The Ben Mulroney Show - The issues Americans "helpfully" say Canadians say we need to work on

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

-  Kelly DeRidder / conservative MP for Kitchener Centre 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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You can't hide. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. It is Friday, September 19th. I want to thank you all for sticking with us all week long. We've got a nice weekend ahead of us, and then we'll pick it back up on Monday. We've all been visiting a new town, right? We've gone to a city, rented a car, and we've put the address into the map. And the name of the street, there's like six of them.

And you have no idea which one you're supposed. supposed to go to. And in the city of Toronto, even if you live here, there is the same street in Scarborough as there is in Atobico, as there is in Old Toronto, as there is in Markham. So you put the name in and then you've got to really be careful because otherwise you're going to go in the wrong direction. That's for people who live here. Imagine coming here and having to deal with what I just described by a factor of 10. Here is a woman from the United States who came to Toronto, explaining her Rogers confusion. First off, there's two arenas or two venues with the name Rogers in it.

Literally, who's Roger and what is wrong with him? I'm not joking, like half of the concert was at the wrong Rogers place. We were supposed to be at Rogers Stadium. Everybody was at Rogers Center. Some lady crashed her car on the way out once we found out. We were an hour away from the other venue. On the way to the other venue, and you are sharing. a road with a monorail train.

Oh my God, and the scooters and the bikes. Now, by the way, so that woman was on our way to the system of a down concert, which I think is one of the final ones of the season. Yeah, up at the Rogers. At the Rogers Stadium. So for our national listeners,

you may not know that Rogers opened up an outdoor venue here in the city of Toronto, 50,000 people strong so that the city could host some of the biggest concerts of the year without having to place too much pressure on what was once known as Skydome and is now Rogers Center.

And so, yes, and she's not the only one. There was a story back when Chris Brown was in town, this woman thought she was being smart and got herself a hotel room right next to the Skydome and then she realized she had to then go up to Rogers Stadium. And these aren't the only Rogers. named stadiums in the country. There are five others.

There's Rogers Arena in Vancouver. There's Rogers Place in Edmonton. There's Rogers Field in Vancouver. There's two Rogers' ones in Vancouver. There's Rogers Rink, formerly Shaw Center, in Salmon Arm, BC. And there's the Rogers Center in Ottawa. They got the naming rights for the convention center. It used to be the Shaw Center, and then Rogers bought Shaw.

So I guess they bought the naming rights. And I'm sure there's a few more things named Roger. But these are the main big ones. Oh, well, there's Rogers way here in the city. But it also, this is a conversation we'll have at a later date. When you see what things are named in the United States, they're named also. There's startups and gas companies and this and that. Here it's telcos and that's it.

That's it. But I did love what you said. Who is this Roger guy? What's wrong with him? That was really good. But yeah, listen, there are, there are sticking. points between Canadians and Americans right now. They don't get us as well as we probably thought they did and we don't get them as well as we thought we did. And the U.S. ambassador

to Canada, Pete, how's it, hextra, huxtra? Hoekstra. Hoekstra. Pete Hoaxstra was in Halifax for a symposium, I guess. And he was having a fireside chat on a stage where he, well, listen, let's listen to his take on the lay of the land as it relates to this relationship, and then I'll tell you what my thoughts are on it. I'm disappointed that I came to Canada, a Canada that it is very, very difficult to find Canadians who are passionate about the American-Canadian relationship. You ran a campaign where, you know, it was anti-American, elbows up, me too, You know, it was an anti-American campaign.

That's, and that, that has continued. That's disappointing. Okay, listen, I have a great deal of respect for the ambassador for the, because of the office that he keeps. But he is not a student of recent history, if that's his assessment. It seems like he missed a few headlines over the years. Like, why are we in this position we're in right now? Here's what I liken it to. He started the tape late.

And what he saw was Canada smack in the United States in the face. That's what he saw. If you backed up the tape just a little bit, you would see the Americans were the ones who came in and upset the Apple Cart. They kicked us in the butt a few times first. So what he's viewing as us being detrimental to the relationship, it started with the other guy.

It started with this guy's boss. It started with this guy saying the Kuzma is the worst trade deal of all time. Canadians are getting away with murder. They're stealing from us. And let's not forget the tariffs. So it's one thing to say things. It's another thing to do things.

And also, I want all of Canada's auto industry and I want to move it to the United States and I want everything else. Yeah. Oh, and by the way, any business that's in the States, you can move down here and I'll take care of you because I don't care about that country. I don't care. And we know Donald Trump's style of negotiating. It's a zero-sum style. There has to be a winner and there has to be a loser. There's no such thing as a win-win.

There's no such thing as let's get together and create something together that is bigger than what we have today. And so I don't know if he's gaslighting or if he just hasn't been paying attention, but that is not the lay of the land. Now, was there a certain amount of of anti-Americanism during the campaign, what you call anti-Americanism, we call protecting ourselves. And I won't even call what Mark Carney and the liberals did is anti-American. I think it was, I think it was inaccurate to say that they were coming for all of this stuff when I think a lot of it was rhetoric. They wanted, they want to kill us so they can own us or whatever it was. But I don't think it was anti-American. I don't even think it was patriotism.

I think it was just, you know, we're on the defensive. We're on the defensive, but they also want to win an election. So it was political. There was messaging in there for sure, and it was playing on people's fears. Pierre Polyeb was playing on anger, and the liberals were playing on fear, and fear beat anger. I think it's as simple as that. But he said we have a successful relationship, apparently ignoring everything that has happened. And do we have more audio here? Yes, we do. He's talking about, he has another short clip talking about business and really what needs to happen and where this relationship should be improved.

Yep. We've created a lot of prosperity and wealth, high quality, high paying jobs by working together on both sides of the border. Like I said, I'm passionate for it. The business community is passionate for it, but they're not very public about it. And listen, that, that is true. And I've seen that and I've commented on that, that one of the, biggest differences in terms of public discourse between Canada and the United States is they have

different sectors of the economy will have people who stand up very vocally on and get quite partisan. That doesn't happen up here. And so their voices tend, everyone's much more trusting up here of whoever's in power that they're going to get taken care of. And that is not, that's not the case down there. think part of the hypocrisy of what he said there because he's saying he's saying the Canadian businesses aren't saying hey you know what we really need Americans I think they are we've said it at nauseam but flip it around to what's happening in the United States are a lot of the leaders in American politics are they telling Donald Trump that hey his policies

aren't great that things are wrong we're hearing about it behind the scenes yeah but he's got sycophants around him they're a bunch of yes men yeah and we've seen it time and again And everybody's like, oh, yes, he's the greatest and he's so, and actually speak up. Yeah, I agree. But I also think, look, there's a long-term, there's a long-term failure that I think they're not planning for, which is if you hollow out everybody else's economy, if you take and take and take, you're not going to have the customers you used to have for all of the goods that you want to sell and all the services you want to sell. It's just not going to be there for you in the future. But that is a conversation for another day. All right, coming up, what the heck did a Harvard professor say that was way worse in Canada than is in the U.S.?

It's true, and you're going to want to hear it next. Right here on the Ben Mulerunee show from coast to coast to coast on the chorus radio network. Welcome back to the Ben Muleruny show. Thank you for spending some time with us. It's Friday. It's Friday. So we're trying to change it up, do some different things. And I always love it when we have a new guest on the show,

who I know will be hopefully a regular guest on the show. Where are we right now, by the way, on the schedule. Something I have to my seat. Here we are. Okay. There we are. Yes, a new guest, new friend. And please welcome to the show, conservative MP for Kitchener Center.

Kelly de Ritter. Kelly, welcome to the show. Hi. Hi, Ben. Thank you for having me. I'm humbled and honored to be here. And I can't wait. Well, that's very kind of you. That's very, very kind of you. I know I'm glad one of the things that we want to do. We want to have national conversations with local politicians and with sitting members of parliament so we can hear the issues of your riding and see how people from around the country can appreciate what's going on in Kitchener Center. But Kelly, tell me your story. How did you get to into politics? So my story into politics is, well, my background actually is that I'm a mechanical engineer by trade and I specialize in robotics and automation. Can I stop you for just one second? Yeah.

Okay. That's, you've got that, you got that education. That's a growth industry. That's a rocket ship to success. Why would you ditch that to go into politics? politics. Because of what I'm seeing in Canada, there's a couple of things. You know, Kitchener Center, I proudly love to declare that we're Canada's innovation

capital. Yeah. And we can't innovate. So that's something that I want to bring to the national table to help our investors and our innovation and, you know, our startups and our entrepreneurs do better within this country. as well as my other reason for getting into politics personally is the drug crisis as well.

And in Kitchener Center, we have a huge tent city. We have a lot of things happening. But today we're here to talk about innovation in Kitchener Center and what we can do to better support. Yeah. And the fact that you have this background in mechanical engineering, the fact that you understand the mind of the engineer, because you are one,

you can speak to sort of talk to me about how you see the problem because one thing I know is the University of Waterloo don't they graduate more engineers than most of the United States combined?

Is there some incredible number? Yeah, so we have amazing education systems especially in the Waterloo region. Absolutely. As well as we have a phenomenal incubator program in our community as well. And so, but what I see, though, is that we're not retaining or attracting the talent that

we need to further drive our innovation here in Canada. Is it, is it, is it, is it because they, these, these kids get educated, they become these engineers, then they have this idea for a business, they, they know how to build a bit, better widget, and then the money isn't in Canada. It's down in the States. So that's where they go. Exactly, Ben. And the thing is, though, is it isn't just the money being in the States.

It's the fact that, you know, this liberal bureaucracy is hurting our innovation and is holding us back. Did you know that the average innovator waits nine months, on average, just to get a decision on their application? Nine months, as a startup entrepreneur, that's a very long time to work towards your dream and to be able to incubate. And not only that, so you get through to incubation, and then there's monetization is scaling. And our angel investor community is fatigued. They're not, you know, there's no incentive right now in Canada for our investors to invest, our taxes are too high our regulations are too strict and the conservatives want to do something about that i want to do something about that from kitchen or something so let's talk about you you're in um you popped up on

a lot of people's twitter feeds the other day because in a committee meeting you uh were you were uh there was a there was testimony being given by what a harvard professor and yeah okay so let's listen to a little bit of this exchange how would you assess the current merit based criteria for federal funding in Canada and how will that trust be eroded in time and how quickly, especially to innovation hubs like Kitchener Center where I'm from? Yes, well, I want to echo Professor Sharif

in saying that there's a ripe opportunity for Canada to poach American scientists and even as a professor at Harvard, I would like to say, poach us. The situation in the United States is threatened. The only disadvantage that Canada has is that there is a reputation for being woker than the United States and for there being possibly onerous requirements on the range of opinions expressed, the racial and gender preferences

for, for example, the Canada chairs. So I guess I would urge Canada not to squander the opportunity by imposing distortions of science coming from the other direction. I mean, this is coming from the belly of the beast. This is the most liberal arts university, the most storied university in the United States and possibly indeed the world. And that guy is coming to Ottawa to say Canada is more woke than the United States. Now talk to me about what the problem with that is. Because woke in and of itself, I don't know, it could bug some people and it doesn't

bug others. But explain to me the problem with that in the scientific community. So it's multifaceted really in the scientific community. So number one is we're not attracting talent into Canada because, you know, in Professor Pinker's words, we have a reputation of being more woke in the United States. But and then, so we have this far left ideology happening where really, in my opinion, it's creating exclusion in inclusion. And so we're not hearing other sides of thoughts. We're not hearing other sides of expression.

And Dr. or Professor Pinker, sorry, said himself that we're going to lose faith in the scientific community if this continues to happen. But then I asked myself a question. I thought, well, if we can't retain or attract talent here in Canada, you know, what are we doing in retaining our talent here in Canada because of what's happening? And I'll tell you what, the numbers I found are not. So in Q1 of 2025, and this was under Trudeau,

over 27,000 Canadian left Canada to work outside of Canada. 27,000 Canadians took their talents and left the country. And left the country. And when you say, but do we know what jobs those 27,000 Canadians had? So I do know that it's good talent. It's our ideas. It's people. It's innovation.

I know right in my writing that, you know, when people are ready to monetize, they go. And but I just want to express to Ben that that's care. Canada didn't say the numbers are out yet, but since Carney took office, we're expected that Q4 is going to set new record of Canadians leaving this country. So I remember in the 90s, I remember in the early days of the Kretzian government, he was dealing with what we called the brain drain, and it was due to a number of issues, high taxation, I think was one of them, but the brain drain of smart, talented, educated Canadians. with capital and ability to make money and therefore pay taxes,

we're leaving here to go do what they needed to do down in the states. That got reversed to a certain extent for an extended period of time. Are you saying we're experiencing another brain drain? You know what then? I think that's a great way to put it. And so what we want to do is there's a couple of things that we want to do. Number one is we want to pass the Canadian Sovereignty Act. There's a pillar in there that protects our innovation and intellectual property.

This is extremely important, and we're expecting that the liberals will support this. You know, they say that they're a party that is willing to work across the aisle for the benefit of Canadians. And I think us as conservatives have proven that in our first session. We passed the Canadian Economy Act, the one Canadian Economy Act. So, you know, we're looking at the liberals here to pass the Canadian Sovereignty Act. And another thing that we want to do with conservatives is we want to eliminate the capital gains on Canadian investment. We want Canadian investors, venture capitalists, angels to want to invest in Canadian. We got to leave it there, Kelly.

Thank you so much. Kelly DeRitter, Conservative MP for Kitchener Center. Please come back soon. I dare you to pay attention. I dare you to speak up. I dare you to try something new. I dare you to challenge what you think you know. I dare you to think differently.

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