The Ben Mulroney Show - The Friday Political Panel - Has Carney failed on Trump's Tariffs?

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

Guest: Warren Kinsella, Former Special Advisor to Jean Chretien and CEO of the Daisy Group Guest: Michael Burns,  Canada's Valour Games (former head of the Invictus games, Canada) 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 Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And the answer is for the time being, yes, because now it's time to get the opinions of two people whose opinions I value far more than my own, because it's time for the Friday edition of this week in politics. Please welcome to the show. Warren Kinsella, former special advisor to Jean Chrétien and the CEO of the Daisy Group, and Michael Burns, Canada's Valor Games, and former head of the Invictus Games. Well, welcome to the show. Both of you. Morning. Great to great to be here, Ben.

All right. So the August 1st deadline came and went. Canada does not have a deal. We now have, according to certain metrics, the fifth highest tariffs in the world. Granted, that doesn't take into effect the the the Cosmo Cosmo compliant products, but it's not a good day for the prime minister. It's really not a good day. And I guess the question Warren I have is, is this something, is this a failure or is this still a work in progress? It's a failure. There's no question. You know, in the past 24 hours, not only are we the only G7 country, the only major country in the world facing tariffs, significant tariffs from the United States, it's actually worse than it was.

You know, we've moved to 35% for those goods and services outside the terms of the USMCA. So we're in a worse position than we were before. Now, all the reasons for that, the pretext that the president has cooked up, he's back to fentanyl. But previously, as we know, he talked about dairy and banking. And, you know, he talked about Palestine earlier this week, which I know we're going to talk about. He comes up with whatever BS he wants to. But at the end of the day, the problem is, this guy, this prime minister raised an expectation that he is not satisfied.

And we are now in a worse position than we were even 24 hours ago. I see it exactly the same way as you do. There are people who are wondering, like, is this gonna stick to him? Like, yeah, sure, it's a failure, but how much is this going to count against him? Michael, what do you think? Well, if you're asking if it's what it means for Carney, I think it's eroding the very trust that he's built up through the campaign and in the early weeks of his administration.

He was the guy that promised to get a deal done in the best interest of Canada. And as Warren has pointed out, other nations have been able to secure deals and we haven't. And so, you know, that falls on the lap of the Prime Minister. I also find it interesting. And again, you know, as I've said on this program, Trump's, you know, his inability to be predictable is predictable.

And now he's, you know, reverting back to fentanyl and other issues as a reason for this deal not getting done. And I think if the president is serious about wanting to solve these issues, we should be doing it together. But at the end of the day, not getting a deal done by August 1st hurts Prime Minister Carney for sure. See, I don't know if it's going to hurt him in the way that we're used to politicians being hurt by failure. Warren, it's because the Donald Trump of it all keeps coming to rescue Mark Carney. The liberals were he spent force in politics and they were going to be relegated to the sort of possibly third or even fourth

place in the House of Commons until Donald Trump and people's fear of Donald Trump was more significant than their the problems that they had with 10 years of Justin Trudeau's liberals and and now because he's so unpredictable, the the narrative that well, nobody could have gotten a deal and no deal is better than a bad deal. It seems to be something that people are saying and that seed is finding purchase. But it ain't what we paid for. You know, at the end of March, Mark Carney, then just the prime minister select, not the

prime minister elect stood up very solemnly. The whole world saw it. It was a headline that went around the world. Mark Carney saying, our old relationship with the United States of America, militarily, diplomatically, economically, is over. You know, all of us remember that. And that set the table for him to be hired as prime minister

during the election campaign. You know, to the point where you had people like Christiane Aymapour on CNN, you know, leaning over to him and campaign, you know, to the point where you had people like Christiane Emma or on CNN, you know, leaning over to him and saying, you know, everybody's calling you the Trump whisperer. Well, the Trump whisperer has failed in this case. He, you know, the thing I learned then is, you know, and your dad was the same way. The thing I learned at Crutchy as Knee is you undersell

and you overperform. Yeah. Undersell and overperform. And he didn't. He actually led us to believe that he would be able to put together, because he's the Trump whisperer, put together a deal with Trump and, you know, avoid most, if not all of these punitive tariffs. Well, now we're actually in a worse situation than we were before. And I have no idea what the prime minister's strategy is going to be going forward. And look, we were also promised, Michael, we were promised laser focus on on Canada and what's best for Canadians.

If that whether that means interprovincial trade barriers or the one Canada economy or projects of national importance or getting our getting our resources to Tidewater and diversifying our trading partners. That was what we told was going to occupy all of his time. And so for any time to have been spent on this this performative declaration that one day we are going to recognize a Palestinian state at this time, in this moment, belies the laser focus that we were promised. Adam Fossum No question. And I have to be honest, I'm struggling to understand the Prime Minister's strategy here. Let's be real. Does anyone who has studied this conflict believe that the conditions

he laid out for recognizing a Palestinian state will actually be met in the next five weeks? I think the answer is easy. Absolutely not. What was the point? Moreover, the move comes right as we're trying to shield our economy from Trump's escalating tariffs. And I don't think poking the bear this way over an issue this complex is principal diplomacy.

I think it's absolutely reckless on the part of the prime minister to do this at this time. And, you know, two things can be true at once. And I concede, Warren, that a government can walk and chew gum at the same time, that they can be working on multiple files simultaneously. So I'm being a little bit facetious when I say doing that means he wasn't focused entirely on Donald Trump, but he wasn't because there's no way that he thought this was gonna be well received in Washington.

And whether or not Donald Trump even cares about this or not, it was a card that he played. He was able to point to it and say, this is stupid. And now because of that, I'm more upset with you. Yeah, and we, you know, we don't know. I mean, the advice I always give people is pay attention to what Trump does, not what he says. He had said after Carney made his disgraceful statement

about recognizing a state run by a designated terrorist entity. He said, this is going to make it harder to do a tariff deal. Who knows whether that's true or not? But separate and apart from that, it was the wrong thing to do because it is a state run by a terrorist entity. And what was the immediate consequence of Carney as well as, in fairness, France and the UK saying what they said? Hamas has disappeared from the ceasefire talks with Qatar and the Saudis and the Israelis. They've disappeared.

And you know, I can't really blame them. There's a logic to it. Hamas is saying to itself, hey, look, we get recognized as a state if we just, you know, keep fighting and keep killing Jews. So why not? So it just, there was no incentive to change the behavior of Hamas. It's now made things dramatically worse, I believe, for our Jewish Canadian friends here

in Canada and around the world. I just think it was a terrible decision. And as we've noted, it may give Trump a pretext to punish us even more. Look, it's, I miss, I miss the days of moral clarity on this issue when it was pretty simple. It was pretty automatic who what side we were going to land on Warren. I told you this before, I miss your guy. I miss your guy on this file. And there have been people, Michael, who've been talking about, you know, oh, this is Mark Carney is governing like a progressive conservative. Brian Mulroney would have endorsed this platform. I can promise you,

as sure as I'm sitting here. I don't talk for my dad, never have, but I know I knew him well. And he would not have endorsed doing this now, let alone possibly ever. But he would not have done that. And the comparison to Churchill, the fact that he called himself Churchill during the campaign, Churchill would not have done this. Churchill would have fought on the beaches and he would have fought until the until the and he would have fought with his allies and he would have remembered who his allies were. All right, that's me.

I get off my soapbox. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about that Maga singer and the impact that it had on one church in Montreal. Don't go anywhere. This is the Ben Mulroney Show. In the seventies, four young women were found dead. For nearly 50 years, their cases went cold. I'm Nancy Hicks, a senior crime reporter for Global News. In the season finale of Crime Beat, I share how investigators uncovered shocking evidence of a serial killer and hear exclusive interviews with the killer's family. Listen to the full season of

Crime Beat early and ad-free on Amazon Music by asking Alexa to play the podcast Crime Beat. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and this week in politics marches on with Warren Kinsella and Michael Burns. And I'm going to take a stab here and I'm going to guess that all three of us that all three of us probably agree on the following that we stand up for people's rights even if we don't agree with how they use those rights you know the freedom of speech is only as good as the the speech that we're willing to tolerate that we don't agree with and and we have seen Warren for two years our streets and our universities being taken over by some people spouting some pretty vile things,

some pretty hateful things, and the police seemingly willing to just let it go. And yet one guy comes here from the United States singing songs about Jesus, and he possibly didn't fall on the right side of the pandemic as far as safety protocols were concerned. And we're treating this guy like the living embodiment of Mein Kampf. Yeah, it was ridiculous. It was just this overreaction and all they did is make him famous.

Like, I don't know about you guys, I mean, I only listen to punk rock and reggae. So, Like, I don't know about you guys, I mean, I only listen to punk rock and reggae. So, but so he was never my cup of tea, but like, you know, now we're all talking about him, which I presume is what he wanted. And like, you know, just putting on my lawyer's hat, even though he's a foreign national, even though he's an American and apparently a mega American, he is entitled to protections under our constitution under section two, a freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. And he was denied that by levels of government. Yeah.

They basically pulled the plug on his events. And then, the one lesson I've learned about rock and roll, because I used to have my own record company and production company, is in rock and roll, any publicity is good publicity. And they gave this guy plenty. So everything that they'd hoped to achieve blew up in their face. And, you know, again, it was just a bad look. It made us look like we're an intolerant little country when I don't think we are. And as you point out, it looked hypocritical as well. You know, in the city of Toronto, the cops have had to spend 17 million bucks on extra policing of these pro-Hamas anti-Israel types. And, but they come down like a sledgehammer

on this guy. It just didn't make any sense. Yeah. And then, uh, Michael, this one church in Montreal comes to his rescue after his permits were, were taken away. And now they've been fined. They've been given a ticket for 2500 bucks because they didn't have the proper permits. This and the mayor of that of my former hometown just spoken away that was not only was it beneath the office, but it was petty and it also harken back to the like some really divisive positions from certain people on the left. Referencing anything they disagree with is hateful. Saying this is not who we are.

Well, with all due respect, it might not be who you are, but it might be who some people are. And those people are as Canadian as you are. To me, this is a reminder that if the world is moving back to a sensible place away from the reactionary woke stuff, Canada is going to be a laggard on that front. No question. I think we're all in agreement. I think in both cases, we're seeing decisions that raise real concerns about selective enforcement. If a church or a concert venue had hosted a progressive artist with these political views, do you really think there would have been the same fines or permit denials? To me, that is the test of free speech,

whether we protect it for the people that we don't agree with. Now, like I'm not defending his politics. No, none of us are. I don't think any of us would ever spend one minute listening to this guy's music and certainly not agreeing with a lot of the stuff that he espouses. But that's not the point. Correct. And it's really about whether government officials are using the bylaws or permit systems to shut down unpopular views.

I think we'd all agree that that's a slippery slope and we should all be concerned whether you're left, right or center. You know, I think at the end of the day, if we want to be a confident democracy, we've got to let the public debate these ideas and not shut them down. All right. Let's move on to a really a staggering story out of Peel region in the GTA, where the police essentially did a sting operation, putting out an ad online, offering up sex with a, for anybody who rode in or reached out to a non-existent teen. It was a police officer posing as a teenager and 1,100 people reached out to, to, to, I don't know, scratch a really gross and grotesque itch.

Warren, I want to start with you because as a, as a lawyer, what are the rules around alerting the public to these 1,100 people? I mean, it's, some of them could be all be coming from one neighborhood. If I were a parent in that neighborhood, I think I would want to know that these people were in close proximity to my kids. Yeah, it's a tough one. It's a tough one for police, you know, publishing the names of people captured in sex sweeps, like these guys have been, is something that police forces have done before.

like these guys have been, is something that police forces have done before. The only risk is this, what if one of them's innocent? And then you're looking at a lawsuit for the damage to their reputation, or what if one of them gets off, or what if one of them gets killed by a vigilante? So there's a risk associated with publishing their names,

but as you say, there is a history of doing this. And you know, parents in particular entitled to know if one of these creeps lives in their neighborhood. What's extraordinary here is the number. Yeah. You know, 1100 names. Like that just shows us we've got a terrible problem we've got to deal with in this country and in this province. And I don't envy the police for the decision they've got to make this is going to be a tough one. Yeah. And so Michael, I'm I'm of two minds. I mean, like, if push comes to shove, I'm a parent. So of course, I'm going to want to

know who this person who these people are. But as as Warren rightly points out, in a sting operation, that's a dragnet, right? Like you just you throw it out there, you see who can we catch. It's not a focused investigation on one person. And so in that way, I don't know if all of their ducks are in a row the way they would be if they were targeting one guy or another guy. And so I don't know if they would need to clear a higher bar to be comfortable with ultimately releasing the names. Yeah, well, listen, I agree.

I mean, when I read the story, it's horrifying to think that over 1,000 men in Ontario were inquiring about sex with kids. And I completely understand why the public wants their names. I mean, they want accountability. And yes, in some cases, publishing identities can protect the public and act perhaps as a deterrent, but we got to be really careful. And I still think that we believe in due process and the presumption of innocence. And ultimately, I'd land on the side of not publishing names until formal charges are sworn in. I still

think we can protect kids without resorting to trials by social media. And certainly, you know, the recent hockey Canada case reminds us that outrage, you know, isn't proof. And we've got to make sure that we don't get it wrong, because it's very difficult to undo that damage. Now we only have about a minute left. And so if it's all right, I'm going to go to Warren on this one, because I'm sure in your time with with Jean Chrétien, you spent you spent some some really memorable evenings and days at 24 Sussex Drive. But with the story that $200 million is going to be put into a new ballroom at the

White House. What is it about the Canadian character that makes it impossible for us to build a house worthy of the Prime Minister of this country? I'm with you on this one. I'm a big believer that that house, you know, 24 doesn't belong to the prime ministers, whether it's your dad or my former boss, it belongs to the people. And you know, the people have an expectation that we're going to maintain that that building as an all the federal buildings. So,

you know, I think if we sank the money into it, I don't think people would object to it. I know when I was chief of staff of Public Works, we had bricks falling off the front of the center block. I was worried about putting money into it that the bureaucrats were requesting. We did it anyway. And Ben, we didn't get a single peep. Yeah, a single objection to spending that money to protect the people's buildings. Yeah, I'm hopeful now that we've reached a point of collective shame and embarrassment as to, you know, comparing how we how we house our prime minister versus others around the world,

that we can finally get to a point where it's not a political hot potato anymore. But I want to thank you both for joining me great conversation today. I hope you both have a wonderful anymore. But I want to thank you both for joining me. Great conversation today. I hope you both have a wonderful weekend and I look forward to our next chat. They come from Survivor, they come from Big Brother. They know what they're doing. Let's go!

These vets wrote the playbook and they have all had to earn their stripes. How did you win Survivor? Manipulating people. Same thing I'm going to do here. And now, new threats will enter the game. Hungry to forge a new legacy. Once we train them, it's gonna be hard to contain them.

This really truly is the most even matchup that I've seen in a long time. The Challenge. Vets and new threats. All new Wednesday on Slice and Stream and Stack TV.