The Ben Mulroney Show - Ottawa committee media training spin/political panel of the day!

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

GUEST:  MP STEVEN BONK — Souris—Moose Mountain Guest: Chris Chapin, Political Commentator, Managing Principal of Upstream Strategy  GUEST:  Mark Norris / Former Alberta Minister of Economic Development (under Ralph Klein)     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. You don't need AI agents, which may sound weird coming from service now, the leader in AI agents.

The truth is, AI agents need you. Sure, they'll process, predict, even get work done autonomously. But they don't dream, read a room, rally a team, and they certainly don't have shower thoughts, pivotal hallway chats or big ideas. People do. And people, when given the best AI platform, they're freed up to do the fulfilling work they want to do. To see how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. Every now and then, there is a story that crosses my desk

where after I read it or after I watch the video, I have to take my jaw, pick it up off the floor and reposition it. And that story is, the most recent story is the one we're going to be telling you right now. Well, let's listen to a little bit of audio from the social media of conservative MP Stephen Bonk. Let's listen to this. I was curious if the government had been paying to train witnesses and how much is it costing the taxpayer.

And you will not believe what I found. The government spent $263,000. coaching witnesses often government employees on how to answer simple questions in the most complicated way possible. But the worst offender of all? The CBC. $78,643, a communications company. This is outrageous. We have the CBC that is funded by the taxpayer to the tune of $1.4 billion

who get coaching from an outside consultant in the tune of $78,643, so they can come to committee to defend why they're getting bonuses. Uh, yeah, that's a problem for me on a lot of fronts. So to discuss this, we're being joined by Stephen Bonk right now, the MP for, how do you pronounce it? Is it Suri, Sourri Mouse Mountain or is it Souris? It's Souris Moose Mountain. Souris Moose Mountain. Thank you so much for having me on your show.

No, I'm glad to have you. This is disappointing, not necessarily surprising. Uh, but look, I think a lot of. lot of Canadians appreciate the access that we are given as taxpayers to these committee meetings because this is generally, it's probably the one place where we get, we're supposed to get less theatrics, right? We get the nuts and bolts. It's questions and answers. And I think it's really helpful to people who want to stay engaged with the political process to see people held to account and to get answers to questions I think a lot of us have. And so,

to learn, Stephen, that we've got people on the government, on the government dole that are using our tax dollars to, I don't know, learn how to answer questions that should be pretty straightforward is a problem. I couldn't agree more. And, you know, if you get anywhere outside of the Ottawa bubble, pretty well anywhere in Canada, and particularly in Suras Moose Mountain, the area that I represent, when you ask a simple question, you expect a simple, straight, forward answer. And that's not what happens in committee at all. So are you saying that as part of this coaching, part of the coaching could be teaching teaching them how to answer questions in ways that allow them to answer the question without actually answering the question? That's exactly what they do. And as you know, just maybe for some background and some context when it comes to committees, generally we have witnesses who

appear at committees. And witnesses, they really do perform a vital function in the role of government. That's where bills come before committee to be discussed, where we're talking about perhaps expenditures or where we can make amendments to bills. And you've seen the Conservative Party be very successful lately in doing that. But that is where we find that the witnesses we're getting from that are being provided by the government have obviously been coached to answer simple questions in the most complicated and indirect way that they possibly can. And that to me is, it's an affront. It's an affront to taxpayers.

It's an affront to the democratic process. It's an affront to the commitment by government to give us accountability. And the fact that taxpayer dollars could be used to put up roadblocks to that accountability and that accountability is to the taxpayer. That's the, that's the offensive. part because my tax dollars should be giving me accountable government. I shouldn't be paying a surplus to ensure opacity and an obstructionism. That to me is is is is is kind of gross. Well, what I'm going to say next isn't going to make you feel any better.

Okay. So the CBC what we had mentioned in this in the social media post they made, they had set they got $78,643 for coaching. Yeah. Coaching witnesses. So they could defend giving their own executives bonuses while laying off front line staff. That's one part of it. But keep in mind that CBC gets $1.4 billion from taxpayers every year, and it's a communications company. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

That's what they do. That's what they specialize in. If you look at their org chart and go through how many directors of communications that the CBC has, it'll blow your mind. Well, what do they say? They say, when you tell the, when you stick to the facts, there's only one version of the truth. But when you start playing with the facts, there's an infinite number of ways it can go. And so the fact that they can't come in and you shouldn't need coaching.

You shouldn't need coaching to come in and answer questions because if you're faithful to the facts, then the story will be told faithfully. but if you're getting coaching, it's because you don't like the facts, I think, and you're trying to either sidestep them, avoid them, or massage them. Exactly. My dad, he's an old rancher, and he told me when I was a little kid, he said, you better quit lying because you're not smart enough to remember. Okay, so look.

I thought that was pretty good advice. So it is, it is, but Stephen, look, this is pretty big news. What do you do with this information? Yeah, so I think a big part of it, And this is where it shows like yours are so important. And I really do appreciate the work you do because we have to bring this to light. I think that a lot of Canadians just are unaware of what happens in Ottawa. And spending has gotten so out of control in the last 10 years, 10, 11 years,

that people are almost getting numb to the silliness that we're experiencing again. And by bringing it to light, I hopefully will also reduce the tolerance that Canadians have for this kind of behavior. Yeah. So are you going to... Are you going to be putting out requests for this sort of information all the time now? Now that you know that it's happening, are you going to be looking for it every time you have somebody come before your committee? Yes, this and many other things.

I put in also OPQ requests when it came to the housing announcement. So what's OPQ? So that's an order paper question. Now that's a very important distinction. So an order paper question, unlike question period, where we ask direct questions to the ministers or to government, and they'd answer on the question and answer the question that they wish we had asked. An order paper question is a written question to government that they have to answer.

They have to get back to us. And that's how I found this information, as well as a few other OPQs that I put in that have revealed just egregious amounts of wasteful spending by this government. Can you, Stephen, find by way of these requests for disclosure? what these consultants, media consultants, were paid for, what they actually did on the job, because some of them may very well say, look, I was hired because the person that was coming before the committee has issues speaking in public. And so I was helping train them to get ready to speak in public, which sounds benign. And so is there any way for you to be able to find out

exactly what work, some of these consultants were paid for? Yeah, we could put in further requests to clarify. We do get, I do have the amounts that were paid. Yeah. And I just want, it might be interesting for your, for your listeners and viewers that this isn't a simple process that these people went through. Yeah. So anytime you spend money in government, you have to have a request for tender, RFPs.

So a request has to go out. You have to assemble all of the people that have. have applied. Yep. Then you have to make your decision. The government then has to have some sort of oversight, at least we hope they do, in approving these. So this isn't a simple process.

They took a lot of pains to try to mislead Canadians or to coach witnesses to mislead Canadians. And I just can't believe that they're getting away with this. Well, the number is pretty big too. We're going to have to leave it on this point. But listen, I got some media training when I first got into television because I'd never done it before. And I think the expert that the CTV had hired, I think they cost like $200 an hour. So think about that. For $200,000 and find a way to get to $78,000. I promise you. I did not cost

$CTV $78,000. So that's a lot of money. That's a lot of money for a lot of people to do a lot of work. And that's a lot of massaging of the truth. Stephen Bonk, I appreciate your work. Please come back if you have something else on this file. but also if there's any other stories that you think Canadians to hear about. We appreciate you. Excellent. Thank you so much for the opportunity. We just were speaking with Stephen Bonk. He is an MP for the Conservative Party for Asuras Moose Mountain.

And he told us that he uncovered that the CBC spent $73,000 on outside consultants to train their employees to learn. to learn how to answer questions in the most long-winded way as possible. To run out the clock and to answer a question without really answering a question. And Stephen said, you know, I just start finding it odd that I'd ask a pretty direct question. And the answers I would get would be so confoundingly opaque that I had to look into it. What he looked into was that these companies, were using consultants so that they wouldn't answer questions.

They could be effective at stonewalling effectively. And I find that offensive and I want to know what you think of it. I could be wrong. You might be telling me it's a tempest in a teapot, Ben. Ben, you're rage baiting. I'm willing to have that conversation. But I fundamentally find it shocking that our tax dollars go to these MPs and pay for these committees so that

We the taxpayer can get answers to questions on issues related to many things, including where our tax dollars are spent. Follow up on that and you realize that those same tax dollars are going to consultants so that we don't get the answers that we deserve. That to me is an insult on top of an insult. This is crazy. This is crazy. And look, you're right, $73,000, not a lot of money relative to the budget. But that's one example of a crazy, a crazy expenditure.

Go through the entire government line item by line item, and you're going to find hundreds of millions, possibly billions of dollars in frivolous spending. But again, Justin Trudeau promised us a government that would be open by default. We're not supposed to have stuff like this. And this doesn't happen by accident. This happens because of a culture.

You know, people love talking about systemic issues. This is a systemic issue. it's an issue of entitlement that certain people feel that we, the taxpayer, are not owed answers to our questions. We are not owed accountability for the money that we give them to do the job that we expect. And if our parliamentarians challenge them on how that money is spent, they feel they can spend more of our money not to answer the questions, not to give us the respect we deserve. That to me is the problem. That to me is the problem. And if you are a brought before committee and you need you need coaching on how to answer questions, you have a

tenuous grasp on the truth. That's the only conclusion I can come to. I'm really quite upset about this. And yeah, I get upset every day, but that's the job. That's the job. I get upset so maybe you don't have to. Hey, let's welcome Andrew to the conversation. Welcome, Andrew. You are not surprised by this. Not at all. So I occasionally listen to us. And listen. No, Andrew, do be a favor. Call us back because I don't think that that call was, I don't think the line was very good. We were losing you there. But give us a call back. Oh, we got some stuff on the text line. So this is from the text line. This is the same government that said they were going to be the most transparent. Yeah, open by default. And another one,

how can any government claim to be transparent when they are literally paying comms people to train government staff on how to not be transparent? Canadians need to open their eyes and realize these liberal lie, these liberals lie through their teeth on everything in order to stay in power. Here's what I will say. Here's who I'll give the benefit of the doubt to. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to our prime minister. I don't know that he knows that this is going on. And I do hope that upon learning about it, I hope that he will ban this practice. That's my hope. I'm willing to believe that he looks at this and says, this is not right. Canadians deserve better. Canaise. And if you are going to get somebody to train you on how not to answer a question,

you're going to do it on your own dime. You're going to do it on your own dime. Because to use my tax dollars so that I, the taxpayer, don't get answers as to where my tax dollars are going. That is gross. That is absurd. That is obnoxious. Brian, welcome to the show. Brian, you there? Yeah. Yes. Sorry. No, that's okay. Go ahead. Yeah, I think that this is nothing. compared to what you, if you looked at just Justin Trudeau's time governing, you can start with SNC Labelin, you could go to the WEED charity,

you can go to so many things, conflict of interest, like where's all the money from the weed charity? What happened? Why did he have a justice minister resign when SNC Lavelin happened? Yeah. Well, this is what I mean. Why? This is what I mean that it's true. Justin Trudeau walking around free. He should be charged with something. I can't speak to that, but I can speak to the systemic abuse

and which is why I think our prime minister, if he wants to show Canadians that he is different, and this is a different government, then this sort of thing needs to put, they've got to put this to rest. I think he, and I don't care, he doesn't have to make a bold pronouncement over it.

I don't care about that. Just stop it. Just tell your and tell your crown corporations, this is BS, and we're not doing it anymore. That may be the liberal party of the past, but I represent the liberal party of the future. And as such, this won't happen on my watch. That's what I'd like to see from this prime minister. Let's go to, we're going to go to Brad. Brad, welcome to the show.

Good afternoon, Ben. Hey. This is something that's bothered me for a long time, mostly within the last decade. and it's across party lines of people just not answering questions. Yeah. And direct questions and questions that obviously have an answer. And I understand not every thing is easiest thing, yes or no. It bothers me when someone says a yes or no question.

But I'd like to see it where any of these groups or consultants that you have to pay to dodge questions, it should be banned from government tender, number one. And number two is I'd love to see an independent investigation. or a nonpartisan, if that's the right word to say, that we'll find individuals who are clearly not answering questions or employing tactics that don't answer a question or mislead the person. Well, Brad, you're right. The whole point of these committees is to bring sunlight into a really dark place.

That's why they exist. That's why the cameras are in there so that we, the taxpayer, get the answers we deserve on really important questions. And yes, sometimes it's sensational, sometimes it's theater. Welcome to the world. Like, that shouldn't surprise anybody and it shouldn't offend anybody. But to take that additional step of being coached and trained to obfuscate and you're using our money to do it, you're using our money to prevent us from getting the answers

we deserve. That's disgusting. And it's perverted. It's perverse. Yeah. Sorry, Brad. sometimes someone like you said something and I pick up the ball and I run with it. I appreciate it.

Andrew is back. Andrew, welcome. I'm back. Yes. And I hope you can hear me. Yes, I can. Much better. Pat is prologue.

Who said that originally? Because I don't think things are going to change with crime. I don't think they are. But I was saying this to your screener about you listen to all the liberal ministers. the new ones when they first started talking in cabinet in parliament you listen to them speaking and addressing questions and they sounded like kind of foolish now you can't get a straight answer from them you get an answer and it's well scripted but see but but listen i will say mark carney answers questions i don't so you might not like it like the answers but he does

take time to answer questions and i i'm willing to live in a world i want to believe i want to believe when he says, I'm running a different government. But you have to show me you're doing it. Don't just tell me. Show me you're doing things differently than your predecessor. And one of those things could be this. This could be a defining pivotal change to say, you know what? This government was KG and they were covert and they liked operating in the shadows

and in the loopholes. That's not going to be how I run my government. If you were to do that, I would be able to say yes, on this front, I do. believe this prime minister. He is running a different government, but I have to be shown it. Thank you very much, my friend. I appreciate it. Thank you to everybody for calling it. All right, when we come back, it's the final political panel of the week. We've got Chris Chapin and Mark Norris joining us to tee up some really important stories. Don't go anywhere. Joining us, Chris Chapin, political commentator, managing principal at upstream strategy.

And Mark Norris, former Alberta Minister of Economic Development. Chris is in Ottawa. And Mark is wherever he wants to be because he's on the open road. Gentlemen, welcome to the show. Hello from Edmondton, Ben. All right, let's start with our prime minister's trip to India. And I see this great headline in the CBC that says, Energy Hungry, India tells Carney, quote, we are willing to buy whatever Canada is offering.

That's a, I mean, that's a heck of a position to start from. I mean, we've got a lot of leverage, I'm guessing, in these conversations. I'm going to take this as a good thing. I'll wait to see the details. But Chris, when you see this, what do you think? Well, I think, Ben, if it wasn't for the past 10 years of Trudeau and the liberals, I would be very excited about this. You know, I'm willing to give Mark Carney the benefit of the doubt

because I think he's shown so far the willingness to do things differently than his predecessor. But, you know, I wish we were in a position to really take advantage of, you know, these kind of bizarre economic times. And I fear we're not, right? like the idea of shipping them LNG because we had pipelines ready to go because there was a business case for it, which there clearly is, you know, would have been a far stronger position for us to be as Canadians. But unfortunately, that's going to take time. So, you know, one of the world's, you know, the world's, what, first or second largest population in terms of a country wanting to buy our energy should be great news.

Unfortunately, I think we have challenges in terms of how do we actually get that to them. I'll remain optimistic, but I just, you know, 10 years of, you know, fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, you know, I won't get fooled again, as the President Bush once said, you know, it kind of feels how that headline sounds. Yeah, Mark Norris, I'm, I think of the story that we had yesterday of the fact that Canada is buying liquefied natural gas from Australia and it had to get on a tanker and go 25,750 kilometers to get to our East Coast. This is, this is, I think, what Pierre Poli have spoke about in his very good speech that he gave yesterday, where he said we have to be, and he used the Quebec expression,

Maitre Sheenou, we have to control the things that we can control. And the fact that it is the fifth largest, the country with the fifth largest deposit of liquefied natural gas, that we're buying it from the country that is not the fifth largest in the world, and transporting it by way of circumnavigating South America to the tune of 25,000 kilometers. This is, I think, what he was talking about. Well, it's more than that, Ben, it's ludicrous.

It's, and I respect Chris's opinion, but I won't give Carney the break because he was part of that team that advised Justin Trudeau to tell Germany and Japan there's no business case. And so we have to take what we can get, as you pointed out. But I don't have any faith that this is anything more than completely performative and a chance to get out of Canada and say, hey, look, we're doing all these trade deals because the Americans don't pay attention to us anymore. So as an Albertan, I'm not excited.

I'm not hopeful. I just think it's kind of a joke, to be honest. Well, let's stay on this topic and let's focus on looking at it through the lens of, as I said, Pierre Poliov's speech that he gave yesterday, which he referred to as a vision speech. And I think there was a lot of good stuff in there. You know, like I said, the fact that he started in French and referred to Les Metsre Sheen-Hen-Hen-U, which is a reference to the quiet revolution. In fact, he referenced Georgesienne Cartier before Sir Johnny McDonald, I think was a direct appeal to Quebecers. But then what he did is he offered, I think, a constructive, alternate vision to the future from the liberals.

It was not sloganeering. It was measured. It was constructive. It was positive. and I think what he was doing was laying the groundwork for the next 12 months by saying exactly what we just said. We're not able to take advantage of an opportunity like this. And I think what he's doing is he's trying to frame the next 12 months and say,

look, at the end of the next 12 months, we'll be halfway through, almost halfway through this liberal mandate. And what do you think we're going to have to show for it? I don't know that we're going to have a ton to show for it. And so I think through that lens, his vision has more gravitas, more heft. Chris, what do you think? Well, then I think, you know, I thought it was a very realistic approach that Pierre took. And I think there was something that a lot of Canadians had been waiting maybe longer than they'd hope for to hear from the conservative leader.

I think, you know, there's no question the election of Donald Trump kind of threw a ripple in the conservative plan. and Pierre Poliov's plans of how he wanted to campaign in the last election. And it felt like it was the first time I've seen, and I certainly want Pierre to be the next prime minister of his country, I actually have a fully thought through, you know, vision of what he would do if he was prime minister dealing with the United States. And I thought the contrast was quite refreshing because a lot of this, you know, the elbows up stuff I always felt was very pie in the sky. We, you know, we're going to somehow outsmart. the Americans, we're going to find new trade partners.

It's like, guys, you know, if you're being realistic here, give yourself a break. Like, we need the United States. They know it. Donald Trump knows it. And to hear it out of, you know, the official opposition leader's mouth and say, you know, I saw the clip with him and Lisa Rae where he said the same thing in English, you know, we need to control. She asked him why he doesn't panic, why he doesn't sound panic.

He's like, well, we need to do what's within our control. Yeah. And what's within our control is to deal professionally with the Americans and have honest conversations with the Americans and respect the Americans. And I know that rubs a lot of people on that elbows up viewpoint the wrong way, but it's the truth. And so I thought it was a refreshingly honest speech from what I caught of it. I thought it was a refreshingly distinct perspective from Mark Carney's. And I think it'll be very interesting to see how the rest responds to it because I feel that there's a lot of Canadians who maybe had that elbows approach 10 months ago, but are now

looking at this and said, okay, well, we're not better off. Nothing's improved. Nothing's changing. How, you know, what's our path forward? And I think there's a lot of Canadians that are going to look at Pierre Pauley of speech and recognize. Yep, you know what? We need to do what's within our control, not this pie in the sky approach. Yeah. And like Mark, we've got Dominique LeBlanc, who has been in, has been in government at the heart of government for 11 years. He's been an elective official for a quarter century. gave a speech yesterday as well, where he said that he wants a pat on the back for easing interprovincial trade barriers and says that he said the bureaucracy is to blame for the slow pace of the building things that the liberal government is promised. The bureaucracy grew 40% on the watch of his government.

So I think these things are at some point they're going to stick, no? Yeah, you're preaching to the choir, Ben. The fact is I wanted to just pick up on Pollyev's speech. I've been waiting for him to pick up what Canada is throwing down. We want a statesman. You and I talked about that about a month ago. He looked like a statesman. And I'm changing my opinion rapidly because somebody has got to him or he's figured out that the old Pollynev wasn't quite resonating.

So I'm excited. That's the first time I've seen really what I wanted to. to see which is a combination of Maruni, a Harper, you know, a statesman. Okay, you guys got the floor. Somehow you pivoted and you won. You haven't accomplished anything in a year. Dominic Lank's comments were just embarrassing, frankly, because he was the guy at the heart of all interprovincial trade that could have been changed all along.

So if I saw what I saw yesterday, Ben, I'm excited. Yeah. And I'm going to get off my horse and start supporting in a large way because he looked like the guy we need. And that's what I was hoping to see. And look, the numbers don't lie. I mean, the prime minister promised a number of things. And yes, certain things take a lot of time. But it's been 10 months.

And the fourth quarter results for our economic performance came out yesterday. The United States grew over the last three months of last year at 1.4%. That led the G7. Canada was at the tail end of the G7. The only country not in positive territory. We're at negative 0.6% growth. Our economy contracted. We were promised the fastest growing economy in the G7.

I get that he is, that people like him and they believe he's the man for the moment. But they're going to believe that, I have to believe that with evidence to support it. Chris, you know what? I just realized I spoke for so long. We're at the end of this segment. So we're going to take a quick break. We're going to come back and Chris, you're going to pick up where we left off. Don't go anywhere.

This is the Ben Mulroney Show. All right, we're continuing our conversation. It's this week in politics the Friday edition. And we're joined by Chris Chapin and Mark Norris. Chris, right before the break, you know, I was pointing out that our economy contracted by 0.6% at the end of last year. The least performing economy in the G7. Not exactly what we were promised in the election campaign by the end of the last year. the liberals. And so I got to wonder, right now the prime minister is still, by all accounts,

if you want to hold an election today, he would win. I haven't seen evidence to suggest that there's a reason for him to be this high in the polls, but that's where we are. And but numbers like this don't lie. No, they don't, Ben. And I think it, you know, it's one of those strange things that prove that sometimes like the economic indicators just don't matter the way you'd think they would. It's a very, I think, an emotional response from a lot of Canadians right now in terms of those polling numbers you see for the Prime Minister because there's just still a lot of people that simply fundamentally trust him and trust his experience because I'm not sure what in the, you know, real world so far has proven, you know, the bump that he's seen in those polling

numbers. And I don't think it's just at the expense of Polyev. I think it's, you know, Canadians still think he's the right man for the job, I suppose. But after, you know, almost a year, you know, things aren't getting, things aren't changing. I mean, you know, to the economic numbers, what did we expect? You know, like we were an economy that solely relied on the United States for decades. And with the tariffs they've put on us, like we were always going to get impacted, perhaps more than any other single country in the entire world. Yeah.

So that's exactly what's happened. And our economy and those numbers show it that we're trailing the rest of the G7. Mark, what do you think about this? Because, yeah, it's, it's been 10 months. And I don't believe that the damage that was inflicted on the economy in the country by 10 years of Justin Trudeau being prime minister can be turned around overnight. But I don't know that we've necessarily begun to turn around. Yeah. I think it's shocking. And I think any time somebody is let to believe they're the smartest guy in the room, their whole life, they act with impunity.

What I think Canadians have tied into is his confidence. He acts, he acts decisively, he speaks decisively, and they can understand that. What I cannot, for the life of me, fathom, is logical thinking people must see that the results are none. There has not been any results under his watch to speak of. And so I'm sort of waiting for the honeymoon to end. Usually you get six months. This takes it's 10 months. Eventually people are going to say, well, steak is still seven bucks a pound, and bread hasn't gone down.

and my kid can't play hockey because we got to pay our rent. So those real life matters are going to happen. And I can't wait until they do because if you time that with Polly of 2.0 being a statesman and offering solutions and hope, I think we've got a really good combination going. What do you make of this speech by LeBlanc yesterday where, like I said, he blamed the slow pace of uptick on these major projects on the bureaucracy. Like, look, I don't like using the word gaslighting, but I don't like being talked to like I'm an idiot. And telling me that the problem is the bureaucracy that you grew by 40% is gaslighting.

Chris. Yeah, of course it has been. But I mean, like, what other option do they have, right? Like, they, they could shrink the bureaucracy. They could. Well, I mean, absolutely. You and I both love that, right? But I mean, it's like that takes time too.

That's a whole other fight. You could get rid of the regulations that are killing investment. I'm up here in the nation's capital. There's nothing I'd love more than to see that happen. But this place might riot, right? I mean, just look at Pierre Pauly of, you know, election in his own rioting, Ben, when you want to talk about that conversation. You know, it's an interesting tack.

They single-handedly won that seat on the backs of them saying that Pierre was going to fire all the, you know, civil servants in Carlton. And now we've got a federal government that's, blaming the civil servants that live in Carlton. So, you know, it's absolutely gaslighting. I just, when you've committed to doing something to Canadians, which was build faster than we'll ever build before, and then you realize you can't do it,

you've got to blame somebody, and you can't blame Pierre on this, and you can't blame Donald Trump on this, and you're not going to blame yourself. So, I mean, the public service was, you know, the next man up in the firing squad. Yeah, but again, I keep asking myself, at some point, will these things not stick to these guys, Mark? Well, yeah, and the fact is, Ben, when Carney says something and acts by Fiat and doesn't understand Parliament,

then the media, and I include all media, need to hold them accountable. There's nothing but good headlines, good pitchers, statesmanlike, and I sort of look at it and say, okay, where's the rubber hitting the road and when? Yeah. Because you've accomplished the grand sum of nothing. And so now are you talking heads at LeBlanc, and champagne, oh, this is wonderful. We're doing all these things.

You were the masterminds of the 10 years that crushed Canada. Took it from being one of the greatest nations on earth to one of the worst. And now they're sort of getting away with it. And that's the part I can't understand. Canadians, we're forgiving people, were kind. But eventually the media's got to say, this is all garbage. But you're the same guys who said, there's no business case for what your prime minister is now in India is saying,

there's a business case for. You know, at what point does the average thinking Canadians say, yeah, it's time for a change and long overdue. Well, for a party that really hates fossil fuels, they love turning the gaslight up to 11 because on, I just made that one up. I thought that was pretty good. But, you know, the food inflation theory is another one of them.

And I think it was, was it Adam Vancouverden? Adam Vancouverden stood up in the House of Commons and blamed food inflation on climate change. And so the food professor, Sylvain Charlebois, who has been, I think he's been pushed into being more political these days than he otherwise would be because he sees the evidence. He knows how this stuff is. And I think he's fed up with being told that something is one thing when he knows that it's not. And he put out the food inflation forecast where Canada's food inflation for 2026 is projected to be 6.1%. the U.S., which shares a continent with us so you could assume that the impact of climate change would be more or less identical.

Their food inflation for 2026 is 2.7%. The world average is 3.2%. We're at 6.1, but sure, let's say it's climate change. Again, I'm going to say it again. This stuff at some point, and I guess, Chris, like, isn't it the job of sort of the comms team at the conservative party to try to figure out how to make this? stuff stick? Yeah, it absolutely is, Ben. I think the only other problem is I think it's part of the policy shop for the conservative

party that needs to come forward with something. You know, you talk about the difference between us and the United States. There's that big C-word competition that they have and we don't in so much of our food supply. We have supply-managed dairy and we have supply-managed poultry. You know, we don't have much competition whatsoever in our grocery chains. And so you go south of the border, you quickly realize why it's so much cheaper to get certain food items than it is here. I mean, let's not kid ourselves.

Food prices are going up in the United States as well. But in this country, and when you talk about Pierre and the conservatives, they need to take a hard look and say, if this is the issue we think, and certainly Pierre talks about it enough. He talks about food prices constantly. You can only complain so much when you're in opposition if you're not going to put something forward to to explain how you're going to bring that down. And they were successful in the lead up to the last election. they got rid of the carbon tax. You know, you couldn't point to the carbon tax as being the reason,

which it certainly was a huge contributor to the increase in our food prices. You can't point to that anymore. So what are you going to point to? What is your solution if you're Pierre-Pol-Ev? And I don't believe the average voter thinks or can possibly process the idea of it's like, you know, big deficits are why our grocery prices are high. That's just, I don't think, make sense to the average voter. But if you start going out and explaining,

we're going to make chicken cheaper and we're going to make cheese cheaper because we're going to get rid of supply management. We're going to make, we think we can bring down the cost of your groceries because we're not going to allow Galen West and the Loblaws to have a monopoly or vice versa out east with Sobies. We're going to introduce real competition. I think that's the real kicker that if you're the conservatives, you need to have a hard look at. Mark, you would think that the press would be doing some of this work as well. But when I read an article like in the global mail, it says, out of the blue, Canada is poorer than Alabama. I think, okay, okay.

The Tories are in this alone. Mark, last word to you. Well, again, Ben, you know, the legacy of media, as they call them, has to do their job. But I don't know if you guys are football fans. If you remember a guy named Bump Phillips, big cowboy hat, straw in his thing, there's a lot of those guys in Alberta. And everybody sort of thinks they're just awes chucks, but they're very clever. And I listen to them. You know, the price of anhyndor's ammonia, the taxes on it, the carbon taxes, the input into the food production is massive.

And those are the immediate things you can start reducing if you're polio and say, okay, here's, here's, here's, Five things we're going to do right off the bat that are going to reduce the food prices. Because everybody thinks Alberta's all the oil in gas, there's a lot of agriculture out here. Yes, with most of the cat. Mark, we've got to leave it there. Chris, Mark, I'll be both have a great weekend. Thanks so much. There.

Thursdays on Global. I'm Madeline Matlock. She's the lawyer with a legendary name. Don't underestimate Miss Matlock. This woman's a shark. You know it, baby. The one you can trust, even if she has to bend the rules. Things aren't.

Always as black and white as they seem. To crack a case. This is how I get things done. Emmy winning actress Kathy Bates is Matlock. All new Thursdays at 9 Eastern on Global. Stream on Stack TV.