The Ben Mulroney Show - Mark Carney let Donald Trump know, his tough talk during the campaign was strategic

Episode Date: May 12, 2025

Guests and Topics: -How the Conservatives need to re-brand with Guest: Chris Chapin, Political Commentator, Managing Principal of Upstream Strategy -Mark Carney let Donald Trump know, his tough talk during the campaign was strategic 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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Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us. And it feels to me like as we leave the election behind and look towards the next parliament, both the Liberals and the Conservatives are going through a little bit of an identity shift for completely different reasons. And we're going to discuss that and many more topics with Chris Chapin. He's a political commentator, managing principal upstream strategy and a good friend of the Ben Mulroney show. Chris, welcome. Always a pleasure, Ben. OK, so let's start with the lay of the land in terms of what the makeup of the House of Commons is actually going to look like.

A lot of changes since election night. The riding of terbonne in Quebec has flipped to the Liberals after it shows in a recount that they won by a single vote. Yeah, it's crazy. You know, we've always joked in politics that, you know, every vote matters, but in this case, it's exactly that. You know, every vote truly did matter in that riding. And it's flipped back after the judicial recount to the Liberals. So it's certainly going to be interesting to see what the the I believe there's three other recounts judicial recounts that have been ordered. So we could see a

couple more twists and turns before the House of Commons ever sits. Well, the liberals are sitting at 170 seats to have a majority. They need 172. And so a lot of these recounts have been going their way. A lot of them have been flipping liberal or being confirmed liberal. And so nothing to suggest that they couldn't get to 172, maybe even 173. So I think everyone is just assuming now that we're going to have a pretty stable government for at least what three years, you think? I think that's safe to say I actually don't think the only chance we might see an election any sooner than three or maybe the four years from now is if the Prime Minister thinks the cards are in his favour.

You know, perhaps he's able to renegotiate a deal with the president and he thinks it's favourable for him to go to the electorate and ask for that full majority mandate. But at this point, I mean, you've got a leaderless NDP with only seven seats. There's certainly been talks about the Liberals trying to poach one or two of the NDP to cross the floor. I don't think Elizabeth May is going to bring down a government anytime soon. So I think it's pretty safe to say you're going to see Carney govern

like he essentially has a majority mandate for the next several years. Yeah, I'm hearing things like that Elizabeth May may want to put herself forth to be the speaker of the house, which would free up one liberal from having to sit in that position. And that's one extra vote on the government side. to put yourself forth to be the Speaker of the House, which would free up one liberal from having to sit in that position, and that's one extra vote on the government side.

But, so let's talk about the NDP for a second, because yes, they don't have party status. I've heard that they are in discussions to receive party status, official party status, even though they don't have it. How do you feel about that? Because the progressive conservative in me that saw the party decimated in 93

wasn't given that sort of benefit from the incoming liberal government. And yet the conservative in me recognizes that in order for the Tories to be successful at a future election, we kind of needed NDP. Yeah, you know, Ben, I think the rules are the rules. I've thought a lot about this. But you know, we've seen it here in Ontario. It took two election cycles for the liberals to regain official party status in the Ontario legislature.

I don't think we should bend them just at the will of what's good for our own poll political good and what's frankly for the good of the NDP federally. So I think they're in real trouble. I think a party with seven seats without a leader, I think there was reports over the weekend that they're going to fall short of getting their refund back in hundreds of writings across the country. I think they're going to be decimated. I think they very well may be decimated for years and years and years to come. And I just don't see who's going to put their name forward to lead that party anytime soon. I think there's a couple of impressive new Democrats out there that could take down,

but I don't think somebody like Premier Bob Canoe or former Premier Rachel Notley is going to step forward anytime soon to lead a, you know, a party-less, baddest-less party. Yeah. And even a successful rebuild, like what are the electoral prospects of the NDP ever? If they're lucky, they may find themselves in a moment in time where leader of the opposition is a possibility.

But realistically, ever forming government is not a possibility. But I think their issues are greater than that. Chris, I mean, I think that we've been using existential a lot. But in their case, you know, their existence is in jeopardy. They they in a in a good time for them. They have a tough time raising money. And now it's going to be even worse for them.

I don't I don't even know if they're going to pay the bills. I mean, I think political parties go bankrupt. and now it's going to be even worse for them. I don't even know if they're going to pay the bills. Do political parties go bankrupt? I think they can and I think the NDT very well make. They're a real pickle. I don't know whether the left of the electorate has just decided they don't need a single issue party or just that progressive voice in the in the discussions when it comes to an election. They're clearly quite content backing the liberals and have done so for several election cycles in a row now. And I think trying to rebuild that party, I think there will always be a social democrat left in this country. But I'm just not sure it takes the form of the NDP party. Yeah, and that's what I agree with as well.

I think, you know, at their most successful under the Jack Leighton's and the Ed Broadbent's and the Tom Malkares of the world, they were not this single issue pro Palestinian party. And so part of me thinks that with the debt that they've got and this attitude that they are just beholden to, pushing that over anything else, which includes workers' rights,

which is what they were known for. Part of me thinks that all the adults in the NDP should get together and possibly start their own party and just say, like, if you see the ground on Palestine, say, you can keep that, we're gonna go do what we used to do over here under a new banner free of the debt free of the free of the scandal and free of the of the the burden of trying

to not just rebuild they've got to dig themselves out of a hole absolutely i think the the real challenge for the NDP then is that you know you talked about that labor movement side of the party we've seen in jurisdictions across the country, that part of that party has moved to the conservatives. Whether that Doug Ford's conservatives, or Pierre Pauli's conservatives, the blue collar worker movement that used to build up a huge chunk of the NDP

has moved to the right side of the political spectrum. And it'd be interesting to see how Mark Carney governs, but the liberals have done very well at taking those social issues under their fold and really embodying them. And so I'm just not sure what's left for the, the new Democrats to really stake out when it comes to, uh, you know, political ground, because the liberals are quite strong on environmental issues and you know, kind of what I'd call like the woke issues, but those, um, you know, social ideology, you know, lame but I just don't

know what left for for a new Democratic Party to represent. All right let's move on to the conservatives and you know there are there are two schools of thought that if you are the leader of the official opposition your job is to oppose right but on the case of trade with Donald Trump I wonder whether a case could be made that the Tories should be more constructive in this parliament than oppositional on as it relates to the file with Donald Trump. Because if Mark Carney comes out of this,

having quote unquote, saved us from this crisis and the Tories are on the outside looking in, having not contributed, but rather opposed, that might spell doom for them for a number of elections moving forward You know, it's such a tough question Ben because I've always believed that the hardest job in politics is being the leader of the official Opposition and it's times like these that really, you know tells me why and it's you're you're darned if you do and you're darned If you don't because it's easy to oppose

But you know the the logical, I think what most Canadians, the idea of is that they'd work together. The problem is you just saw what happens to somebody like Jagmeet Singh, if you work together with the government for a long time, they take all the credit. And when it comes election time, get to go to the electorate and say, look what we've done.

And it's very difficult for the opposition to stake out and defend the position they took for the last several years. So I think there's a lot of issues that the liberals and conservatives are aligned on. I think probably 80 to 85% of the electorate is aligned on key issues, real nation building ideas that I think would be smart for the conservatives to get behind.

It's just a difficult trap to fall into because you start agreeing with them too much and then when it comes election time, what is there to differentiate you? Now, lastly, and we only have about a minute left, but let's assume for a second that Pierre Poliev maintains his leadership of the conservative party. When Pierre Poliev 2.0 comes out and reintroduces himself,

do you think he should take a completely different tack? Should he be doing more mainstream media interviews that he didn't do on the campaign? Or should he lean in and do say something like Joe Rogan? I mean, I don't know why he doesn't do both. You know, and I think part of the challenge I thought from the approach they took is he did neither in the election campaign, you know, he didn't make that splash and go on one of the US, you know, big

heavy hitting podcast. You know, he certainly did yours. And I think it did him a heck of a lot of good, but I don't think he did much of anything else when it came to the mainstream media. So I think it'd be wise to do both. I don't think you can shun, you know, he struggled with older voters, older voters still listen to the mainstream media. So you know, that's where I would start. All right, Chris Chapin, thanks so much for the insight today.

Thanks Ben. So last week, after the Donald Trump, Mark Carney meeting, I had some criticism, I had some positive things to say, but generally I tried to square the man from the campaign trail who told us that the Americans wanted to break us so they could own us with the guy I saw at the White House praising Donald Trump as a transformational leader. You know, the positives that I attributed to Mark Carney

was, you know, he acquitted himself as a man who knew his stuff. He looked like a leader, he looked like an expert, he looked like somebody who was ready to defend our interests, but in the larger context of what got him elected, I felt like a bait and switch had been pulled. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that criticism.

And I also think I'm not alone in that criticism because there was an article that was written by Tristan Hopper in the National Post where he referred to it as Carney's whiplash inducing turn on Donald Trump. You know, this was, it is, and it's coming back by the way. Mark Carney on his social, Prime Minister Carney on his social media yesterday said, we're in the biggest crisis of our lifetime.

Now is the time for ambition to be bold to meet this crisis with overwhelming positive force of a united Canada. Now is the time to build and my government is getting to work. I mean, it's either a crisis or it's or it's not. And I don't think it's the crisis that Mark Carney got elected on. In this article in the National Post, we are treated to the the realization that quote, in Carney and Trump's first phone call, the Canadian leader

reportedly told Donald Trump that he would be talking tough against the US as a campaign tactic. That doesn't surprise me, but it sure as hell disappoints me to have used people's fear to get yourself elected and then to go in and treat the president as he should. What we saw in that meeting in the White House, that's reality.

That's the reality that Mark Carney knows is present in front of him. What he told us on the campaign trail was a fiction that got him elected. It was a fiction fueled by fear. And so I'm hoping you'll give us a call here at the Ben Mulroney show. Why does Mark Carney continue with this farce and facade about this being the biggest crisis of our lifetime? He's proven that the campaign was just a positional move. This notion that we were in crisis was a positional move.

He wanted to position himself as the best person to go up against Donald Trump. I won't go so far as to say he lied, but he certainly projected something that was not reality, based entirely on fear. And then we got the reality in that face-to-face meeting. The tone and the words that were used by Mark Carney are a reflection of the reality that he knows is in front of him. That he's dealing with a man who is governed by one thing and one thing only. How can I get a better deal for America? That's it.

He doesn't care if others get hurt. But it is in and of itself not a crisis, it's an opportunity, but he used fear and he said as much to Donald Trump, hey, just so you know, I'm gonna make people, I'm gonna turn you into the big bad guy because I need to get elected. And if you follow that logic forward,

you know, what's his name? Pierre Poliev was being criticized for not stoking the fear of Donald Trump soon enough. So essentially got criticized because he was being honest. Because he was being honest about the threat of Donald Trump, he was penalized. He was told, ah, that's not what's going to get you elected.

What's going to get you elected is if you scare people. And what Mark Carney did is he took away as much daylight in terms of policy between the liberals and the conservatives by standing against the carbon tax and by changing his policies on housing and reversing course on immigration, you name it. What they did is they tried to limit the difference in terms of policy. So no, but that wouldn't be a priority for people anymore. Oh, it doesn't matter if you

pick the liberals or the conservatives, by and large, you're going to get the same stuff. And they made it about leadership on this file. Who do you trust to be a leader for Canada in the face of this never before seen crisis dot dot dot that does not exist. Pierre was honest with people and said, no, the biggest crisis is the crisis that we created for ourselves. Donald Trump is a problem, but that problem also presents opportunity. And here is how I think we should capitalize on that opportunity by building out an energy infrastructure by reducing inter-provincial trade barriers,

by reducing taxes and unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit of this country so that we are the richest country in the world. That was his narrative. But the most effective way to get people to vote for you is to scare them. And so the fact that Pierre Poglia was penalized for being honest and Mark Carney was rewarded for being cynical and for telling us to be afraid of somebody that he himself wasn't

afraid of, that to me is a problem. I also believe that had Pierre Poglia gotten elected, you would have gotten by and large a very similar tone from him in that White House first meeting. But had he done that, I promise you, the press would not have been saying, oh thank goodness, like, oh look at him. They would say, oh he's carrying, he's carrying the president's water and he's licking his boots and he's kissing the ring and he's bowing on his knees. You would, all of that would have been fair criticism of Pierre Poliev, but for Mark Carney, you get something completely different. Frank, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Yes. Oh, okay. I wasn't sure that I got you there. Yeah. Yeah, my bad What is this?

Carney went on the notion on the understanding that he was an expert as an economist On that basis alone He set out the criteria that led the people of Canada to believe that he's the only guy with that background that can deal with Trump Unfortunately in the big scheme of things that we didn't It's of no consequence when it comes to Trump. As there's economists around in the United States and around the world that have been kind of voicing the red flags, raising the red flags, saying it's of no consequence, even if there is an expert as an economist to explain that what Trump is doing is the wrong thing. So really, in the big scheme of things, Hardee's an economist is not really

going to be effective in dealing with Trump. I agree with you. And you know, that criticism has been leveled by people like myself, when he says, I'm the only guy who can deal with them because of my background. I've dealt with crises before, I'm the only guy. But then he will also simultaneously say,

look, you're never gonna change Donald Trump. You're never gonna change him. He. You're never going to change him. He's going to do what he's going to do. So that completely negates the specialness that you're supposedly going to bring to this relationship. If nothing is going to change him, and we've seen the tariffs aren't being taken off, and he said as much, nothing Mark Carney can say

will remove those tariffs, and all I want from you is friendship, then it really doesn't matter who we put in the room. We could put a trained monkey in the room and we'd get the same effect. I'm being facetious to make a point, but therein lies the rub. The inconsistency in the messaging and the result based on what we were promised is, and I get it's early days. It's early days and we don't know what's happening behind closed doors. But this is, what we saw in that first meeting

is not what was promised to us. We were promised elbows up. I saw no elbows up. Frank, thank you for your call. And let's welcome Anthony to the show. Anthony, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Good morning, thanks for taking my call, Ben. Yeah.

I was saying this right after the election that we got played, right? Just like as your screener mentioned, if there's a healthy respect between those two individuals, Carney and Trump know, I think because we don't know anything about Carney, I honestly believe that they know each other, right? I don't want to sound conspiratorial, but there was something else at play here that we don't we didn't know about. Trump actually said that I got this guy elected. He said, well, he was there. I think there's an element. I think there's an element of him having a little bit of fun with that as well. He likes to think. But but and my issue is not in terms of what we don't know about their relationship. My

issue is what we don't know about Mark Carney. He still is to my satisfaction still quite an unknown. I don't know what kind of government he is going to lead. I do not know what he stands for because what he stood for in his book is apparently not what he stands for as a leader. So we're going to have to wait and see. I don't like the fact that we're going to have to wait and see and we're going to learn on the fly, but it is what it is. Thank you guys so much for your calls. To celebrate the Days of Our Lives 60th anniversary, W Network and Stack TV invite you

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