The Ben Mulroney Show - Pipelines, Parliament and a Puffed Up President

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

On today's episode of "The Ben Mulroney Show," Ben welcomes Harrison J.M. Faulkner, Founder & President of Ensign Media Productions Ltd. They discuss the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline, the escalating trade battle, and question why PM Carney is not recalling parliament. 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

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And get life brand pure Vita shampoo or conditioner for $8 each. At Real Canadian Superstore, when you're ready, we're ready with a whole world and more. In order to keep up with the energy demands of a rising population, as well as the hopes of having the base load for God knows how many AI data centers that the province of Ontario is going to be going after and hoping to secure over the next weeks, months, and years, there's a massive plan afoot in the province to expand how much energy we are able to produce. but I saw a story pop up on my feed that yesterday, that a major part of Ontario's energy supply just got shut down. And to talk about that is the guy who broke the story as far as I'm concerned. Please welcome to the show. Harrison Faulkner.

Harrison, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm really glad to have you. I always wanted to have you on the show. I respect you a lot. You do great work. Talk to me about what happened on Enbridge Line 5. Yeah, so this story.

story was broken by local news journalists in Wisconsin. For those that don't know, line five provides Ontario and Quebec with roughly half of our oil and natural gas liquids. So this pipeline is a lifeline for Ontario and for Quebec. It was shut down on Tuesday at 10.30 after a rupture occurred on the pipeline in northern Wisconsin. If you can believe it, this happened allegedly after a parked, unoccupied semi-truck rolled into an excavation site on the pipeline. Since Tuesday at 10.30, first response crews have been trying to deal with this disaster of spilled natural gas liquids happening right now in northern Wisconsin. And since Tuesday, the pipeline has been shut off.

So there's two things happening here at the same time, of course. Right now in Michigan, line five in its future is a hotly contested domestic political issue. The governor is trying to shut the pipeline down. This would have huge implications for Ontario. And also, as everybody knows, listening, Doug Ford and Donald Trump are continuing their war of words and threatening to cut off energy supplies to each other. I think, Ben, this just illustrates how crucial it is for Canada to have an energy supply chain that doesn't involve pipelines going through the U.S. Yeah, yeah. And we'll talk about

that part. We'll talk about the tit for tatany, the war of words which could turn into which could turn into materially difficult circumstances for Canadians and people on the other side of the border in a moment. But, you know, what you said there that it was a

truck that was just sitting there unoccupied, it sounds like there could have been foul play. Is that what we're hinting at here? Well, a story like this just sets the conditions for conspiracies to run wild, right? The timing is too perfect in a way. When everyone's talking about Ontario's energy security, you have this story all of a sudden show up.

Now, you would think that there must be some logical explanation for how a rollaway semi-truck could possibly cause this kind of damage. But there's a third angle to this story, if you can believe it. and that is the First Nations angle. This pipeline was going through a reservation in northern Wisconsin, and the construction project that was taking place there was part of the rerouting of the pipeline away from this First Nations project. So really, I don't want to jump to conclusions. I don't want to say that there was a foul play here.

But one thing I will say that's remarkable about the story is that to this day, since Tuesday, no mainstream Canadian media outlet has reported on this. And it made me consider whether or not the initial reporting was actually true. But local police, local journalists have sent crews to the site and they've confirmed the story is true. So I don't really know why this is being ignored by Canadian mainstream media. Well, because we're talking about how mean Donald Trump is for renaming Lake Ontario. Didn't you know? Like we've got to focus on that, Harris.

We've got to focus on that. But, you know, like the tit for tat, one of the reasons I was critical of Doug Ford for whom I have a lot of respect and a lot of time in the war of words is there's no, there's no depth that Donald Trump is unwilling to sink to, if you're in a war of words with him. And so the Lake Ontario thing doesn't surprise me. But there's one thing that could happen, which I hope doesn't happen. Michigan could tell us that they don't want to take our garbage anymore. We send a lot of garbage to Michigan. Remember, a few years ago, we were sending it to the Philippines. They sent it back because they ran out of

space. So that could be a very messy, stinky problem. And it would also just be a PR nightmare if all of a sudden all of our trash came back across the border. So I warn against that sort of thing. But this is, this is huge, Harrison. You've got over 500,000 barrels of crude and natural gas liquids every single day through line five. This is not insignificant. It's not insignificant. And something was going to happen with line five anyway because this pipeline was supposed to last for 50 years. It passed its 50th birthday, I believe 20 years ago. The pipeline is, it's the subject and at the center of very serious political debate in Michigan. And Ontario is heavily reliant on this old infrastructure, this old pipeline, to supply us with our light crude. And importantly, it's natural gas liquids,

not liquefied natural gas. The reason for the distinction is that this is propane and butane, the stuff that that farmers rely on and the things that go into the creation of electronics, for example. It just makes you realize just how integrated Canada and the United States are the fact that we are mutually reliant on each other. And the longer that this goes on for both countries, the pain could be significant.

Well, listen, we're going to start another topic now. and we'll pick it up on the other side of the break. But this is important. We are in a trade war. Our prime minister has been using the language of war, the vocabulary of war,

and you would think that in a war, he would bring back the people's house and he would bring everybody back from summer recess and we would have a fulsome debate as to what our strategy is going to be moving forward. Not only has that not happened, but our prime minister has said that instead he will be attending the state of the union address at the European Parliament.

What does that say to you? It makes no logical sense. I can understand why the prime minister is going to Europe. He is speaking in front of the European Parliament. He wants to diversify trade. That was his mandate. But if you have decided to position this as a war that Canada is under attack, and if that's the framing we're going with, fine.

But then that has to be backed up with legit action. And that involves, of course, recalling parliament. MPs want to get to work. They want to be involved. They want to provide the government with parliamentary backing for their actions they're about to take. So address our parliament first. And then, please, go and fulfill your mandate and diversify trade. But you first have to make sure you affirm Canadian sovereignty by informing the Canadian people through Parliament first.

I completely agree. You can do both. You can do both, but the first step should be recalling Parliament. That shows Canadians that you're taking it seriously and that you realize that your power flows from the people. It's symbolic, but it's also practical. And there would be a lot more cross-party support for whatever the plan is if it could be fleshed out in the House of Commons. I think there's a lot of MPs who are chomping at the bit, hoping to hear from the prime minister and hear from this government as to what their strategy is so that they can determine what parts of it they can support and we can move from there. Until then, because we don't know what the deal was that he rejected, it's all happening in his mind and in the mind of a few select people.

And that's too elitist for me in a moment of national crisis where we are asking people. because you and I and people like us across the country, we're going to be bearing the brunt of the pain. Our representatives should be there so that we can understand why and how. Harrison, don't go anywhere. We're going to take a break. And when we come back,

we're going to continue with a raft of other topics because I want to pick your brain on a whole bunch of stuff, including what else we're going to talk about? We're talking about all sorts of stuff. So don't go anywhere. Much more with Harrison Falkner, when we come back right here on the Ben Mulroney show. Harrison, before we continue with our conversation,

if people like the cut of your jib and they want to hear more from you, how can they find you? Well, they can find me on YouTube and social media under my name, Harrison Falkner, if you search it up, it should show up on your screen. You can also catch my weekly show ratioed on Juno News. Yeah, you got the best name in news, by the way. It's just such a strong, strong name.

It's like straight out of central casting. Anyway, thanks. I really appreciate you and the work you do. and what do you make of this? So I was listening to Ian Brody, who is formerly of the chief staff of Stephen Harper. And he was on the Hurley-Burley podcast. And near the end of the show, which I think was on Sunday,

he listed his prescription of all the things that this government needs to do in these early days of this tariff war. And it was recall parliament, put forth a pro-growth budget, lay out how much money is going to be spent in aid and to keep different industries afloat, try to build cross-party support, go out there and try to bring as much AI data center business to this country, not next week, tomorrow.

And cut regulation approve every single a major project that is currently awaiting in the wings. That was Sunday. Not one of those things has been done. By the way, there was a member of the NDP who was on that show. And he agreed, yeah, we're going to have to do something like that. Nothing like that has happened yet. What, what, what are, what's going on? Well, I don't think the inaction should surprise anyone. I think it's more of the same, right? but I think we would all agree on at least we could all agree on a few of those points. There's going to be contention on the data centers issue.

I think actually that's an issue that's going to become front and center in the coming years ahead, which could be interesting. But on major projects, on recalling parliament, these are slam dunk easy points. Also, if you're playing this from the liberal perspective, which I don't often do, but if you were to think of this from their perspective, recalling parliament, and giving Mark Carney more chances to speak at the pulpit, to speak at the podium in parliament, it creates the narrative that Canada really is under attack,

which seems to obviously benefit the liberals. So these are things they could obviously do and easily do to their credit. They have been approving major projects. I think they could be going faster. I think most importantly, they should be building pipelines. Like it's all well and good to do these other major projects and to do these ports.

We need them. But we need pipelines in this country. So, yeah, I think some of those issues are going to be more contentious than others. But there are obviously a few of those that you've just listed out, that Ian Brody listed out, which are slam dunk, easy to do. You could get them done tomorrow. Yeah. And like when he was listing them out, I was like, see, that sounds like the, that sounds like a centrist government working on behalf of everybody.

And instead, this like I take great issue, Harrison, with the, project's office because the creation of it is an admission of failure over the course of the 10 years under Justin Trudeau. What you're admitting is that there is a regulatory morass that exists to keep projects from ever getting off the ground. And therefore, we have to create this fast track that we, the liberal party and the liberal government controls. That to me is no way to build baby build. No, it's not. And The money which should have been going to these projects over the past 11 years has been shipped off overseas for other issues, for other, for other subjects completely.

They don't really benefit Canadians. And the more we've looked into these major projects, the more the reporting has emerged, Ben, that it says these, you know, these projects are 15 years overdue. They're 20 years overdue. And you just realize, well, what has the government been doing all this time? Yeah. It even goes back to some of the conservative policies. I mean, pre-Justin Trudeau, but this entire time, we have been neglecting infrastructure

that has been needed to be built. And so better late than never. It's kind of a shame that a president, which seems to have so much contempt for Canada, has been kind of responsible for kickstarting a lot of what's been going on. But does the, I guess the outcome is far more important than how we got, how we started this, of course. But, you know, it needs to be done. And you're right. It does indicate that something was broken.

But, you know, if Mark Carney said that this is a crisis, he's a crisis leader. He wouldn't be, he would not have thrown his hat in the ring. Were this not a crisis, he likened it to Chamberlain and Churchill. And if, if in fact, this government starts behaving, like walking the walk, they've been talking the talk of a war. If they start walking the walk and putting this country on a de facto war footing, like let's mobilize, let's fire up industry, let's cut red tape, let's bring, let's bring labor in and First Nations and say, guys, we've got to shorten our consultation periods. We may have to ask you to take a haircut on this or that, but it's all for the greater good

and don't worry we are going to have your back. If he could get that done, I don't know a single concern. that would not be at least partially happy with that? Well, I made my own smaller list than Ian Brody did on what the prime minister should do after declaring that we were at war and declaring that we were under attack. My list was pretty simple. It was to redirect every single dollar, every single cent that we were about to send overseas to foreign aid and foreign investment, redirect every last cent back into Canada for tariff

relief and for infrastructure. The other thing would be to withhold transfer payments from the federal government to provinces that refuse to drop their interprovincial trade barriers. We're leaving billions and billions of dollars in the table every year because provinces have different regulations for wine, everything from wine to trucking to standards for certain jobs. It's crazy. And provinces need to be, there needs to be some carrot and stick. to get these provinces to finally drop the trade barriers. Yeah. So those were my sort of prescriptions.

Pretty easy. If we're really under attack, how could we possibly justify sending another dollar in foreign aid to another country when we're the country under attack and our people need the tariff relief? Yeah. Yeah. So those are the things that I think actually would get a lot of support. And you have to also tack this on to some of the things the government has done that I think

need to be given credit. they need to be given credit for. Cutting immigration is critical. And actually doing the deportations and dropping the population, major step and diversifying trade and signing new trade deals. These are benefits. Carney has a really great chance in front of him, an opportunity here in front of them to solidify himself for a long time

if they really want to take it. Harrison, we only have a couple of minutes left, but I wondered what you thought of, like where's Pierre Poliev in all of this? It's when in a war, you rally around the leader and the leader of the opposition is, becomes a little bit of an afterthought, right? So what, a guy whose leadership is being questioned a lot, what do you, and we've got some by-elections coming up, doesn't look very good for the conservatives. What are your thoughts? Well, everyone said that Pierre Polyev was sort of the greatest opposition leader.

a man made to be the opposition leader at a time when the country needed an opposition leader that was when justin trudeau was sort of entering his final stages the country is not looking for an opposition leader right now because the prime minister was just so popular and this is this is really caused pierre pauli of some problems i think and i i i feel bad because he really is a victim of external circumstances i still hold on to the belief that has had Donald Trump not kickstarted their 51st state rhetoric and launched the tariffs that we would have a Pierre Pauliev prime minister. And so now the issue, of course, is simply holding on to his caucus

and making sure that they don't oust him before he gets another kick at the can. So that's going to be a hard job. And the prime minister is just really popular right now. I don't think there's a political science. I don't think there's some, there's some deep. signs to this. I think the reality is what we all feel right now, which is just the prime minister has a lot of leash from the Canadian public, the Canadian public. He can get away with a lot. And that is not good for a conservative opposition leader. Harrison Faulkner, thank you so much.

I hope everybody follows you and goes to Juno News and watches your reporting because I think you do great, great work. Come back anytime. Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.