The Ben Mulroney Show - The political panel digests the budget and picks their plays of the week.

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

Guest: Andy Gibbons, Principal at Walgate advisory .  Former vp WestJet Guest: Regan Watts, Founder Fratton Park Inc., former Senior aide to minister of finance Jim Flaherty 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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Share the wonder of Christmas with friends and family at Roy Thompson Hall. Tickets are on sale now at Salvationist.ca slash Christmas. You are listening to the Ben Mulroney show. And as always on Wednesdays, we like to pull together two great minds to discuss what's going on in politics. We call it this week in politics the Wednesday edition. It's pretty self-explanatory. And we are currently enjoying the company of Regan Watts. We're awaiting the arrival of Andy Gibbon.

Andy Gibbons, rather. So, Regan, welcome to the show. Good morning, my friend, migwitch. All right, let's talk about the budget. Big budget, bigger spending, bigger deficit. I know that Mark Carney makes you curl like a kitten. How does the budget make you feel? Well, so Ben, it's good to be with you this morning.

A couple of things that I'll say. First, I thought the budget was okay. You know, there's a couple of pillars that I think we should talk about this budget or the context in. First is communications and second is policy. I'll start with the second piece, which is policy. Generally speaking, I think the budget reflects the primary. Minister as a macroeconomist. He believes in big pillars for economic activity, and particularly

around the super deduction that was announced for businesses to write off equipment and other investments reflects his posture. There was some investments around infrastructure, which should be helpful in the near term around getting the economy going. It's clear he, though, on a communication standpoint, there was a lot of promise about this being a transformational budget. And I have to say, I think that the government dropped the ball with respect to the strategic communications around that. I candidly expected more in yesterday's budget than we got. The budget was fine. It was kind of a shrug. I do think, though, the political story coming out of this is he continues to turn the page on the long national nightmare known as Justin Trudeau and the policies that

the Trudeau government pursued. And the most blatant example of that for me was around tree planting. There was a leak before the budget of the canceling of the two billion trees. I mean, that kind of performative nonsense is what you expect from Justin Trudeau. And I have to say, the Prime Minister and his team had me burring when they announced the cancellation of that. Not because I'm not a friend of the environment, I absolutely am, but that was the kind of performative light on substance policy that Trudeau would be known for. The fact that he's canceled that, He's made some comments around emissions caps for the oil and gas sector, which was included there, I think are all good signs that the Prime Minister is trying to reorient the country in a different direction than the previous Prime Minister was doing.

And I'll finish with this, which is, I think, though, with respect to cuts or reductions in the public service, he was also up front with Canadians with the details. And he provided far more detail in his budget around spending reductions than Minister Flaherty did, for example, in his 2012 budget. So on that basis alone, I thought it was, I give the budget a B or a B plus. B or a B plus. All right. Now we're joined by Andy Gibbons, who I believe is cosplaying as Dieter from Sprockets. Now it's the time on Sprockets when we dance.

Nice to see you, sir. Nice to see you. Okay. So would you give this budget as high a grade as Regan? Politically, yeah, if not higher. Because I think we're going to have to start using the word Teflon to describe this prime minister. there are things in this budget that would trip up other prime ministers and other finance ministers but he has at the moment still so much grace and charity and goodwill that people

want him to succeed that it's actually it's actually a good lesson learned yesterday and what you can buy what you can do when you have credibility and when people give you the benefit of the doubt yeah there's lots of things in this budget that would have you know lit people's hair on fire at Stephen Harper and Jim Flaherty did it. But Mark Carney has this credibility and give him credit. He doesn't just park the car in the garage. He takes it out for a drive and sees what it can do. So I wouldn't say this budget is the most ambitious generational thing ever. I think they shouldn't have sold it that way. But is it a path forward for Canada that they deftly handled politically? Absolutely it is.

And I listen one point and this is not directed specifically at this government. It's directed at so many governments, I'm getting so tired of calling spending investment. Everything's an investment. And there are certain programs that are real investments, childcare, for example. Not every time a government spends a dollar, can you call it or should you call it an investment? And every time I hear it, I can't unhear it. But let's go, Regan, let's talk about what Andy just brought up, that there's certain things that this government can do that the Tories can't do. For example, get elected on preserving the public sector and then cutting 40,000 jobs.

I mean, Bruce Fanjoy, someone just popped up on my feet again telling people that this is vital and we need you. And let's make sure that Pierre Polyev doesn't win because your jobs are essential to helping build the country and then turn around and cut 40,000 jobs. I don't know that a conservative could ever, ever do anything like that. So look, I think that's a fair point, Ben. But to bridge back to what Andy said, there are things. that Prime Minister Carney can do because of his eminent credibility and his impeccable resume that a conservative, whether it was Stephen Harper or Jim Flaherty or, by the way, even Brian Maruni, your father could do. The fact is, and I suspect if he has pushed on spending reductions,

he will communicate and say, look, when we, after election, we really looked at the books, we found that it was a different situation. I don't think there's anybody in Canada, apart from the protected elites who live in Ottawa in Andy's backyard, who feel like the government of Canada can't reduce its size. One of the things that really jumped out at me, and if you're a consulting firm or a technology firm looking to do business with the government of Canada, this was a great budget for you

because there's a lot of talk about automation and digitization and whatnot. And that will naturally lead to displacement of workers. And in particular in Ottawa and the government of Canada, that's not necessarily a bad thing. And the reason Mark Carney can do these things and not a conservative is because liberals, for better or for worse,

and for time immemorial, always viewed as warmer-hearted than conservatives. And that's just a fact. But I do think the Prime Minister, for reasons that Andy described, does get more leeway than his counterparts. And look, I want people like Mark Carney, the elite, the tip of the spear, the people who've reached the pinnacle of whatever job they've held to the best to the best to look at politics as the next mountain to climb. So I'm very glad on that front that he was elected. I believe I want to believe that his big brain is going to lead to a better Canada. But in my opinion, Andy, a resume is only good insofar as it leads to those outcomes.

A resume for resume's sake helps no one. So that's why I choose to be optimistic about this. It's not a budget that I would have, that I'd necessarily subscribe to, but I'm willing to live in a world where this does get us to a better place. I still find Ben, I don't know if you saw this yesterday, it's still a lot of government talk. If you look at what Dan Kelly said for just as an example, the CFIB, he basically said small business and individual entrepreneurs who are non-unionized were left behind in this budget. So there's a main street, maybe the liberals still aren't fully in touch with around entrepreneurs, around small business people, around those job creators and how does the government let them do what they want to do? and get out of their way, I still find it to be a top-heavy document. And I thought Dan Kelly's response to the budget was interesting,

if not telling in terms of their priorities. And Regan, I'll give you the last word here, but we're not talking Zoran Mamdani here. But in his acceptance speech yesterday, he said there isn't a problem too big or too small that the government cannot solve. And that is fundamentally a belief to varying degrees on the left that every solution, I mean, on the far left, the government solves everything.

Closer to the center, the government partners to solve everything. And we're seeing a little bit of it in this budget, that fundamentally this is a budget that believes that the government has a role to play in solving all the problems, including the problems that they created. Well, let's give the prime minister some political credit here, or at least the benefit of the out. I agree completely that this is a very government-first, government-heavy budget. And the Prime Minister has taken that posture throughout his time as Prime Minister. What it does do is open up the window for him in the future to tack a little bit more to the center and have the market

forces that a central banker like the Prime Minister used to be weigh in. And so I think this does, the Prime Minister has given himself some leeway here to tack to the center and try and go after voters who would be progressive conservatives or red Tories, so to speak, with respect to the gentleman who was elected mayor of New York last night, you know, I'm going to paraphrase the great Ronald Reagan who said, you know, the worst sentence ever uttered is in the English language is, I'm from the government and I'm here to solve your problem. And I think that, you know, and I think that that's a reflection of his ideology. I think the prime minister would have that same view. All right, we're going to leave it there. When we come back, we're going to talk

about Chris Dantremont. You didn't know who he was yesterday. You probably know today. He was a conservative yesterday. He's a liberal today. We'll discuss. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and welcome back to this week in politics. And it's the midpoint of our panel with Andy Gibbons and Regan Watts. And on that note, it's time for a fairly new segment. And you know what, just going to go right to Mr. Voice. And the axe hangs, but it doesn't fall. That's okay. We got it?

My computer's frozen. Give me a second. No problem. You know what? Before we get to it, you know what? We'll do it next week. Oh, here we go.

Time for Mr. The Voice. It's a special federal budget political play of the week. Regan and Andy choose wisely. Oh, look at that. Very ominous.

Regan, choose why. The voice says so. You got to do it. Choose wisely, Regan. Political play of the week. Well, so I was going to go outside of the week. country as I usually do for my play of the week and highlight the election of the crazy socialist

Zoran Mondami in New York. I can't believe what New Yorkers have done. However, since you wanted something for the budget, I mean, I think the political play of the week is honestly Francois Philippe Champagne. It was very gracious of him to deliver a speech in the House of Commons and a budget that was clearly written by the Prime Minister. It's hard to be the finance minister at the best of times, especially with an economist as prime minister. And I saw that up front and close with Minister Flaherty when he worked for Stephen Harper as his finance minister. But this was very much a carny budget,

yet the finance minister jumped on the themes and the policies and adapted as his own. And, you know, he gets an A for optimism and being positive in delivering the message. And a lot of imagery of ships and sales. We're a nautical country. He's supercharged, despite 1% economic growth. Yeah. All right. Andy, your turn. Who has, who had the political play of the week?

It's got to be the Prime Minister of Canada, you know, to put forward a budget like this. And Ben, think about it this way. This is the 11th budget where liberals have promised generational investments that will help Canadians. Yeah, but this is the first one that promises to catalyze private investment. Yeah, but, I mean, you've seen the videos, Freeland and Moreno. I mean, they might get a royalty check from this case. All right. Yeah, I think we lost Regan there. I think we lost.

Oh, there he's back. Regan's back. All right, well, before, I want to talk about. It's the prime minister. There's a floor crosser and a budget in one day is a pretty good day for a plan. Okay, so let's talk about this because they needed three votes before this, before this, the budget was tabled. And now they only need two because the only Tory elected in the province of Nova Scotia,

Chris Dantremont crossed the floor to join the liberals. Now, depending on who you listen to, he was either fired or he resigned. But 40 days ago, this guy was railing against this government, as you would expect an opposition member to do. And he complained about deficits. Those deficits are higher. He complained about the cost of food.

The food costs are still high. In fact, it's expected that chicken is now going to go up 20 to 25 percent in cost over the next couple of months. That's according to CTV news. So nothing on the ground has materially changed and yet he has changed his spots. We can discuss this any way you guys want. All I will say is I do not understand if you don't want, if you don't feel at home in the conservative caucus anymore, no problem. Why don't you sit as an independent? You can still vote for the liberals. I don't get it. Regan. So I'll say a couple of things, Ben. One, it's a tale as oldest time that a member of parliament who has no actual role or responsibilities beyond being

in the House looks after his or her self-interest and is crossing the floor. Oftentimes, floor crossers are induced with some type of role or position. I suspect that there's probably some role for Mr. Dantramal in a Carney government. You mentioned, though, Ben, in the lead-up to nothing has changed on the ground. I would argue it actually probably has. And my guess is Mr. Dantramal did some polling in his writing and has seen that the prime minister after the first six months is far more popular than Mr. Polyev and that it would be difficult for Mr. Dantramal to win as a conservative in that writing. Members of parliament are at their core self-interested sociopaths. Well, you're not wrong. I just want to point out just as context. I think you're actually right.

Rick Perkins, former Nova Scotia MP who lost in the last election, said, this is what he tweeted, quote, if an election is held now, I will lose my seat. I might as well not run. run. That, according to Rick Perkins, was said by Chris Dantromo to me this past weekend. Make no mistake, there's nothing in this floor crossing about principles. It's about keeping his job. So continue. I have found that the tone for Mr. Perkins in particular to be one of the reasons why, on a broader strategic level, why the Conservatives lost. That guy has the bedside manner of an undertaker, and I think he should look in the mirror and think about how he's talking about his former colleagues. I have found the conservative response actually to be quite

nasty as well. People accusing Mr. Don Tramon of making this decision because he didn't win a particular vote or whatever. I just think conservatives should just take a pill and chill. There's a reason this has happened, but there's a way, the only thing that Mr. Polyev can control is how he and his caucus react. And I had just found the whole response. And Rick Perkins is a poster boy for insanity on these types of things. It reflects the conservative party that still has a weird nasty streak that Canadians don't like. Well, okay, listen, floor crossings are not specific to one party. They happen back and forth and conservatives become liberals.

Liberals become conservatives. Greens become liberals. I mean, it happens. I don't know that there's anything wrong with, I don't think there's anything necessarily nasty, Andy, about being upset with somebody who two days earlier was happy to be in a caucus who now has switched over six months after defeating a liberal. You went toe to toe with a liberal in your riding. You actively courted votes trying to elect a party that was going to do things differently than this party that you now say you're part of.

And I don't think there's anything nasty with pointing out that that's, that there is something that can rub people the wrong way. Andy, what do you think? Well, how could it not rub it, the Conservatives, the wrong way? It's a team sport. Unity is the name of the game. liberal MPs, look what they stood beside Justin Trudeau on for a decade. I mean, if I was Pierre Pollyev and there was emails from Chris Dantramov begging me to come to my riding for a rally and all of the,

I would release them in the public. I don't know how they cannot be angry about this when the ink isn't even dry on his election result. I think that's the difference here, is it's so soon after the election. So for him to just jump, the question, Ben, is does this, is it, something bigger than just a guy who was jaded and made a decision and you chalk it up and you move on and i'm not sure that there's something bigger here but i mean the scuttle button ottawa is like you know last night there were seven people crossing the floor today it's three and a half this

afternoon it'll be five you know there's just rumors all over the place about currently getting his government well brian lily brian lily suggested uh that um that three weeks ago when there was talk of three floor crossers from the conservators one of those names was Chris Dantremont, and the other two were two Quebec MPs. And so if, you know, I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that that those conversations may still be happening with those two, with those two Quebec MPs. And if so, he gets his majority and he gets his budget, right, Regan, it's pretty simple. Well, the budget's going to pass and yours truly said three weeks ago or four weeks ago when we first started talking about this topic, that the budget was going to pass. So there was no, this floor crossing doesn't change that.

No, but it doesn't have to – But it can pass free and clear without the need to curry favor with any one party. They don't have to make any concessions if they want. Yeah. Yeah, but Ben, what does it say when conservative MPs are questioning whether they're sitting in the right caucus? I think it's more – that's why I go back to my comments about the conservative party. Maybe just step back and reflect on why this is happening and adjust your approach or the way you manage your caucus or on issues. because clearly people are feeling vulnerable

and they're going to act in their self-interest because of my comments earlier about MPs and being focused at the end of the day really on one thing, which is their own election. Last word to you, Andy. You got about 30 seconds. I think what's interesting about this budget too is even you use the word concessions,

men, that the government should give concessions. And I just think the media coverage of the budget hasn't caught up with what the prime minister has been saying for six months. This is Canada's moment. We all have to work. together so i'm just where the liberal brinksmanship meets their commitment to a unity government and one canada i find them in contradiction here on those two things and i'm i'm i'm curious

to be watching in the next few months how those two things drive with each other because i don't think you can be robust partisans election hearing yep and do brinksmanship but also talk about the unity of the country are to work together A kidnap child whispers dark secrets from his past in a language he no longer understands. But a lost cassette will reveal the ugly truth. From Curious cast in Blanchard House comes a cross-continental Odyssey to recover a stolen past. This is Stop Rewind, The Lost Boy,

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