The Ben Mulroney Show - NEW breakdown of refugee health costs/Can Conservatives breakthrough in Quebec?

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

GUEST:   ERIC DUHAIME  / leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec   If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Well, much like the stars of Brokeback Mountain when it comes to the Interim Federal Health Program, I can't quit it. We keep talking about three days in a row. You'll remember the Interim Federal Health Program is a program designed to offer temporary. help for medical services to refugees in Canada. This and a couple of days ago, our prime minister and his government announced that refugees in Canada must now pay $4 per prescription and $30 of the cost of dental care, vision care, counseling, medical equipment like wheelchairs. And we on this show saluted him, tipped our hat to him.

We said, this is a good thing. This will restore faith and balance to a very stressed system. We are overstressed in so many different ways in the health care system. And having people who are relying on it pay into it is a good thing. We said as much on the show. Well, Intrepid did some fine print reading. And yesterday we brought you the news that refugees should ask their health care provider, quote, whether a copayment will apply.

before receiving care, and that they should, quote, confirm how much they will need to pay. In other words, what was presented as a rule is more of a suggestion. And if the doctors want this suggestion to be a rule, it's up to them to enforce it. That's a problem for me because you're putting the responsibility of enforcement on the shoulders of some already burnt out doctors. people who put themselves on a list to be helpful in this interim health care program. And now you're saying, hey, if you want to get paid, you've got to tell these poor refugees that they have to pay you. Now, what do you think? Do you think some of them are just going to eat the cost? I think some are going to eat the cost.

And we heard anecdotally that some doctors are just choosing to remove themselves from the list altogether. So that's a net positive for everybody. So let's talk some numbers. This is how we advance the story. These are some numbers related to the IFHP program and that Michelle Rempel Garner of the Conservative Party asked for and have now been released. Thank you to that member of parliament.

Let's take you in the way back machine. 2016, when the IFHP had costs around $60 million. So of all the refugees in the country, availing themselves of this program, the cost of the taxpayer in 2016 was $60 million. The Parliamentary Budget Office projects the cost will reach. I hope you're sitting in 2029, 2030, $1.5 billion. From $60 million to $1.5 billion, this is one point five billion. This is one program, one government program. Beneficiaries of the program grew from just over 90,000 in 2015 and 2016,

from 90 to 623,000 in 2425. Okay? From 60 million to 1.5 billion. And from 90 million people availing themselves of the benefits, 90,000 to 623,000. And just to give you some context, because this is always helpful, the original cost of the program,

as I said, 60 million. Today, Alberta costs 64 million. That's... And if you're curious about Ontario, 772 million, Quebec, 306 million, and on and on down the rabbit. habit hole. And we can break this down in so many different ways.

Ontario, by the way, more than all the others combined. But you put it all together, $1.5 billion estimated for the end of this decade. Here's some other highlights. Can we call it highlights, low lights, stress lights? I don't know. Pain points. Since April 2024, the I FHP. has covered an explosion of supplementary health benefits for asylum seekers, including. 23 million billed for home visits. That's for 80,000 claims. 21 million build for vision claims.

343 million build for dental claims. 169 mil for prescriptions drug claims. 77 mil for counseling claims. 525 mil build for medical and hospital care claims. You and I are paying for this. And before anybody gets their backup and says, Ben Mulroney has a hate on for immigrants and refugees, no, no, no, no, no.

You will remember that we pointed out yesterday that low-income seniors have a very similar deal. They pay $2 a co-pay for prescriptions. And middle-income seniors pay $6 to $10 for a co-pay for prescriptions. These are people who have been paying income tax, paying into the system, paying GST, paying every tax that the federal government is thrown their way for about 50 years. And we still ask them to pick up a little bit of the tab. So is it unreasonable to ask people who have been welcomed into Canada who are of working age and have the ability to pay in a little bit when I've just listed for you what we have been, the bill. that we have been footing as Justin Trudeau shot the lock off the front door and said everyone is

welcome. Everyone's welcome. He doesn't care because you're paying for it and I'm paying for it and my mom's paying for it. Joy is paying for it. Drolay is paying for. We're all paying for it. But you know what? We're also paying for a lot of other stuff.

I'm paying for a lot of other stuff. And I don't know about you. I don't have any more money. I don't have any more. And so the fact that this was presented by our. prime minister as a new rule going forward that that the actor gave way to the banker and the banker who knows numbers looked at these and rather than and presented it as a rule they will be paying this they will be paying this so this moving forward the 169 mill billed to you and me for 3.3 million

prescription drug claims that's going to go down because because doctors aren't going to have a choice. You know, like if a claimant, a refugee claimant comes in and says, hey, last month, this was free to me. It would be a lot easier on these doctors if they said, you know what, on the drag down, the click down menu in the software that I use, there's no option here. I have no option.

I have to charge you. I have to charge you. I'm sorry. It's the new rule. Mark Carney said so. and I have no option but to charge you. That would make the doctor's lives a heck of a lot easier. But instead, they don't want to do that.

Instead, they presented it as a rule. But instead, now it's up to this, the doctors, to say, you know, I'm really sorry. I mean, I could. You know what? I'll make an exception today. Sure. I'll eat the cost.

I will eat the cost. Because the government told them, like, are you going to charge me? And if you charge me, how much am I going to have to pay? and then they open their empty wall and say, oh, I'm so sorry. The doctor who got into medicine to help people is going to default to their better angels

and they're going to eat the cost. The bottom line here is this is about lowering the cost to taxpayers. And more importantly, arguably, it's about getting new Canadians to buy in, have ownership over their health and the health care system. We want everybody rowing in the same direction. And unfortunately, the system that Justin Trudeau set up that Mark Carney does not seem intent on dismantling

is rather than have everybody rowing in the same direction, we've thrown out the anchor. And we said, keep rowing, Canada. Keep rowing. I know it's hard. There's an angle. I know we could pull up the anchor. No, no.

Just keep rowing. As hard as you can. That's the system here. Do you think that's a recipe for taxpayers to feel respected? Do you think it's what taxpayers after these 10 years deserve? And by the way, let's just think long term here. As you hear the ballooning cost of this one single program and appreciate the cascading effects that unchecked immigration have had on our system,

do you think this is a recipe for long-term success for our health care system and for society writ large? my two cents, I only have two cents left is no, no, not at all. Anyway, if there's more to discuss, we will discuss it as soon as it comes up on the Ben Mulroney Show. Meanwhile, there's a big election coming up in Quebec at the end of October, I believe, mid-October. So we're going to be speaking with one of the candidates in that election.

Eric Ju-M, the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, joins us next right here on the Ben-Moruny show. is moving fast across the enterprise. But without visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways. ServiceNow turns that chaos into control. With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place.

What it's doing, what it's done, and what it's about to do. So you stay in control. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And I got to be honest, it's a very interesting time to follow Quebec politics. This generation in particular, because when I was growing up, one of my great observations about Quebec politics was it was a very binary choice, right? You had the separatist option in the in the Parti Quebecois, and you had the federalist option in the Liberal Party of that province. And it didn't matter what your personal politics, where you could be a socialist, you could be a authoritarian,

communist, it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was how you saw Quebec, either within the Confederation or without. That is not the choice that is today offered to Quebecers. There are multiple options. And for me, this signals a maturation of Quebec politics. And I don't say that in a pejorative way. I just say that there is more choice out there.

So let's explore one of those choices today with our next guest, Eric Duen, He is the leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec. Mr. Duetam, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure being with you. I think a lot of people are hearing this for the first time. They're saying, wait, hold on it. There's a conservative party in Quebec.

Talk to me about the genesis of this party and the journey it's been on. I took the leadership of the party five years ago. It was a French party. We were at 1%. We had 3, 400 members. And we've been working, working, working. Today we have 65,000 members and the polls were at 15, 16% of the votes. At the election, the last general election in 2022, we did almost 13% of the vote.

We didn't win seats, but we had over half a million voters supporting us, almost as much as the liberals who ended up official opposition with 21 seats. But that's another story, but it's growing. I mean, there is a small C conservative movement in Quebec, and the Conservative Party now is representing that voice, and we will be in the National Assembly. And last month, like almost day to day, a month ago, we had the former Natural Resources Minister in the Quebec government

who crossed the floor and joined us to become our first member in the National Assembly of Quebec. Well, I'm looking at the latest polls on 338Canada.com. And so the PQ is sitting at 31%, the Liberals at 29. You've got the KAC, which is the government right now, but Mr. Legault has resigned. And they're sitting at 15. The conservative parties at 14 and Quebec Solidare at 10.

And this is, I find this to be a really, really interesting dynamic. Talk to me about the sort of the priorities of your party. Introduce the priorities of a conservative party to the rest of the country. Well, first off, we're a conservative party. So obviously, we're a party that does believe in a smaller state, in more individual freedoms. We're campaigning in favor of, you know, adding the private sector in health care to make sure that there is more options and competition. We're also advocating for tax cuts.

We're promoting the idea to exploit our natural gas here in Quebec that we have. So it's a normal conservative party that you would find in other provinces. Maybe the one difference, and that's why I published a book over the last few days, is on autonomy. We're an autonomous party, so we are a Quebec nationalist. We want Quebec to remain within the Canadian Confederation, but we want to do so by protecting Quebec powers and making sure that we stop Ottawa from intervening in our own jurisdiction. So that makes us a, well, closely, there's other parties.

There's other conservative parties now across the country that more and more are saying that Ottawa should mind his own business, but we're very strong on that issue as well. You know, after the last election, there was this team Canada, approach. We all have to row in the same direction to sort of bolster everything we can etre metres chenou for the entire country, so to speak. And really, control what we can control

in the face of an aggressive American administration that didn't have a lot of respect for us. And there was talk of interprovincial trade barriers coming down and doing our best with our natural resources. It does seem that after a little bit of time, those provincial trade barriers, are still there. And it does seem like what was once at least a will,

I was going to say a will to start pipeline national projects across the country. It seems like Quebec has defaulted, at least a big chunk of people in Quebec, have defaulted back to this anti-pipeline perspective. I wonder what is it about Quebec and being against this, the notion of pipelines? It's a very good question, and I wonder often why are we so much against exploiting our natural resources, building pipelines from coast to coast. You know, we have no choice.

We see it now, and obviously we saw it dramatically over the last two, three years. The fact that now we have a tariff war with the U.S. shows the importance of being sovereign in matters of energy, and we need to be much more sovereign within Canada, if we want to be able to compete. In Quebec, we have resources that we can exploit as well. But the problem is that it seems Quebecers don't understand the importance of being wealthier. And if you want to be wealthier, we should not just think about transfer payments coming from Ottawa

and equalization payments. We should also think first and foremost of exploiting our own resources and making sure that the other resources and other provinces are also exploited much more. Because if we want to distribute the wealth, we have to create it first. and that seems to be a problem because there's no other party than us that currently in Quebec is saying we need to build more pipelines and we need to dig and make up make sure we exploit our own gas. Yeah, well, I like to say if we were to do those things responsibly, environmentally and in partnership with good faith First Nations, we could afford all the things that everybody wants and we could take care of all the people that even the most bleeding of our hearts want to take care of. Yeah, and I'll just give you an example. There was a project for a terminal of liquefied natural gas in the Sagni region, a $14 billion investment.

Today, if we went ahead with that project five years ago when it was on the table, today we would exploit that liquefied natural gas to Germany and elsewhere in Europe and making sure they convert their power centers into natural gas instead of carbon. and today we would save, you know, it's 60% less emissions. So it would be greater for the environment, greater for Canadian economy. And unfortunately, we didn't go forward. We backtrack the government, you know, didn't fulfill its promise to build it. And today we're realizing it was a huge mistake economically and environmentally.

And as you brightly pointed out, it could be responsible. We could do it and actually make it better for the environment. I mean, natural gas is a transition energy. And we're very lucky in Canada. We have tons of it. But unfortunately, the political willing is not there in Quebec right now. And I think that explains also why we're growing, because there's a need in Quebec for a different speech.

Because for too long, as you said earlier, we've been dividing between the yes and the no camp. And while we're talking about constitution, we're not taking care of the economy, of the well-being of our population. Mr. Jam, are you prepared for the possibility of some government forming a minority government coming out of this next election? so, possibly this nascent but ascendant conservative party could hold the balance of power? Yeah. Not only I just, I hope it even.

Not only do I know it could happen, but I think it would be the best, a good outcome. Currently, we would win between 10 and 12 seats in the National Assembly if an election was held today for us. And having the balance of power for the conservatives mean two things mainly. First off, that there's going to be no referendum. Because for us, we're not on the no bus or not, we're not on the yes bus. We're on no bus and we don't want any buses to leave the station right now. So that's the first thing.

The second one is that we want to make sure we create wealth. And for us, we would have a pro-economy agenda and we would be pushing the government to make sure that our bills and our proposals would move forward. So I think that's the kind of agenda. Many small C conservatives are looking for right now, And for the first time, in almost a century, we have the chance for the conservatives to be back in the National Assembly. If I'm elected on October 5th, I'll be the first conservative leader to be elected at the National Assembly in almost 100 years. Monsieur duem, the head of the Conservative Party of Quebec.

Merci beaucoup. And hopefully we can have you on a little bit closer to the election. But I hope you have a great day and enjoy your time in Ottawa. Thank you very much. Have a great day, Ben. By now.