The Ben Mulroney Show - The Monday Political Panel!

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

Guest: Anthony Koch, Managing Principal at AK Strategies and former National Campaign Spokesperson for Pierre Poilievre  Guest: Max Fawcett, Lead Columnist for Canada's National Observer 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 Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. I always love Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, because I get really smart, passionate people to come bat around some of the biggest political stories of the week.

And differing opinions makes for better conversation. And Monday is probably the, peak for those differing positions. And we've got with us, Dimitri Sudas, as well as Max Fawcett, the lead columnist for Canada's National Observer. Max, I want to start with you. I guess fashion is cyclical, but so too possibly our government policies. Because Pierre Pollyev, the leader of the official opposition, in an effort to normalize

our relationship with the president, at least on. all things automotive is proposing a throwback. He is. You know, I mean, I too am a fan of the back to the future franchise, but I'm not sure that that's a good way to design policy. And look, we'd all like to go back to the world we lived in where the United States was a rational actor, where it had common interests with us and where it wasn't openly trying to bankrupt our auto sector, but that's not the world we live in right now.

And I think if you're the leader of the official opposition or you're the prime minister, you have to engage with reality. And so, yeah, it would be nice if we had tariff-free trade with the United States. It would be nice if we, you know, didn't have tariffs on our auto sector. It's bad for not just Canadian companies and Canadian workers. It's bad for the American auto companies to have tariffs on all these things. But that's what the president wants. Yeah. Well, you know, and what I pointed out before, not my idea.

I heard it from somebody else is, you know, it's sort of a half-baked idea with the president because by causing this chaos, even if the end result will ultimately be, you know, Canadian automotive jobs going south of the border, during that transition period where it's going to take at least five years to spin up a new factory, you're going to have losses for American car companies. and the only people who win are not our foreign car companies. And that's sort of not his stated goal. But, you know, we have, by the way, a late edition change.

A last minute. We replace the starting picture and brought in the closer. So welcome to the show, Anthony Koch. I miss you, Anthony. It's been a long time. He's a managing principal at AK Strategies and former national campaign spokesperson for the person we're talking about right now,

the leader of the opposition, Pierre Paulyev. How's it going? It's going well. look, do I think that this idea of sort of bringing back aspects of the old Autopact is in and of itself the solution? No, but I've got to believe that by bringing up a way of talking about this sort of thing in different ways, this might lead to the thing that might lead to the thing that would be a solution. No, 100%. At the end of the day, right, like the criticism that Pierre Folli have and the conserves are faced from many of their detractors

over the course the last few years of that they never proposed solutions they only ever criticized well here's the leader of the opposition doing his job and also proposing a type of solution doesn't mean that it's going to be signed tomorrow morning it's just showing that he's thinking meaningfully about some of the major

issues that are facing the country in Ontario in particular and suggesting a potential solution to the problem that should be considered and might be attractive to many people in the United States I want to switch topics and move to the Middle East where as we know, chaos is the name of the game as it relates to what Iran is trying to accomplish.

And because of that, it's almost impossible to navigate the Strait of Hormuz where a big chunk of the global oil supply has to get through. And Donald Trump is urging allies to help with the Strait of Hormuz. And it's a big ask for a lot of countries because to exceed to Donald Trump's request could be. be seen as bending the knee to Donald Trump, and that's not on brand for a lot of leaders. So what's your take, Anthony? Is this something, you know, our prime minister has walked a tightrope trying to work with the man, but also letting Canadians know that he's not on Team Trump. So what does he do here?

I don't think there's much that he can do, quite frankly. I think this is more of a call to countries like France, maybe the United Kingdom, and a couple of the other ones that still have fully functioning militaries that can actually do something about this. So I think in this respect, Canada's military impotence is probably a gift to Mr. Cardi, and that even if he wanted to do something,

I don't think there's very much that he could. On the macro question, though, about whether or not people should consider supporting this initiative, I think when you're talking about the large geopolitical questions of the day, things should be viewed from the perspective of every country's self-interest, notwithstanding whether or not you happen to like the president of the United States in any given moment in time. So I think the removal of the regime in Iran is to the benefit of every Western nation. And I think that, you know, the question should be posed the following way.

If this was a Democrat president who was asking the exact same question, what would we do? And if the answer is to intervene and we should do the same thing and it should be done, respective of who the current president of the United States just happens to be at this time. Max, your take? Well, here's the difference. If it was a Democrat president, they would have prepared for this operation. They would have known that the Iranians would have tried to block the Strait of Hormuz, and they wouldn't have spent the last year insulting and degrading all of their allies. I mean, sorry, if you've just told the British recently, you don't need them,

you don't want their help, and you're going to remember it down the road because of the way they've insulted you. And then a week later, you say, hey, by the way, we could actually use some of that help. It's not going to work. work. People have dignity. People have, you know, they have to, they have to represent themselves to their voters in their own countries. And Donald Trump has done nothing to earn the respect or support of any of his allies. He has insulted them. And so guess what? He broke the straight of Hormuz. He's bought it. It's his to fix. You know, the first thing that you said was, the second thing you said made a lot of sense to me. That what you just said about,

about denigrating your allies. That made a lot of sense. The first part, though, is I don't know that you can make that, you know, comparing a reality to a hypothetical, I don't know. But I do appreciate what you just said there. Anthony, it is true. I mean, he literally said that he denigrated, he forgot Canadian history, or not that he ever knew it, our military history and the sacrifices of our brave men and women who went to war because our neighbor was attacked on 9-11. And we, and we, we spilled the blood of many a Canadian hero.

We've got those wounds to prove it. But like you said, there's nothing we can do because we've done nothing to support our military over a decade. But Max is not wrong about specifically targeting. We don't need your help. We've never needed your help. We can do it ourselves. And now he needs help. It is a good point.

No, it is a good point. And it's well taken. But I'm saying, you know, Trump's never done anything. I mean, largely speaking, thank God he did. But support for Ukraine is still maintained, and the Europeans wouldn't be able to sustain that, largely speaking, on their own. What I will say, that this is a macro point, independent of geopolitics. I'm in business, I'm in politics. If every time somebody said something nasty about me, I wrote them off for all other instances of shared interest,

I wouldn't be very successful at business or politics, right? So I do think I take Max's point, and I agree, Trump's been a massive A-hole, and he's made sure to insult anybody and everybody that's actually within the American camp for in many cases no particularly good reason. So I share that criticism. But at the end of the day, you know, don't let hurt feelings get in the way of doing something that's in your geopolitical interest. So I still think when you make decisions of this gravity, it should be on the basis of a little bit more

than the president ticking you off with some of his comments. Yeah. And I agree. To me, he's somebody who touts his accomplishments, and there are some significant accomplishments. But so many of his issues stem from self-inflicted wounds, and so many of them stem from personality issues. A lot of people would be a lot more people would get behind some of his policies

if they weren't packaged so confrontationally. And it's an odd thing because I agree with Max. But actually, I agree with both of you. I don't even know how that happens. All right. We're going to take a break when we come back. We got a couple of conversations that I want to start with you guys. The idea of collecting mandatory DNA from anyone arrested for sexual offenses.

Arrested, not convicted. That, I think, is the distinction that we're going to drill down on. Next, right here on the Ben Mulroney show. Welcome back and welcome back to my guests for this week in politics, the Monday edition. and the caution Max Fawcett. Thanks guys for sticking around. In my previous segments,

we were talking about the Ontario government's desire for the criminal code to be amended so that people walk in the streets of our big cities are able to carry pepper spray. And I think they're good reasons for it and there are worries about what it could mean, all fair and valid.

But that's one of the pieces of news that the Ontario government is making. However, what I want, your take on is that the premier wants to make DNA collection mandatory for people arrested for sexual offenses. And in his letter to his attorney general, he said they also want to pursue victim notification services when there is a DNA match in the database so that survivors are informed, supported, and protected. Those are his words in sexual offense cases. And I wonder what you think about that because I don't, listen, it should be standard.

to collect DNA anytime there is someone arrested, but it's the keeping of it beyond the arrest, because what happens if that person turns out that they had nothing to do with the crime? You shouldn't keep their DNA if they did nothing wrong, Max. Well, I'm sure they could design some sort of condition into it

that if the charge doesn't hold or if they're not convicted, they expunge that information. But I have no problem with keeping this sort of database, You know, these sorts of crimes are heinous, they're intolerable. All questions where you have this sort of intersection of privacy rights with other people's rights fundamentally involve a choice. Which side do you want of the line do you want to fall on?

And I think it's perfectly acceptable to fall on the line of community protection, public safety. You know, I trust our police officers and our prosecutors to handle this information with the sensitivity it deserves. but we need to give them every tool they can possibly have in the fight against these sorts of crimes and the people who commit them. Yeah. And Anthony, this is, I agree. And I'm going with my feelings on this, right? But my feeling has been, as somebody who sits here and gives people the news from my perspective, is that people feel like the deck is stacked against victims these days, that, you know, whether it's in sentencing to see how much of a, how much of a reduction that we can give to somebody who has been convicted of a violent crime. We don't look at the atrocity of the rape.

We ask ourselves, could systemic racism have hurt this person? And therefore, we have to let them out early. And myriad examples like that to have a political, to have a government coming out and saying, no, we want to do something that allows us to better protect the victims, I think is, it's a cleansing tonic. Well, this is the problem. You have me on with Max. I'm always expecting to disagree with the guy.

But then you bring us on your show and all of a sudden we agree on everything. Yeah. He's a moving target. He's a moving target. People throw a lot of hate at Max on my social media. And I would say, you know, he definitely comes from his, you know, he's got his tribe on one side of the spectrum. But I don't think, I don't think he's reading from anybody's policy handbook. No.

Max is his own man. Multitudes, gentlemen. Yes, indeed. Yeah, exactly. And so I'm in full agreement. We also have to keep in mind, we're talking about sexual assault here, right, which in my mind with maybe in certain circumstances, murder is the worst form of crime any person could possibly commit. Right? So, yeah, you know, if this is the kind of tool that people feel would be helpful to make sure these people stay locked up as long as they possibly can, then I'm absolutely in favor, right? I'm a law and order conservative. That's what I believe. And I'll be honest with you, I don't, I'll, only thing I guess I'll even say, I don't even have a particular issue with the government. If you're arrested for something, which the burden to be arrested for a crime is already pretty high, all things considered, especially for something like sexual assault. I'd probably be okay with it even if they didn't destroy the information. Yeah. You know, because just because the burden is not met in that particular case to convict somebody doesn't mean that that person's not a person of interest

in future cases. And I think the more tool the police have in these particular, cases, the better. I think there's a story in the Toronto Star about our sweeping federal gun control reforms that are causing chaos for legal gun owners. And it's the story of Canadian competitive sports shooters. And look, we've all heard these stories before. But what's it going to take? And I want to start with Max because I've got to know what his position is on

first, but what's it going to take, Max, for us to have a dispassionate and effective, effective debate about gun control in this country? Because from my perspective, and I know it's from one side of the political spectrum, but we're not getting the outcomes promised from these sweeping reforms. And the, you know, the liberal after liberal takes credit for making Canada safer by taking guns away. And it feels to me, like by and large, the only people who have suffered are the people who followed all the rules and jumped through all the hoops and got all of the, got everything done in order to be legal gun owners.

And if we're not getting the outcomes and we're spending so much money on this stuff, then what are we doing? Well, this answer will make your hate listeners a little happier, I think. Or maybe it's less happy. Who knows? But, you know, we have to start by grounding this in the facts. There have been more than 30,000 military-style, you know, heavy guns taken off the streets as a result of the buyback program. I think that's a success.

I don't think we should want really any of those out there. If you need a, you know, a semi-automatic rifle to hunt, you're not much of a hunter in the first place. That said, you know, I think stories like this do get at a sort of fundamental unfairness in the government's approach, which is that it is focusing on legal law-abiding owners. And they're not the problem. The problem is the guns that are being smuggled across the border in the United States. I think that the stat is like eight out of ten guns involved in a crime come across the border. That's where the focus needs to be.

You know, this was clearly an issue that animated certainly the previous liberal government. There is a constituency in the liberals for more gun control. And I understand that in a lot of respects. I share it. But you have to focus on where the problem is coming from. And you risk getting the public offside in the broader issue. you if you are seen to be sort of punching down on people like the story who are involved in this very like esoteric sport who really just want to do their thing and do it well. It's not a good

look. So, you know, if Mark Carney is looking for another opportunity to kind of rebrand and position himself in a way that's different, I think this would be a very, very good opportunity. Yeah. Anthony, what do you think of that answer? I think it was fairly reasonable, unfortunately. I wanted to get into it a bit. I'm actually a legal. firearms owner. I have a license. I own firearms. I was at a range yesterday, actually, so kind of timely. I think that's exactly the point. Max is right. And this is the thing. Law enforcement officials have said this from the very beginning. The problem with guns in Canada is overwhelmingly a result of illegal weapons that are brought in across the border from the United

States. Law-abiding gun owners are by definition law-abiding, right? So it's one of these things where is it always just about more cowbell, more cowbell, more cowbell? And, you know, obviously there's a constituency in Canada for people who think that there's not enough gun control until all guns are just banned outright. That's fine. They'll always exist. I don't agree with them, but I understand that perspective. It's, you know, well documented in this country. But at the end of the day, when you talk to law enforcement, when you see the public declarations of chiefs of police from across this country, they've said repeatedly that they do not feel like these kinds of legislation actually do anything in the way of public safety in any meaningful way, and that it's exactly that. It's a way to take

advantage of people who find guns scary and don't actually know the facts or more detail about what's involved in all this sort of stuff. And people who, whether it's sport hunting or whether it's sports shooting, whether it's hunters, whether it's what have you, bear the brunt of the law in an attempt to go after criminals who weren't following the law to begin with and will not start following the law the next day after such a piece of legislation. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Listen, I've always said, tell me what problem you're trying to solve. And then let's look at the policy that you're putting in place. And if you can achieve it, it might not be my policy goal, but I will respect it.

And instead, I feel that, and we've seen enough of these stories that I think enough's enough. Now we have to have an adult conversation that the streets are not safer. We've spent time and money and intellectual capital and emotional debates on on vilifying and demonizing and making illegal things that are not necessarily making. the streets unsafe and we haven't been looking at the thing that makes it unsafe. So maybe now, yes, now that there's an adult in the room and Mark Carney's there, I don't think it would, I think he'd gain a lot of respect if he said, look, the facts don't align with the reality on the ground and therefore we're going to make

this change. Anthony, Max, thank you very much for a non-confrontational conversation. We appreciate it. Thank you. I can try to be more disagreeable next time. Yes, indeed. You do that. Have less coffee or more coffee. I don't know. Whatever gets you there. Thursdays on Global. I'm Madeline Matlock.

She's the lawyer with the legendary name. Don't underestimate Miss Matlock. This woman's a sharp. You know it, baby. The one you can trust, even if she has to bend the rules. Things aren't always as black and white as they seem. To crack a case. This is how I get things done. Emmy-winning actress Kathy Bates is Matlock.

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