The Ben Mulroney Show - PM Carney scraps the DST, NYC election and Alligator Alcatraz

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

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Thank you so much for spending some time with us. I want to thank you for joining us on podcast platforms, on streaming apps, on radio, on YouTube, wherever you find us. I say thank you very much. Today was supposed to be the day that the Liberal government's digital services tax came into effect. It was voted on and became law under Justin Trudeau and this was going to be a boon, a financial boon for the feds because they were essentially taxing big American tech companies like Metta, Airbnb, Amazon, Google, big companies that don't necessarily pay tax in Canada. This was going to be a way to apparently get them to pay their fair share. Well, because this was telegraphed from so many months ago, the Trump administration

made it very clear to this government that they were none too happy about this. And they've been saying, this is going to be a problem. This is going to be a problem. And as after Mark Carney got elected, he said, yeah, the DST is still coming into effect. And the Trump administration suggested, why don't you put a pause on it for 30 days? Because we're in the middle of a really intense negotiation. The negotiation that Mark Carney said he entered politics for in the first place, which was to reestablish a new relationship

with the Americans. We were current, we were negotiating a quote unquote new trade and security agreement with the Americans. We were going like 24 seven on this. This was central to normalizing relationships, a relationship with our biggest trading partner. Well, here's what Donald Trump said about these negotiations with Canada. So Canada put a charge on some of our companies and Canada has been a very difficult country to deal with. Over the years. You know, we hear Canada, we have a great relationship with the people of Canada, but it's been very difficult. And they put a charge in, they were a little bit early,

we found out about it, so. And we have all the cards, we have all, every single one, we don't want to do anything bad, but they have, economically, we have such power over Canada. I'd rather not use it, but they did something with our tech companies today trying to copy Europe. You know, they copied Europe. It's not going to work out well for Europe either, and it's not going to work out well for Canada.

They were foolish to do it. So I said we're going to stop all negotiations with Canada right now until they straighten out their act. Yeah, the Americans have been telegraphing their position on this for months. So much so that Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario last year, gave a speech where he said, I'm talking to Democrats, I'm talking to Republicans, and to a person. They tell me that this is going to put hundreds of thousands, if not millions of jobs in Canada at risk. And I urge the federal government to rescind this law as soon as possible. So that was a state of play before. And then at the end of last week, this is what Donald Trump

posted on social media. We have just been informed that Canada, a very difficult country to trade with, including the fact that they have charged our farmers as much as 400% tariffs for years on dairy products has just announced that they are putting a digital services tax on our American tech companies, which is a direct and blatant attack on our country. They are obviously copying the European Union, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We are hereby terminating all discussions on trade

with Canada effective immediately. We will let Canada know the tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America with the next seven day period. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Okay, so yes, so Donald Trump said, no more trade negotiations and I'm gonna levy another tariff on you.

So what was the reaction of the elbows up crowd? Well, in my estimation, they lopped off their elbows and put them in a FedEx package and sent them to the White House. Because as of last night, I believe at 10 p.m., the government announced that the DST would be paused. The PMO said that Carney and Trump talked. Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne

and Treasury Secretary Scott Besant also talked. And it looks like that that tax is going to go the way of the dodo bird. And I'm just trying to figure out what we're doing here, man. Like I have been, I believe, fair in my assessment of what this new liberal government has done. I have given them credit when they deserved credit. But I also think it's

fair to point out that the crisis that they claimed was necessary for the liberals to be reelected, which got them reelected, did not materialize in tone, in tenor, and in behavior by the government once they got into power. And this is another example of that. I'm not the guy who said our relationship is over. I'm not the guy who said this was the crisis of our lifetime. I'm not the guy who said elbows up. That's the guy who ran an election

and successfully got himself elected. And so I look at this and I'm like, where are the elbows? What's going on here? How is this? Because I promise you, where are the elbows? What's going on here? How is this? Because I promise you, if Pierre Poliev had been elected, one of the first things he would have done was cancel the DST, and we wouldn't find ourselves in this mess where we lost credibility

and we lost a bargaining position with the Americans. We could have used the DST as a bargaining chip and said, we'll take this off, what will you give us instead? And they didn't do that, they capitulated completely. And so to me, this is just, it's a demonstration again, that the liberals got themselves elected,

they got themselves elected fairly, but they got themselves elected, leveraging a fear of a fictitious problem. And if Pierre-Pauliet was guilty of running a campaign of anger, which I don't necessarily think is entirely true, but let's say it was, fear trumps anger. This is what I've now learned at 49 years old. In politics, fear is a more sustainable emotion than anger. And it was proven out in this election campaign.

So where are the elbows? Just tell me where the elbows are. And by the way, just for context sake, here's some audio of why the digital service tax was put into place in the first place. This dates back a number of years where there are concerns at some of the large multinationals but particularly tech companies.

Perception is they haven't been paying their fair share of tax, in part because they're very effective at moving some of that money around based on revenues that can come from things like data and intellectual property. So we've seen a number of countries establish this digital services tax, which is typically about a 3% surtax on the revenues that are generated

from things like digital advertising or online marketplaces. US has pushed back against other countries that have done it, but Canada has said we want to go ahead, especially if an international agreement that was designed to sort of mediate and address this issue failed to materialize. Okay, so that was Michael Geist. He is an e commerce professor at the University of Ottawa. And a couple of things that we need to discuss one, what is this going to do to the revenue

projections of the federal government, it was projected this tax was gonna bring at least seven billion over five years, with two billion coming in the first year alone. So that's revenue that was counted on that no longer exists. But now that our federal government has demonstrated that it's going to do whatever Donald Trump wants. What's going to happen when he comes after supply management that Mark Carney said was absolutely a sacred cow. Nobody was going to touch it. You'll remember in the social media post

that I mentioned off the top of this segment. Even though this was a discussion about digital services tax, Donald Trump prefaced it by talking about how Canada has charged our farmers as much as a 400% tariff for years on dairy products. That is a bee in his bonnet. And if you don't think he's going to run the exact same play once we get back to the table on on on on dairy and on supply management, then I got a bridge to sell you because that's exactly what's going to happen here.

He's going to say, okay, thank God you saw the light on the DST. Now we're doing supply management. And when Mark Carney says, well, no, we're not going to do that. He's going to run this exact play again. And then what happens to Mark Carney who pledged it would never get touched? I don't know but I'm paying attention. I'm paying very very close attention. All right don't go anywhere when we come back we're talking about the most interesting exciting and crazy political race in all of North America.

It is the race to become the mayor of New York City. Don't go anywhere. to become the mayor of New York City. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney show and the most curiously interesting political campaign, I think in the world right now, is what's going on in New York City. The mayoral race really took an interesting turn when a self-avowed democratic socialist, Zoran Mamdani, with a grand total of five years of public service under his belt as an assemblyman at the state level in Albany, upended the status quo by beating out political stalwart and democratic leader

in that state, Andrew Cuomo, for the democratic nomination. So he has earned the right to represent the Democratic Party in the mayoral election, which now means he is a national figure. Right? I mean, yeah, he is he is a he is a vote away from becoming one of the most influential political leaders in North America and probably the world. I mean, the economy of that city alone dictates that he's that powerful. He could be that powerful. But because, as I said, he only has about five years of actual political experience

under his belt, in order to get to know this guy a little better, we have to go all the way back to high school when he ran for student council to see what he believes in. You know, it's not like he's, it's not like he's Pierre Poliev. And you go back to his voting history from 10, 15, 20 years ago to sort of make an assessment of who he is and what his values are. And so as a student, he ran for vice president

of the Bronx High School of Science. Ultimately, as he said, it was an unsuccessful run, but on a 2017 episode of a podcast, well, he did a rap campaign video, apparently that cost him the campaign. His political platform was, he promised constituents fresh juice and gym credits for attending school sanctioned sporting events.

Actually, that second one, well, I don't know about the, I don't mind either one of those, but clearly that was the beginning of him giving stuff to people. Like the government is a vehicle to ordain people with things. Since then, he's evolved.

Here's what he's promising. He's gonna make all New York City buses free. He's gonna create city-owned grocery stores to stop the price gouging, apparently. Universal child care at no cost. Raise minimum wage to $30 an hour, that nearly doubling it at $16.50 an hour. He's going to tax the rich, whoever they are, by an additional 2%. He's going to raise the corporate tax from 7.25 to 11.5%.

He's going to shift the focus away from policing and incarceration. He's going to invest $60 million in gender-affirming care. And he's going to create an office of LGBTQIA-plus affairs. So those are some of the high-level bullet points of what a Mamdani city administration would be about. But he's getting national attention, as I said, and he was on NBC over the weekend. And he was asked, because Trump called him so, he was asked if he's a communist.

Are you a communist? No, I am not. And I have already had to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I'm from, who I am, ultimately because he wants to distract from what I'm fighting for. And I'm fighting for the very working people that he ran a campaign to empower

that he has since then betrayed. Okay, well, look, yeah, he's not a communist because he doesn't want a revolution, but he wants to bring as many pure socialist values into the democratic system as possible, into the capitalist system as possible. He was also asked about what he thinks about billionaires. You are a self-described democratic socialist.

Do you think that billionaires have a right to exist? I don't think that we should have billionaires because frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality. And ultimately, what we need more of is equality across our city and across our state and across our country. And I look forward to work with everyone, including billionaires to make a city that is fairer for all of them. So listen, I appreciate the nuance. He's like, my position is we shouldn't have him.

He's not saying he's going to work to make being a billionaire illegal because he said he's gonna work with billionaires. He said that he, I appreciate the nuance. However, you can say it with a smile and you can chuckle all you want. You have outlined that you are openly hostile to the very existence of billionaires. And yes, just like in every single walk of life,

there are good people and bad people. But billionaires typically are in control of companies that employ many, many, many, many, many people. And New York, I don't know if it's the billionaire capital of the world, but it's probably one of them. This to me is a signal that if you are a billionaire, your life is about to get less economically rewarding and satisfying if you live and make your residence in New York City. And I predicted, I said that if he becomes elected, you could expect the

most significant flight of capital out of that city that we've seen in a very long time. I also think that you could probably see a boatload of billionaires getting on their yachts and going somewhere else, probably Miami, probably somewhere in Texas, probably anywhere they wanna go because they're billionaires and they are going to take their money with them. But Zoran doesn't seem to care.

Mike Drolet, you wanna chime in? Yeah, do you think that this is the sort of thing that is gonna resonate? You know, I think back think that this is the sort of thing that is going to resonate? You know, I think back to, this is strange, but the third Batman movie where they were talking about, they were saying, you know what? The people are going to rebel and they're going to actually, you've had yours for far too long. Now it's time for everyone else.

And it's, I just think about that as very similar to what's going on right now? Well, look, I think there are discussions that can be had about the tax system and the way billionaires operate in that tax system. But the billionaires themselves and the wealth that they've accumulated is a product of the system. And so you can have a conversation about that in order to, I don't know, find ways to, yes, I don't know, but to look at the billionaire and say, you're the problem, to me is juvenile. No, the problem is the system that doesn't make sure

that they are paying what you think is the right system of taxes so that it gets to where it needs to go. The billionaire- It's inflation as well. It's inflation. Yeah, it's inflation as well, and it's poor choices by governments, and it's pet projects by governments,

and it's bloat, and it's graft, and it's too many people doing too few jobs, and it's red tape, and it's waste. There's a whole lot of reasons why people are feeling income inequality. And to look at the billionaire and say, that's your problem, there's a word for it, there's an expression for that, it's called class warfare.

It's called class warfare. It's like, here, there's your enemy. There's your enemy. And you know when you point at them and everyone's looking at them? They're not looking at the guy in charge of the government who probably has a hand in why their life sucks And so now here's a problem for Zoran Mondami because over the weekend

Donald Trump got a massive victory by the Supreme Court. That is that severely circumscribes the ability of People to come after him in terms of like injunctions against his plans, meaning he now has almost unfettered ability to revoke the federal funding that goes to a city like New York, that goes then for being a sanctuary city, for example, if they don't allow ICE to do the work that they wanna do in terms of deportation of illegal and criminal immigrants. And that amount of money is about $10 billion a year, which amounts to 8.3% of the city's

operating expenses. And so I ask our good friend, Mr. Mamdani, how are you going to pay for the free buses? How are you going to pay for city-owned grocery stores and universal childcare at no cost and investing $65 billion in gender-affirming care, especially if a lot of your tax base moves away because they think that there is a better incentive for them elsewhere. And this is where he put his foot in his mouth

and he really messed up. Yeah. Because they had the headline of the New York Post. Oh yes, we're gonna go after, we're gonna tax white neighborhoods more. You're making an enemy out of somebody who isn't a natural enemy. You put them on the other side of the fence.

This, there is a storm brewing here. And if Mamdani wins, I know he's gonna blink first. Okay, Trump's not gonna blink. And Mamdani is gonna blink first. And anyway, this is a fight I'm looking forward to because Trump is itching for this. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you've been following the news,

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Question, what's the best way to get real, up-to-date health and wellness info that isn't coming from a TikTok girl named Kale. Answer, the Tonic podcast of course. It's smart, it's honest, and it's made for grownups who remember life before Wi-Fi but still want to feel good in their genes. Visit www.thetonic.ca to listen and subscribe. The Tonic, you know, for what ails you, and also for that stuff that just creaks for no

reason now. Well thank you so much for joining us. It's a day before Canada Day and I hope you're enjoying the, Mother Nature is agreeing with us. She wants us outside. She wants us enjoying time with our families and time with our friends and time with our community in a way to celebrate this country.

I'm ascribing that motivation to Mother Nature. She wants us out there feeling the pride that we should feel in being Canadian. And in just over, just under a half an hour, we're actually gonna have a conversation with a brand new Canadian. She just, one of our interns here at the radio station just became a Canadian citizen

and she's gonna sit down with me and we're gonna discuss everything that it means for her to be a Canadian citizen now. I'm quite, I'm looking forward to it. I think it'll be quite inspiring for me. Okay, so this is a story that I only learned about this morning, I'm still really enjoying it. Okay, so we know that the ICE in the United States, the organization in trust, in trusted, that is in charge of going into cities and rooting out criminal

elements made up of illegal immigrants are there they're collecting a lot of people they are collecting a lot of people for deportation and the question is where do you put all those people there are thousands upon thousands of these people that need to be housed temporarily until they are sent back to where they came from. Now, the debate will rage on beyond me about whether or not that is a policy that should be pursued by the Americans. That's not the conversation I want to have because it well, we're not American. It doesn't matter really to me. This is a choice they've made. The conversation I wanna have is about the solution that the Americans are bringing to bear on that question.

Where do you house all of these people all at once in a secure location? And the answer is the Florida Everglades. That's right. Oh, you know what? Rather than me explain it, we're gonna listen to a US social media creator explain it.

It's called Alcatraz. It's called an alligator Alcatraz. Only Florida looks at the Everglades 30 square miles of swamp gators and pythons and God knows what else and says perfect spot for a prison. They already broke ground Monday and by August 5000 beds surrounded by nothing but prehistoric murder lizards and snakes that can swallow you whole and they loving it down there. They're literally bragging if they escape ain't nothing out there but alligators and pythons nowhere to go nowhere

to hide. This ain't a damn detention center this is Florida outsourcing border security and the national geographic's deadliest killers. If you break out you ain't dodging ice you dodging Steve Irwin's worst nightmares. But hey, it's Florida. You either retire there, get arrested there, or become gator food. It's the circle of life in the swamp. I gotta say, you know, for, for years we would, you know, there's a game you can play if you go to Google and you type in Florida man and you see what it auto fills and it's always something ridiculous. Uh, and the Everglades are this definitional aspect of Florida. But I don't think that the the sort of the the swamp of Florida has ever

been leveraged to to benefit national security. And you know, I've heard some people say, oh, this is this is so unfair. I was like, why they were arrested for doing something illegal. They are now put in a secure and safe location and told, please don't leave. Please don't try to leave. But if you do, you'll probably get eaten by by a lizard. And I mean, you're giving everybody fair warning. They know the rules of the game.

Alcatraz, the reason they're calling it Alcatraz, alligator Alcatraz, is because if you wanted to escape Alcatraz, you had to risk your life with the crazy currents of the water off of San Francisco Bay. And so that's why, and there's sharks in there too. I mean, cause I don't know if you know this, but there's a town on the other side there near Oakland

called Tiburon, which is Spanish for shark. Yes. And so yeah, that's why apparently there've only been, I mean, there've been a number of, there were a number of escapes. My favorite was the escape into Alcatraz known as the Rock. Welcome to the Rock. What's that line? What's that line from it? Your best losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and eff the prom queen. And then Nick Cade says Carla was the prom queen and

then they get into Alcatraz. It's a great movie. It's a terrible movie but a great movie and I love it very much. Okay so that's that's a terrible movie, but a great movie. And I love it very much. Okay, so. So that's, that's a social media guy talking about it. Let's hear from the governor himself who was interviewed by Oh, no, it's just Steve Usy. So this is so in the in anticipation of an interview with with DeSantis, here is the host of the morning show on Fox News describing what they're building in the Florida Everglades. Normally on a Friday, the Everglades would be so quiet, but right now the hills are alive with the sound of construction. Joining us right now is Governor Ron DeSantis here in the great state of Florida. You came up with this idea in the last couple

of weeks, right for Alcatraz alligator Alcatraz. Okay, so you hear that in the last couple of weeks, the governor came up with it by August, they are going to be able to house 5000 people securely. And a lot of people are not happy about this. A lot of Americans are protesting this. Of course they are. This is a really contentious issue in the United States and the battle lines have been drawn. You're free to protest there as you are here. However, one thing that they are not doing in Florida is these protesters are not blocking the roads. We see it in Europe, we see it in Canada, we see it everywhere. If you have an issue, you're just gonna block the road and stop traffic and cause

issues for everyday regular people just trying to get about their lives. Not so in Florida. Why? Because if you block the road in Florida, you will be arrested. And further to that, the government in Florida said, if you block the road, if you're driving down the road and somebody blocks the road with a protest, you can run them over with your truck. That's Florida for you. And I look at this, I look at the speed with which they're moving on this. I look at the speed with which they're moving on the deportations. I look at a number of things that Donald Trump is doing. And I am not talking about whether or not the policies are worth pursuing. I'm talking about the speed with which he's pursuing his agenda.

That's the speed that we were promised was going to happen here in Canada after Mark Carney got elected. And yes, he is moving on a number of issues. If in the next six months, he lands a number of those planes, then I will be able to say with a straight face, he did what he said he was going to do. But right now, it's still the unfinished symphony of Mark Carney.

And I wish that there was a little bit more of the urgency on certain things in Ottawa that we're seeing in Washington. And look, just to tie a little bow on it, three youths in Ontario got bail on weapons charges with 73 charges. They were found with some of the most destructive firearms available on the black market and they're all out on bail. And I guess the question I have now with the Alcatraz, alligator Alcatraz is, why can't we build jails as quickly as they're building this detention center in Florida? We clearly need them to keep people like this off the streets. Yeah, but that story with the three youth, 15, 16, and 17 years old.

Yeah, the Youth Criminal Justice Act needs to be changed because it is now being exploited as a loophole. It's now being exploited as a loophole. They're too young to know. They know exactly what they're doing. And again, I want to live in a world where guys like this who are charged with 73 gun offenses, I want to make an example of them so that other youths know they can't get away with it. I'm tired of living in a world where everyone is redeemable. Not every, like you can be redeemable but within the confines of a prison. But you're not gonna be redeemable in the streets of Toronto. But the point you made right there before is spot-on. They have to know. Yeah. Right now they

know they can get away with stuff. They know they're gonna get bailed. They know it. In Florida they know that they're gonna get into trouble if they block the road. Yeah, I always say, like, what I've been saying recently is, of course you're gonna do the crime because you know you're not gonna do the time. That's the Canadian way of using that expression. Tuff jobs need tougher gear. Actionwear's fire-resistant clothing is Canadian-made. It's battle-tested in oil and gas, mining, welding, you name it. And now we're closing our doors. Everything is going below cost. No markups, no fluff, just serious gear for serious work. While it lasts, get in, gear up, before it's gone. Click to browse and buy now.