The Ben Mulroney Show - Politicians spar over Mark Carney's Housing Plan

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Politicians spar over Mark Carney's Housing Plan If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Ben Mulrooney Show on this Tuesday. Thank you very much for joining us. And thank you wherever we find you, whether it be on the traditional route of the old-fashioned radio box, or you might be listening on a streaming app on your phone, or you might be listening in podcast form on all the major podcast platforms. But now we're also on YouTube, so you get to enjoy this whenever you like. All right, so I've always been a fan of Question Period. I think the theater is cool, but there's actually a real substance that comes out of it, makes people think.

There's not always value in the interactions that we see on Question Period. But as we are going through crisis after crisis and Mark Carney is dealing with a lot, he does have a lot on his plate. Sometimes you gotta stop and actually have conversations about these things to appreciate and understand what is going on. And here is Liberal cabinet minister, Christia Freeland going toe to toe with conservative MP, Jacob Mantle

over what exactly Mark Carney's housing plan is all about. We can get a modular housing industry going in our country. That is one of the solutions to the housing crisis. I hope the members opposite will be constructive and support this important legislation. Honourable member for York, Durham. Mr. Speaker, my generation refuses to live in a shipping container.

Okay, there's a lot of directions we can go here with this. But the first one is, it just struck me for the first time listening to Christia Freeland. We do have a modular housing industry in this country. So for Christia Freeland to say

we can get one going. Well, we have one. And we certainly don't need a new government agency called Build Canada, which will be made up, I'm sure of thousands of new bureaucrats to help create an industry we already have. So that's the first point. The second point is,

I know people who want to live in modular homes and I know people who want to live in shipping container homes. They, the best versions of those are awesome. Awesome, architecturally beautiful, thought provoking, great. I do not trust the government to build one that I would want to live in of either variety. I don't trust the government to build one that I would want to live in of either variety. I don't trust the government to do a lot of stuff. Years ago in the city of Toronto, the city of Toronto tried to reinvent the food cart industry.

$300,000 wasted on trying to rebuild something that worked perfectly well to sell hot dogs on the streets of Toronto for years. $300,000 wasted because they thought they could do it better. This is that on a federal scale, as far as I'm concerned. Lots of ways that the government can help with housing. But if you can see we already have a modular housing industry, then just help that. We on the Ben Mulroney Show love to wrestle with the idea of what makes a national consensus. We know that for some reason, Mark Carney will never save pipelines full stop.

It's always pipelines dot dot dot if there is a national consensus to build one. Well Pierre Poliev jumped into the conversation about that very question yesterday. If you wait till everybody agrees on everything, nothing will happen. You're never going to get everybody to agree on every single project. And bottom line is we're giving 90% of our oil and 100% of our gas to the Americans at enormous price discounts.

This is costing us tens of billions of dollars every single year to the exclusive benefit of American refineries and commodity traders who are able to take our product, bid up the price by $15 and sell it on the world stage and do that literally about a billion times a year. And that is insane. So we can't wait any longer. We have to get things done and it's going

to take some backbone. And so we as conservatives believe in pushing ahead with pipelines and the most the shortest route is to the Pacific. Any other route is going to be even harder politically and physically. So we need a pipeline to the Pacific. And if the prime minister says he's going to wait till everyone agrees then nothing will get done. And that's see that's the problem that's why I need clarification from the Prime Minister. I need him I need somebody to ask him and I've said this before I will continue to beat this drum. Somebody with a microphone needs to shove it in the Prime Minister's face and say, what constitutes a consensus? If the polls tell you that the majority of people in say, British Columbia support a

pipeline, but the premier says he doesn't, where's the, who's right? And if, if British Columbia or Quebec is the only holdout, do you, Mr. Prime Minister, recognize that it is incumbent upon you to lead the charge to create that consensus, and are you willing to do that? Or are you simply going to throw up your hand and say, oh well, Quebec doesn't want it, so we can't build it, because that is not leadership in a federation. Leadership in a federation is recognizing that these are issues of national importance and doing the hard work to get to a yes. That is my humble opinion on that. And by the way, I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Pierre Poliev is not the only one who thinks so. This is not a left right issue. Here is Alberta NDP leader, Nahed Nenshi, agreeing with Pierre Poliev. I think Mr. Poliev is right on this one. When I think about the work we did to get the Trans Mountain expansion built, it required a lot of work. And I'll remind folks that that happened with the New Democrat government in place in Alberta, with the federal government.

And I have to say, over the objections of the Premier of British Columbia at the time, it was the right thing to do. It's propping up our economy right now in the face of Trump tariffs. And so I'm not suggesting you run rough shot over people. You have to have consultation with indigenous groups, with people, landowners across the way,

but eventually you have to make a decision. And sometimes consensus can be an excuse to not get anything done. There we go. That's what I've been saying. I don't want that to be the case. And I am hoping that the prime minister is just being cautious in his language right now

about over-promising and under-delivering. So fingers crossed. But the fact is, this is an idea, the idea of consensus and leading to form a consensus is not a partisan issue. I think a lot of us were happy to see Stephen Guilbault removed from the environment file because he was, listen, he was a Greenpeace activist. And I've said before,

activists make terrible politicians, terrible politicians, because they see the world through a keyhole as opposed to how can we create broad consensus. And he was moved to another file, Heritage Minister. And I thought, okay, at least he's in a place where he can't do any more harm. Well, my God, I didn't realize it. The Bond villain ability of Stephen Gilbo

to stick his nose into saving the environment, in his mind, knows no bounds. On her radio show, her weekly radio show, Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta, pointed out that Stephen Gilbo in his role as heritage minister is looking to build federal national parks all over Alberta in an attempt to stop any ability to get pipelines built.

This is bond level villain craziness. And so she said that under no circumstances would she allow any of those to be put in her, in the province of Alberta. I got to give the guy credit. Like no matter what he does, he can find a way to overstep and encroach his rights and position. I never thought that the Heritage Minister would have more power on the environment file than the Environment Minister, but that is the world we are living in. Another world we're living in is the fact that the National Holocaust Memorial in Ottawa was vandalized with red paint.

And what was even more disgusting is the people rushing to normalize this on social media. People who present as journalists and fact checkers saying just awful, awful things. Look, this happened yesterday after I had had a great interview with a young man who is the tip of the sword for the class action lawsuit against McGill, who allowed terrorists to terrorize Jewish students, who, by the way, pay their tuition to McGill. And what did they get in return? They were dehumanized and threatened,

and in some cases actually physically assaulted over the course of a year and a half. Well, now the rubber is meeting the road and McGill is being brought to court. And I hope that that is a signal to all universities. But back to the National Holocaust Memorial. I've said it before, guys, this is who we are now. This is what we have allowed

to fester and metastasize and turn into something that we... I don't know how we excise this tumor because we let it grow and it happened on the watch of a great many politicians. This is on them. This is on them to own. This is their shame. This is their burden. I don't want to own it, but I will fight it The best high-concept sci-fi rig of a roll in the universe is back Please let me out put you in there for a reason, Spade. Mom, just say it! Get back here! This is for your own good! Rick and Morty. New season, Sundays on Adult Swim. Stream on StackTV. Get your mouth rounded.