The Ben Mulroney Show - This week in politics -- banning public prayer in Quebec

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Guest: Warren Kinsella, Former Special Advisor to Jean Chretien and CEO of the Daisy Group Guest: Chris Chapin, Political Commentator, Managing Principal of Upstream Strategy 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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Array! The Conjuring Last Rites, only in the theater September 5th. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. And as we get you ready for the long weekend, we can't do so without finishing up the week in style with our political panel this week in politics, starring Warren, Sella, the former advisor to Jean Crettiant and the CEO of the Daisy Group and featuring guest star, superstar political commentator managing principle of upstream strategy. Chris Chapin to the both of you. Happy Friday. All right. Let's talk about Quebec. Let's talk about the issue. This is a country, or rather this is a province in our country that has taken a firm stance on on secularism in the past. And it looks like they're going to be doubling down with plans on banning public prayer. This after images that we've seen of mass prayers by Muslims in front of, say, the Notre Dame Basilica. And I wonder, Warren, your thoughts on that. I had somebody from the Canadian Civil Liberties organization on the show a little bit earlier,

saying that this is a dumb move and this is probably like trying to kill a fly with a bazooka. I don't agree. I don't often agree with decisions made by the government of Quebec, the CAQ government. but they are consistent. This is something that they have been doing now for a number of years, up to and including removing the crucifix from the National Assembly. And, you know, I say as a church-going Catholic, I strongly believe, like most Canadians,

that there needs to be a separation from church and state, and the state includes the streets and roads and highways of the nation. So I don't care if you're Muslim or Jewish or Christian or Tamil or anybody you are not entitled to block roadways to prayer we encourage people to praying and to have communion with their god it's protected in the charter of rights and freedoms it's all good but you're not allowed to do it in a way that is obstructing others yeah and what we've seen since october 7th is people who claim to be muslim i don't know if they actually are having very performative prayers in public, blocking roadways, leading to ambulances having to back up

and having difficulty getting people to the hospital for emergencies. It's wrong. It's not something that is, in my view, legal. And I think the government of Quebec is right. Yeah. And it feels to me also like this is a, this is a tool that is it, the purpose of it isn't not, and isn't necessarily to put another law on the books, Chris. But given the fact that there are already tools for municipalities and police forces to use to stop these sorts of things but they're not this could be the government of Quebec

trying to double down put another law in the books to say hey look we've given you everything you need you're not doing it it's to highlight the intransigence and the permissive nature of some of the municipal governments that are letting this stuff happen

oh Chris we can't hear you no no you know we'll come back to you chris we'll come back to you in a second um but as as i was saying uh warren i'm finding like i i'm i'm tired of being the guy who has to hedge and be uh make sure that nobody is offended when what i see sometimes in some of these images is offensive and if one side's going to be offensive then i'm going to play that game and what i see is is religion being used to intimidate and religion being used to say you will have no quarter from us you will have no peace from us and if that's the case if you're going to weaponize your religion against another group then i think the heavy hammer of the law needs to come down yeah and it's you're absolutely right

it is intimidation and it's not even religious so the koran talks about you need to pray in mosque, right? That's where you're supposed to be, you know, praying to Allah and praying for the good of the community and your family and your neighbors. That's where prayer is supposed to take place. Check with any imam. They'll tell you, no, they're not supposed to be doing it in the street. And any priest or rabbi would tell you the same thing. It's like, no, you're not supposed to do that. It's not appropriate. Can there be extraordinary situations where the Pope comes to Canada and blesses everybody who gather in a specific, secure space, away from a roadway, for sure,

or the Archbishop of a Canterbury, or what have you. But, you know, what is happening here? We all know what it needs, and it's what you just said. It's designed to intimidate and make people uncomfortable. And, Chris, if this were a bunch of Catholics in front of a mosque, I would be the first person shouting at them saying, get the hell back in your church where you belong. So I'm not going to be accused of.

of and I'm not going to be allow anybody to label me in one particular way. This is, this is, but, but I'm also not an idiot. I know what I'm seeing with my eyes and I'm smart enough to know the intent behind it. Oh, are we,

Chris, for some reason we're having, we're having trouble with you. We can't hear you. We're going to get you on the phone, my friend, okay? We're going to come back to you in a second.

And we're going to switch over to, you know, Mark Carney has got a big job ahead of him, Warren Kinsella. We've seen a lot of things. We can talk about the, the fact that Canadian natural gas, apparently there is a business case to sell it to Europe. So we've missed out on that opportunity.

But I kind of want to talk to you about what was being talked about in my previous segment with MEI, was an independent public policy think tank, talking about the ballooning size of the public service. And not just the size, we oftentimes talk about how many people are now in the public service. But it's the cost of it. I mean, I could not believe when I heard that the cost of just to pay our public service is going to reach $76 billion annually by 2030. Oh, Chris, Chris, are you there? I don't know if you heard the question, but we're talking about the ballooning cost associated with the public service. $76 billion annually by 2030.

This was a pivotal point in the election. Pierre Palliav lost a lot of votes when he said that he was going to cut the public service. And he lost his riding in a riding that had a lot of public servants in it. And I wonder how Mark Carney is going to square this circle where inevitably he's going to have to do what he accused Pierre Pollyev of saying he was going to do. Yeah, I think Ben, and hopefully my audio is working now. But listen, I guess kudos to Mark Carney and the liberals for being able to get through the election and never really get questioned on what their intent was going to be once they're in power. I think it's, I don't believe anybody thinks that the public service in Ottawa isn't bloated, that it probably isn't far, far bigger than it should be.

Pierre Paulyab was very honest during the campaign in a riding that was almost, I think, 50-50 split on public workers, that he was going to reduce the size of the federal government. And, you know, it seems to be, you know, the track record so far of Mark Carney to kind of pick and steal some of Pierre's ideas. I know Pollyev's been out there saying just that. but whether it's, you know, now kind of reverse course on liquefied natural gas or the size of the public service, Mark Carney, he's apparently quite comfortable squaring that circle bed. Yeah. Now, your guy back in the day, Warren, Jean-Cretzian, he had a similar problem. It was not nearly as big. I believe the Kretzian government was able to reduce the size of the public service

by 17%. That's not going to get us to where we need to be. What kind of hit did your guy take back then we took a big hit we nearly lost the majority in 1997 after that historic budget came through where we cut the living hell out of the public service across the board so carney's talking about doing the same thing up to you know 15% if he does that that'll be something I think we should all applaud getting back to your point about you know gas and energy like we're an energy producing country and it's bananas for us to leave energy in the ground and under i'm not blaming carney yet but you know under trudeau for nearly a decade we saw seven six hundred and seventy billion with a bee in gas and oil and lNG and pipeline projects

either killed or left in the ground because of government dumb decisions at the federal level or government in action. And, you know, like right across the Saganay-LNG project in Quebec, it was $20 billion, and it was killed by Stephen Gilbo. And that could have created jobs for Quebecers. And that could have provided an opportunity for us to get that product to market. So I am hopeful because, you know, now Carney has got a Minister of Energy who knows what he's talking about.

And this week, I don't know if you guys caught it. You know, Warren, Warren, we're going to pick that. We're going to pick that up right after the break. So hold on to that thought. We're going to continue with that topic right after the break. Right here on the Ben Mulerney show with this week in politics, Chris Chapin and Warren Kinsella. Welcome back to the Ben Mulerney show and welcome back to Warren Kinsella and Chris Chapin for the Friday edition of this week in politics. Warren, I was going to let you finish up your point on LNG and the business case that now apparently exists for us to sell it.

around the world. Yeah, it was the only thing I wanted to say, and so I'm trying to be fair to the Carney government, his current, his new minister of energy, who's got a lot of experience work in the energy sector. Actually, the day before yesterday, referred to the Trudeau government, who I was critical about before the break, as the previous government. That's what you call it. Like they were a member of a different political party. So, you know, that signals to me that they plan to do some things differently and hopefully they do things differently on the energy front. Well, hopefully they do things differently on the energy front quickly. All right, Chris? Yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, we, I think Warren nailed that, you know, before we went

to break. This is such a massive industry for this country. And the only thing I disagree with Warren was the language he said, you know, the last government's in action. I'd say it was the previous government, if we're going to quote the current energy minister. It was their maliciousness. You know, it was their ideological bent that it wasn't that they, they couldn't pull the energy out of the ground in this country. They didn't want to. They didn't believe in it. They thought it was better left in the ground. And it's

at least positive so far to see that Mark Carney and his current government seems to think differently. I want to spend a little bit of time on two really disappointing stories. One from Quebec and one from Ontario. Specifically, we hear about this massive

multi-billion dollar e-retailer, Essence, which really made a name for itself during the pandemic. And they're going to file for bankruptcy protection. And then there's the story of Diageo moving Crown Royal out of a small town just outside of Windsor at the expense of 200 jobs. And God knows how many more negative knock on effects for that local economy. Both cases, I believe, can be traced directly to Donald Trump.

Let's start with Essence. I mean, Essence, Chris, is a multi-billion dollar company. I think they just shy of just shy of a billion dollars in revenue last year. They were valued over $4 billion. One of the reasons they were so successful is they were able to sell their goods. You know, a lot of unique things available on that site that you couldn't get elsewhere. You could sell it to the states because of the de minimis exemption, which allowed, you know, sales of under $800 U.S. to go across the border of tariff-free.

That ended yesterday. Yeah, you know, this was only a matter of time before. for things like this started happening then. And I mean, you know, the essence one's an interesting story because I think there's, you can see why the president, you know, on exemptions like this on tariffs, feels the way he does, you know, companies being able to skirt certain rules to their advantage being located in Canada and say not, you know, the northern United States.

But, you know, with the Ajo and I fear so many more still to come, I think we're going to see some real turbulence in this country. if we don't find a trade deal or some kind of an arrangement with the United States sooner rather than later, because this is the part of tariffs that do work. You know, there's parts of tariffs that I don't believe work and I think are going to drive a cost for American consumers and Canadian consumers, but there's going to be pressure on Canadian-based companies that do business in the United States to relocate. And, you know, if you're a Canadian operator of a company, it's only going to be a matter

of a time before you start looking at your bottom line and figure out whether you're better off operating in Canada or whether you should move your operations south of the border. But, you know, Chris, I'm going to take issue with you, Chris. I mean, I look at the essence thing. Essence found a way to work. I don't believe that they were crowding anyone out of the market. The de minimis rule exemption existed for many companies around the world. And it existed so that Americans would have access to these things that they otherwise wouldn't.

That's part of the glory of living sort of an integrated world, Warren. And so it's only a problem if your worldview dictates that that is a problem. I think one thing I've been writing this week, and you guys are conservatives or no conservatives better than I do. I don't think Donald Trump is a conservative. You know, he just bought, he used state power. He got Bernie Sanders on side and bought into Intel. He's been meddling in the marketplace, you know, bullying.

being CEOs, telling Europe that they, if they want to avoid tariffs, they have to directly invest in the United States. Like that's not the behavior of a conservative, as I understand conservatives to be. He's messing with the rules of capitalism. And we all know historically when you start to do that, there's a price to pay and it'll be a steep price to pay, principally for Americans. But right now we're feeling it. Like to me, the tariff thing isn't an end in itself.

tariff he's clearly using them as leverage to force manufacturing back into the united states but if you look at the iPhone for example tim cook has said well you know we'd love to do that but the engineers the system engineers that are involved in creating the iphone there's thousands and thousands of them in in china there's only about a dozen of them in the united states so like it's we're colliding with a reality here that is going to be very bad for everybody The Trump administration included. Well, I had an expert on the show just a few weeks ago where we asked that very same question, could you build an iPhone in the United States? And he said, absolutely not.

He said, the U.S. has been investing something like $10 billion a year for the past 10 years, just in infrastructure alone and educational tools for those engineers in China. So they have $100 billion sunk into that economy for that for them to just snap their fingers and start that production in the United States. Not only can they not do it, but if they were to do it, it wouldn't be $100 million. It would be a trillion dollars. So it's an impossibility to build in the United States, at least from my expert's perspective. Chris, I'm going to allow you to come to the defense of conservatism in the face of sort of the world's most famous self-reclaimed conservative, Donald Trump. Do I have to? I mean, I don't think I can.

I think Warren's right. There's nothing conservative about the way Donald Trump's government. That's what I was saying. You're coming to the defense of conservatives. There's nothing conservative about it, you know? And I think Warren's spot on. He has a very torqued worldview of how the U.S. economy should operate. And he's using the levers of power that he has as Presidents of the United States to do just that. I, you know, I saw a story, I think it was earlier this morning that it was reading the cost of U.S. aluminum surging. And it's becoming, you know,

nobody in Europe around the world's purchasing it, because it's something like 40% more to purchase U.S. aluminum than it is European or Canadian aluminum. And so, as you can imagine purchasers around the world are choosing the cheaper option simply because Donald Trump drove the cost of U.S. aluminum through the roof because of his tariffs. And so there is a knockover impact that, sure, you can build everything in the United States. But if you're tariffing everything outside the United States, you know, the only thing Americans are going to buy is American-made products. Yeah. And the rest of the world is going to look elsewhere for, you know, everything but American-made products. Well, exactly. At some point, he's going to, he's going to come

butt up against a new reality that he forced onto the world, which is he's impoverishing everybody else, which means we will not be able to, we won't be able to afford the things that we once took for granted. And he's going to have a whole lot of American companies saying, we don't have the markets. We don't have access to the markets we once had because those markets have dried up, Warren. Yeah, absolutely. So he, I mean, ultimately, he is going to pay a price for this. But, you know, in fairness to him, as you guys know, I volunteer for Kamala Harris like he was saying this every single day he was going to do this he's always believed in tariffs and he's always believed in using tariffs as a stick to compel the private sector to do what

he wants but that's not what conservatives are supposed to do yeah you know guys like your dad been knew that you yes you provide an environment for the private sector to flourish but you don't bully them into submission and that's what this guy is doing and it amazes me that the republican party is still lined up behind him because they used to believe in capitalism Yeah, we're living in an odd time where the, I'm finding liberals and conservatives in Canada finding common cause over very, I mean, the oddest things these days. And like, I guarantee you the three of us would come together and agree that I'm in complete support of the union doing everything it can to save every single job in Amherstburg against the sort of the Diageo's desire to move to move south of the border. and it's an odd time to be in politics in Canada as far as I see. Chris, we had problems with your audio before, so I'm going to give you the last word on Diageo.

Yeah, it's a sad, it's a sad story, Ben. You know, I didn't know the history of that plant, but reading the story this morning, you know, almost a century worth of existence in Amherstburg and the families and the generations that have gone in and over that plant, you know, bottling a product that we absolutely take for granted as Canadians with no idea. the history behind that plant and that factory. You know, the fact that those jobs are gone to set. Yeah, we're going to leave it there

and it's very, I wish you guys a great long weekend. We'll talk to you soon. Take care. Big Brother is back. If it gets hotter, the alliances get trickier, and the blindsides, brutal. Just a roller coaster of backstabbing and craziness. New house guests, new twists, same epic drama. Bro, I'm gunning for you.

You're my number one target. Who can you trust when everyone's watching? Game on, baby. Big Brother, all new Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays on Global. Stream on Stack TV.