The Ben Mulroney Show - Trump has a trade fit and what's NOT in the Stellantis/Canada contract ?

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

GUEST:  Rick Perkins / Former conservative MP GUEST: Daniel Lublin / partner at Whitten & Lublin 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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This balance is not working. And the naked gun. That was awesome. Now that's a mountain of entertainment. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Ben Mulroney show Monday, October 27th. It's a five-game series, ladies and gentlemen, with the Jays taking one and the Dodgers taking another in Toronto. The World Series has moved to Los Angeles, and it's effectively become a best-of-five series. Welcome back to the show, and last week, we talked about the bet, the traditional bets between the mayor of one city and the mayor of the other.

It's Olivia Chow and Karen Bass. And they actually had a very progressive vote, a debate, progressive bet, I should have said, where the two progressive mayors said that whoever loses has to cycle the number of runs in miles, or rather, Olivia Chow says she'll do it in miles, and Karen Bass has to do it in kilometers. That's how confident Olivia Chow is. It was a delightful back and forth between the two mayors.

I was here for it, very happy for it. But now we're going up a notch. Now we've gone up a notch to the governor and the premier. And Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, and Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, have their own bet and they let us all know on social media. Okay, Governor, you're on. If the Blue Jays win, I'll send you some of Ontario's finest maple syrup in a proper tin can the way it's meant to be enjoyed. The tariff might cost me a few extra bucks at the border

these days, but it'll be worth it for a Jay's win. That's a sweet offer premiere, but something tells me that syrup is staying north of the border when the Dodgers win. And when they do, I'll send you a bottle of California's championship-worthy wine. And hey, can you do me a favor? Think you can put it on the liquor store shelves? I don't think so, buddy. Talk to your friend in the Oval Office. Here's to a great world series and a terrible. free friendship between Ontario and California. Yeah, I love that. I don't think so. Talk to your buddy in the Oval Office. Yeah, Doug Ford has, first of all, that, it's a great video. It's a great bit. Let's take the politics

out of it. It's just a great video. They did a great job. You can say, think what you want about Newsom, Ford. It's a great video. I loved it. Um, but talk to your buddy in the Oval Office. Doug Ford has gotten under Donald Trump's skin. And we talked about that last week. few of you were not here for my analysis and my suggestion that on the 21st of October, the president saw the commercial that was put out there by the Ontario government using Ronald Reagan's own words, essentially against Donald Trump. And he had no problem with it on 21st. And on the 24th, boy, did he hate it.

Boy, did he hate it. And now he's doubling down. He's saying, we cheated. We cheated. and got caught. Let's listen to the President of the United States doubling down on his hate for the commercial that was put out there

by the Ontario government. Ronald Reagan loved tariffs and they said he didn't. And I guess it was AI or they cheated badly. Canada got caught cheating on a commercial. Can you believe it? Ronald Reagan did not love tariffs.

Ronald Reagan was the father of the free trade agreement in the United States. He signed. it as one of his last acts in office. He'd been talking about free trade and terror free trade across the continent as early as 1980. I'm not sticking my nose where it doesn't belong. I come from a proud family of free traders. And my dad, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Salinas in Mexico. They all believed in continental free trade. And you can say it as much as you want Donald Trump. It doesn't make your words true. Ronald Reagan used tariffs when he had to, not because he loved them.

You're both coming at tariffs from completely different perspectives. On one hand, you got a guy who was loath to use them, and I'm using that expression on purpose. One of the parts of the five-minute radio address by Ronald Reagan that was excised, that was not put in the commercial, was he referred to the power he was loathe to use. That would have actually reinforced Doug Ford's point. He took it out. So on one hand, you got a guy who uses it knowing he doesn't like it but knows he needs to use it

every now and then. And the other side is using him every time the wind blows and any time he feels it suits his purpose. So you both are coming at from two completely different perspectives. Just because he used him doesn't mean he liked using them. that with great power comes great responsibility. Yes, I know I'm quote in Spider-Man, but just because it comes from a comic,

don't make it not true. But the irony that he would suggest it was AI-generated. This from the man who posts AI memes more than any world leader in the history of the world is rich, rich, rich, rich. And in typical fashion, like I said, going back to his playbook, first identify a cheater,

then say that the game is rigged, and they're cheating and they're cheating and they're trying to cheat to get a particular end result and he started talking about the end result that he claimed we wanted which was to alter the position of the Supreme Court

because he knows he thinks he's going to lose so he's preparing for the day where he loses so he can then say Canada is the reason we lost what happens next what's the next phase of the playbook send out the sycophants send out the trained seals

send out the yes men send out the people who who will pair it back exactly what the Donald Trump said in different words here's Kevin Hassett the National Economic Council Director saying that Canada has been difficult

I think the frustration has built up over time I've been involved in some of these negotiations and the Canadians have been very difficult to negotiate with and you look at all the countries around the world that we've made deals with and the fact that we're now negotiating with go separately, reveals that it's not just about one ad, that there's frustration that's

built up. Yeah, he does go on. He refers to sort of echoes of the difficult nature of Trudeau-era negotiations. And so to me, it's like, well, which one is it? Is it the commercial or is it the negotiators? Because one is not the other. So I think you've got to pick your poison here. And to cut off negotiations because you don't like a commercial is the definition, in my opinion, of bad faith.

It just is. You don't like the – by the way, if there's such a problem with a foreign province, a foreign region, buying up commercial time and airing their commercials, then it should be illegal, right? But unless you're breaking a law, which I don't believe the Ontario government did, then it's not illegal. If you haven't broken the law, it's not illegal. I don't think I'm saying something that's a hot take here. It's pretty logical. Okay? So unless, and you can call it propaganda all you want, it's something you disagree with is not propaganda.

Words have to mean something. And we have to agree on what they mean. and because you disagree with the ad doesn't make it propaganda it's just something you disagree with and so it's very dangerous to say stuff like that let's oh here's scott besant uh who's the treasury secretary on meet the press why is the president setting trade policy based on a television ad he doesn't like uh well christin let's let's think about this this this is a kind of propaganda against u.s citizens you know it's it's siops why why why would the government of ontario i'm told that they've spent, they have spent, or we're planning to spend up to $75 million on these

ads to come across the U.S. border. So what, what was the purpose of that other than to sway public opinion? And, you know, it's some kind of propaganda that the premier of Ontario unilaterally launch. You can dish it, but you can't take it. I mean, come on, guys. Come on, guys. You call us the bad guy.

You call us cheaters. We're just reminding you what your demigod, Ronald Reagan, thinks about tariffs and that's too much for you? I mean, you guys bruise easy, man. Yeah, bruise easy. And like I said, just because you disagree with it, don't make it wrong. I wish we had time for more of this. But Mark Carney is in Malaysia, and I wish we had time to get to it.

He thinks the whole thing is funny. He's sort of chuckling at the whole thing. The truth is coming out about the Stalantis deal. not looking good for the liberals or the taxpayers. We're going to dig in next on the Ben Mulroney show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. We in Ontario and indeed anybody concerned with the health of the Canadian economy is still reeling from the news that Stalantis has decided to up and close one of their factories here in Ontario.

and decamp and completely move operations down to Illinois. And this happened knowing that the Canadian government had invested billions of dollars in Stalantis to make sure that this province and this country were attractive to bring them and keep them here. And now there is a push in Ottawa to open up the contract between Canada and Stalantis to understand what happened. You can't know if somebody broke the rules if you don't know what the rules are. Meaning, was this a well-written contract

that provided for protections for workers and job security and myriad other issues? Or was it a poorly written contract that allowed a company like Stalantis to take the billions of dollars that were given by the Canadian government and leave without any

repercussions or financial remuneration for the country, the province, and indeed the workers affected by this shuddering of the factory. And until people in Ottawa are allowed to speak openly about it, we're left to speculate unless we can find somebody who has actually read the unredacted contracts and can at least to a certain extent speak to what is either in them or what is not in them. So please enter a solution to that problem, good friend of the show, Rick Perkins, former conservative MP. Rick, thanks so much for joining us today.

Great summary, Ben. Nice to be here. Every now and then, every now and then I nail it, Rick. Okay, so talk to me about when you read these contracts. Yeah, I read them about a year and a half ago. So as soon as the deals were signed, and I'll make it clear, these are the contracts on the EV battery assembly. places for Volkswagen and Stalantis, not the Brampton plant, which was a different project. But one could surmise that, you know, the team that wrote one contract probably had something to do with the other.

So there may be some parallels there, but let's continue. And in the case of both battery factories, there were two contracts with each signed. And one is a contract to help pay for the construction of the facility from a fund called the Strategic Innovation Fund of the industry department. And then the second contract is the production subsidy contract, every battery that gets produced once in production gets a subsidy from the taxpayers. So the funding of the Brampton auto assembly plant, the Jeep and all of that, they would have been funded as well out of the Strategic Innovation Fund.

So these are pretty much cut and paste type contracts. The $15 billion that everyone here is about with and then another $13, $14 billion with Volkswagen for the EV batteries, those production subsidies are a certain amount of those things that are public. But I demanded in both the industry committee and the government operations committee, let these be public starting about two years ago. The government refused. And in a minority government, we needed for my motion opposition support. So in the last parliament, that meant I needed to get block and NDP support, since the government wouldn't support it. So the compromise we did was that members of the industry committee could, on a specific date,

spend some time going over the unredacted contracts in camera, meaning we can see it and then determine what we want to do from there, but the contracts wouldn't be public. Last week, I think it was last week in the Government Operations Committee where I was doing this, we moved a motion, and of course the makeup of the committee is different now because NDP don't have a seat, and they made a motion to get the unredacted contracts

to see in the committee itself, and then they will debate what gets internally. they will debate what it's made public. In my case, there was none of it that was allowed to be public. However, there are large amounts of it that either the minister of the day, Minister Champagne, who's now the finance minister, spoke about publicly, and parts of it mirror what's called the Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden Act.

So this is where they were competing and saying we have to match these subsidies. So I can talk about those. I can also talk about what's not in the contract. Okay. So, you know what, I'm rather than try to try to, try to be overly too cute by half here. I'm just going to open up a very broad question to you and ask you, what's not in these contracts that, you know,

I think a lot of us are hoping the God is in them. Well, there were a couple of things that you would expect a $15 billion contract to have. It's only 26 pages. One of them would be obviously... I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've got to ask. I need to stop you.

The contract is 26 pages? Yeah, it's only 26 pages. My employment contract, it comes in at around 20. And so you're telling me that a multi-billion-dollar contract coming in at 20-s, so already I know there's a bunch of stuff in there that I would be expecting that it isn't because there's no way. So 26 pages. Continue.

So it's not tough to remember what was in it. And I read it a couple of times. So number one, you expect job guarantees. And there is wording in there in the case. of up to 2,500 jobs, in the case of Volkswagen up to 1,800 permanent after the construction stuff. The problem is there are no words in there saying they have to hire Canadians or that they have to be unionized jobs.

So neither are in there. And the result of that was we saw a lot of job postings by Scalantus a year ago for jobs, permanent jobs there, that were not specialized, forklift operating. secretaries that required the knowledge of Korean in order to get the job. So most of that hiring being done was basically being what we called at the time foreign replacement workers. They were hiring people from Korea. I got to, wait, I've got to ask, why Korean?

Because Stalantis and LG, sorry, Stalantis, LG is their partner in it. Okay. And LG is Korean. So it costs $5 billion to build this plant. And so that's the first thing. You would expect the guarantees would be Canadian jobs and in the case of auto worker jobs, unionized Canadian jobs, and neither of the case.

The second thing is you would expect there to be a cancellation clause, right? Something changes, your business changes, the world changes. There are no cancellation clauses in this. So there's no penalty for just up and leaving saying, we're done, the world has changed, and we're changing with it, so we'll see it when we see you. There's nothing in there that says, okay, well, if you do that, UOSX. Right, because the $15 billion is tied to producing batteries if you don't produce batteries and you don't get the subsidy.

But there is, third thing is you would think there would be a link to all of the other Stalantis productions. If we're going to give you the largest subsidy in Canadian history of a business, but somehow you would say, well, you've got to maintain an automobile assembly business here in Canada of a certain level. And none of the other Stalantus operations in Canada were mentioned, and therefore they can do whatever they want in removing those and yet still get the subsidy here. Remember, Stalantis' goal with this plant was to produce, assemble Chinese parts to an EV battery in Windsor that would go into Stalantis' EV vehicles in Canada. Well, they're not producing EV vehicles in Canada anymore, so the batteries are producing there won't be going into any car made in Canada. connection. The final thing that you would expect from this would be that it actually

connects that these actually have to go into a car. There is no requirement for that. And the reason that's disturbing is because the Inflation Reduction Act that this mirrors has a subsidy, a declining subsidy. So when the plant's open, which it is now, in the case of Windsor, through 2029, every battery that's produced at that plant, assembled at that plant, is 100% subsidized by committing taxpayers. Yeah. And then in 2030, it's 75%. Right. Then in 2031, it's 50%, 2032, 25%.

And then 0% 20333. So think of that. Every battery that's going out there now in a market where EVs basically are declining dramatically. We're subsidized. are being subsidized. So if you're Stalantis and you've got to pay off $15 billion, $5 billion that you put into building this plant, and you've got the Canadian taxpayer paying 100% of the cost,

the battery through now through 2029, guess what you're going to do, produce batteries, whether they're needed any or not. Rick, I wish we could keep going. I'm really, really sorry, but you've really opened our eyes to a lot, and I'm sure we're going to be talking about this for days to come. I wish you all the very best, my friend. Thank you so much.

You too. Take care. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. There are a few buckets that we like to fill on this show fairly regularly. And one of them is the bucket asking ourselves, what is our world going to look like as AI completely turns over and changes industries completely and totally. And one of those that we're looking at today is the legal industry. What role does AI have to play in the world of lawyers and the criminal justice system? And is there a world where AI can partially or completely replace lawyers?

I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere, but that's not what we're doing today. So joining us to discuss this is Daniel Lublin. He's a partner at Witten in Lublin. Thank you so much for being here, Daniel. Thank you so much for having me. So listen, I'm sure that one could train an AI model to specifically work exclusively on legal affairs, meaning you wouldn't be able to ask it what the recipe for a macchiato at Starbucks would be. But if you wanted it to search LexisNexis and if you wanted it to do all of your legal research leading up to a court case, I'm sure we could get there. but that doesn't necessarily do anything for the longevity of the legal career because you

would you'd be depriving an entire generation of kids out of law school of that formative years in the early days of their legal career well that's true so then the tools already exist in the legal profession for the use of AI like I've already seen the prototypes where tools exist to synthesize large swaths of data and prepare them in a way in which a lawyer would take it and utilize it in working with clients or the courts. Give me an example, Dan. Give me an example of what that could mean for you today and what the work was like prior

to. So right now, I can utilize AI to help me take a lot of information coming from different places and to put it into clear, easy to understand. and interpret memorandums that I could provide to clients. It allows me to take and look at a lot of documents and facts in a case coming from different places and to synthesize it and put it into one simple to use outline that I can use for myself. It will become very adept at reading transcripts and summarizing them.

These are the positive uses of AI, but I have more concerns about. negative uses. Okay, so let's talk about the negative uses, and then I want to double back and really talk about how this is going to impact, like, you're an established lawyer, but what's going to happen to people early in their careers or people who are deciding

today that they may want to get into the legal profession? So let's talk about the negative impacts. The main problem I see is that general public's use of AI in place of a lawyer. I mean, let's face it, lots of people don't want to pay expensive rates for lawyers' times, just to understand if they have a case or not.

But that is precisely what the main objective of a lawyer should be when an individual comes to them to look at their fact pattern. The problem, Ben, is that the general public generally feels extremely emboldened when using AI in legal disputes before they've met with a lawyer, and that's because there are a few checks and balances to ensure that the information they are reading is accurate, or probably more importantly that they're interpreting it in the intended matter. Right.

Intended manner. As we know, as we know, the answers that the AI gives you is based on how you tune it. It's really a self-diagnosis and somewhat of an echo chamber. And I've used it many times where I've received somewhat different information when asking the same question, maybe just on different days. So I have lots of people that walk into my office. And almost everybody feels, and I do workplace law and workplace disputes, and it feels like everybody is already using AI,

and I mean everybody in the general public, to assess their dispute before they even come in. They all feel as if their employer has acted terribly, as if there's some bad faith, as if their cases worth millions of dollars, as significant punitive damages. And the problem is that many of them don't have the restraint. So this emboldens people. It actually makes my life more difficult sometimes.

Well, and, you know, I've got to say, say that people ask the question, is there a world where as AI improves and it will, it's going to be a march towards improvement forever, right? Like they always say AI will never be as bad as it is today, meaning it's always getting better. And as good as it is today, it'll be better tomorrow. But the one thing I can't get around and get over, Daniel, is there will never be a substitute for the human lawyer because of the work that you've put in to your career.

because the appreciation of the skill required and probably more importantly for the liability that you face if you get it wrong. There are no stakes for AI. The stakes are exceptionally high with every decision that a lawyer makes because they know that if they run a foul of the rules

that they hold themselves too, they could find themselves on the outside of the legal profession forever. And it's those stakes. It's that self-preservation. It's that desire for excellence that AI will never have is why we are more prone to trusting our lawyer than we would a computer program that knows everything

that whether they get it right or wrong, it'll still be their moral. Well, there are two elements to that. The first is that all lawyers are regulated by professional governing bodies, meaning lawyers have to be held to particularly high standards of ethical and moral compliance with codes of conduct. And there's a complaint mechanism against a lawyer when that lawyer, when that lawyer runs afoul of the regulatory body's rules. That's number one. And courts also can hold lawyers accountable

when they run afoul of the rules, including there are several cases we've seen where lawyers have used AI hallucinations in court and have been chastised for doing so. The second thing, which is ultimately what is probably the most important item of what you just said, is that you or when I say you, the general public, can sue a lawyer

for providing negligent or faulty advice, and all lawyers have to carry mandatory insurance coverage, which means even if a lawyer can't afford to indemnify the lawsuit, there's a mandatory insurer there who will, whereas with AI it's very clear that nobody is responsible. So if you're using AI to provide you with legal advice and you make a significant mistake, like when you should resign, where you think there's an alleged constructive dismissal

or is something harassment or something discrimination, and you fumble that based on AI, you have nobody else to blame, whereas if a lawyer gives you misleading or negligent advice, you have remedies against that lawyer. So probably the most important thing I'll say is that what I've learned in my more than 20 years of experience is probably the most important advice sometimes I give people

is when to exercise restraint, as opposed to when to go ahead with something. and AI always seems to give people this emboldened feeling as if they should take an action when sometimes the best advice and the best strategy is when not to take a step. Yeah. Daniel, in the last about minute that we have left, I'd love to go back to what we were saying before. How do we incorporate AI that is becoming an increasingly valid aid to lawyers? How do we fold that in to the ecosystem that it feels like they will be, AI will be horning in on the necessary early work that young lawyers, and summer students participate in,

they cut their teeth on, that's how they learn the ropes. What do we do there? Because it feels like AI could replace a lot of that work. So AI will definitely and has likely already replaced a lot of administrative tasks that lawyers and legal assistance and paralegals will do. It's not going to replace them all together.

But the modern lawyer, and I'm not even talking about down the road, I mean, I think it's here. But the modern lawyer will need to be, experienced in utilizing the technology to speed through things that were taking too much time before. Like when I was growing up in this profession, I would have to read a transcript from left to right, you know, maybe a thousand or two thousand page transcript that would take days on end. I would have to research legal cases and read that case from front to back to find that little nugget of information that I was looking for. Now if you are well-trained

and if lawyers or young lawyers coming into the profession are well trained on the use of technology it will make them faster and it level the playing field yeah level the playing field Daniel Lublin

we're going to have to leave it there partner at Witten and Lublin we appreciate it I hope you come back soon thanks so much anytime A kidnapped child whispers dark secrets from his past in a language he no longer understands. But a lost cassette will reveal the ugly truth.

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