The Ben Mulroney Show - The Monday political panel - pipelines and free speech!

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

 Guest: Max Fawcett, Lead Columnist for Canada's National Observer Guest: Dimitri  Soudas, Former Director of Communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper 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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your first month. That's BetterHelp H-E-L-P.com slash Mulrooney. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. It's Monday, which means it's time for our Monday edition of this week in politics. And we're joined by Max Fawcett, lead columnist for Canada's National Observer. And Demetri Soutis, former director of communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. To the both of you, happy, happy Monday.

Happy Monday. So I just finished a conversation. with Lindsay Sheppard. She made waves in 2017 for getting her teaching assistant job taken away from her at Sir Wilford-Lurier University for starting a conversation on pronouns, I think. And that was the beginning of a sort of that was the first time we heard about her. And so we're bookending it with a conversation today where she has now lost her job for a tweet that she put out following Orange Shirt Day. And I want to get your assessment. I mean, is it cancel culture?

Is it consequence culture? Is it somebody who should have known better, given the fact that they were in a comms position? It's an interesting topic because on one hand, you have the conversation around free speech. And on the other hand, you have the argument that political staff can't say whatever they want. They can say whatever they want as citizens, but they can't say whatever they want. want us political stuff because ultimately they're not private citizens when they speak publicly they are an extension of the elected office that they serve yeah so the words that they say carry implied authority of ministers provincial uh legislators and so on so there's also a duty of restraint

their expression must not undermine the credibility neutrality uh or trust in the institution so she can continue saying whatever she wants but it is also the prerogative of whichever political party she serves and whatever political leader she serves as to whether or not they want to have them employed. So there is a duty of loyalty and confidentiality and first and foremost

that loyalty means not saying things that don't align with the policies of the political party that she serves. Could it, my microphone's a little hot there. Could it also be Matt, Max, can we hear it? Can you talk for me? yeah we got you okay so you go ahead i'm sure you heard everything there so so the floor is yours i was using the new microphone that dmitri recommended still some technical difficulties on my side i guess but look i think i can hear you better that's good i think it's very rich that uh miss shepard is blaming

the ndp for the words that came out of her mouth and the consequences that flowed from them i agree with everything that dmitri said you know when you are in a position like the one she's in especially a cons position you represent the party you represent the people you work for and her beliefs are certainly hers to express but they are not uh popular uh in the province as a whole and and this is a party that is trying to at some point win an election form government and and saying the things that she said about a day that is pretty sacred uh and pretty important i think to to acknowledge and recognize is not going to help that party win more votes in the middle so she adversely impacted her employers and her party's fortunes and she was made to pay a

price for it. That's how it works. I got in trouble back in 2017 for a dumb tweet that I had and I learned my lesson. I took my medicine and I would suggest that the same is true here. She shouldn't be blaming other people. She should be taking responsibility for the things that she said. The one point that I made before the conversation happened was I was unwilling to necessarily call it cancel culture because in my opinion, cancel culture has there is at least an element of an actively working to just go find dirt on people, stuff they may have said years before and without context and not appreciating that they may have evolved in their thinking.

We're going to go find dirt that exists in the public sphere and we're going to use that to destroy them in the here and now. This isn't that. A few weeks ago, we started talking about the difference between cancel culture and consequence culture and whether or not you like the consequences, it does feel like this is an action-reaction sort of situation. I see and I see you nodding there, Dimitri.

Right. And again, I look at this from the perspective. I spent a decade of my career being the chief spokesman to the Prime Minister of Canada. My job was not to express my personal opinions. My job was ultimately to speak on behalf of the Prime Minister of Canada, to be his voice. Therefore, she was the voice of the leader of the Conservative Party of British Columbia. And that hat is on permanent. 24-7-365. If you choose to be a communications staffer, if you choose like I chose to be the voice of the prime minister in my case, well, your opinions no longer exist in the public sphere at least.

You can talk about them with your wife at night as you're about to fall asleep and say, my God, I disagree with almost everything. And then the next morning, you put on a smile and you go out there and you say what government and party policy is. That's how it works. So it's not cancel culture, it's consequence culture. All right, let's move. Oh, Max, please. I do wonder if there's almost a generational aspect here where, you know, Lindsay Shepard is younger and maybe she believes that, you know, she should bring her full self to work.

But as Dimitri pointed out, when you're in the role that she was in, you don't get to bring your full self to work. Part of yourself has to sit on the sidelines when you are a spokesperson for a politician or a political party. All right, let's move on to a story that, I mean, I did not see this one coming, but the title is indigenous nations plan customs

free trade customs free trade corridor across Canada U.S. border. So it's a story that starts in Fort Capelle in Saskatchewan and it's going to work its way

across the U.S. border into the standing Buffalo Dakota nation and the goal would be for trucks from the first nation to be transporting food, furniture, critical minerals south of the border along ancestral pathways.

once used to move Buffalo and without paying taxes or tariffs. I think it's a novel idea, but I see a raft of problems, not the least of which is it just seems like the perfect opportunity for a criminal element to piggyback onto this and do some stuff nobody's supposed to be doing. Dmitri, when you hear this, what do you think? Is this ingenuity or is this taking advantage? So the criminal element is an important one, and the primary example that I always like to give is the smuggling of illegal guns between Canada and the United States, specifically coming in

from the United States into Canada, happened through primarily First Nation Reserves in Ontario. The point I'll make is if this is just a trade idea, well, what's going to happen to these goods once they go from reserve in Canada into reserve in the United States. Once they leave those reserves, guess what? There's taxes and duties and tariffs that need to be applied on them. So interesting idea. I just don't think it's going to fly. Max?

Yeah, I appreciate the entrepreneurship here. There are treaties, historical treaties in place between indigenous communities in this part of our country that are applicable here. But I'm not sure that this American government is going to respect them the way previous ones have. And either way, our borders have to mean something. Our borders, and they have to be enforced in a way that is consistent and even handed.

So I admire, there's a statement from the leader of the community here saying, we're not going to accept the crumbs that have been offered to us. And I wholeheartedly support that. I just don't think that this is going to work logistically or legally in the year 2025. Yeah, I think I, like I said, when I read it, I was like, my goodness, this is, this is a, this is a novel take. And, and there, there, there, it could be the beginning of an interesting

thought exercise that could lead to something different. But in, in the, you know, embodied in what, what is being proposed today, it just feels like a non-starter. And, but, but I do appreciate, I, like, I, I, I, I, I, I also think that that those sort of, trying to use things in, ways for which they weren't intended sort of flies in the face of whatever the spirit of an agreement once was. I don't pretend to be an expert. This is just a gut feeling I have based on what I've read. But again, I do appreciate when people try to push the ball down the field and try different things because it gets you thinking in different ways. Perhaps if we're thinking about something differently in this case, that might lead to, who knows? Who knows? Maybe our trade

negotiators going down to going down to Washington may use this as a launching pad for a more novel approach to trade with the United States. I have no idea. Not going to happen, Ben. All right. Hey, when we come back, we're going to talk about federal language trading, success or failure.

Don't go anywhere. This is the Ben Mulroney show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. All right. It's a hot button issue because it's Canada. We're talking about our two official languages, and specifically the case of our governor general, Mary Simon, who's the first indigenous governor general that we've ever had. And the one knock on her, as far as I could tell, is her complete lack of knowledge in French. That being said, she has apparently, if the documents are correct, she has worked very hard to improve her French to the French to the

tune of hundreds of hours of one-on-one French lessons. The problem is it hasn't necessarily resulted in a marketable, marketly, market improvement in her French. And it opens up a larger conversation about bilingualism in the civil service. And I know personally because I do some French radio with a gentleman by the name of Benoit de Trisac, who is no fan of Mary Simon, and I think a big church, chunk of that comes from her seeming unwillingness to learn French. But I'll ask you, Dimitri, it doesn't feel like it's an unwillingness.

It feels like learning a third language to her is just a hard hill for her to climb. She's putting in the time. I'd like to be an astronaut, but I hope they don't send me to space before I get the adequate training and demonstrate that I can actually be an astronaut. And here's the argument here, whether we like it or not. Canada has two official languages, French and English. Two founding people, the French and the English. The founding language of Canada is actually French.

1608, Samuel de Champlain landed on the shores of the St. Lawrence. So my point is the following. She should have never been appointed head of state or representative of the head of state and commander-in-chief because she does not speak the two official languages of this country. Whether we like it or not, whether you want to be. governor general or prime minister you need to be able to communicate in english and french not english or french french french or english um three quarters of canadians speak english roughly 70 75 and more than 30 percent of canadians speak both english and just french so it's a bad

appointment should have never happened and um i don't think taxpayers should be paying uh for mary to learn French. She should have learned French. She was a senior public servant. She should have learned French decades ago, and she should have been disqualified from the get-go at ever becoming Governor General of Canada. Max, what's the sense that you have a little farther West? Yeah, it's not as hot of a button out here, although Alberta has a pretty significant Francophone minority here. How would Alberta react if a unilingual francophone was named Governor General? Nope. They would be appalled. I mean, I think your points are well made, and I take them that, you know, this job and the job of Prime Minister, table stakes is speaking at least those two official languages. I think it is admirable to want to find someone who also speaks indigenous languages, so they communicate with those people in our country. But there are plenty of people who can speak both English, French, and an indigenous language. And that should have been the circle in which the appointment was. drawn from you know i think there is there is an interesting sort of silver lining around the horizon

here which is that we have technology now with artificial intelligence and you know there's these new uh air pods that that do translation for people that this is going to become i think a slightly less pressing issue i still think you are going to need to speak english and french if you want to be prime minister governor general um you know stephen harper showed that you can learn french it's hard but you can learn it um but for most civil servants i i just think think this is going to become less of a hot button, given that we'll have technologies that close the distance between non-native English speakers and non-native French speakers. Dmitri, how do you see that then from the perspective of Quebec, where if what Max

says comes to pass, the civil service could be occupied by people who either speak English or French, not necessarily both, because we're going to have technology that complements them in real time and allows them to service any Canadian in any language. I mean, heck, we're going to be able to do it in any, any language under the sun. Never mind English or French. And you won't have to speak them. You'll have an AI assistant who will help. Okay.

Yeah, is it the goal of the public service to hire bilingual Canadians, or is it the goal of the public service to service Canadians in either English or French as they choose? Because those are two different things. So they are two very different things, and I'm glad you made the distinction, Ben. So when it comes to servicing Canadians, Canadians should be serviced in either French or English, our two official languages, their language of preference. Number two, if we are simply going to use artificial intelligence as the backup plan for everything, we may as well just have monkeys on the typewriter, and they can press on buttons,

and artificial intelligence can run the federal public service. My point on language is the following, whether it's a Francophone learning to speak English or an Anglophone learning to speak French. It is not just a language. It is the ability to understand, to engage, and to appreciate. We are such a diverse nation. You compare the West Coast, British Columbia, Alberta to the East Coast, Atlantic, Canada, Quebec, and obviously here in Ontario. The ability to speak to somebody in English, if you're a Francophone, allows you to also understand them, allows you to build bridges with these people, the ability to do the opposite, an anglophone speaking French, because at the end of the day, it goes well beyond linguistic skills. It goes to understanding priorities. For example, today, Premier Smith is in Montreal delivering a speech to the business community.

So senior public servants and senior federal government officials, be it deputy ministers or ministers, they should learn both official languages. It is beyond just a linguistic issue because ultimately, let's just replace cabinet with artificial intelligence do. We might get more bang for our buck through that as well. Artificial intelligence cannot be the solution to everything. It needs to be a real human intelligence. Max, what do you think? Because look, I think there's a role for artificial intelligence, and I don't, I don't discount what Dimitri is saying, but there is a cost, so listen, it costs us $52,000 to try to teach Mary Simon French, and that didn't work. Now, there is, there's a push in the civil service to it to offer French language classes to Anglophones and vice versa.

I mean, there's a very, it's expensive and it's not necessarily optimal. And perhaps there is a role for AI to play, but I take, I take Dimitri's point. I'm just surprised that he's looking past such a, you know, easy opportunity to save money in the federal public service. You know, I think he's making a bit of a slippery slope argument. I'm certainly not suggesting that AI should do everything. I am, I am equal parts intrigued and horrified by AI. But I think in this particular case, you know, whether it's dual. whether it's you know AI doing translation there is a lower cost higher tech way to get

people to communicate with each other than doing you know immersion opportunities in Vancouver in Quebec City where oh by the way they can also do tourism at the same time I just think there is an opportunity here to reduce the salience of this of this divide between us and find ways to communicate better with each other and to me that is the that is the end goal we have to be able to communicate and under understand other people in this country because it's not just a French-English divide anymore. We have dozens of divides in this country and we have to be attentive, I think, to all of them. I'm going to get, Dimitri, yeah, last point for you, and I'll ask you to do this very quickly,

but surely there's a difference between a need to understand each other and a need to simply provide a service. I mean, isn't there a nuance there? And you've got about 30 seconds, my friend. I'll do it in 15 and I'll tell you this. Ben, you spent a good chunk of your life in Ottawa. I spent more than a decade, I can tell you two things. You can be in a room with 20 francophones and one anglophone in Ottawa, and the meeting will happen in English. And number two, having spent more than a decade in Ottawa, there are two official languages in Ottawa, English and simultaneous translation.

Yeah, all right. All fair points. To the both of you, I say another great chat. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon. And thanks again for joining us today on the Benwe. Mulroney show. If you want to keep the conversation going, you know what to do. Follow me on Twitter at Ben Mulroney. Follow the show on Instagram at Ben Mulroney show. Don't forget to like and

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