The Ben Mulroney Show - Trump dumps more tariffs on Canada, and a heartwarming story about a message in a bottle

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

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Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Welcome to the Ben Mulrooney Show on this Friday, July 11th. Thank you so much for making it to the end of the week with us and every day you hope to you so much for making it to the end of the week with us and every day you hope to God that we can make it to the end of the week with clarity and calm. But the orange agent of chaos, Donald Trump, has lobbed another grenade into the lives

of so many business people in this country, so many small businesses, so many big businesses, so many people intent on growing this economy and building a new relationship with the Americans. He sent an open letter to our Prime Minister levying all sorts of accusations and what he was going to do to deal with his perceived grievances in the form of a 35% tariff on the Canadian economy. And before we jump into everything, the latest update on that is our global national bureau in Washington touched base with the White House and a

spokesperson there for clarification on this threat. They confirmed to him that they would not be put on anything that was USMCA compliant. Energy and Potash will also stay tariff to 10% and won't be bumped to 35%. Not only that, and I think this is very important, the official told him that no paper had been drafted. No final decisions have been made by the president. So at this point, it's a tweet. That's all it is.

It is the musing of a man who doesn't have, in a lot of meaningful ways, doesn't have an impulse control, period. Doesn't have impulse control. He thinks something, tweets it, causes chaos, and then it's up to other people to clarify and clean it up. But look, I don't think any of us knew the extent to which he would be behaving in such an irrational way on a nearly daily basis. And I don't think any of us, at least people that I know, appreciated that he would have some,

Canada would stick in his in his craw the way it is. He looks at us as enemy number one. And yet, I mean, he says on one hand, we hold all the cards, we're in complete control. Then explain to us how you believe we have you over a barrel and have for years. Explain that to me. But I didn't run for prime minister. I didn't offer myself up as the solution to the problem. I didn't get elected based on the belief that I sold to the Canadian people that I'm the guy to meet the moment that person is Mark Carney He said well, he said as much and let's listen Be positive Convince Canadians that we're the right ones to manage them through this crisis. Look I am if there's not a crisis

You wouldn't be seen. I am most useful. I am honest. I'm most useful in credit. I'm really I'm I'm not that good in peacetime Don't tell anyone because I'm not exactly I'll be yeah you let me know when it's 1945 but I'll be going up but this is yeah yeah yeah yeah, yeah. It's 38. You know what it is? It's 19, yeah, it's 1938. And the question is, do you appease these guys? Never. Never, never. Exactly, you stand up. You stand up.

That's what gets you through it. The comparisons to Churchill, they may be apt. You're not supposed to make them yourself. If somebody makes it and somebody chants, you're Churchill, you'd say, that will be for history to decide. You, you leaned in man. You leaned in. You said, yep, yep. And, and, and he essentially said that the choice is between Canada picking Churchill or Neville Chamberlain, the guy who appeased Hitler, and the implication is that Pierre Poliev would be that guy, or Churchill, who said that we were gonna fight them

in the air and on the beaches and everywhere. And I'm just trying to, I want to move forward in a productive way. I want to get to a place where we're not talking about these squabbles, but the squabbles are the problem right now because they are causing chaos. As I've said before, companies in Canada need certainty so that they can plan six months, a year, three years down the line, so they can make the investments that they need to make in

order to grow their business and by extension grow the economy. And if you are not in a position to provide that, even though you said you were the only guy who could do it, you don't then get to throw up your hands and say, well, this is who he is. Okay. If that's who he is, then you're saying you're not the guy. You're saying no one is the guy and you sold us a bill of goods sir. I this is not me grinding an axe. I am just following things to their logical conclusion. If you say x then by extension y has to be true. You said you're the guy and now you're saying now the argument would be oh well that he

would have done this with anyone. Okay that he would have done this with anyone. Okay, if he would have done this with anyone, then why did you create the stark contrast between Chamberlain and Churchill? Because you did that, sir. Now, Mark Carney's tweet in response was, oh, because apparently fentanyl is still an issue. That was in this letter. He just decided fentanyl is still an issue. That was in this letter.

You just decide fentanyl was still an issue. Never mind the fact that we have been spending billions of dollars to beef up our border, to make sure that the one kilo of fentanyl that went through last year doesn't go through next year. We are building Canada strong. The federal government, provinces and territories are making significant progress in building one Canadian economy. We are poised to build a series of major new projects in the national interest.

We are strengthening our trading partnerships throughout the world. Great. Okay. I need the rubber to meet the road here, man. The chaos that we are dealing with every day with this. I don't want to be disrespectful to Donald Trump, but he's disrespectful for my country. He's a petulant child, but nothing satisfies him. He's having a temper tantrum in Walmart.

And it doesn't matter what the parents give him and say, oh, here's some licorice. Oh, here's some Jolly Ranchers. No, no, no, no, it doesn't matter. He's not getting what he wants. And he is, and he is, and it's a hissy fit. It's a month's long hissy fit. You're either the most powerful guy in the world

with all the cards or you're over a barrel. You can't be one thing on one day and another on the other. And I get it, Mark Carney has a big problem on his hands. But he asked for the, he said, not only will I deal with it, I am the solution, I am the answer. At some point, sir, can we have a little clarity because we have seen you claim elbows up. We have seen you flatter him.

We have seen you be fawning. We have seen you call him transformational. We have seen you capitulate on getting rid of the digital sales tax, which for years we were told was essential. It was the right thing to do, that's gone. We've seen you say that you're gonna commit to this insane golden dome that I promise you,

had my father said he was gonna do, the Toronto Sun, the Toronto Star would have had his head on a spike. They would have said, look at you, look, my dad was called a bootlicker for singing when Irish eyes are smiling on St. Patrick's day with the prime minister, with the president of the United States. You said you're gonna get engaged

in this nonsensical golden dome. You also did the right thing by doing what should have been done generations ago and committing Canada to 2% of our GDP to the military with a promise to get to us to 5%. You've added billions of dollars to our border security and our Arctic sovereignty. You've done everything this guy wants.

I have not seen elbow, I fricking hate elbows up. I wish that expression had never been existed, but it exists, so I'm gonna use it. You have demonstrated a willingness to do anything at any point to placate this man, and it hasn't worked. That's not Churchillian. It's not. And at some point, accountability,

we need an answer to this, sir. What are we doing here? We're following the bouncing ball and it's going everywhere. That's not a plan. It's not a plan. I don't think I am being overly harsh and I don't think I'm being overly critical. You sold us on a vision of calm, of steady,

of getting us to a better place. And this guy is not playing ball. He's not playing ball. And there are a lot of people out there who are gonna make allowances for you and who are gonna say that anything you do, anything you do, whether it's contradictory to the last thing you did or not,

is proof that what you're doing is working. I'm not gonna be one of those guys. I am going to celebrate you when you do something right and I'm gonna call you out when you do the opposite of what you said you were going to do. And I think we're living in that moment right now. We need something different to happen here. My hope, my hope is this makes us go

from maybe possibly a pipeline to absolutely certainly multiple pipelines. If he's not going to help us, we're going to build our own economy right now. Don't go anywhere more on The Ben Mulroney show coming up. There was paper in it and we sort of said, it's a message in a bottle. In a way joking really, I suppose. Now, Gay and her husband didn't open the bottle. Instead, she took it to a meeting Monday night of a local conservation group.

They had to break the bottle to get to the message. So September 14, 2012, Anita and Brad's day trip to Belle Island. The note was short and simple. Somewhere, some people named Anita and Brad wrote 13 years ago, quote, Today we enjoyed dinner, this bottle of wine and each other on the edge of the island. This is the Ben Mulrooney show. Well, that is sounds like the beginning of a movie. And thank you to Mike Armstrong of Global National News for sharing that story with the world. A message in a bottle is what so many of

us have dreamt of recovering and discovering. And then it can open a whole new adventure, and it can lead to so many new surprises in life. And this is a real story, where Kate Gay and her husband were walking along the beach in southern Ireland when they found this bottle. But let's go to the person who put the note, the message in that bottle in Newfoundland herself, please welcome to the show Anita Squires.

Anita, thank you so much for joining us. Hi, thanks for having me. Anita, talk to us about that day. Talk to us about the day that seems in that those few short sentences sounded like a pretty beautiful day. Yeah, you know what? It was a really beautiful day. And it's kind of like become a bigger thing now. But for us, it was just like a special day. We, we both had the day off from work. So we, yeah, we just took a little ferry ride over to Belle Island, which is just,

you know, 15 minutes away from where we live. And we did a little touring around and we decided we'd have some lunch. So we picked up some things for a picnic, some snacks, and this bottle of wine. And we went up to the side of the cliff and we had a nice picnic. And we decided, wouldn't it be kind of like cute romantic? We'd write a little note.

So we found a piece of paper in the car and wrote a note and put it in the bottle. And we, yeah, Brad threw it off the edge of a very rocky, sheer high cliff. And we didn't think that that would ever survive, let alone make it across the way and be found. It's been quite an experience. So talk to me about that moment where you realized the bottle did find its way to a destination and to somebody who picked it up and opened it.

I know, can you believe we were found it was wild. It came through Facebook, they they tried the number that we put on there. But it was Brad's parents landline actually in their own holiday, so it didn't get them anywhere. And yeah, so they posted on their Facebook page and the story was shared to us and our phones were beeping and we didn't know what was going on. We were really happy that it was a good news outcome and not something bad on our phones.

Yeah. Yeah. And we, yeah, I sent a message to their conservation group and we were chatting that night and we just like, we both couldn't believe, they thought it was so fun that they found it and we couldn't believe that we were part of it. So the bottle the bottle Anita traveled 3200 kilometers when was the last time you traveled 3200 kilometers? Well that that well that route from Ireland

to Newfoundland is kind of notoriously not good for travel. Yeah. When you heard about it, did it bring you back to that day? Yeah, of course it did. And we remember that day. We've been over to Belle Island a few times, Brian and his family over there, but it is just a magical place. It's a rock in the middle of the Atlantic. It's so beautiful. And we reminisced about being young and we're still in love. Obviously, we're still married. We have so beautiful. And we kind of reminisced about like, you know, being young,

and we're still in love. Obviously, we're still married, we have a family, but we were like, it was the first year we were together. And it was just, it's been nice to like, think back about our relationship and try and find some old pictures from around that time. I'm, I'm, I'm somebody who helps tell people stories. I very much like the idea of storytelling. And this story has a tourism campaign written all over it. But it meant we're all on board for it. Newfoundland and Labrador is so good at selling themselves not just to Canadians, but around the world. And the some of the some of their tourism campaigns are some of the best I've ever seen. But

this one about your story and that that Belle Island and the connection to Ireland, it writes itself. I really, really hope that whoever, that there's somebody from the tourism office who's listening to this, I'm sure they know the story already, but this writes itself. You do not have to be an expert to appreciate

that there is romance and adventure and beauty and joy in this story. And it's all tied up in Newfoundland. Yeah, it's beautiful. And like Brad and I have been to Ireland and like, you know, my heritage comes from Ireland, not far from where the bottle was found. So it's just like, it does just feel like

it couldn't have worked out better. The fact that these people who are doing this conservation work are the people that found it. Like it's just, it is a beautiful story. But Anita, you've got this connection to Ireland already. Do you feel that it has deepened because of this? Do you feel that, I mean, have you made, have you made friendships or relationships with anybody on the other side of this equation? Yeah, well, we've been messaging back and forth with Martha. She's the one that's writing us back from the conservation group. And you know, she when we had sent that message initially, we said, well, I'm off work, like I worked a 16 hour shift and emerged the next day and was trying to like

manage all these conversations. And we said, well, we'll pop over to Belle Island on my day off. And we'll just have a chat the two of us. And we haven't even gotten to that because it's become such a big story. So yes, we're definitely gonna keep in touch and have a chat and we'll go over to Belle Island and show them where we threw it. And yeah, we really hope to keep in touch with them. It's our 10 year wedding anniversary in September next year.

And it's also their 10 year anniversary for when they started their conservation project. So we're, yeah, we're gonna make that happen for sure. The campaign keeps getting better. I know it's really beautiful. No, I'm sorry. This is Brad. There's a direct flight from St. John's to Dublin. So let's get WestJet involved in this as well. We'll get WestJet involved. You hear that WestJet? But I got to okay, I'm'm glad I got both of you here because look, you were in love at the time, you're still together,

your 10-year wedding anniversary comes up. And on this show, I get really fired up about all sorts of political stuff. But the opposite is also true. I am completely enraptured with these stories of human beauty. And talk to me about the moment where like you got the two of you got to sit down together and remember that moment. Did it deepen the connection that the two of you have with each other?

Yeah, it's been really nice. Like we were talking to the kids about it because people keep asking, like, what do they think about it? And like, they kind of just are like yeah it's cool but for them it's like you know we love each other we show each other we love each other every day and this is just like other people know that now it's like a nice little carry on top of our of our story but yeah it's been nice to like look back and reminisce like our lives have changed so much but But everything's just getting bigger and better for us. What about that bottle of wine? Do you remember though, you said it was a great bottle of wine? What did you remember what kind of wine it was? Yeah, it's so funny, because we love wine. But we

were young then and like we did our honeymoon, we went to Napa. And we had wine and we had kind of like a similar day, we just got some wine and cheese and bread and had like a nice little picnic. It's not a one-off that we've done this kind of just impromptu date. So yeah, we were thinking maybe our love story has gotten bigger and so have our taste in wine. I think that was a screw top Moscato.

Oh my god. OK. Maybe we don't fold them into the story. Maybe we alter the story a little bit. We get you guys a we don't fold them into the story. Maybe we alter the story a little bit. We get you guys a better bottle of wine for the next time. This is- We like Malbec now.

Yeah. We make our own wine now and we like Malbec. So maybe we said we do a Maherese Malbec on our next bath. You make your own wine? Yes. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Well, either. Yeah, you got to send them a bottle over in Ireland. Maybe we can maybe we

can do a little bilateral trade here and start up a little cottage industry for the both of you. Yeah, we know no tariffs. Simple exchange. Yeah. But let me tell you on this Friday with all the serious news that we have with all the crises that we're dealing with as a country, I just want to thank the two of you for giving me personally and the audience of this show such a wonderful, pure,

joyous, simple love story that we can all get behind. It means so much that you would spend a little bit of your time with us and share your feelings around it. And please, as this story gets updated, especially if tourism of Newfoundland Labrador gets in touch, we want to hear about it because I genuinely think if they want to get bodies onto the rock, they got to tell this story.

Yeah, good little plug there. Thanks for that. Hey guys, thank you so much. All the best and happy 10th wedding anniversary coming up. Thank you so much. trend's number one compact SUV for the third year in a row. Why? Exceptional capability, value and safety that beat all others to become Motor Trend's number one compact SUV. Right now, finance a new Rogue from just 0% for up to 60 months. That's a finance offer that's better than other Japanese and Korean competitor SUVs. Hurry into your local dealer and drive away in the award-winning Nissan

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