The Ben Mulroney Show - The Smoke and Mirrors of Canada's Job Economy

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Are we any closer to a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine? with Guest: Adam Zivo, National Post columnist and Executive Director for the Centre For Responsible Drug Policy -The Smoke and Mirrors of Canada's Job Economy If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Ben Mulrooney Show. Thank you so much for joining us on this Friday. We made it to the weekend and we're gearing up for a weekend to honor the mothers in our lives. If you are a mother listening, if you know a mother, if you love a mother, you say Happy Mother's Day. There's a lot of news to get to. Something we had, we talked about it yesterday where we explored the ins and outs of conclave, but it's time to, you know, take a moment and celebrate, acknowledge and talk about the new Pope, the first American born Pope ever in the history

of the Catholic Church, Robert Prevost. He's taken the name Leo, Leo the 14th. And I gotta say, there's a lot on pack, he's from Chicago. And so the memes have been fantastic. The picture of the the Blues Brothers car, they said it's a new Pope Mobile. He's on a mission from God. And is the fact that his brother,

the Pope's actual brother who still lives in the Chicago area was interviewed yesterday. The fact that the guy tweets, these are all very new for Catholics who are used to a certain character, a certain stereotype, I guess, in the Vatican. And I tell you, I was really surprised. I was really surprised that Donald Trump didn't take credit for this. I was ready to see the tweet or the truth social or he said you know we've got America has the the Super Bowl you know we've got the World Series we've got the NHL champion we've got the NBA champion and now we've got the Vatican. America is truly great again.

But he didn't do that. He didn't do that. Now, that being said, not a whole lot of us follow the ins and outs of the politics of the Catholic Church, even the most devout Catholics, of which I do not consider myself. Wouldn't know the names of all of the archbishops and all the cardinals.

But Steve Bannon, Steve Bannon, who knows politics really well, apparently also knows the politics of the Catholic Church because a week prior to Conclave, he predicted who was going to be elected pope. I do think one of the dark horses, and I think unfortunately he's one of the most progressive is is cardinal pre-votes i don't think he's getting a play he's certainly on the short list as being and i think it's pretty shocking given the the uh... how the contempt they hold the American church

the american church gives so much money they're afraid it has too much power so they've never really want to have an american pope my understanding is pre-votes is one of the ones closest to frances ideologically power. So they've never really wanted to have an American pope. But my understanding is Prievos is one of the ones closest to Francis ideologically. He's also had tremendous experience in Latin America. And so he's one of the ones on the shortlist. Yeah, from what I understand about Pope Leo, he was, he spent a great part of his early career in Peru, working with Catholic missionaries there. So he does in fact know that area very well.

And yeah, I mean, I'm gonna be learning about him as we go, when I think of the Pope, I always think about John Paul II because he was the defining one of my life. I actually had the opportunity to meet him and take communion from the Pope on Parliament Hill. I remember, yeah, on Parliament Hill in the eighties, it was a very, very big deal for Catholics.

And we'll see what kind of Pope Leo ends up being, but we do know that he's a Pope who tweets. So there you go. There's a lot of pomp and circumstance in the Catholic Church. We know that there's a lot of pageantry. There's a lot of performance. There's a lot of traditions. There's a lot of traditions.

And now it seems like increasingly we're seeing a new kind of pageantry in the white house that's specific to this president. We saw it in his first administration. We're seeing even more of it now. And what I'm talking about is the, the flattery, the flattery that the people in Donald Trump's inner circle bestow on him, shower on him, flood him with. And no person does it better, more often, more deeply, with more conviction than Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary. It's just, he's elevated it to an art. His ability to shoehorn Donald Trump's apparent genius into anything he says is something to behold.

And so we're gonna go through some of my favorite Lutnick hits over the past couple of days. Here's Howard Lutnick praising Donald Trump for Liberation Day. We feel really good about the deal. You've heard the prime minister, he feels really good about the deal, right? And we started at 10% and we ended at 10%. And the market for America is better. And this is a perfect example of why Donald Trump produced Liberation Day. People don't understand, he gets things done.

In a matter of time, this would have taken Jamison and I three years, maybe. And instead we got it done in 45 days, certainly because we worked for Donald Trump. Okay. I mean, I had some people on the show yesterday, David Frum and notably on the show yesterday, David Frum, and notably on the show yesterday, former speech writer to George W. Bush,

and he's a staff writer at the Atlantic. He's got a new podcast. He knows a thing or two about a thing or two. He said, this is not a trade deal. He said, it's vapor. It's an agreement to build a trade deal. I also just saw on social media a few minutes ago that while this deal is being touted as incredible the automotive giants of North America are taking great issue

with this supposed win by saying it prioritizes UK cars that have no American parts in them over a deal to secure the automotive industry in North America and so this is that's certainly one take. Howard Lutnick certainly has his own take, but there are people on the ground here in North America who take issue with even suggesting that this supposed deal is a win at all. But he pours it on even further

when he sat down with Jesse Waters on Fox News. And you know, my favorite part was, I bring Donald Trump the deal and I say, look, here's the deal. And he says, come on, how can I make it better? So I go through all the details and he picks up the phone and he called the prime minister of the United Kingdom and he makes the deal a billion dollars better yesterday. I mean, what's more fun than working for Donald Trump how do you squeeze an extra 5 billion at or an extra bill out of that.

Well what happened is he said look these are all the products that we're doing but we really like to add a couple more products but we just can't get it done and he said look on the closer out to it and I and I said look we always want the best dealmaker to make the deal he literally picks up the phone and makes the call and he says to me, Howard, every time you want to close, I'm doing it. This is my favorite thing to do. I'm closing.

There is no better businessman behind that desk than Donald Trump. Okay, Howard. Sure. I'm not saying he doesn't know how to negotiate. I'm not, but he is the president. Like if the president calls you, you're going to probably listen. I don't know that that is a testament to his business acumen more than it is a testament to the power of the office of the president. And again, all of that is contingent on your belief that this is the end all be all of trade deals, which as I told you, David from yesterday said there is no deal yet. This is not a deal. It's a framework to build out a deal. And if you believe the automotive industry of America, it's not a good deal. It's certainly not a good deal for the automotive industry, which has knock-on effects across the economy, but never let those facts get in the

way of a Howard Lutnick fawning. And so we have this, I got this other clip for you, and I was going to play it for you. Oh yeah, wait, yes, I want to play it. But I want you to hear the people laughing in the background. That's why I want to play it for you. And then we'll give you one guess as to who's the loudest laugher is. And the Democrats are fighting it only because they want to fight. They have Trump derangement syndrome. You know, if it was somebody else, they wouldn't fight.

If you had a normal person, if you had some stiff sitting behind you, they'd be fine. But they have Trump derangement syndrome. You know, Senator Schumer's become a Palestinian. He's welcome. I don't know when they're gonna give him the ceremony, whatever the ceremony may be. It's terrible what's happened to the Democrats. I might be dating myself, but it reminds me of Ed McMahon

laughing from the corner on The Tonight Show. Ha ha, yes! Over and over. It is what it is. I've got time for one more Let's Play Trump's, I think, off-color joke and off-side joke on Pete Buttigieg. When they took over, Buttigieg, who has no clue, you know, he drives to work on his bicycle with his, with his, in all fairness, with his husband on the back,

which is a nice, loving relationship. But he didn't have a clue. This guy didn't have a clue. And he's actually a contender for president between him and Crockett. You can have that party. And that was Howard Lutnick again. Don't go anywhere.

More on the Ben Moller Show after the break. Hi, I'm Donna Friesen from Global National. Life moves fast these days and we want to make it even easier for you to get the news you need. That's why you can now get Global National every day as a podcast. The biggest stories of the day with analysis from award-winning global news journalists. New episodes drop every day. So take this as your personal invitation to join us on

the global national podcast. You can find it on apple podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much for choosing to spend some time with us here on the show. We really appreciate it. We always appreciate what Adam Zivow makes time to join us and tell us what he's been working on. He is a significant and very clear voice on what is going on in Ukraine as it relates to the war. And now with Donald Trump rising to become president again, we'll remember he

promised that this would never have happened under him. And he was going to solve this conflict in a matter of days. Well, the conflict rages on. So here for an update on both of those fronts is Adam's Evo. Adam, thanks so much for joining us. Oh, thanks for having me on the show again. Okay, so we've got Putin's Victory Day parade coming up. Before we get into the gist of your article, what is Victory Day? Okay, so Victory Day commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany and it's celebrated throughout Europe. In Western Europe, they celebrate on the eighth and in Eastern Europe, they celebrate on the ninth. And so during Soviet times, Victory Day was not actually that big of a big deal. So they would have a parade around every 20 years or so, but for the most part,

there were just some solemn speeches. But then after the Soviet Union collapsed, Boris Yeltsin revived the Victory Day parade in 1995, basically brought in a whole bunch of military hardware, had foreign dignitaries from all over the world come in, including from the West, and then made it an annual event. But it still was not overly significant up until 2008. So in 2008, Putin brings back the military hardware into the victory day parade, you know, fills it with tanks and other weapons and basically tells his government that this is not saber rattling and we're not going to attack anyone. Well, lo and behold, three months later, he invades Georgia. So basically this parade portended at the beginning or sorry the resurrection of russian militarism.

After that point victory day became a jingoistic propaganda extravaganza so year after year became more aggressive more important and became central to putin's cult of personality. When they were anti government protest in moscow in two thousand eleven in two thousand twelve the parade continued unabated and essentially provided a counter narrative saying that, Hey, you know, the anti government protesters bring chaos, we bring order and duty. So, right. So, so how does the Ukraine war and Russia's inability to win it in, in short order, as was promised, how does that fit into the narrative that Putin's been trying to sell about Victory Day and the and the sort of the sheer magnitude and force of the Russian military? Well, the thing is that after 2014, you know, after Russia annexed Crimea and then launched his shadow invasion of eastern Ukraine. So Putin turned Victory Day into this, you know, he basically said that we're fighting against the West for fighting against Ukraine and he Trought he'd spent a lot of money creating this myth that Ukraine is filled with Nazis, right? Right and tried to essentially connect being backed being led by a Jew

but led by Nazis Exactly, right, you know where the far right has never had more than two or three percent of the vote So these are some very special Nazis, right? and So he has this idea He's trying to connect World War two back to his current expansionism and reframe his aggressive foreign policy as a defensive existential struggle And so after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine victory day was muted for a few years Yeah, they had like the one tank not so much because it was all sent to the front.

But this year is the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. So they went all out. You know, they have, I think about 10,000 troops in Moscow today, they brought in a whole bunch of tanks. And this is their big symbolic gesture to show that they are really committed to finishing through this war against Ukraine. And they asked Putin asked Ukraine for a three day ceasefire saying, Hey, we're going to unilaterally declare three days fire during the parade. Now, Keefe of course said, no, you know, we're not going to just stop, stop the war just so you can have your nice festivities.

And then Ukraine sent hundreds of drones into Russia over the course this week, including 19 drones at Moscow. Those drones that were sent to Moscow all got shot down, but they ended up shutting down all four of Moscow's airports for quite some time, leading to 60,000 passengers being delayed. Now, the significance here is that this kind of attack would have been unthinkable two, three years ago. Right? When Russia was surrounding Kiev, no one thought that in a year or two or three years, people would have to debate whether or not Moscow is going to get bombed by Ukraine. And now we have Putin asking Ukraine for a ceasefire to protect its parade. So I think this really reinforces the fact that Ukraine is more powerful than people

assume and that it's able to continue to effectively resist Russian imperialism. Where are we in terms of sort of Trump's understanding of the dynamic between Ukraine and Russia? I mean, is, are we still in a place where he's living in a, in a fiction that Ukraine started this war? Or is he finally seeing that this is a, you can't pick your allies and no ally is perfect and Ukraine certainly isn't perfect, but they are a democracy and they have an elected leader.

And granted, they haven't had an election in a few years. But like, is he, is he starting to see the light that maybe he was, he, he, he assumed that the honest broker here was Putin and it should have been Zelensky? Yeah. I mean, I think he's certainly becoming more pro-Ukrainian recently, but I don't think that's because he has some renewed love for Zelensky. I think it's more so that he realizes that he's been played by Putin, which we all said was going to happen. You know, everyone that this is going to happen,

you're full for trying to make this work. He ignored them. And now he has egg on his face. And I think one of the main, like, you know, he was trying to negotiate this deal. He offered Russia a really sweet, you know, offering in terms of how to negotiate this war. He sent over, you know offering in terms of how to negotiate this war he sent over, you know, putin sent over a negotiator Vidkoff who was very pro-russian and the Russians still said no right and they gave these impossible demands Yeah, and I think that part of the turning point is that when they were in the middle of all of this Russia launched a huge bomb strike on Kiev and that's when Trump made his in Them as you know truth social post where he said, you know, Putin, no, don't do this, which made him look really weak.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I think now, now Trump is saying, I think he's become more hostile. I think his meeting with Zelensky at the Pope's funeral seems to really help. And so we're seeing a remarkable shift. And I do hope this continues

because Russia is obviously not our ally. And we do have a strong interest in Ukraine's continued sovereignty. So how does this play out? I mean, listen, I'm not asking to predict the future of like a year from now, but what do the next steps likely look like? Well, I mean, look, I don't think that I don't think the Putin's going to continue.

He's not going to stop. I mean, because I think part of the reason why he's not going to stop is that if he demobilizes these soldiers, then you have hundreds of thousands of soldiers who return back home and feel frustrated by the fact that their economy is broken and they didn't really achieve much. Um, so I think he's going to keep on going. Uh, I think that Trump, you know, he's Trump is trying to say that we should have a 30 day ceasefire.

We'll see if that works. But I think that if Ukraine continues to get, you know, the support that it needs, and that includes increased support going forward, that there's a chance that Russia could collapse at some point over the next few years because the Russian economy is stalling. So they have high inflation, which resulted in spending all of their reserves and they have high interest rates. And so we're starting to starting to finally see the cracks in the Russian economy. So I don't think that they can continue doing this for much longer.

Yeah. And also like, let's, let's not forget that so many of, of the, the, uh, so much of the opposition in Washington to Ukraine and the, and the continued funding of, of their, their military endeavors by way of American aid as so much of that opposition Comes from people who are just taking their marching orders from Donald Trump and if Donald Trump were to do an about face So would they? Yep, and I think this you know the fact that they were able to negotiate that mineral deal Yeah, we help things

I mean that was signed and thank God the final draft of that was actually fair in comparison to the predatory contract that Trump proposed back in January. And I think, you know, of course, that's another great sign. And let's also not forget, not for nothing, that Putin's got his victory day parade and and and in Donald Trump looks like he wants to have a parade of his own. You know what, if that keeps him on side with Ukraine, why not? In his parade, it's okay. Yeah, absolutely. Well, listen, my friend, I want to thank you very much for always joining us. Very much appreciate your insights. This is this is the drama of the Ukraine-Russia war with the added supercharging of Donald Trump's mercurial position makes it so that

we do need you to join us fairly routinely because the events, everything changes so very quickly. But we appreciate you. We hope you have a wonderful, wonderful weekend. Thank you. You too. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much. We're ending the show in style with you, our listeners. Give us a call here at the Ben Mulroney show. I want to talk to you about the

Canadian economy. The unemployment rate went up even though thousands of jobs were added to the economy. When I give you the data, it's going to make some sense to you. We added 7,400 net jobs last month. There was a gain. Here's the kicker. There's a gain of 37,000 public administration sector jobs, which Statistics Canada says was largely temporary work tied to the federal election in April. Canada's manufacturing industry led job losses, shedding 31,000 positions with the bulk of the impact in Ontario. So the wholesale and retail trade sector lost some 27,000 jobs.

Unemployment is now 6.9%. Ontario is 7.8%. And Toronto is 10%. We are manufacturing a job economy by just hiring people in the public sector. It is unsustainable. It is a mirage when you see how many jobs, I mean, what would happen if we level set,

we right-sized what they call right-sized the public sector in this country. It has grown by leaps and bounds with no measurable benefit to the taxpayer, except to hire people. It is huge, it is bloated, it is too big, and hopefully not too big to fail. We've got to have to take,

we're going to have to take some steps to right size it. What's that going to do to the number of 6.9% unemployment rate? What's that going to do in Ontario, where Ottawa is? You've got some public sector workers federally in the city of Toronto, what's that gonna do to the 10% here? Mark Carney on the election trail

said that the size of our public sector workforce was too big. He admitted that on the campaign trail. So what's he gonna do? And how is he gonna change things so that the engine of the economy is once again, entrepreneurs and small and medium sized business? I mean, when your government is leading the charge

of employment by hiring public sector workers, you've lost the plot. And as a country, we can't afford to lose the plot. We need to be laser focused on growth. And we have so many parts of our economy, we have to turn around from bad decisions of the past. So give us a call. I want to hear what you have to think.

Maybe you're in the public sector or you know people in the public sector. Do you recognize, as I do, that this is unsustainable? I just don't see how this can continue. It's only going to get worse. But the fact that we gained 37,000 jobs, I concede that those public jobs were tied to the federal election. That also means they're going away, right?

So that 6.9% could go up to 7%. I mean, it could. But the fact that the retail and wholesale trade sector lost 27,000 jobs. The fact that we lost 31,000 manufacturing industry jobs. Like this is these are crisis numbers. These are crisis numbers. And we're not even to the thick of the tariffs yet. We haven't even felt the true impact of those. Hey, Frank, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you so much for calling in. Oh, that's my fault. I apologize. Frank, welcome to the show. Hey, so what's up?

How would you think? Listen, I work for the government. I work for a municipality in the GTA and it is beyond bloated, beyond bloated. Yeah. And, you know, I discovered this during COVID that really the 15% less people in my department alone would be more efficient. Yeah. But, you know, the mentality that these governments all have, I got to have my budget and if I

don't use my budget, I lose my budget. I'm going to keep bleeding the taxpayer. Oh, yeah. Frank, do you remember right before the election, Melanie Jolie's office went off and bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of furniture? And apparently that's par for the course. That happens a lot in federal politics, where they have this budget, this extra money that they didn't spend. And if they don't spend it, then they lose it next year. So she her office authorized the purchase of hundreds of thousands of dollars of furniture.

Municipally it's the same bloody thing. Yeah. And we see the waste and it's you can't do anything about it obviously you know I wouldn't want to lose my job but we've got people who are ready to retire they They're actually beyond the retirement age. Yeah. And they can be bought out and those positions do not need to be filled. But I remember Doug Ford saying this, we're going to let people, we're going to, we're going to reduce staff. We're going to do it through attrition. You did nothing. Yeah. Well, and look, Frank, Frank, look what happened. Look what happened in the election campaign where Pierre Poli have found himself with about 100,000 new people.

I don't know if it's 100,000, but a whole bunch of new people in his riding who most of whom were lifers in the public sector. And he had to walk back his threat of right sizing the public sector and say, oh, we're only gonna do it by attrition. And even that wasn't enough to keep them. Like there's a, the more you have, the stronger they get.

And I want a robust, healthy public sector that provides the services that we as Canadians are entitled to, but this number is just too big, Frank. It's just too big. I don't know what to do here. So, but fortunately, not my problem. Mark Carney asked for this job, so gonna keep him I keep him honest and hopefully we're gonna get some idea from him as to what the heck He's gonna do on the employment side in Canada I've just been to spec savers and upgraded my lenses to extra thin and light with 50% off now What else can I upgrade my cat? Wow my scooter with 50% off. Now, what else can I upgrade? My cat? Meow. Pfft.

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