The Ben Mulroney Show - Trump hockey blowback/LNG from Australia??/Ramadan Mcd's/EV cutbacks

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

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This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Searchlight Pictures presents in the blink of an eye on Hulu on Disney Plus, a sweeping science fiction drama spanning the Stone Age, the present day, and the distant future,

about the essence of what it means to be human, regardless of our place in history. The film is directed by, Oscar-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton and stars Rashida Jones, Kate McKinnon, and David Diggs. Stream in the blink of an eye, February 27, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. Sign up at Disneyplus.com. In an alternate reality, the Canadian men's Olympic hockey team, as well as the Canadian women's Olympic hockey team, would have taken home gold. And what would have happened was Mark Carney, our prime minister, would have called them to celebrate them.

They would have accepted his kind words. There may have been some sort of show of support in Ottawa at some point. Perhaps they would have shown up at question period. And everyone would have, they've got a round of applause. And perhaps there would have been some sort of ceremony or parade. That's the world we wanted to live in. Instead, sadly, the Americans took gold on both fronts. And on the day that, at the moments afterwards,

when the men were celebrating in the locker room, drinking as you do after a victory. It happens in every sport. Champagne and beer flowing, really celebrating with their teammates, having achieved something that no men's hockey team had achieved in the Olympics since 1980. The president called,

the president called Cash Patelah had the FBI was there. Okay. And he was part, he was living his best life. Let's be honest. the day he wasn't getting invited into locker rooms and he wasn't celebrating with the jocks. And so he was living his best life. He put the president on speakerphone. And the president made an off-color joke about the women's team and these men who were high on endorphins and probably had a little alcohol in their blood, kind of laughed along with the president. And it was a joke

about the women's team. And I wouldn't have made the joke. But I can't say, honestly, that if I had heard the joke by the president in that moment, I wouldn't have, you know, went along to get along, so to speak. And that's it. Then the men were invited to the state of the union address, and they showed up. The women were invited, and they turned him down. And as far as I'm concerned, That's it. I don't know that there's much more to report. However, there is a counterpoint to how I see things. Let's listen to this woman's take on what I just told you. I do love that we all love teated rivalry.

I do think it did a little bit of damage because I think that we all kind of, like maybe collectively forgot that like hockey is one of the most, if not the most conservative sports with the most conservative fan base. Like, this isn't anything new. I would say it's comparable to golf or lacrosse, but like, here's the thing. Okay. Hockey, I don't know if you guys have seen, like, the USA national team. Everybody's white.

Everybody on the team is white. Everybody affiliated with the team is white. All the coaches are white. Like, there is not a lot of people of color in that space. And, like, a huge draw to hockey is it's violent. Like, you are encouraged to be violent. Like, the fans love to watch the violence. The players love to enact violence.

Like, what type of. ideology do you think a white man that comes from insane amounts of wealth for his entire life that like has these violent tendencies what type of ideology do you think that they lean towards like like obviously they were on the phone with trump making fun of the women's team because that's what violent rich white men do wow wow you got a lot out of a joke like wow um you ma'am are a racist. You are. You looked at people you don't know

and just made these broad, negative assumptions about them. You're a terrible, terrible racist. And you should be called that by the people who know you best. I don't know you. I'll say it on this show. But people know your name.

And the people who know your name should say to your face, hey, name, you're a racist. You also don't know anything about hockey. I don't know a ton of hockey. So I would never, ever plumb the depths of analysis the way you just did.

What a hot, terrible, steaming pile of take. That was awful. I'm sorry, these people have been rich their whole lives. Why? Because they're white?

Most hockey players that I know did not start out rich. They had parents who sacrificed for them because it was a sport that mattered to them. Most players who achieve that level of success do so because

they mine the best of sport. They learn to be leaders. They learn to work as a team. They learn discipline. Most players do not get to that level by turning to the dark side of sport. Yes, there's dark sides to everything. Sport is no different.

It's a reflection of society. And okay, so they're all white. You're going to do the NFL now? That's what, 75% black? Oh, it's more than that. You can do the NBA? And I'm sorry. What do you know about the history and the culture of hockey to compare it to golf?

What do you know about golf? You're a, you're not only a racist, you're uninformed on everything. And that's, you're the worst kind of racist. A fabulous who conflates. You're a terrible, terrible, terrible racist. And the fact is, the only thing you know about hockey, is a cable TV show, a heated rivalry. That's your only basis for any of this.

And you don't like that they laughed at a joke. You know, if the president makes a joke, I think the polite thing is to laugh, so don't make a big deal out of it. I mean, you're a terrible person. You're a terrible person. Oh, yeah. So roughly 55% of current NFL players are black or African American,

and nearly 75% of NBA players. Yeah, so do that. Do those. If you're going to do one, do the others. Besmirch all the, you know, if you're going to be a racist, just go full racist and be racist about everybody. Yeah, it's the fact is, as I said, and I said, Brad Smith, who's a host on this radio station at 640 Toronto,

who was a former athlete, said he does not agree with Mark Carney on most things. but if he had been representing his country at the highest level and the leader of that country reached out to congratulate him for what he did for the country, he would show up and shake that Prime Minister's hand and beam with pride and tell that story for the rest of his life. But you, uninformed racist, are so consumed by the identity politics that have been governing your pathetic life for so long that you can't see any of that. You can't see the beauty in what they did. You can't see the pride that you should be taking what they did.

All you see is white men bad. White man bad. 14% of the U.S. population identifies as black or African American. Go after all of them. Go after them. I dare you. I dare you. But you won't.

You won't. Because it's okay. It's okay to say those terrible things about those men who did something great for their nation. Very easy to do. Lazy. It's pathetic. Meanwhile, Austin Matthews,

he was the captain of the team, wasn't he? He's captain the Olympic team and he's the captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs. He's American. He showed up. He did his wave

at the state of the union and then he left. Probably because he knew that people like you existed. Probably because he knew that the inve and the misinformation and the misguided racism of people like you is out there. And yeah, I'm making a big deal about racism towards

white guys. Why? Because you made it a big deal. I don't sit around all day feeling persecuted by literally witness people being racist towards these guys who did nothing but become heroes to the people who love their sport. And you crapped all over all of it. Let's listen to Austin Matthews described his DC trip. It's an honor. So it was it was pretty neat to go there and see everything and just kind of get to share that experience with everybody. You know, to me, I don't like to get political or get into that kind of stuff. I mean, like I said, we're proud Americans. And, you know, winning a gold medal, it's been 46 years since the men's ice hockey team has done that.

So, I mean, the team that wins the Stanley Cup every year accepts the White House invitation to go. So, I mean, I just think it's something that you do, you know, because we are proud Americans and whatever your political beliefs may be. I mean, hopefully something like this will, you know, hopefully bring more unity to the country and stuff like that. but I mean, for us, we believe it's a great honor no matter who's in office. As an aside, if he hate Trump so much, consider this possibility. Will you run again? I haven't decided.

You're still thinking about it. I might. Yeah. That's what I've been saying. That's what I closed the book and I'm like, oh, she wants to. She's just thinking about it, about it if that was my impression. Oh, Kamala. Oh, Kamala, we can dream, can we? Anyway, congratulations to the Olympic team.

You deserve everything you got. You deserve a lot of stuff you didn't. Shame on these people. Well, here's an interesting headline. Australia ships LNG, 25,000 kilometers to eastern Canada amid Asian slump. So there is, Eastern Canada, is set to receive its first Australian shipment of the fuel on the Moran gas hector, which is a huge ship on Thursday. That's according to ship tracking data.

And it's a long journey, 25,750 kilometers to reach its final destination. And this is interesting. I pulled up Brett Wilson's Twitter. And he, Brett Wilson is the former Dragon's Den, one of the OGs on Dragons Den. And he points out, leaves Australia, goes, around South America, up the coast of South America, all the way to eastern Canada. And he points out, what the F? Eastern Canada needs natural gas.

Sure wish they had asked Western Canada maybe build a pipeline. And so, you know, to get LNG from Australia to Eastern Canada, here are a couple of things you need to do. You need to produce and process the gas. You need to liquefy it. to minus 162 degrees Celsius. This is very energy sensitive. You have to ship it, as I said, 25,750 kilometers in a tanker around South America.

And then once it gets to its destination, you have to regassify it. Gosh, I wish there was something we could do to understand the carbon footprint of what I just described. It's time to do math. Grab a snack, grab a cat. It's time to do math. Okay, so let's do a little math. Total emissions for the trip. About 77,000 tons of CO2.

That's how much CO2 was emitted on this giant, enormous tankers trip. 25,750 kilometers. That's roughly, let's look at cars. That's like the yearly emissions. of 1,700 gasoline-powered cars. Compare that to homes. It's roughly the annual emissions from about 1,800 average homes energy use.

And now let's compare it to flights. It's similar to around 4,500, 4,500 round trips between North America and Europe for a single passenger. However, there's a bonus. Because it's LNG, there's also something called methane slip. And is when unburned methane from engines and systems have to be taken into account. Methane has a much higher warming effect than CO2.

So total climate impact of CO2 and methane can be significantly higher than the CO2 number alone, often 10% more, depending on the engine technology and the controls. and it begs the question, well, why no LNG pipeline in Canada? Don't we know why? Yeah, well, there was the energy east cancellation. TransCanada's energy east pipeline, which was originally oil, later considered maybe the pivot to natural gas. It was canceled in 2017, and it was the only realistic corridor that could have been

repurposed for LNG exports from the East Coast. Isn't this a doozy? It's a dozy. We've seen this before. We've seen the arguments that, you know, Canadian natural gas had we had that pipeline to the east, we could have supplanted Russia's, Germany's need for Russian LNG. They're stranglehold on certain German, on certain European countries. We could have been that savior, right?

We could have been. And look, it's about. promoting soft power, right? It's about taking our values and exporting them by way of trade. We could have, Canadian values would have been all over that LNG, pushing back against Russian autocracy. That could have happened. But no, no, no, there's no business case for that. Let me ask you a question. Just picture in your head, Daniel Smith in her office when she reads this headline. Yeah. What's her reaction? She's chuckling. I think she's chucking. I think she's chuckling. Or she's slapping her, like, palms in the face. And the other one, David Eby,

Premier of BC. Well, David Eby is, uh, I don't, look, David, David Eby's got a lot on his plate right now. I think, I think somebody came in with his headlight, he's like, not today, junior. That's pretty good. I like that. But I, look, this is, this is that, the, the, the, hypocrisy and the, sort of the, sort of the, the, sort of the militant environmentalists. Like, So this natural gas is coming our way? Think about the carbon footprint of this LNG and ask yourself, what would the carbon footprint have been

if we produced our own and shipped it safely through a pipeline to the East Coast? Like, this is madness. This is what people have been talking. This is why people like me bang our head against the wall. We're going to be talking a little bit later today with economist Eric Cam.

Because we have a video of an economist sort of trying to normalize the mediocrity of the Canadian experience today, saying, well, other countries have it bad. It's not great in Canada, but other countries are worse. And that's fine if you're looking at Canada through a keyhole. But if you zoom out and you look at the past 10 years, yeah, stuff is bad, but that doesn't mean it had to be bad. We don't have to be where we are.

We shouldn't be where we are. When conservatives referred to the lost decade, that wasn't them being negative. That was them being realistic. True Canadian, pro-Canadian is doing everything we can for Canada to be self-sufficient in as many ways as possible. To be as strong and as rich as possible. Nonsense like this is us getting in our own way. Like, and think about it.

We're literally getting in our own way as a point. to drawing a direct line between LNG and Western Canada and where it's needed in the East, we literally are bending over backwards to get it from frickin' Australia, 25,750 kilometers away. It's down under. It's down under. Yeah, this is way down under. It's as down under as you can get without falling off here.

Just remind me, because I don't have it, I don't know whether a first or third or seventh or eighth. what are our LNG deposits in this country? Where do we rank in the world? Take a look. I'm pretty sure it's up there. I'm pretty sure it's up there. This is like, yeah, so when an economist says, you know, listen, yeah, stuff's bad,

but other countries are worse. Okay, fine, that's today. But if we could just go back the past few years and look at the mistakes that we've made, being where we are was not divined by God. It was orchestrated by bad decisions by government. And so you don't get off the hook. The government does not get off the hook for us being, oh, we're better than others, but yeah, everyone's pretty bad.

No, we could be great. We could be the best version of ourselves today. Today, Canada has consistently ranked the fifth largest natural gas producer in the world behind the United States, Russia, Iran, and China. You know who's not on that list? Australia. Why the hell are we buying from Australia when we're ahead of them on the list? This is the crazy town stuff I always talk about. And this is not me rage baiting.

I am not mad at a hypothetical that couldn't exist. I am mad at the promise that was broken, at the potential that was lost. This is not me creating a fiction that could never exist. This is me taking the very real. natural resources that we have and saying, had we exploited them responsibly, there would be money to go around for everybody. And everybody who's claiming,

who was out there cap in hand saying, my group needs this and this group needs that. We could have taken care of everybody, everybody with that money. Instead, we're out there, we're out there getting LNG from Australia. Amazingly, we are one of the top producers, yet we actually send out,

we actually export far less than Qatar and Australia. Qatar. Okay. Qatar. Let's go with Qatar for a second. Qatar is the, is a sponsor, has been funneling money into, oh, you know what, we don't have time for that, sadly. When the music starts, Ben needs to shuddy up.

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And very glad to be joined by a great friend, not of just of the show, but of me, Tony Chapman, the host of the award-winning podcast, Chatter That Matters, as well as founding partner of Chatter AI. Tony, welcome back to the show. Always a pleasure, my friend, always a pleasure. Okay, so, you know, when I first heard this story, I had a particular thought. And then when I saw the actual ad, I think my opinion got tweaked a little bit. And so as the story goes, there are ads for McDonald's in Germany that in order to respect Muslims at Ramadan, they were presenting ads of their containers without any

food in them. However, when I'm seeing it now, what it is is it's a, it's an ad that changes the camp, it's a digital billboard that sinks with the sun. And when the sun goes down and the fast must begin, they, there's, it's, how does it say this? It only reveals food after dark throughout the month of Ramadan. And then the shoot of the, so the food appears at night and then during the day, it's just an empty container. Once I saw it, I thought it was more sophisticated and therefore a better ad than I thought it was going to be. I agree.

I mean, when you just hear about it, you go. But when you think about what they're doing, as they're signaling restraint during the day when you get not allowed to eat, and then as the sun goes down when the feast starts, obviously they present their product. And I think it's a really clever use of outdoor. and I think it's going to get a lot of additional amplification in media because people are going to be talking about how well they sync the technology of the media with the reality of what's happening.

So I get full kudos to McDonald's. They've done some really interesting stuff without a home. And this is just a great example. And I guess I had to check myself, right? Because my back got up. And I was like, oh, my gosh, is this going to be another one of these bending over backwards sort of things? but I see this as respectful to everyone. And I like that.

I like being shown that you can do something to honor your Muslim customers without alienating anybody else. And I don't see this as alienating in any way. Yeah. And I think what you've pointed out is a great insight, this delicate dance between exclusive and inclusive. And inclusive says, I'm going to welcome everybody. But often you do that, you just become wallpaper.

Nobody pays attention to you because you're trying to be something to everybody. But I think what they did is they signaled respect for a big part of their community and at the same time, as you said, without alienating everyone else. And that is a tough dance to do. And again, I give full credit for McDonald's of finding a way to do it. And even across the ocean, we're talking about it. There's a story. I don't know if it's an old wives tale or an urban legend, but as the story goes, it's a story that they teach in. business school about thinking outside the box. And Tabasco, as the story goes, was losing market share

to other companies and other, you know, like the chalulas of the world and that sort of thing. So they brought the greatest minds together at Tabasco to come up with a way to increase market share. And they were coming up with, you know, two for ones and buy one, get one free and all these things and giveaways and promotions. And finally one guy just put his hand up. He said, let's just make the hole bigger. because you make the whole bigger, you'll use more and you'll sell more. And so that was an example of thinking outside the box. And so with that in mind, what do you make of this new Axe Body Spray, quote-unquote, technology as a way to combat people who use too much Axe body spray?

They're essentially just making the spray less pronounced. Yeah, I worked on the Unilever brand. And it was always sort of the tongue in cheek that these teenagers, as they hit puberty, would literally bathe an axe, thinking they would become these magnets out there. And what they obviously did was become very offensive because they just were overindulging at it. So I think what they did here is they realized this was happening. And rather than having people sort of come in and out of the axe brand at age 13 to 15, they're now saying you can be much more subtle with our sense.

So by doing this, you spray less on. They say it lasts longer. You're actually just putting a scent on yourself versus the entire room or subway car. And they did it at the same time launching a new, more adult, sophisticated scent. So I think it, once again, what they're saying to the world is we've listened like McDonald's did. And we're absolutely going to innovate our brand in a way that's going to get people to use acts longer and offend a lot less people. So once again, smart marketing. So, but isn't there a fear that the kids are just going to spray more of it?

Well, without question. As you know, but you got to remember this category, it used to be Old Spice, high karate. You know, you always had this one brand as you were growing up that you felt her musk that you felt as soon as you sprayed yourself. And your parents are just like going, what have you put on? I think what, you know, and also it creates some humor with it. You know, this older guy talking about the history of overdoing it, everything that goes with that very male psychology that, you know, especially when we hit, when those hormones are raging,

we tend to lose a little bit of common sense. And I think this is a fun play on it. And it'll put Axe back, hopefully what they're hoping is that next new generation of kids are growing up, we'll start, you know, discovering acts and realizing once again, you don't have to bathe in it, a little goes a long way. And that's probably what I would have called the little goes a long way. and the long way being the girl you're going to get. But that's just me as a marketer versus as somebody that's just a pundit on radio.

And you know, if they have, if they've built up brand trust with these young, impressionable kids who have been bathing in the axe body spray, if the people who make acts come to them and say a little goes a long way, they're probably more inclined to listen, right? No question, especially if the long ways you're going to get the prize, which is you put this on because you want to attract whether your same sex or opposite sex. That's why you're putting the scent on. So if they just say a little goes a long way and they paid off with the long way was.

Remember high karate, the guy used to the skinny kid, five foot nine was high karate his way through a bunch of big buffoons and ended up with a beautiful girl. You know, it was a skinny kid on the beach, getting kicked, sand kicked in the face, suddenly had this new armor called, you know, and that's high karate or brute was the same thing. So that, that storyline is never going to change. I want to be attractive. I want to look the part and smell the part. But I think what Axis is saying is you're probably going to have a better chance doing it

if you're not creating such a repelling scent around you that people are moving away from you versus being attracted to you. And I give them credit for it. Again, history of overdoing it to me was a little complicated. A little goes a long way to me would be a little simpler. But once again, I'm just trying to be the armchair creative director. Well, this last story, I think, is it's an interesting one because during the Super Bowl this year, we found out that I guess the quarterback, the winning quarterback, his grandfather was the original Marlboro Man.

And his real name was Dick Hammer. It's a greatest story ever. So great that when he actually got a role on a television show, they couldn't come over with a name for his character better than Dick Hammer. So they named his character Dick Hammer. And so to hear that, um, um, Philadelphia, or rather, Kraft Hines is sort of being inspired by the Marlboro Man and they've got their new character. What's his name?

Philly boy. Philly boy. Yeah. And the beautiful thing is he's a cowboy. Yeah. But he rides a cow. Okay. Okay.

So the humor of it is this guy's on a cow, gorgeous man, wandering with his cow into kitchens and teaching people how to use the Philadelphia cream cheese, not on a bagel, but in a recipe. That's awesome. It's hilarious. And they've done, like that a series of these things. They're fabulous for TikTok. They're YouTube shorts.

They're hilarious little pieces of film. But again, the payoff is this guy riding a cow down the main street. The kids are following them. Like this is a stallion, you know, cowboy riding the stallion. But instead he's got a jersey cattle that he's straddling. And it is hilarious. But what they're trying to do is obviously get the cream cheese that was just made for bagels. Yeah.

Here's the interesting thing. People stop buying it because they've got. got their bagels with cream cheese when they're on the way to work because spreading a bagel is a lot of time when you can just get it at Tim Horton. So they're now saying we've got to find another use for our brand. So this is a recipe play. One day I'll teach you about a talk about Tabasco because that was part of that whole that whole reinvention. Oh yeah? But it's a yeah, our campaign was Alla Tabasco.

Everything's better than Ala Tabasca most days. Tabasco is basically just in for your Bloody Mary's and Caesars. And then the new hot sauce is arrived. I put that stuff on everything. Everything. So we're just showing that Al-a-Tabasco is that you could have a hot dog's better, ala-tabasco. So it's, again, a recipe play.

My friend, thank you very much for joining us. Really great insights. I always love talking about this sort of thing with you. Oh, we'll chat soon. All right. When we come back, Dr. Eric Cam joins us. And like I said, we're going to be talking about this economist who was talking to Steve Paken a few months ago, who was sort of.

making allowances for why Canada is where it is. I don't think that's good enough. We're going to talk about that next on the Ben Mulroney show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And as promised, I was going to air, we're going to air a little audio in a moment. But first of us welcome Eric Cam, economics professor at Toronto Metropolitan University to the conversation. Doc, welcome. Thank you, Ben.

How are you? I'm good. I'm good. So I saw this video today, and it's a few months old, but it's still, I think, germane to the conversation. I want to play this audio for you. Then I'm going to have a couple of sentences for you on the other side of it. And then I want to hear what you have to say. Let's listen.

This is Steve Paken, the great journalist who has found, oh, by the way, he's got a new job. He's got a new job on breakfast television. Congratulations to him. So he asks a very specific question to someone who I got to believe is an economist. They don't really say it in the clip. But let's listen. I want you to name names on which countries are doing way worse than us. Because it feels here like we're in deep.

Who's worse than us? The United States by far, their debt and deficit is way, way, way bigger than Canada's, however you look at it. Also the UK, significantly worse financially right now than Canada. And as you go throughout all the G7 countries, we're actually doing the best. So we're not doing great, but we're doing relatively well. So that we should take some comfort with because to some degree when you're out there borrowing money to finance your debt, looking relatively better is what matters. If everybody's in trouble, being the least in trouble,

actually helps you continue to borrow. So you're actually not doing that bad. Yeah, so I heard that, and I looked at some of the comments on social media, and yet people, some people I actually know and respect on there, saying, oh, the conservatives are going to rage, bait, everything's broken. You're never going to be able to convince anybody who doesn't support the liberals that things are okay. And I was like, my God, it felt like they were living in the upside down because I don't think they're, you're talking about government finances and that's one thing. But I think I think Paken should have followed up and said, but what about people in their own lives who can't start a business or can't pay their mortgage?

I mean, and I compare those people to people in America and compare those people to people in the UK. I think that's what really matters to people. And also that doesn't factor in, Doc, that the world that we're living in where things aren't great, but they're not the worst, didn't have to be the way they are. We could be experiencing a golden area in Canada right now where certain decisions not made. Well, when it gets on breakfast television, what Paken should really do is dig a little bit deeper when someone gives you one number. So, and what this person is citing is that if you look at net debt, not gross debt, net debt, which is gross debt, take away a whole bunch of things the government doesn't want you to know. Canada has 14% of GDP. That's the lowest in the G7.

But if you go and talk about gross debt, which is a much wider range of debt that includes much more relevant debt like household debt, we skyrocket. So whoever gave that number was really cherry picking. The reality is I went to find that source because this is the problem with statistics, Ben. You know, you give someone one number and they buy it hook, hook, line, and sinker. And in fact, you know, it's called an outlier. The two numbers that I look at are in terms of economic growth. If you want to normalize, and let's say Canada's at zero, just to pick a zero number. Who's doing better than us, the United States, Brazil, China, India,

who's not doing as well as us, lower African nations and Germany. And Germany's had the worst economic run they've had since 1933. So you don't want to be bragging about that. And then also, again, you want to go pure gross debt to GDP. We're not doing well. We're not doing well per capita. And then so if you want to look at it as Mike and I were talking about earlier, who's doing much better than us?

Big countries, big wealthy countries like India, China, Japan, the United States, countries that are growing. The only countries that are falling below us are people that are also declining in their real GDP growth, like nations that no one's ever heard of and no one's ever going to visit and we're never going to trade with. All right. Let's move on to a story that popped up in the Star. I mean, the idea of EV rebates, depending on what side of the bed you wake up on, you

could be pro or con. And I think I appreciate the argument for them, which is that, hey, Listen, the cost are still higher than an internal combustion engine. And if our goal as a nation is to at some point electrify the entire vehicle fleet in Canada, then we have to offer incentives for people to buy in. So I understand the argument. I'm not saying I buy it or buy into it necessarily. But Transport Canada, according to the Toronto Star, said that officials were aware

that funding for the popular electric vehicle rebate program was at risk of running out several months before the department told the public about it. And, you know, I just, it feels like, it feels like until these, the cost of these cars comes down, maybe we shouldn't be in, like, let the market do what it's going to do. I remember when a plasma television costs $15,000. And now you can get a TV that's 10 times as good for 10% of the cost. The less than that.

That's right. And that's, that's called the invisible hand. You're exactly right. You let the market dictate these things. You know, this EV thing is actually kind of simply difficult, or maybe difficulty simple. I don't know. But the point is, before the EV rebates dried up, there was a real financial incentive, but it was definitely financially stronger for a subset of car prices to buy an EV.

But now with the current rebates, it's kind of 50-50, looking at a lot of people's numbers. if you're buying now with no rebate, you're going to lose. And about the only way you can really win in this, well, there's two ways. Number one, there are lots of used EVs on the market. And you can actually do okay with that. The bottom line about EVs is because the batteries are, forget the price, but the batteries are still in its infancy, if you do a lot of highway driving, they don't tend to make as much sense as city driving.

And if you're only going to keep a car for a year or two, it makes no sense. it only pays itself off if you keep it for a long time. Right. In our last few minutes, let's talk about the Great Canadian Cutback. And again, this will go back to our first, our first, the video that we played there, of the guy saying everything's fine, nothing to see here. What is the Great Canadian Cutback? The Great Canadian Cutback is proving that that guy is full of baloney, okay?

It reflects the fact that we've been living under persistent inflation, rising living costs, interest rate pressures, and now you've got an overwhelming number, not just a majority, Ben, an overwhelming number of Canadians actively having to manage their cash flow. That does not just mean trimming the occasional expense. This is prioritizing core expenses,

like housing, utilities, and groceries. And now, unfortunately, we're at a time that budgeting alone isn't enough. My grandfather told me if you budget, it's not what you earn, it's what you spend, you're going to be fine. Now it's not, and you have almost 30% of Canadians taking on a second job just to afford,

not to afford vacations and fancy cars, to afford a roof and to afford food. So it's really a move from being reactive to proactive financially, but you can rest assured it's nothing but a foreshadow to saying that we are declining in our net wealth. Look, the data says that 2 and 3, so 67% approximately Canadians plan to make significant spending cuts this year. That's up from 51% last year.

And if you ask where the money goes, the top sacrifices are eating out less. So good luck if you run a restaurant in your town, which are already the economic headwinds make it practically impossible to stay open. Making fewer retail purchases. So there it goes to the neighborhood shops. And then there's the side hustle. 25% of listeners are actually already working on a second job or side hustle just to manage basic expenses. This is not to do anything but stay afloat. Well, you're right.

That's the point. In looking at the surveys that the Stats can does, and they're asking people, what are the things in which you consider yourself financially sensitive, meaning, you know, you are in trouble and you may lose in the next 12 months. Again, it's not fancy cars, bet. It's rent. It's your mortgage. It's utilities.

It's groceries. I mean, you're in, this is real financial insolvency. And now, as I said last week as we were talking, debt levels, like this idiot at the beginning, debt levels on a per household basis are now. out about 104 to 107% of your net income. So I don't know where this guy's off. Canadians are getting poorer. All right, my friend.

I'm very glad we had this chat. I hope some people were listening. I suspect they weren't because they're just going to call me a rage baiter, even though I think we dealt with them chapter and verse. You take care of my friend. Stay healthy, Ben. All right. I want to thank everybody for joining us.

Just a reminder, if you want more BMS, we put out a podcast every day. And you can find even more content on X, on Instagram, and on YouTube. Thursdays on Global. I'm Madeline Matlock. She's the lawyer with a legendary name. Don't underestimate Miss Matlock. This woman's a sharp.

You know it, baby. The one you can trust, even if she has to bend the rules. Things aren't always as black and white as they seem. To crack a case. This is how I get things done. Emmy winning actress Kathy Bates is Matlock. All new Thursdays at 9 Eastern on Global. Stream on Stack TV.