The Ben Mulroney Show - Two heists -- The Louvre arrests and the Stellantis contract with Ottawa

Episode Date: October 27, 2025

GUEST:  Rick Perkins / Former conservative MP Guest: Max Fawcett, Lead Columnist for Canada's National Observer - Guest: Dimitri Soudas, Former Director of Communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper 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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slash iPhone 17 Pro on select plans. Conditions and exclusions apply. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. It is Monday, October 27. Thank you so much for starting the week with us. We're going to have a great one, shall we? I'm away tomorrow. I'm back on Wednesday and we will enjoy the downslope all the way to Friday together. What's going on in Paris? That's the question we have today. Lots of news coming out of Paris. And we're going to start

with our prime minister because he has made it Instagram official by walking out of a restaurant hand in hand with his new, I guess, girlfriend, Katie Perry. And they were celebrating now. Some people were saying they were celebrating her 45th birthday that has been corrected online. She is 41 years young. Not that I don't believe it's incumbent upon us to talk about a woman's age. But it's important to correct the record. When people said she was 45, she's 41. And yeah, let's listen to the flurry of activity and excitement when they left this restaurant in Paris.

I'm going to go. This is for you, Katie. This is for you, Katie. This is for you, Katie. This is the road is for you. Thank you. Now, see, if this, if it were in Quebec, they will be singing,

My cher Katie, it's at your tour to let's to to let's talk of love. I did enjoy that. Katie. Katie!

Hey, Katie! Hey, Katie! My favorite tweet. My favorite tweet, But no, but the fact is that I just want to know, was he wearing jeans? No, he looked like he was wearing a nice suit. Oh, he even wears jeans on boats. Looks like he was wearing his nice suit.

But J.J. McCullough, who's a great, he's an award-winning Canadian YouTuber. I actually shared the stage with him at one point. He actually wrote something very funny. I bet Katie Perry is receiving a pretty one-sided account of the last decade of Canadian political history. That's actually a really good tweet. Of course, when you know nothing about Canadian politics at all, and why would Katie Perry know anything about Canadian politics? And the lessons you're receiving are from the former Prime Minister himself.

And you know, of course, at some point, topics. So what have you been up to for the past 10 years, Justin? Well, let me tell you, I was saving Canada. And I'm going to go chapter and verse as to why I, what I took over was a disaster. And today, it is better than ever. And let me explain to you while we feed each other, Strawberries. Why that is true? And of course she would believe it. Why wouldn't she believe

her boyfriend? I'm not talking about this because, uh, for any other reason, except it's public. It's public. And allow me to say, I am happy for anyone who finds love companionship makes me happy. I love love. And so if the two of them make each other happy, I'm happy for the two of them. That's it. That's it. There's no judgment. I'm not trying to make fun. I'm not trying to put, I'm not, except for that funny tweet. Because that, was just funny. And you're not going to have in me, you are not going to have somebody who punches down, as they like to say these days. Although I don't think, can you punch down at the prime minister? I don't know. You'd have to punch pretty damn more at this point. Look, he's

living his best life. I mean, two weeks ago, we're talking about him on a yacht and now he's in Paris. Again, not wearing jeans. Well, I would, I would, I'd wonder what his carbon footprint is for all this travel. Something tells me, something tells me, something tells me, he's burned a lot of fuel in the past few weeks. But again... Hey, good on him, whatever. He's living his best life. Yeah, I've got kind of...

Look, I'm of a bunch of minds here. But the mind that is the loudest is like, let the guy... I think we all need to... We all need to collectively stop losing our minds every time we hear of his name. We've got a lot of other stuff to do. And look, our prime minister,

during the news break, we heard the prime minister talking about how he's dealing with Donald Trump. And he said, look, it doesn't help. It doesn't help. You don't get anywhere by being emotional in moments like this. And you've got to be a little bit of a Vulcan when dealing with Donald Trump these days. And I think the same thing could be said with how we approach our feelings towards the prime minister.

We all got really emotional. I got really angry in the last few years. I really felt that he and his government were not listening to people and not listening to the issues that we were having and demonizing anybody who presented an alternative theory of the case. and I got really, really angry. But he's gone now. And I think it behooves us to, for our own sanity and our own mental health, to let that go for a while. And when it comes time to judge his legacy, to do so as dispassionately as possible.

Because that's how we're going to get to the truth of what his years in office actually meant. And so if he's out with Katie Perry, Good on him. There's an entire generation of men who wish they could spend five minutes with Katie Perry, and he's now dating her. So I'm sure there's a lot of sour grapes out there. And it is what it is. Honestly, from a romantic perspective, I wish the two of them the very best.

So that's some of the news out of Paris. But then we've got to talk about the Louvre Heist investigation. You know, this story was just bananas. And it keeps getting more bananas because now there's a, this video of their escape from the Louvre. So last week we told you about that, sort of like that elevator, escalator ladder, ladder company that discovered that their product was used in the heist

and they found a way to leverage it for advertising. And now there's video of them using it. And it's like an escalator that they were able to position out the window that took them over the gate that then took them to their awaiting scooters that allowed them to all escape and watching it happen

is incredible. It's amazing. It's slow motion. They're in this little elevator thing. I know. I know. You can see clearly the person taking the video is,

feels like a couple hundred feet away, but must be, can't be a cop. and I guess the Louvre property is so big that even if the cop saw it from that position just to get around to an access point must be minutes upon minutes upon minutes because they all escaped

at least for the time. This is how fast it was. Hey, the entire heist lasted about as long as you've been speaking in this segment. Yes, so they were far more productive than I. So they all escaped on their scooters. That's what we saw. However, there have been some arrests.

I think this is important. It's not like the French police have just been sitting there smoking, smoking cigarettes and complaining, smoking their chitans. The galois. The galoise, les chitans. No, so two men were arrested on suspicion of organized theft and criminal conspiracy. One suspect was caught at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris while attempting to leave France for Algeria. And the other was trying to get to Mali. So this is where I was surprised, because I just assumed that these guys were meticulous, meticulous.

meticulous and left nothing to chance. However, they planned everything out until they left. Yeah, because there were DNA samples from the crime scene that led to the identification of suspects. Police claimed that they left fingerprints at the scene, lots of DNA evidence, and they didn't burn the escape vehicles. Now, what do you mean?

Everybody knows to do that. Of course, yeah. I watch enough heist movies that once you escape, you torch the vehicle. Torch it. You throw some diesel in there and you light it on fire, right? It happens in every movie. And if they're not doing it, then they've done it off camera, for sure.

But these guys didn't. But the thing that sunk them was the fact they both had prior convictions so their DNA was in the system. Yeah. Yeah. Fox News has a theory of the case. Let's listen. Local officials say this may have been an inside job after revealing they found digital forensic evidence that a member from the museum's security team was in touch with the thieves

and during the heist to the thieves wield a furniture lift to the museum and then rode the basket up to the second floor balcony that was not recorded by security cameras and just about in about seven minutes they were out of that balcony on scooters museum yeah there she said a couple of things odd there museum museum anyway authorities are still searching for the remaining suspects as well as the stolen jewels. But the fact that it was inside job. Somebody was talking to them inside, gave them all the information about the holes in the security system.

Yeah. And then was actually speaking to them over whatever intercom. Yeah. And for all they knew, they had compromising information on that person and forced them to help. Well, it's all going to come out in a wash. But the investigators are apparently closing in on the burglars. They are not optimistic about recovering the jewels, which have likely been broken up for

sale. But listen, the story continues. They will catch these guys and when they do, we'll get the whole story. It'll be a Netflix documentary in short order. Up next, the Stalantis deal. What was left out? Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. We in Ontario and indeed anybody concerned with the health of the Canadian economy.

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 shuttering 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 is a different project. But one could surmise that, you know, the, 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 at each signed. 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 hears about with and then another $13, 14 billion dollars 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 gets 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, I'm, rather than 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, sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I 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 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 Stalantis 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 Scalantis a year ago for jobs, permanent jobs. jobs there that were not specialized, forklift operators, 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. Well, I got to, wait, I've got to ask, why, why Korean? Because Dolanthus and LG sorry Dolgis is their partner in it

and algae's Korean so so it's a it costs $5 billion to build this plant

and 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 it's the $15 billion is tied to producing batteries. 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 Stalantis 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. Right. 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 20, In 2020, 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 of 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. Now streaming on Paramount Plus, it's the epic return of mayor of Kingstown. Warden? You know who I am. Starring Academy Award nominee, Jeremy Renner. I swear in these walls.

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the podcast Crime Beat. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. It's Monday, October 27th, which means it is time for this week in politics, the Monday edition. Please welcome Max Fawcett, lead columnist for Canada's National Observer, and Dimitri Soutis, former director of communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. welcome. Good morning.

Great to be on the show. Okay, so we were speaking earlier today with a former conservative MP, Rick Perkins, who had a chance prior to the last election to read the unredacted contract between the Canadian government and Stalantis as it related to the EV, the building of EV batteries in Canada. And there are a few things that stood out because as we gear up to understand the larger contract that led to the Stalanta's decamping from Brampton to move to Illinois.

You know, a lot of us were saying, we don't know who broke the rules until we know what the rules were. And this is, in my opinion, a good indication as to sort of the quality of the writing of the contract, right? Like how fulsome was it? How much foresight did they have?

How many scenarios did they envision? What guarantees existed to ensure that Stalantis stays where they committed to staying. And based on what Rick Perkins told us, there are some issues in this contract that should be concerning. First of all, the fact, Dimitri, that this is a 26-page contract

representing hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. And the fact that there was no guarantees for unionized workers, Canadian workers. In fact, everybody who was employed, or a lot of the people who were employed, had to be fluent in Korean. there's if that's what we're if that's what we're gearing up for when we read this next contract

I don't think it bodes well for the Canadian government well I got to tell you that contracts of this magnitude usually the table of contents is longer than 26 pages and I guess the difference between former member of Parliament Perkins and current finance minister Francois Philippe Champagne is that former MP Perkins actually read the contract you know I heard his interview as well and it's it's it's it's it's it's outrageous that the government of canada signed signed such a contract um without the minister responsible uh actually reading the contract and now there is a very high high likelihood that the government of canada has no recourse uh to sue stilantis um it just and at the same time i'll just i'll just recap and i'll say at the same time um it is heavily subsidizing

an industry for which demand is not proven yet, while demand for things like oil, natural gas, critical minerals, is obviously critically important, not only the Canadian economy, but global supply chains. And the government of Canada over the last 10 years has pretty much put a handbreak on those sectors. And Max, I want to be clear, I'm not looking to paint the liberal government negatively at all. In fact, I am hoping against all hope, that what comes to pass is we learn that this is a bulletproof contract that was written by the greatest legal minds so that when Stalantis, when push comes to shove, Stalantis has to fork over a boatload of money for the workers who have been, uh, whose jobs and livelihood have been decimated. I want to believe that. But if, if past his prologue, I'm concerned.

Sure. I mean, I think we're a little bit over out over our skis here on this issue. You know, the ontario. government led, I believe, by a conservative, signed and negotiated the exact same contract with Stalantis over the battery plant. It has the same terms. And so this is not a liberal issue. This is a all-of-government issue approaching these files. Agreed. Sorry? Yeah. No. I agree. Yeah. No pushback here. And look, you know, people like to throw around the big headline number, $15 billion. Those are production subsidies. Those only get paid out if Stalantis builds the back. batteries at that facility.

And just, you know, as a footnote, the reason why they needed people to speak Korean or have Korean workers there is because we don't know how to build batteries in Canada. We do not have a vibrant, you know, EV battery sector. That's what we're trying to build here. And so part of this is technology sharing. We bring companies into the country who have expertise.

They set up shop, they do partnerships with our own companies, and we gain that knowledge, gain that expertise going forward. That's the whole point of the Ontario government and the federal government's support for the EV battery sector and yes you know MP Perkins said that the demand for for EVs is declining in the United States it's also skyrocketing in the rest of the world and so we have a choice to make here in Canada do we throw our chips in with a you know US auto sector that is becoming more and more uncompetitive globally with each

passing day or do we work with the rest of the world in meeting demand for a product that is growing in every other country in the world it's not just me saying this. Corey Tanike, noted socialist, you know, was on his podcast last week saying essentially the same thing. You know, do we, do we want to follow this U.S. auto sector down the, down the drain? You know, he said Trump's tariff measures are killing that industry. And we may be a, you know, collateral damage there if we're not careful. So should we be opening the doors to, you know, Chinese E.C. Company. Well, there you go. Yeah. And I'm glad. I'm glad you open the door because that's where I was going to go next. And our prime minister.

is in Asia right now, and he's on the eve of a conversation with Xi Jinping. You know, we have been talking about Chinese EVs as if they were, you know, four-wheels, you know, spy, mobile spying, an army of mobile spying cars with cameras and microphones. However, you know, if in the absence of a better option, maybe this is the option. I don't know. I'd love to hear what you have to say, Dimitri. Okay. So to Max's point, let's talk about the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room is that the reason that demand for electric vehicles in Canada is not increasing but declining is because they are too damn expensive. They're too damn expensive because there's a monopoly. We don't have European electric vehicles and we don't have Asian electric vehicles. So one consideration, as Max mentioned, and as you mentioned, Ben, is removing the tariffs on Chinese EV vehicles. but also another option all these all these plants all these assembly plants that we have here in Ontario what did the Howard Lutnik say the day after the

meeting with President Trump and Prime Minister Carney in a private meeting in Toronto he said that the American administration's objective to no uncertain terms is to completely erase and and make disappear assembly of vehicles in Canada so what if and I'm just pontificating you're thinking out loud What if all these assembly plants that are currently manufacturing American vehicles and, I guess, Canadian vehicles as well, turn into electric vehicle manufacturing plants? Otherwise, if the Americans take it to the finish line, there will be no cars to assemble here in Canada. Yeah, I think we have to have these tough conversations. And I'm very glad that Mark Carney is willing to have them.

Look, it seems like some water was put in the wine in terms of our relationship. with India just a couple of weeks ago. It was announced that, you know, we're trying to reset that relationship. I think it's important that we reset our relationship with China as well, especially given the headwinds that we're facing from Donald Trump. So I do think that we have to, you know, put on our big boy pants and have some really adult conversations. How far, though, Max, should we as a country be willing to go with a country like China?

We know that they have human rights issues. We know that they have intellectual property issues. We know that they're not necessarily honest brokers. But then again, south of the border, we don't really have an honest broker either. So how far, like, how deep do we want this relationship to go with China? Yeah, that's the tension we're in now. It's not like it used to be. There was a choice between democracies and autocracies.

You know, now it's a choice between sort of decaying, increasingly autocratic American democracy. and China and India, who obviously, as you mentioned, and as we all know, are a long way from being where we are on things like human rights and free speech. So I wouldn't get too far, I wouldn't get too concerned about spyware and things like that. I mean, China builds our iPhones, they build our computers. We don't seem to have any problem with that. I'm sure there are things we can do from a regulatory perspective to just ensure that our data stays in Canada, that they can't put kill switches on the cars and whatnot. Look, you know, China is increasingly dominating the European market.

They are rewriting the Global South in terms of the technology they use. They are where the puck is going to use that horribly overused Canadian metaphor. And we really do have to kind of find a way to thread the needle between not upsetting the Americans, not abandoning them because, of course, we can't. We're always due business with them. But also recognizing where things are going. Okay, stick a pin in that. We're going to come back. We're talking about Kamala Harris, possibly running for president.

Again, this is This Week in Politics. Don't go anywhere. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney's show. Welcome back to This Week in Politics. Guys, I want to just read the first line from Stephen Chase is one of his most recent. He's very busy writing a lot of stuff about our prime minister. out in Asia. But in his Globe Mail article entitled Carney

tries to reassure Canadians after Trump threatens a 10% tariff hike, he says, Mark Carney said he stands ready to resume trade negotiations with the U.S. and tried to reassure Canadians that he's taking steps to shore up the country's economy after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to hike tariffs by another 10%.

Over the weekend, or at the, rather on Friday, I put out a suggestion that one of the reasons the president had such a problem with our, the Ontario ads, using Ronald Reagan's words against Donald Trump's use of tariffs, was because he feels that he needs a boogeyman because he thinks that he might lose at the Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court is going to rule whether or not he has this tariff power.

And so he needs to start preparing the ground for if he loses. He needs to have somebody point to and say, they cheated. That's my theory. We'll see if it bears out. However, when he, for no reason, decides he might want to lose. levy another 10% tariff. Don't you think that hurts his case? By being arbitrary with this rule, just deciding willy-nilly, I don't like you, 10% tariff. When there is no good faith argument for why today, 10%, why yesterday, not 10%, doesn't that fly in

the face of the judicious use of tariffs? Max, we'll start with you. Oh, yeah, we can't hear you, Max. oh no can't hear us all right so we're going to start with dmitri well ben i i i can't wait to see donald trump's lawyers argue before the united states supreme court that an ad by a province in canada uh is a case of national security and national emergency because that is why don't that's that's how don't trump has justified um putting all these tariffs on so so i really look forward to how they will twist themselves into a pretzel. Let's be clear on this ad, Ben.

First of all, China used that exact same video back in April, April of 2025, using Ronald Reagan's words, the exact same video. Second point, three days before Donald Trump had a tizzy fit like a toddler, he actually said he saw the ad and that he would probably do the same thing. So I just think he didn't have his milk and honey. on Friday morning, and he had a connipion. And to the point of Mark Carney, he's got to figure out what the hell he's going to tell Canadians. Because last week, he was saying that there's no deal coming, we're far away from a deal.

Today, in his closing press conference, in Malaysia, he said, we were so close to a deal and it's all Doug Ford's fault. He's got to pick a lane. It's either we're close to a deal or we're not close to a deal. because right now we have no idea what the hell he's doing. All right, Max Fawcsey, you get another kick at the can, my friend. Much appreciated. Yeah, I don't know about him saying that it was Doug Ford's fault. I think those two are thickest thieves on this issue.

But, you know, I think your theory is pretty good, Ben, that, you know, that this is cover for for Trump knowing he's going to lose the court case around these tariffs. They need someone to blame. Ironically, him putting these tariffs on for this reason apparently makes that court case even more likely to lose. apparently the lawyers for the, you know, opposed to the government were rewriting their briefs after they saw that. So, you know, he continues to dig his own holes.

But I think Carney's doing the right thing here. You can't respond to this sort of tantrum, right? You just got to let it play out, let it calm down and be open to him coming back to the table when he inevitably does. This is what Trump does. You know, he panics, he freaks out, he hits the fire alarm, and then a week later, it's like it never happened. Yeah.

And maybe that's it, Dimitri. Maybe the play here is to slow play it, to rag the puck and wait for what we hope is a loss at the Supreme Court, which will severely circumscribe this man's ability to do the things he's been doing. And therefore, he'll be forced to renegotiate from a far weaker position. I don't know. I mean, it's a big gamble. It's a big bet. You have to really hope that the Supreme Court that he stacked with.

with his hand-picked judges, goes against his wishes. But if we do that and it goes the way we want, it could be a huge payoff for us, don't you think? It can be. There's another huge payoff, by the way. What most people don't talk about, and maybe the federal government doesn't want us to talk about it, is let's play this out.

Let's say there's no deal. So, 2026, based on the last Kuzma deal, we have to renegotiate. If any party chooses to withdraw from Kuzma, it's not immediate. Kuzma expires then in 2036, which means between 2026 and 2036, nothing prevents a future American administration or a future Canadian government to say, let's get back at the table to negotiate, given that the toddler is now out of the White House. Okay. All right. Listen, so fingers crossed. Sorry, I, I, I, I, I can't not say things like, he behaves like a toddler. Oh, yeah. Hey, the days, the days of Irish eyes are smiling when Brian Maroonie and Ronald Reagan negotiated a free trade agreement, when we built upon that trade agreement, he decided unilaterally to break that friendship, to break that pact. They are no longer our best friends, most reliable neighbors. Therefore, we have no other choice, but.

to diversify in a way that we have never thought that we can do before. Yeah. And to all those, and to all those on social media that are another bunch of toddlers complaining about Doug Ford that this is why the negotiations broke off

and Doug Ford killed the negotiations. Sorry, I call bovine scotology. Yeah. Well, look, anybody, I had Warren Cancel on the show and is somebody who knows sort of the inner workings of a PMO and understands the back and forth between Premier's offices and the primary

minister's office. He said, there's no way, there's no way that an ad like this gets run by a province without it first running by the PMO. He says there's no way. It does not happen. So this doesn't happen unless Mark Carney's office at least, at least in some capacity, signs off on it. So I, those are people looking for excuses and, and I think simple answers, where the simplest answer is, this guy's just, he doesn't play by any rules and he's a bad faith actor. And there are some, Max, that would say that had the Americans just voted for Kamala Harris, we wouldn't be having these issues. And she is now suggesting that she is not done with elected office and she may run. Why don't we listen to a little bit of Kamala Harris on the BBC?

When are they going to see a woman in charge in the White House? In their lifetime, for sure. Could it be you? Possibly. Have you made a decision yet? No, I have not. But you say in your book, I'm not done. That is correct. I am not done. In my experience, interviewing politicians, when someone says I'm not done, it means they are thinking seriously about running. But when you look at the bookies odds, they put you as an outsider, even behind Dwayne the Rock

Johnson. I mean, is that underestimating you? I think there are all kinds of polls that will tell you a variety of things. I've never listened to polls. If I listen to polls, I would have not run from my first office or my second office. and I certainly wouldn't be sitting here in this interview. All right. So this is the final question I will put to both of you.

Max, you get it first. If Kamla Harris ends up being the Democratic nominee in the next election, what are her chances of winning and what does that say about the Democratic Party? Well, I don't think she will. I think her odds of winning are probably the same as they were last time, maybe a little better. But it says very bad things about the Democratic Party. Look, I don't think there's a realistic shot that she's the nominee.

they're going to have a robust primary, which is what they needed in 2024, and they didn't have, and it's part of why they lost. But they're going to have a robust primary, lots of candidates. Boy, I hope the Rock runs. That would be fantastic. But, you know, as many new faces as possible, because that's what the Democrats need. They've been stuck in this sort of post-O-Bama hangover for a while now with, you know, Biden and Harris and Clinton, and they just need some new voices. Maybe that's AOC. Maybe that's the Rock. I don't know, but they need to try something different, and I think they will. Best elect to Ms. Harris, but she's not going to get it. Dimitri, 20 seconds to you?

Not even. I hope she lies down and the feeling will go away. Gentlemen, thank you so much. I always love chatting with you. It's a great way to kick off Monday, and I hope the two of you have a great week. We'll see you back here next week. And to everyone at home, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a great first day of the week. Let's enjoy the Jay's game tonight and come on back here for an incredible day on the Ben Mulroney show on Tuesday.

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