The Ben Mulroney Show - Mark Carney feels it's beneath him to have to answer to reporters

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Mark Carney feels it's beneath him to have to answer to reporters Guest: Andrew Scheer, Opposition House Leader, former Opposition Leader 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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So our Prime Minister, Mark Carney, decided to on his first official trip abroad, to go to Europe. And, you know, to be honest, I took a position yesterday that I thought it was a bad move that he should have gone down south to prove what he claimed. He was the one guy who could deal with the existential threat of Donald Trump. And there were some people who made some good arguments as to why he should go to Europe

because he could come back with these great business deals, trade deals that would demonstrate that he is the leader we need today. And thank God he came to save us. But the trip came and went and he didn't come back with much. Like he didn't come back with much. He came back with a photo, some photo ops,

which I'm sure will help him on the campaign trail because he gets to say, look at me, I look like a prime minister. And if I look like a prime minister and sound like a prime minister. And if I look like a prime minister and sound like a prime minister, you're maybe more likely to believe I should be elected as part of a government to be the prime minister. And he didn't get any of that stuff.

Like he didn't get any of it. He didn't even get any of our allies to push back and say, we stand with Canada as an independent nation and they shouldn't be, Donald Trump should stop talking about them being the 51st state like he didn't we didn't get that but that doesn't mean we didn't get to know him a little bit better he uh what will i'm sure become a famous interaction that we will be playing over and over again because i do believe it was very telling he was asked by two reporters about transparency, his blind trust, the accountability gap between

who he is and what we know about him. And he got really testy, really, really testy. Let's listen to the first exchange between our Prime Minister, Mark Carney, and the Globe and Mail's Stephanie Levitz. Mr. Carney, Stephanie Levitz with the Globe and Mail. We understand that you have now placed your assets in a blind trust, so you don't know what's happening to them going forward, but you knew what they were going into that blind trust. So what are they? Look, Stephanie, I follow the rules of the Ethics Commissioner. I'm following them well in advance

of any of the requirements. As you know, because I know you know this, you know that these requirements come into effect in months. We're talking days after I became Prime Minister. So I'm complying with the rules of the Ethics Commissioner, going through the processes and all those things that are necessary. Okay, now I caught the condescension. Some will say I'm reading into it, but I caught the condescension. And here's my problem, and I'm going to speak very slowly for those of you listening who think that any criticism of Mark Carney is automatically maple-maga. Okay? So listen very carefully and I will choose my words and I will speak slowly. Our system has allowed for Mark Carney to ascend to become our Prime Minister. That is not a problem I have. That is our system.

I do not want to change it. I am not trying to minimize his accomplishment, and I'm not trying to suggest that he is in any way, shape or form, not our prime minister at all. He is. I want him to succeed because his success becomes our success. However, one must recognize that his path to power is unique. The liberal government is a caretaker government. We have a prorogued Parliament. The business of the country is not getting done.

The person at the top of that government was, and let's remember, it was a minority government propped up by the NDP. For over a year, there was a groundswell, a desire for an election. It didn't happen. They played keep away with our vote. And now an unelected man who went through what any rational good faith observer would say was a cakewalk of a liberal leadership race. It was a contest in name only. We have an unelected leader who is now the Prime Minister of Canada who has yet to sit down for an in-depth conversation with

for an in-depth conversation with someone in the Canadian press. I'm talking an hour, at least. We haven't had that at all. Not at all. We get press conferences, we get scrums. And so because of that, because of that extraordinary level of, let's call it unaccountability, but not democratic unaccountability, like unaccountability to the voters. Because that exists, he should be trying to make us, reassure us that he is the right guy by disclosing more than is the minimum. And the minimum is what the ethics

committee and as Commissioner requires. He essentially said I am doing the bare minimum Stephanie Levitz what's your problem? And don't forget the way the disclosure rules work is it's entirely possible that Canada will not have access to those disclosure documents until after the next election where he could very well be the actual Prime Minister of Canada. Simple as that. If you don't have a problem with that I would ask you why not? This is not a normal circumstance. To try to normalize it is an affront to to the rights of the people of this country. So that was the first question. Let's move on to Rosemary Barton's, essentially her follow-up to Stephanie Levitz.

Rules say that those assets should be publicly disclosed within a hundred and twenty days, which means you'll campaign in a coming federal election, most likely within the next 120 days, and are serving as campaign in a coming federal election, most likely within the next 120 days and are serving as prime minister now with Canadians not being aware of what potential conflicts of interest you've sought to avoid. What possible conflict would you have? Stephanie, I'm complying with the rules. I'm complying with the rules in advance.

My apologies. That was Stephanie Levitz in a follow-up. She's absolutely right. It is not incumbent upon us to guess what what conflicts there may be. That's not my job, Mr. Prime Minister. It is your job to ensure and assure me that there are no conflicts. Because you have not been vetted. The Liberal Party did not vet you. The people that were racing against you in the leadership race did not challenge you. The people that were racing against you in the leadership race did not challenge you.

The press didn't have an opportunity to interview you. You do not talk to the press. It is your job to make me feel better, not me assume the best about you. That's not how it works. Now let's get to the follow-up with Rosemary Barton of the CBC. There's no possible conflict of interest in your assets. It's very difficult to believe. Look inside yourself, Rosemary. I mean, you start from a prior of conflict and ill will. I have served in the private sector. I have stood up for

Canada. I have left my roles in the private sector at a time of crisis for our country. I'm complying with all the rules. Your line of questioning is trying to invent new rules. I'm complying with the rules that Parliament has laid out and the responsibilities of the Ethics Commissioner. And I will continue to comply with those rules. If you are a good faith operator, everything that man said and the manner in which he said it should upset you. Everything. I'm complying with the rules. That's the bare minimum. Look inside yourself. That's condescending. If any other politician, especially on the right side of the

political spectrum, had dressed down two female journalists back to back like that, they would have been labeled a misogynist. And you know what? You could probably make a case for it. I'm not hearing too much of that today, but that's fine. I left the private sector to come to public life because of this crisis. Okay, you're not the Messiah, sir.

And you've demonstrated that for what should have been a layup going to Europe, you couldn't come back with anything. and the crisis that you're referring to, you haven't addressed yet. Look inside yourself ascribing ill will to a journalist trying to do their job on behalf of the Canadian people? Unacceptable, sir. That's not how this works. Tough questions are asked all the time.

Not good enough and it's going to get worse for you. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and in a world where the Liberal Party of Canada has turned its back on its defining policy, the carbon tax, I think it's incumbent upon us to have a conversation with, you know, the people who are in the trenches who were fighting against it, saying it was going to be a job killer and a wallet killer and it was going to make life more expensive, only to be and if you if you attacked it or if you weren't in favor of it, you were somehow a climate denier. And so the people who were in the trenches taking the mortar fire are the ones I want to talk to. So let's welcome to the show opposition house leader and former opposition leader, Andrew Scheer.

Mr. Scheer, welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Good morning, Ben. Great to talk to you. So I think the conversation I think has moved past whether or not the liberal stunt was a cancellation of the carbon tax. I think at this point, we all know that that didn't happen. But your leader, Pierre Poliev, took to the microphones to say that he's going to scrap the industrial carbon tax if he becomes prime minister.

And it seems to me, I think he wanted to hammer home the point that this could very well still be a carbon tax election. Yes, absolutely. And I think it's really important to kind of break this down into some components. So as you point out, the carbon tax law is still there. Senior liberals still talk about how they believe in carbon taxes as a tool and that it's not going to go anywhere. The industrial carbon tax, though, still exists, still is planned to keep rising. And the reason why this is important is because,

and I know that many Canadians are worried about their jobs with the US administration threatening these tariffs. Here in Canada, we have a government imposed tax that the Americans don't pay. So when we're thinking about how we stand up to this threat and protect jobs and the economy, the industrial carbon tax needs to go. And only conservatives are promising to do that. A steel plant, which I have in the economy, the industrial carbon tax needs to go. And only conservatives are promising to do that.

A steel plant, which I have in my writing, that has to pay carbon taxes, looks across the border and says, well, if we were there, if this production shifted to US, we wouldn't have to pay this extra fee. So for steel workers, for auto workers, for anybody in the manufacturing sector, they know that their jobs are threatened

with the industrial carbon tax. And Mark Carney said yesterday that he's going to keep it and it's going to keep going up under his government. Well, he also said that it's necessary to keep it. He said, if Canada wants to expand trade into the European Union and the United Kingdom, as well as emerging Asian markets, it must have an industrial carbon tax.

Now, I got to say, Mr. Scheer, that's a new one for me. I don't think I've ever heard that spin before and I think somebody might want to tell India, China and the United States because that would be news to them as well. Well exactly, you know it's just utter nonsense. There are so many countries around the world that do massive bill You'll close to trillions of dollars worth of trade With with European countries that don't have a carbon tax and that hasn't stopped the Europeans from importing things from China and India Also, why would we want to make ourselves? preemptively

Uncompetitive why would we want to put burdens on ourselves if European countries are gonna you know suddenly start looking at imports in a different way? Well let them figure that out but we should look at our own economy and say how can we make ourselves the most competitive, give our workers the best advantages so that our Canadian companies can bid on projects and manufacture goods that the world will buy. Instead, Mark Carney's approach is saying, well, if we shoot ourselves in the foot first, then maybe the other European countries will have sympathy for us and buy our stuff. And I've never known an economist or a trade analyst that has ever

suggested something so stupid. Well, listen, we're getting to know our new Prime Minister very slowly, in drips and drabs. He doesn't sit for long interviews, and we really didn't get to know him during the coronation that was the liberal leadership race. But we're getting, I mean, if you build the image of him as a mosaic, then we're getting to know him one tile at a time. And so we got a few, we just talked about a few of those tiles, but in French, during his trip to Europe, he made some very, I thought, telling pronouncements about LNG and the development of liquefied natural gas in Canada

and getting those building pipelines from east to west, where he essentially threw up his shoulders and in French said, you know, that's really not my job. Like it's up to the provinces. And of course we've got to get buy-in from the first nations. And of course you have to have a project first before you even talk about these things. I mean, to me, that was a very telling moment where we got to see how he truly feels about, you know, mineral and natural resource extraction

and development in Canada. Well, exactly. The answer is that he doesn't want to develop that. And when before the Trudeau Liberals came into power, before they started imposing and we have to remember this, it wasn't just Justin Trudeau who became unpopular. It was his policies. And one of his policies was to leave the oil and gas in the ground, something Mark Carney has himself said. One of his policies was to tell our allies no when they came looking for our LNG. I gotta tell you Ben, when I saw Canada's allies like Japan sitting in the Oval Office making deals on LNG with the US

administration that could have been done here, I just I almost you know I want to punch the wall or something because we are going through a tremendous amount of uncertainty and anxiety right now. We could have had those multi-billion dollar investments that other countries would have invested here in Canada, putting Canadians to work, steel workers, pipe fitters, and that's all going to the US.

And the reason why Mark Carney gets so prickly about that is because we know that when he was chair of Brookfield, they were heavily invested in companies that compete with the oil and gas sector and natural gas sector. He still won't disclose what those assets are. And when we're talking about jobs and investments going to the United States, we have to remind everybody that Mark Carney himself, to make a little bit more money for his shareholders and for himself, moved the head office of his company to New York City. We've now got data from Brookfield, his company, that shows that they increased investments in the US by 34% while decreasing investments in

Canada. So, you know, this is just the worst guy in the world we could have going to go toe to toe with the US right now. Look, I want to spend the last couple of minutes we have on that disaster of a press conference yesterday. As I said, you know, we're learning about him in drips and drabs, but another tile in that mosaic was that press conference where he dressed down two consecutive well-respected

female journalists simply for asking, I believe, the questions that it is incumbent on him to answer, given the fact that we just don't know this guy yet. He did not want to go into detail on his blind trust. He condescendingly suggested that there was ill motivation behind the questions themselves. What do you make of that? If this is a snapshot of the Prime Minister today, what do you see in that snapshot? Well, clearly he's got something to hide. You know, people who are open books

and not worried about revealing information, don't get that, don't lose their temper, don't become so furious as he was yesterday. I found the question back to that reporter, you know, look inwards or, you know, look inside. Look inside yourself, Rosemary. Like, you know, whatever we might think of, politicians might think of the media from time to time, asking a sitting prime minister who has just installed without an election, with just a small number of liberals voting for him, who has the incredible power that

comes with that. You know, the prime minister has incredible personal power to, as we saw, you know, to sign regulations, to change rules. He has millions of dollars invested. He hasn't told us if he's, what those assets were. So we can't see, okay, if he makes a rule change, does that benefit the company that he knows he owns shares in?

Is he doing that to enrich himself? Don't you think given the fact that, look, I don't take issue with the system that allowed him to rise to where he is. I don't take issue with that. That's the system we have. It may be an exceptional scenario, but that's the system we have. But given that this is so exceptional, don't you think it's incumbent upon him to do so much more than what the bare minimum is, which is respecting the letter of the law, according to the ethics commissioner?

100% and you're absolutely right. You know, the system is the system and and and and that's that's how he was installed. Fine. But you cannot ignore the fact that the rules are there to achieve an end. It's not just that we have this this rule for the sake of the rule. The rules are there to provide Canadians with assurance that people are not going to abuse power once they get in office. If we find ourselves in a situation where the rules are inadequate for that, then it is absolutely incumbent on the Prime Minister to say, I'm going to go above and beyond. I'm going to just simply disclose, here's where I

had my money invested. So now you can see if I make a rule change on say, renewable fuels, you can see that I have millions of dollars invested in a company that sells renewable fuels. And we don't know. And listen, he's not a politician. He loves touting that. Were he a politician for even a couple of weeks, he would know if you answer the question to the satisfaction of the press, they will stop asking the question. But until he does, those questions are going to keep coming back, keep coming up. Mr. Shear, thank you so much for your time today. Always great to chat with you, Ben. Thanks.

There's no limit to how far criminals will go to cover their tracks, but investigators will go even further to uncover the truth. I'm Nancy Hicks, a senior crime reporter for Global News. This season on Crime Beat, I'll take you from the crime scene to the courtroom and inside some of Canada's most high-profile cases and some you've likely never heard of before. Search for and listen to Crime Beat on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.