The Ben Mulroney Show - Mark Carney showered Donald Trump in compliments, which is opposite of what he said during the election

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Mark Carney showered Donald Trump in compliments, which is opposite of what he said during the election with Guest: Erin O’Toole, President of ADIT North America, former Conservative Party of Canada 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

Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale, expertise, and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at visa.ca slash fintech. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And I've been telling you that I was so lucky yesterday to spend some time at the Norton Rose Fulbright offices here in Toronto. It's a big law firm where my dad was a senior partner.

And we were there to celebrate the launch of the new historic Heritage Minute. And I was there, coming out of the elevator, was my next guest, Aaron O'Toole, the President-Adept North America and former Conservative Party of Canada leader. Aaron, what did you think of yesterday? It was a great event, Ben.

Great crowd and a great story. Borah Laskin, the first Jewish Supreme Court justice, remarkable career as a lawyer myself. I remember studying his cases, so it was a great night. It was great to see you. Yeah, I was so glad to see you, well, see you remotely two days in a row now. But yesterday was all about sort of Canada's history.

And yesterday was also about history in the making with Mark Carney sitting down with Donald Trump. And you know, I'm really of two minds. I've been telling the listeners all day about this, that I think he acquitted himself very well. He didn't get Zelensky. He wasn't Justin Trudeau. A lot of positive things that came out of it. I think he acquitted himself very well. He didn't get Zelensky. He wasn't Justin Trudeau.

A lot of positive things that came out of it. I take issue with the fact that the man that he presented as on the election campaign was not the guy we saw yesterday, but that's neither here nor there. What did you think of yesterday? Yeah, I think that's a good assessment. Generally, it went well.

I think if there's a new tone established, we need that tone between Canada and the US, two great historic allies and friends. We need to reestablish that trust before we can then tackle tariffs and security issues, a range of bilateral issues that are important. There was still some mild taunting, but there was none of the governor

language, that sort of stuff. I had been the conservative critic for the NAFTA renegotiations in 2018. And unfortunately, the Trudeau government made a lot of critical errors. You know, Donald Trump can be very unfair and very mercurial. I'm not suggesting he's not. But when we went into it almost trying to drive disagreement, it was not a smart way to negotiate with an ally. So I think Trump is looking at Carney as a fresh start and Carney is taking a serious tone. So I thought overall it went very well for a first meeting. Well, and listen, let's, we've got to be fair as well. And like, listen, it was good, it was fine. It was what needed to well for a first meeting. Well, and listen, we've got to be fair as well.

And listen, it was good, it was fine, it was what needed to happen in that first meeting. It by no means is the end of the road. And he was very clear in what he said. But I do believe Mark Carney's enjoying a little bit of a honeymoon right now with the Canadian people, as well as the press. He's getting a lot of, look, the fact is,

anybody could have shown up and had a positive meeting if they weren't named Justin Trudeau. Like that was as clear as the day is long. He said as much, he doesn't like Justin Trudeau, he doesn't like Christia Freeland. He's got a long memory for those sorts of things. And the fact that he showed up and his name wasn't Justin Trudeau

already put him ahead of the game. 100%, yeah. And in fact, the relationship between Trudeau and Trump got so bad that even while he was still prime minister, Trudeau was commenting publicly about how he wished Kamala Harris had won. And normally the Canadian prime minister doesn't wade into that stuff.

It doesn't make sort of virtue signal comments, which he did throughout his time. And I really think the Trudeau team never thought that Trump would win a second mandate. And so they rolled the dice and, and it, you know, lost as a result of it. But then you've got like, you just referred to the Trudeau team, Mark Carney's team is still more or less the Trudeau team. And so I find that part of it, I don't know whether Donald Trump is choosing to not see that nuance or whether he doesn't care.

Maybe it's all about the leader for him. But the fact that so many of those people who applauded when Justin would say those nitpicky things about Donald Trump, they're still there. You're right, and it's the same cabinet. I used to joke that there was one cabinet change. It was the first minister, the prime minister, an important one, but all the rest of the cabinet ministers,

including Ms. Freeland and Wilkinson that were sort of anti-pipeline, anti-energy, you know, they're now all singing a slightly different tune. But that's the real test I think for Prime Minister Carney is are we going to get the recent Prime Minister Carney who called Canada an energy superpower sort of echoing Harper in those comments? Or are we gonna see the Mark Carney of years ago starting the Global Financial Alliance for Net Zero G fans, which has fallen apart, was way too far forward on the energy transition?

Which guy are we going to get? It remains to be seen. And I do think he needs to change a lot of that Trudeau team around him to show that he's serious and he wasn't just campaigning differently. Well, like I said, he still hasn't been road tested to a point where I know which guy we're going to get. And that, I think, that served him well in the election campaign. But now that he is, wants to be the Prime Minister for all Canadians, we need to know who he is far more than we do right now.

Now, Aaron, I had Gordon Giffin on the show, the former US Ambassador to Washington. He said something that I thought could prove quite insightful. He said he knows some people who are in the behind the scenes meeting, the stuff that happened beyond the pageantry of that press conference. And he said that Donald Trump appeared genuinely interested

to learn all sorts of things about Mark Carney, who he was, who he knew, what his worldview was. And it occurred to me this could be an opportunity where Mark Carney, maybe he was right. Maybe he's the guy that Donald Trump will take a shine to and appreciate that, you know, in this, as partners in the world with similar values, there's certain things that Canada might be able to do

and say and have conversations with that the Americans can't. And we would maybe be able to leverage that soft power of being a sort of a middle honest broker that we haven't been able to do in a very long time. What do you think of that? I think there's a lot to that, Ben. I do think it's clear that Donald Trump respects people that have had success in business.

And after Mr. Carney's time as our governor and governor in the UK, he's had great success with book field and Bloomberg He was called in often as an advisor. So I think Trump respects that And if we can build a little bit of a better rapport as I said this tone then we can go back to to that traditional role where Churchill called Canada the linchpin between Europe and and the United States and nobody Exemplified that better than then your late father who was able to leverage huge wins for Canada on acid rain But also huge wins for the world, you know

on South Africa fighting apartheid and Making the first Gulf War a multilateral effort. So if Canada has that good relation, we can actually get a lot of things done for our country and for global security. But in our in our last few minutes, Aaron, I do want your insights as to what you what you see, and what you think are interesting things that we on the outside should be paying attention to as the conservatives try to learn from their election loss and move forward. They've selected Andrew Scheer as the interim opposition leader. We know that Pierre is going to fight it out in a by-election in Alberta, but the fight isn't over for him to maintain his leadership. So just give me a little bit of your

sense of what we should be paying attention to. Well, I think the by-election is is key Damien Couric, you know, so in the crow foot riding in Alberta, that will be a quick by-election because Mark Carney has also said that he'll he'll not delay, you know, the prime minister can delay a by-election for six months. So I think he has to wait by by constitutional law 30 days, but Pierre will be in the House quite quickly. He's got strong support in caucus and in the party, so he won't have some of the trouble I had after an election loss. The bigger issue though is he has to show sort of learning from the campaign.

I think he's already starting to show that. We saw that in his first comments, his first video. But he's going to have to show a nation building and a Team Canada approach because until we resolve our challenges with the United States, there will be this elbows up mentality. I've said Canada needs elbows up and we need to smarten up too because we haven't been as effective as an ally as we can. But where he can support the prime minister on critical things for our country or for national unity, I think Pierre will have to put the country first.

Conservatives have generally always done that, going back to our earliest days and the key thing he'll have to do is show people a bit of a new breadth and depth and be able to speak to issues beyond just those that are important for the conservative faith. Aaron O'Toole, thank you so much for joining us. I hope you come back sometime soon. I appreciate it. Great to be with you, Beth. days of our lives set tour, a helicopter ride over LA, and so much more. Watch Weekdays at One and look for the weekly code word to enter.

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