of from the federal

level interventional to your ring of fire point you just made. And also a tanker ban, which you obviously can't export oil. Oil tankers. But then also a few other ones. One is that there's an emissions cap. They want to get rid of the emissions cap, obviously, because they cannot grow production if that exists. They want to increase loans to indigenous groups so they can have equity and all these oil and gas projects and be partners.

And they want to have a commitment to reduce the regulatory process to six months, which is ambitious, but certainly would make it make a better business case in Canada if they could do it. Well, you know, one of the things that surprised me was this notion of declaring an energy national emergency, which would then be, I guess that comes with a raft of additional powers where you don't have to jump through certain hoops. I think it's, you know, in regulation

where you have a public interest test and say that something is in the public interest or the national interest. Then the regulator just looks at everything else through that lens. So, okay, we know that we wanna get this done. This is a project that needs to get to yes. So it's not about should we build it, but how are we going to build it and let's go through the process. So to have, so it does add

to the regulator some urgency and also I think, you know, some leash to do things, you know, in a bit more proactive way. So I have to assume the Greens would not pick up this, this, the torch and say, yes, what you're asking for, we will do. I have to assume the Greens would not pick up this torch and say, yes, what you're asking for we will do. I have to assume the NDP would be against this. The People's Party may be in favor of it, but they are not a force in federal politics, so it's a moot point to even bring them up, which brings up then therefore the two contenders. And on one side you've got, as I said, Pierre Poliev who sort of endorsed the development

of the Ring of Fire. And on the other side, you've got Mark Carney, who just last week was asked in French about the building pipelines in the national interest. And he shrugged his shoulders and said, well, it's really not up to me. First of all, you have to have a project and there's no project before me.

And then you've got to talk to municipalities and First Nations and the provinces themselves. There's really a lot to do. And I just I don't know that we should even be discussing that right now. So based on that, and Pierre Poliev, I have to assume there's only one guy who's going to agree with this. Listen, this letter I think is to smoke out who's serious when they say we're going to be an energy superpower and who's not serious. Yeah. Yeah. Telling everybody what needs to be done to attract and I'm telling you tens and tens of billions of dollars. No, the ring of fire is an excellent property. Oil sands and the Montney national gas properties are trillion dollar resources. Yeah. And there is strong demand for them.

And so the very fastest way, the lowest hanging fruit for Canada to increase our GDP, to get more jobs, to attract more investment is to do this list of six things that the CEOs just put forth. And if you can't commit to that, then, you know, don't say we're going to be an energy superpower and you better tell Canadians what your plan is. Yeah, and let's look at this holistically as well. For the past 10 years, we've had a government creating social programs

that we can't pay for. If you're somebody who truly believes in those social programs and wants them to exist not just today or as a performative, hey, look, we really care about this project or this program or that. If you really want the most robust social safety net in the world, then you have to have industry that can pay taxes into the into the government

and pay for them. And this is so if you are if you are a bleeding heart, then you should support things like this. Well, I even have to say for the NDP, this puts them in a bit of a pickle too, because we know steel is under pressure right now. That's important to a lot of writings. We know manufacturers, the workers that work at those jobs are under pressure because of the threat of tariffs. And so to come out and say the easiest thing we can do is build more pipelines, extract more oil, get a ton of GDP that way.

And then to say, no, that's not the tack we want to take. I mean, now you're talking about people that lay pipe for a living. So I think it's clever in a way. One thing is that they have been asked, the CEOs have been asked, how do we accelerate development? How do we boost productivity in this country? And this is their answer. But it's also a way to say, who is actually serious?

Who is just talking? And I'm glad you say that, because when that Financial Times article was written, I always love it when somebody from the outside highlights accurately what's going on on the ground in Canada, said, here is the pathway for us, for Canada to become an economic and energy superpower. It referenced our lack of visionary leadership in Canada, which is why we find ourselves where we are. But certain people in the Liberal government, including Minister Champagne and Minister Anand,

retweeted that article. And so I agree with you. If you're gonna tweet that, then you have to have the courage of your convictions and follow through. You are the people with the levers of power. You should be able to get behind something like this and not just do something as performative as tweet about it. I'm speaking with Heather Exner-Perot about all things energy

and all things nation building because that's really what we're talking about here. A tweet from the opposition leader Pierre Poliev came out just a few hours ago where he said, conservatives announced plan for Canada first with shovel-ready zones, pre-approved areas to build mines, data centers, pipelines, LNG plants and more. No uncertainty or years of delay. Just go. Your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, you know, on the one hand, it's great to hear political leaders talk like this. It does help investors, proponents feel some security or some optimism that things will move faster, that there is a political partner on the other end. And I think there are some cases where, like I say, you could designate something a corridor,

you could designate something in the national interest. I can think of three or four projects that would be game changers for Canada that would get that economic boost we're looking for. Yeah. And maybe he can do that there. But let's not forget that the Constitution still, you know, affirms Aboriginal rights and treaty rights. And that is a factor in all of these projects. Now, in some cases, the Indigenous group already, you know, if I think of a few projects, Indigenous

group. Yeah. Tell me about, you said three or four projects that could help boost the national interest. What are they? Okay, well, so Ring of Fire, there's a uranium mine in Saskatchewan that has full indigenous support, is really just worrying on the federal regulator.

They've taken their very sweet time on that one. That would boost uranium, global uranium production by 20%. And I promise you, there will be no nuclear renaissance without it. And there's Silas and LNG and a related pipeline in BC and then Northern Gateway. So if we had those four projects rolling,

we would be providing those defense critical minerals, those energy minerals, nuclear, oil, gas, everything the world needs. Yeah, and look, I'm allowed to editorialize on this show because people wanna hear my opinions. I very much like that central, whenever the conservatives talk about these plans, central to it is always ensuring

that they have buy-in from First Nations, always making sure that they feel like they are partners in this development, that if something goes through their land, that they are compensated for it, and they are stakeholders. And I like that from the ground up, it's built with that intention. Yes, and it's possible, and that's what from the ground up, it's built with that intention.

Yes, and it's possible. And that's what people need to know, it's possible. A lot of these projects, the ones I just listed, Ring of Fire is a bit more complicated. Silas and Tatsin, Indigenous proponent, the Euringian Mine in Saskatchewan has the Indigenous Chief Order

off that last week saying, get your act together. Heather, we're gonna leave it there. We gotta leave it there. Thank you so much. I hope to talk to you again soon. At Desjardins, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do – business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us, and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk business.