The Ben Mulroney Show - Quebec's war on pronouns! And how should the gov't bet with OUR money?

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

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The whole way? The whole way. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. It is Thursday, September 25th. I want to take a moment. As I try to do often, I try to do it every day. You know, we are less than a year into this show. And we have, I think, done a pretty good job at finding topics that matter to you.

And if they don't matter to you, we find a way to convince you that they matter to you. And sometimes they matter because you agree with what we're talking about. And other times they matter to you because you. you fundamentally disagree and both are important and everyone in between as well. It's really important for us to start conversations, to continue conversations and to end conversations and when that happens when you have somebody to talk to and that's who I'm talking to right now. So thank you very much.

Right before we came to air today, there was news that popped onto my feed that Nicola Sarkozy, the former president of France, has been convicted. of what's the campaign finance abuse. I'm not quite sure what the actual crime is, but he was sentenced to five years in prison for, oh, there is criminal conspiracy related to illegal campaign financing from Libya.

He now becomes the first former president to serve actual prison time. And apparently in France, the second you're convicted, you're shipped off to prison. You don't get to go home and get your toothbrush. You're going to the big house. He's sleeping in jail.

He is. He is sleeping, and now it's mid-afternoon there. So he's probably getting ready for a little yard time right now. Well, he did say, I will sleep well in jail, but with my head held high. So he called the ruling scandalous. He said it's a threat to the rule of law. He insisted on his innocence. I will sleep in jail, but I will do so with my head held high.

Here's what you need to know about this case, because I didn't know any of this. I have to admit, I've been sort of focused on what's going on here at home that I have not paid attention to the perceived and now very real ills of a former French president but he and his close aides and it's not alleged anymore tried to secure millions of dollars in funding from Omar Gaddafi's Libyan regime

and this would have occurred before 2007 when he was still France's interior minister in return Sarkozy was accused of offering political support or international legitimacy to Gaddafi's then isolated government and because it's now, he's been convicted so we can say it's true it means that the election

that saw him become the president all the way to the Elisie de Palace it was influenced by a dictator a foreign dictator and that is a problem foreign campaign donations are illegal in France he was convicted of exactly that

and not just any dictator Omar Gaddafi yeah yeah you know that back in the day when Muammar Gaddafi would go to the UN he would not stay in a hotel you know where he stayed No, what do you say?

They'd build a giant Bedouin tent for him in Central Park. I'm not kidding. That actually happened. He was so terrified of being assassinated that he had his own private guard and they were all women, remember? Right. He had his own security force and they were all super decked out. It didn't look like...

No, it looked like a Robert Palmer video. Yeah, it did look like that. That's the best way to do. Yeah. Okay. Let's stick with French because the province. of Quebec has now banned pronouns

from government documents right so in England in the rest of Canada there are debates going on as to whether or not it's we add the you know he her they but in French it's a little more complicated

than that and we're going to break this down for you right now the policy change is as such Quebec's French language minister Jean-Francois Reberge is banning gender inclusive writing in government communications for the public. And he states confusion. And look, there is, we have to talk about how French is different than English.

So here are some of the words that they've, that they use in French or have used in French, that they will no longer be using in government documents. So they've got worms, so he is ill, she is L, E-L-L-E-L-E. their version of they is i-e-el i-e-l the word the word every in english it's well in french it's two or tut right so that one is feminine one is masculine and so they they mixed them together and you have a word tust and then there's also ce le mix and here's my favorite one frereur f-r-o-e-u-r it's a combination of brother and sister Frère and Sore, Frere.

Here is the problem. French, historically, since its beginnings, is a gendered language. What I mean by that is, if a word is, there are words that are either feminine or masculine. Think of the word schedule, like, au re. Oire is masculine, say, an au rea. No, it's feminine, aure. And there you go. There's the problem.

You have to learn the job. the gender of everything. A table in French is feminine. It's la table. It's a table. And that's hard, because I used to think, I thought it was a tab,

a table, a plane, masculine, an avion, a helicopter, masculine. But a car is feminine. Okay.

So then let's go back to this example of Frère. are you gendering are you misgendering the person who you refer to as frere if they are non-binary how do you respect their non-binaryness if the very nature of the language is to as gender to a subject is it a frere or is it un frere because they don't have another they don't have another word. It doesn't exist. You can't say,

I don't know how you would do it. I genuinely don't know how you would do it. Well, this is the thing. One of the things they did was, and it's hard enough in English when people want to be referred to as they, because it's generally plural. And you get confused,

and especially when you're conjugating, when you're saying, they are coming, well, how many of you are coming? And that's a problem. But they actually do this in French, where they spell like les etudents. but they put a period after the T, E, period, S, as opposed to T-E-S.

Yeah. They put periods in there. And that's difficult, especially, I mean, the spell check is going to mess you up every time. Reading it and saying it are two different things. And look, I've always said, like, my goal in every interaction I have with an individual, a person is to be respectful. And for the sake of showing that respect, of course, I'll call you whatever you. you want me to call you.

It never occurred to me the knock-on effect in French. Actually, it's not even a knock-on effect. It, because that suggests that the French language somehow did something. This is what the French language has always been. It is a gendered language. And unless you are going to take the added step of figuring out how to ungender, de-gender, peel away the gender from the French language, I don't know what you do. And I think, well, Spanish is a gendered language.

Well, how are they doing it? Italy, Italian, I think all of the languages that are based on Latin, I think are gendered in one way or another. Well, it makes sense then that some of the places that where they've really gone after the pronoun words, world is Italy. Yeah. The education ministries banned it, right? And then in France. Yeah. These are the two places where they're trying, it's just too confusing because of the way the language works.

It's far more, there's far more of an argument. against the pronoun game than there is in the English language. Yeah, no, exactly. It's less of a respect thing as it is here. It's not the same conversation. And it's not, it's not, and I'm not sitting here saying, oh, here's another place where it's been a problem. No, no, in the French language, fundamentally,

in its core, in its DNA, is a language that is not built to address this new reality. And so, look, some people say, all right, then let's just, take more liberties with the language. And then you run a foul of language purists who say for the sake of the health of our language, this thing that binds us together, we have to come up with a better path. Yeah, but in Quebec, language purists, I'm sorry. Well, look, I like, because they, they've bastardized the language, as you well know. No, they, you say bastardize.

I say made it their own. Yeah, I mean, they use a lot of Anglo words. Yeah, I know. And stuff when they, I get a hot dog, all dressed, instead of two garnis, hot dog, Chienchio, they use English words, and also they use all the words in the Catholic language, right? In the Catholic, yeah, yeah, I know.

Swing, la bag in, you got to get off a high horse there in Quebec. All right, don't high horse. All right, up next, an argument against provinces providing subsidies to large corporations. Let's face it, finding your next favorite podcast can be tough.

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We've got our fingers in a lot of pies. And I say thank you to all of you for joining us on this journey. All right. So we're going to talk now about the case against governments providing subsidies to large corporations, corporate welfare, as it's called. By the way, when I hear corporate welfare, it's like when somebody refers to. refers to the tar sands. You know exactly what their position is because I think they're using a word that is designed to make you feel a certain way.

I'm not necessarily against governments picking winners. I think it should be exceptional. I think it should be in the public interest. But in the aftermath of the massive investments by the federal and the, the provincial level here in Ontario, uh, to ensure that Ontario maintained its position, it's a vital position in the, uh, the, the automotive, um, supply chain of the 21st century as we pivot towards electric vehicles. Uh, and then we saw the subsequent cratering of the EV market. You got to wonder, was that the right approach? So we're joined now from the

Montreal Economic Institute, Samantha, welcome back to the show. Glad to be here, Ben. So, yeah, like, you know, I've, when, when Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau made that massive announcement, I've made a couple of announcements that Canada was going to, we were going to bet big on Ontario's future within this, this new EV reality. It was a lot of money and a lot of people took issue with it. I did not take issue with it at the time. And therefore, I can't take issue with the fact that it's not yielded. the results that we wanted.

A great friend of this show, Regan Watts said, he said, if you believe that the government has a role to play in things like this, and you have to believe that you're going to take losses every now and then. So now that I've told you my position, tell me your thoughts. Well, to me, it's whether you're comfortable

with the government betting with your money, right? Sometimes, very few times it pays off, but oftentimes it doesn't. And the kind of easy boondoggle we're in is a complete and, like, a great example of that, right? So, like, you have the government giving billions of dollars to Stalantis. Well, they're hitting the brakes abroad.

They're revisiting their plans. The Quebec government gave billions to Northfold for electric vehicle manufacturing. They're closing down completely. GM is winding down their plans in Ontario. They're looking to shift their EV manufacturing to pickup trucks, right? So these companies, they're not beholden to the Canadian taxpayer, unlike our government. They're beholden to the market. And there's no reason why governments can prove.

predict the markets better than these companies, right? Yeah, well, and listen, you point out, not for nothing, the Ontario economy, it's supposed it's the biggest province, most populous province, largest economy in the, in the, in Confederation, but it hasn't really been growing of late. No, no, the financial accountability office came out with an indicting report about how your debt is going to explode, right? It was foreseen that it was going to be $1 billion. It's going to be $12 billion next year.

net debt is exploding. It's going to total $550 billion. And then growth is going to slow to 0.9% next year and 1% the year after. So it's not a good situation. And, you know, since this kind of subsidizing policy has come in in 2017, right, like this isn't new. And this is kind of the point of the study, right? Because I don't think a lot of Ontario's realize that they're actually the subsidizer in chief. Many people often think it's Quebec because historically for decades, they have been. But something happened in 2017 under the liberal government under Kathleen Wynn, and they decided to turn up the industrial policy. And it's not yielded the results that they said it would. So that's, and actually, when the Wynn government announced that they

were going to start subsidizing at a large, at a fast rate, the auditor general of Ontario said, listen, there is actually no evidence that this yields the jobs that they say they have. So it's not working, you know, we're almost a decade into this policy. I think we need to change tracks. And that's part of this conversation. And what track do we switch to? What can we do? Because nobody wants to see Ontario or Canadian companies leave. We want to see everyone thrive and survive. We want their success to be our success and our success to be their success. So if we're taking corporate welfare and corporate subsidies off the table. What are we replacing it with? Tax cuts. So we did I like the sound of that. I knew you

would. Yeah, so we calculated that Ontario gives an average of $9 billion in direct business subsidies each year. So if you took that money and offered tax relief, a broad-based tax cut at the corporate rate, you could lower the corporate tax rate by 4.5%. And that's meaningful because that would actually be the lowest provincial tax rate in Canada, lower than Alberta. Yeah, and everybody, those who don't like tax cuts and are allergic to just hearing the words, and they have to remember that we got two levels of government we've got to deal with when it comes to corporate taxes. And so that would be, it's great, it would be low. What's the federal level?

It's 15. It's 15. How does that compare? So, so a company that's based in Ontario. Yeah. What's it, what's the aggregate rate that they're dealing with today? So right now, it's 26.5%. Okay. And how does that compare to our analogs around the world? Well, in Canada, it's the highest. It's equal with Quebec. Okay.

And it's much higher than several states in North America. And obviously, we're in direct competition with the states, like, you know, even when we look at just, like, quality of life. Like if in Ontario, we're an American state, it would be the third poorest, right? So we're constantly comparing ourselves to states. You know, we have a lot of integrated markets. You know, when this whole trade spat started, we heard a lot of Canadian companies saying maybe we should move our operations down south. So things could be fluid.

And so if we actually had a better tax rate in Ontario, who's to say how many people would come up from down south? Well, you know, what do they say? What's that line? You know, if you and I are being chased by a bear, I don't have to run faster than the bear. I just have to run faster than you. And that's, you could say the same thing. If we are being chased by the fear of our... of our companies going elsewhere.

So long as I'm performing better than you, better than the United States, I'm not going to be consumed by it. And they're not going to leave here. Exactly. And, you know, not just businesses, but, you know, people kind of like vote with their feet, right? They go to places with better policies

where they think they can build a better life for themselves. And there was a port that came out that said that Ontario, for the fourth year in a row, had the most people leave it in the confederation. most of them are going to Alberta, you know, like people, people are leaving. They're, they're, you know, they're desperate. Like things, things are too expensive, you know, business investment is down, productivity is down. And productivity is directly linked to our standards of living, right? Yeah. Like if, if, if productivity is low, you're not going to be

making any more money. And, and so we just, we really need a policy that will get business investment back into Ontario. If you're not getting it from the progressive conservative government. Yeah. You're not going to get it from the NDP. And, and, and, the liberals are are off the table for right now. It's it's surprising that there isn't anybody really espousing this low tax rate as a policy. Yeah, I mean, I heard that, you know, Cromby, but before she resigned, was talking about how spending is just out of control. But you're right, there's no, there's no leader in this space that's saying that we need to get this, you know, we need to rein in spending and make sure that our companies aren't just dependent on the government, right? because it creates a dependency.

It distorts incentives, right? Instead of being like, I'm going to start a business that's just going to survive on its own. It's like, can I afford the corporate lobbyist to curry favor with Doug Ford's office, right? Like, it's completely misaligned to, you know, it's completely unfair, really. Yeah. And so, yeah, until there's an appetite for it. But we've seen this before, right? We saw, I think, in the late 70s and early 80s that we were completely.

We're in a competitive disadvantage from the United States and elsewhere. And it took a certain leader federally to change that. I can't remember what his fine name was. But anyway, that's a conversation for another day. No, but it's surprising that in Ontario, you know, Ontario is open for business. That's the slogan of the progressive conservatives. And yet, this is a conversation that doesn't seem to be happening. Hold, maybe our show will help open up that conversation.

Samantha, thank you so much for joining us. Do you find the good fight, Ben? Thanks a lot. I run to the chaos, and Survivor is chaos. Wednesdays on global. As a mother of a four-year-old, this is vacation. Canada's number one reality show is back. This is when Survivor turns into a horror movie.

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