The Ben Mulroney Show - Mark Carney spending numbers are out, and they’re as bad as Justin Trudeau’s

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Mark Carney spending numbers are out, and they’re as bad as Justin Trudeau’s with Guest: John Ivison, Political Journalist, National Post Columnist 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

You are listening to the Ben Mulroney show on this Thursday, May 29th. You may also very up until very recently, we're only listening to it. But now you can watch it on YouTube. Just search up Ben Mulroney show or the Ben Mulroney show and you'll find content that we post all day long. Thank you so much for joining us. Someone that you were able to see in question period for the very first time ever yesterday was newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney fielding questions for the very first time ever yesterday was newly elected Prime Minister

Mark Carney fielding questions for the very first time. And I have to say he looked at ease. He looked comfortable. He looked confident. He sounded as much as well. And it didn't take long for for the conservatives to remind the prime minister that it is a confrontational moment, question period. You're held to account, you're asked tough questions and you're expected to answer those questions.

To be fair, if we're being honest here, I didn't hear a lot of direct answers to direct questions. There was some pivoting, but it was the first day. I'm like I said, I am not looking to criticize for the sake of criticizing. Right. So let's let's listen to some of these exchanges and then we'll talk about them on the other side. Here is Andrew Scheer, who for the moment is the acting leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons, as Pierre Poliev is on the outside, awaiting a by-election that would hopefully for him, see him returning to the fold as the leader within Parliament.

But here's Andrew Scheer asking Mark Carney, what's gonna happen to the numbers of this new government, given the fact that the retaliatory tariffs that were supposed to be implemented are going to blow essentially a 20 billion dollar hole in those projections. Thank you very much Mr. Speaker. I would like to welcome the Prime Minister to his first official question period. This is where democracy lives and this is where we provide rigorous scrutiny on every word he says and every dollar he spends on behalf of Canadians.

Now, let's talk about those words and dollars. During the election campaign, it was elbows up as he put retaliatory tariffs on the US. Then secretly, he dropped those tariffs to effectively zero. But he didn't stop there. He told Canadians that the government would collect $20 billion in revenue from those tariffs and use it to cost his platform. Now that those tariffs are going to bring in $0, two quick questions. Why wasn't he honest with Canadians during the election? And how is he going to make up the shortfall? Is he going to borrow it, print it or tax it? Fair question. Fair question. Here is his non-answer answer. Our tariffs have maximum impact on the United States, minimum impact on Canada, and we are

dedicating all the revenues from those tariffs to supporting the workers and businesses affected by the unjustified American actions. Yeah, except they don't exist anymore. They were taken off in the middle of the campaign. So I don't get how you can stand there with a straight face saying they are going to cause maximum damage when they don't exist. They are vapor. They are an echo of the past.

Here was Andrew Scheer's commentary following that non-answer answer. Well, he didn't take long to pick up old liberal habits of not being able to answer questions. But since the election, Canadians have been inundated with grand rhetoric and pretty speeches from this liberal party. But they are still suffering under all those policies. Household debt up at record levels. Number of people who can't pay their mortgages, increasing. Food bank use continuing to rise.

Now TD Bank is forecasting a recession with hundreds of thousands of lost jobs. The PM said undoing the damage in the last 10 years would require great speed, but he's not gonna table a budget for six months. If he's the man with the plan and the guy you hire in a crisis, why won't he table a budget before he goes on summer vacation?

And that is actually a very good point. This is supposed to be a crisis. And I have no idea why this why this government hasn't decided to sit during the summer. If it's really that important, honestly, and that's a good good faith question. I ask, you know, that was that was one thing that Pierre Poli have promised. Had he been elected, he he even said he's like, I'm going to tell every member of parliament, cancel your summer plans because we have work to do. So to me, it's another one of those things like when, when Justin Trudeau claimed that the last election was the most consequential of our lifetime. We've heard that before. And then as soon as he got the same mandate he had prior to the election, he, he didn't, the house didn't sit for something like six weeks. So you can't call it a crisis and then behave like it's business as usual.

Here was Mark Carney touting the one Canadian economy. Mr. Speaker, I understand the member of the opposition is very busy, didn't have a chance to study closely the 100 day plan of the former member from Ottawa, Carlton, which did not include a budget. Our plan includes legislating for one Canadian economy and nation-building projects immediately to grow this economy, and we expect the support from all in this House. I mean, he's got the snark, he's got the edge that's required to be in the House of Commons, the former member referencing a Pierre Poliev,

and I'm sure you didn't read the document. I mean, I think that's gonna wear thin on certain people. I think, he is the smartest guy in the room, but reminding us that he is, is gonna be the thing, I think, that hurts him with a certain type of person at some point. We're nowhere close to that day yet, but I think it's gonna come.

And once you ring that bell, it's hard to unring that bell. And look, say what you will about Justin Trudeau, but he started a tradition of answering every question that was posed to him. To the point, I think on Wednesdays in question period, he would answer as many as 39 questions. And yesterday the prime minister answered eight questions and then started pawning off questions

that were directed at him to his cabinet. Which by the way, there's a logic there. He wants his cabinet to feel empowered. So having them answer more questions, I'm fine with. Not every question has to be answered by the prime minister, at least not now. And here is new energy minister, Tim Hodgson, when he was asked by conservative Shannon Stubbs

if the government will repeal bill C69, that's the no new pipelines bill, as well as the production cap so that they can get pipelines built. Yesterday the PM said Canadians shouldn't focus on pipelines. We'll tell that straight to the hundreds of thousands of workers who lost their jobs when these Liberals killed pipelines, LNG exports to allies and capped Canadian oil and gas. Last year, 98% of Canadian crude went to the U.S., Canada's biggest customer and competitor due to these Liberals. But in April, the PM said he won't repeal their

no new pipelines, never build anything on lawful Bill C-69 and ignores premiers and businesses. When will he repeal Bill C-69? The Prime Minister has been clear. Yes, we will support new pipelines if there is consensus in Canada for them. With American tariffs threatening our economy and threatening our sovereignty, we must protect our energy security. There is no question energy is Canada's power. It will help us build the strongest economy in the G7, guide the world in the right direction and be help us be strong at the negotiating table. We will win this trade

war. We will make Canada an energy superpower. Okay. Pay very close attention to what he said there, because this has been repeated before. Mark Carney has said this many times. He is in support of pipelines if there is a consensus to build them. What does that mean? If there are any conservative MPs who hear this radio show or listening or staffers for those MPs, it is my humble recommendation that at the next available opportunity at question period, the question must be posed to Mark Carney. What do you mean by if a consensus to build one is there? Define that for me, please. And if a consensus does not exist, do you commit today in this house that you will champion and lead the effort to create

and find that consensus? Because what that sounds like to me is a big giant loophole. It's a get out of pipelines free card that they are holding onto. Well, we, of course, we want to build a pipeline, but there's no consensus for one. So what are we going to do? Can't build one if there's no consensus. I need to know what that means, because I've heard it too many times now to think that it is anything but a hedge. And I think Canadians deserve to know where this government stands on an issue of national importance, like building pipelines to get our resources to

tidewater and fulfill the promise that is this incredible country. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And there's an old adage that if you want to know the values and the priorities of a government, just look at their budget. And I would say just look at their spending. And fortunately, we have our next guest is here to give us a peek through the keyhole of what the values of this new untested, in a lot of in a lot of ways, unknown government under Mark Carney is all about because you know, as I've said many times, I don't believe that Mark Carney was properly and totally vetted during the election campaign or during the leadership campaign. And he can be very vague in terms

of what his policies are. We've got these grand notions of building an energy superpower. But beyond that, I've heard some words, but until I see some action, I'm not in the jury's out, the jury's out. So here to to talk about those about those priorities and what this government is all about, we're joined by John Ives and political journalist with the National Post. Thank you so much for being here, John. Hi, Ben. So, yeah, so you've broken it down. There are some real spending concerns that could be coming down the pike, and we could get a sense of what this government truly values based on what they want to spend their money on, our money on, I should say.

Right, right. I mean, I think, so what we're talking about are the main estimates. Yeah. They're not the main estimates. They come out every year. They are essentially what the government wants parliament to approve as far as spending goes.

So they give you a sense of what the government is going to spend. They're not the last word in the picture because that is really the budget. But as folks will know, the budget is didn't come out in the spring as it normally does. And it's not due to come out. The first carny budget will come out sometime in late fall. And John, before you go on, is this normal to have these main estimates come out and ask parliament to to vote on spending without actually seeing a budget? Well the budget and the main estimates are kind of related, but they're not the same thing. Yeah.

And they're slightly disconnected and they're very confusing for people because they have different accounting methods. But the budget is really the last word in what the government wants to do. The main estimates are then followed by, even more confusingly, supplementary estimates, which are responses to events over the course of the year. So the main estimates are only a partial picture. But what I think is interesting in this is that the first real concrete evidence of what the government intends to do.

The party platform came out during the election, but that's not written under oath. Right, yeah. They don't actually have to do anything that they say they're going to do in the party platform. And voters are justifiably skeptical about platforms. But this is actual dollars being put next to government plans for each department. I mean, 130 organizations.

So Mark Carney promised to be a different kind of leader than Justin Trudeau. And Justin Trudeau was the type of leader that didn't... I mean, there was no rat hole that he wasn't willing to throw money down. And so by saying that he was going to be a different leader implicit in that is that he was going to be a more restrained spender. Is that what these numbers are saying? Yeah. Well, he said that explicitly. He said in the campaign that the previous government spent too much and invested too little and that operational spending was rising at 9%

per year over the course of the Trudeau government. He said we will limit that to 2%. But that's not what these numbers show. And in fact, what the numbers show, the main estimates suggest a 7.75% increase in the money that the government will spend this year. The total amount is four hundred and eighty six point nine billion dollars across the fiscal year across all departments. So that's all spending.

Yeah. That includes transfers to people in the form of old age security and guaranteed income supplement includes transfers to governments such as Canada Health transfer and social transfer. So let me say if I got this straight. So Mark Carney and the Liberals got elected on a promise of reducing the rate of spending to 2%. But these numbers are suggesting it's going to be north of 7%. Right. Now, complicated further by the fact that Carney, if you remember, divided the budget up into operational spending and capital investment. And he said that the operational spending side would be capped at 2% and that budget

would be balanced within three years. Now, it's now and impossible to separate the capital spending and the operational spending in the main estimates because it's all mixed in. But there are there is no sign of restraint. No in this document and almost five hundred billion dollars in spending set feels like a lot of money to me. Right and talking to people who know this stuff, we're looking at it inside government, they're kind of surprised that there are no signs of restraint. And they suggest that it'd be very, very hard to meet that balanced budget within three years at the spending levels.

I mean, you only have to look at each department. I kind of did a rough count of the 130 departments. There were something like 60 plus departments that are seeing major increases in budget over the course of this year. And there were only about 14 that were seeing budget cuts. The biggest indicator to me was the fact that if you look at all 130 departments and their spending plans on consultants, which if you remember is a big, yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah. Was it 20 target for a lot of people? Was it 26? $26 billion. What are all the bureaucrats for if not to do the job that we are now outsourcing to consultants? Right. I mean, you could understand the rise in consultancy costs if the size of the bureaucracy was shrinking. Yeah. But the size of the bureaucracy ballooned

under the Trudeau government. and so did the amount of money they're spending on consultants. So you would have thought that like as a first indicator, what the government would do, what the Carney government would do would say, right, we're going to take a hammer and sickle to the number of consultants being employed. Yeah. So I mean, to give the government its due, the new government is due, it has not had time to do a root and branch line by line spending review. But at the same time, the government has put in this document under its name as if it endorses

these plans. It had to break out in estimates. I mean, the government, the parliament has to devote on this stuff to keep the machinery of government moving. Right. But it really surprised me that there were no signs that the bureaucracy or that the new government had taken on board the message, which currently was quite explicit at sending. Yeah. Is there is there anything in this document that you would view as a positive development in the form, a decision that's being made that is different, that is a departure from the Trudeau years? Well, nothing from a taxpayer's point of view. And you're going to hear terms white or whiter

in my case. But from the bureaucracy's point of view, they're probably delighted. They've apparently been given part blanche to keep spending, which I think makes the budget in the fall doubly interesting, because it surely has to signal that. I mean, in one of his mandate letters, Carney said that this will be a fundamentally different approach to government. But this looks to me to be a business

as usual spending. Yeah. So the budget, when it comes has to be dramatically different. Yeah, as we can see already in this document, that there's more spending on defense, it goes up from, I think 30 billion to 35 billion. But that doesn't get us to the two. That doesn't get us to the 2% that NATO demands or even the 5% that apparently is on the table moving forward. Right. And currently was quite explicit this week, as was David McGinty, the new defense minister in a speech yesterday, that more is coming. More is coming.

More is coming. So really quickly, only about a minute left, John, but what's the procedure that happens now? Does this have to be tabled and it gets voted on? Yeah, this is this is something that goes before parliament and is and is approved. So presumably all the liberals and at least three or four other MPs are going to have to vote for this spending plan going forward before presumably it is disowned at some point later in the year. Is it picked apart in committee or in the Senate? Is there any sort of check on this?

Well, normally it would go before committees, but we're not at that stage yet. Committees haven't been formed and it's not quite clear to me how this will... Isn't that convenient? At some point it needs to get waved through by Parliament to just go before committees are formed. All right, John. Hey, thank you so much for highlighting this. This is a really important piece of information as we get to know this new government. Great. Thanks, Ben. of information as we get to know this new government. All right, thanks Ben. That beautiful silk skirt. Did she pay full price? Or those suede sneakers? Or that luggage?

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