The Ben Mulroney Show - Why did King Charles ignore Easter after praising Ramadan? And Tony Chapman!

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Guest: Dimitri  Soudas, Former Director of Communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper  Guest: Tony Chapman, Host of the award winning podcast Chatter that Matters, Founding Partner of Chatter AI 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 Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields.

Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. You're listening to the VanMobilms. Rooney Show. That's right. And I'm going one-on-one this week in this week in politics with Dimitri Soutis, great friend of the show, great friend of mine, former director of communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Dimitri, happy Monday. Happy Easter. Happy Monday and happy Easter to you, Ben. We got to start with the news that I heard from Joel Denebel Avaance, from La Press on CTV, where he suggested there could be as many as 10 additional floor crossers from, they don't say which party, so I have to assume it's coming from

left and the right, who are considering making the move to the government ranks. Let's listen to a bell avons. He's got some key people talking to opposition parties. I'm told up to 10 MPs are still in discussion with liberal delegates from the Mr. Carney's office. So there's still discussion going on, so they're still hoping to get more of opposition MPs from the Conservative Party or even the NDP, not the Black Quebecois, I don't think, but it's still a possibility that more may cross the floor to join the liberal case.

I mean, 10's a big number, Dimitri. 10 is a big number. And there won't be much left of the NDP if even half of those would potentially come from the NDP. I think the key lies to next Monday's by-elections, Ben, where if Mark Carney wins all three, he actually has a functional majority. If he only wins two, he has. a razor-thin majority where the Speaker of the House of Commons would still not vote unless there is a tie and then the Speaker always votes for the status quo. There's definitely unease in both

the NDP and the Conservative Caucus these days. The NDP with the election of the new leader that is going so far left, he will reach the right if he takes one more step to the left. You're going on all the way around. He's going to listen at some point, at some point you do a full circle and you end up being on the right side. And I would say there's a lot of unease in the conservative caucus. I'll give you an example. Last week, there was an email that went out to all conservative caucus members. Althea Rash from the Toronto Star reported on it. This was an email sent to all conservative caucus members, basically asking them questions because Mr. Pualiev is looking to shuffle his shadow cabinet of, I think, more than 90 members where they're asking for best-performing

social media posts, send them copies of media interviews or quotes. Basically, justify your existence within the shadow cabinet. Show your work. I will say that this is an important process, but many caucus members, Ontario and some in BC that I spoke with said we got an email from the director of policy. Couldn't we get a call or a meeting from the leader? Couldn't we have a sit down where we kind of lay out what we've been doing over the last little while. Yeah. And some even responded to me by saying,

maybe we will respond, Pierre, you go first. Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, last week, Demetri, I gave some free advice to Mark Carney when he was, he went toe to toe with Pierre in the house, and he was puffing up his chest, talking about how great things are.

And I didn't think that that was a winning strategy because you got to, you got to, you got to, you got to empathize with people and how hard their lives are. So today, I've got some free advice for Pierre and for the conservatives because I'm sitting here day in and day out wondering, what am I not getting? Why, when I sit with my good and intelligent and thoughtful friends who are, they are smart and well-read, they are so happy with this government. And I think I figured out what it is.

They said to me, one of my best friends in the world said, he's doing a great job. He is going around the world And I've got friends around the world Who say, hey, you've got a great prime minister there And I think that's the thing. A lot of people don't live the life that you and I live And don't consume the news that we consume. And so they see the headline

And they see the star. They see the quarterback. And they stop there. And they're happy with what they see from him. And they assume that that has infused the rest of government. But you and I know, we're going to talk about Lena Dia. And we're going to talk about immigration.

We're going to talk about housing. And we're going to talk about, you know, Ananda Sangaree and Anand and Jolie. Like these are, his bench is, this is not a strong cabinet. And the results are scandals and cost overruns and lack of oversight and dangerous people roaming our streets and on and on and on. And so my advice to them is stop attacking Carney. that's a losing game. There's no point in focusing all of your attacks on him when he is the guy,

like he's Teflon right now. Go after his team because this is one of the weakest cabinets I think I've ever seen. I agree with you. And oftentimes I do quote your dad, Ben, not just on your show, but in French or other shows what I do.

There's two things your dad used to tell me. The first one is that in politics, perception is reality. And the second one is Mother Teresa's not in the ballot. What did he mean by that? At the end of the day, right now, Canadians are saying, well, option A is Mark Carney, option B is pure polyev. And based on public opinion polls, the gap is widening between the two.

You know, you mentioned so many issues. I'll add another one. The pipeline deadlines, the Memorandum of Understanding with Alberta, they won't meet those deadlines. If you actually look at what this government has delivered in the last 12 months, concretely to improve the cost of living, to improve productivity. You know, our GDP is not skyrocketing by any means. There's very little to show for.

But then when you ask Canadians, okay, well, would you prefer Mark Carney or would you prefer Pierre Pueleev, based on the same pollsters that were giving Mr. Pueleev a 25-point lead a year and a half ago, they're now giving anywhere between a 10 and a 15 point lead to Carney. So I agree with you, and I will add a second free piece of advice. It's not about taking down your opponent, in this case the prime minister today. Why not adopt a strategy of give him some rope? Give him as much rope as he wants and six, eight, 12 months again from now when results are not. And if results are there, that's great because that's good for the country.

But right now, genuinely what I'm seeing from this government, if you look at the immigration minister, if you look at the public safety minister, these people, I say this with the utmost respect, should not even be tasked to run lemonade stands. Yeah, no, I agree. And I said it, I think we're saying the same thing. When Pierre introduced the kinder, gentler version of himself, and it landed. Like everyone said, you know, that's great,

and it's coming off as genuine. I said at that time that this is going to be, like you're planting the garden now, and it's going to take 12 months before you can pick anything. So just and let let because your popularity as a leader is it's compared to the alternative, right? So people may not like Pierre today, but it depends. If a year from now, Mark Carney hasn't delivered. And you're absolutely right.

I want him to succeed. I absolutely do. I'd rather have, I'd rather have a roaring economy. We all do. A roaring economy that was given to us by a guy I didn't vote for than than being right. I don't want to be right. I want him to succeed. But in the off chance that he doesn't live up to expectation,

just sit there quietly and keep being the nicer version of yourself. And then all of a sudden people don't like him so much anymore and your approval goes up relative to his. Yes. But there's still another challenge strategically for Mr. Puelev. He needs to move the needle over the next six to eight months to tighten that gap between himself and Mr. Carney. Why? Because his caucus is also growing impatient. And that may translate to some caucus members

deciding to leave to citizen dependence. That may translate to some caucus members deciding to leave the conservative caucus to join the liberal caucus. That may also result into them triggering a vote on his leadership, which is a tool they still have in their toolbox. And I fundamentally believe that the, you know, we call it the nicer version, but it's not the nicer version. It's the Prime Minister in waiting version of Kiev-Poliev. You know, he's not there to teach knitting class on Sunday. He's there to take on the government. The Prime Minister-in-waiting version of Kiev-Pol-Yev, I believe can tighten the gap. The challenge is that one or two times out of ten he does the Prime Minister in-Wading

version, and eight times out of ten, he does the Attack Dog version, which he should be leaving to his caucus members, not taking that upon himself. All right, we're going to take a break here when we come back. lots more to get to, including just what I think is a shameful description of Canadian history coming from our government. We'll talk about that next. Some crimes are so shocking. They don't just make headlines. They forever change our society. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's most infamous crimes. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases. Each case unfolds across multiple episodes, release every Tuesday through Thursday, from the first time that something was wrong.

to the moment the truth came out or didn't. Listen to and follow America's most infamous crimes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. A 67-year-old grandfather fails to show up for a meeting with his son at a local tire shop, sparking a desperate search. And he wouldn't be the only victim. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year,

but they're not crime beat. Season 8 drops April 21st. But you can hear the first story now, one month early, only on Amazon music. I'm in conversation with Demetra Soutis for this week in politics. Dimitra, thanks for sticking around. Thank you, Ben.

We were talking earlier about sort of the JV squad, if you will, that is occupying a great chunk of Mark Carney's front bench. And here's a... another example of the things that upset me about this government. The federal government has quietly drafted a new citizenship guide telling newcomers to Canada that Canada should be viewed through a lens of shameful history tied to slavery according to internal records that were obtained by Blacklock's reporter. This is the guide claims slavery existed in Canada for more than 200 years and describes enslaved people as having been treated as less than human. And John

Jonathan K points out, and then we'll talk about this. No Canadian Parliament legalized slavery. No father of confederation. No, as a slaveholder. Slavery was outlawed by Upper Canada Assembly in what is now Ontario in 1793. We became a country in 1867. The British Parliament followed with an 1834 Act for the abolition of slavery throughout the British colonies, and we were a colony at the time. Canada remains the only G7 country never to maintain overseas colonies.

Most black Canadians, almost 60 percent, were born abroad. with a majority arriving here after 1971. And that's according to the stats can, a report of 2024. This is, this is, I don't know what to do with this. Your thoughts. So I remember back when we were in government, Minister Jason Kenney actually upgraded the Citizenship Guide. And what's the purpose of this?

this is the document that new arrivals internalize about their adopted country. And talking about Canada's shameful past, you know, you talked about 1793. Do we forget the Underground Railroad where Canada was the destination? More than 40,000 freedom seekers crossed into Canadian territory, primarily into Ontario, fleeing American slavery. there was no Confederate sympathy. Canada never wavered. When the U.S. Civil War divided opinions internationally,

Canadian public opinion at the time, and we're talking about a whole long time ago, was broadly anti-slavery, anti-pro-union. You know, Canada, as a British colony, was actually covered by the Slavery Abolition Act. That's 30 years before the U.S. Emancipation Act. So, you know, this is, again, this Minister of Education, and it lands on her squarely as a very bad minister that offers a guide that adds another layer. Her department isn't just poorly managed. It's ideologically off-brand with most Canadians. And the timing could not be worse.

This is basically the document that we're telling newcomers, thank you for joining our country. Please see our shameful history, which is inaccurate. It's historically inaccurate. It's historically inaccurate. So right there, that is disqualifying. But I also don't like the idea of them, of putting into this document as if it's just an accepted fact that Canada has a quote unquote systemic racism. I don't like that because I don't believe that we've actually had a fulsome debate. I know that we've seen correlations between certain communities not doing well in certain things.

you have not proven causal relationships. And I don't like that it's just an acquired. It's just a fact of the matter. This is a thing. So we're telling newcomers that exists here. So when you tell somebody who's new to the country, beware of systemic racism, you're essentially telling them that you're a hammer

and the whole world is a nail. You're going to see nails everywhere. You're going to see boogeymen, racial boogeymen, around every single corner. This is Justin Trudeau's Canada, a perpetrator. through Mark Carney's administration. And this is, I got to say,

Dimitri, I thought Mark Carney was going to come in and say enough of these shenanigans. Like enough. I'm a numbers guy and these numbers don't number. Well, they don't, and I'll tell you this. You know, let's define systemic racism. Systemic racism is when government institutions are wired in such a way to behave in a racist fashion. We are nothing but the opposite here in Canada. And quite frankly, the timing could not be worse.

At a moment where our country is leaning into national pride, where we have the trade war with the U.S., this whole elbows up rhetoric, the by-Canadian sentiment, the immigration minister's team is actually drafting documents to tell newcomers that literally the country they just joined has a shameful history. And a shameful president. And a shameful present.

And a shameful present. And, you know, Ottawa wants you Canadians to feel proud enough to stay and contribute. Yeah. But it's like this minister wants new Canadians to say Canada is such a shameful country. Let's do things differently. That's not civic education. No. That's literally self-flagellation as government policy.

Yeah. And I'll say one last thing. If systemic racism is or was, a thing, is a thing, then I got to think that the party that has been in charge for 11 years should have dismantled it. If it was that big of a deal, and if it existed and they can see it, and they're the ones in government, so if they're the ones who could see it, they should have dismantled it by now. And if they haven't, that's on them. But I contend it's not there, which is why you can't dismantle it. Not to say there aren't inequities. People will put words

in my mouth and say that I'm saying that everyone's, everyone gets the same thing. No, I'm not saying that there are inequities, and that is the beauty of a country like Canada. We strive for perfection knowing we will never fully attain it. The best system, as far as I'm concerned, Ben, is one called meritocracy, where a young boy for Becomo can reach to being Prime Minister of Canada, where you get what you put in, not because of your gender, your sexual orientation, your color, basically because you are the best at what we are looking for and what everybody's looking for. Meritocracy.

With the obvious exception of people like myself that the internet likes to call a nepo baby, Dimitri, I have come up with a new expression, which I hope catches on home base adjacent. Well, as far as you're concerned or others, Ben, I would say that you earn what you do every single day. Nobody give it to you. Thank you. Hey, what do you make of King Charles making videos for Eid and Ramadan, but nothing. for Easter. He's the head of the Church of England. Like, how do you explain that? And just let's listen to a monarchist message to the king.

This is a very important constitutional role as a Christian. And it now seems you're not going to give an Easter message, which I think confirms what many of your subjects have believed for some time, that you have somehow embraced the Islam faith. And that's not a problem as far as I'm concerned. I'm a libertarian. You must embrace whatever, of a faith you think appropriate, but not as king. What I'm suggesting to you is that you abdicate and get gone. Get thee gone. You are of no use to this country whatsoever.

You have failed in every conceivable way on your relatively short period of time on the throne. In the name of God, go. I got to say, if the CEO of Eric Canada got his comeuppance for not speaking in French, This, I think, is a lot worse in England if the head of the Church of England doesn't put out an Easter message but puts out messages for other religions.

And by the way, I'm not suggesting that this guy is right that he has adopted Islam, but he did not do the thing he's supposed to do. Well, the asymmetry is definitely damning by King Charles deciding to make a video about other religious celebrations, in this case, Eid and Ramadan, and not doing one for Easter. And, you know, some of his defense or the defenses that people are offering are weak. You know, royal experts are noting that there has never been a strict royal tradition for Easter messages.

Queen Elizabeth, for example, only gave one during COVID. Fine. but Charles has issued Easter messages every year since his coronation. So he broke his own precedent the year he chose to send Ramadan and eat videos from inside the palace. So that's not neutrality, that's a choice. And I would say that the political damage is real. He's received the open letter. It's just sometimes applying common sense and judgment,

And if you've set the precedent of Easter greetings as the new king, you can't one year all of a sudden not do one, but do greetings for other religious holidays. We're going to leave it there, Dimitri. Thank you so much. Welcome back to Ben Morinie show. And so glad to have my next guest joining us. He does every week.

Tony Chapman, host of the award-winning podcast, Chatter That Matters, and founding partner of Chatter-A-I. Tony, welcome. Always a pleasure, my friend. Always a pleasure. So we've been talking soccer all since the beginning of the show. We've been talking Italy, trading in their blue Italian jerseys for Canada red and the jersey swap that took place in Toronto's Little Italy. And how did you see that?

Because it feels to me like that was a major coup. I think it's brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I mean, first of all, that would be like Canada not qualifying for the World Cup and hockey. Soccer is, or football, as they call it over there, is everything. And to make this gesture and say, hey, there's still a team. cheer for. I think it was just fabulous. Gets the city excited about the World Cup because as we know, with everything this country does, there's a lot of people for and against.

And I think it just reminded people that this is a major event. It's going to be partially staged in Toronto. And we got a chance to cheer Canada and cheer the best players in the world. But the fact that when people showed up, they thought they were going to have to hand over their Italian jerseys. And instead, Team Canada said, no, you get to keep that. That's your heritage. That's where you're from.

But this is, that's where your family's from, but this is where you are. Yeah, I think it's great. I mean, I would have, I would have been surprised if they had taken it away. That, that's part of the story. The story that's really important is somebody's thinking. Somebody's saying, and what can we do? That's going to be great for the Italian fans. It's going to remind people what's going to happen in Toronto very shortly.

And it's the kind of Canadian gesture we expect from Canadians. And so somebody was thinking and doing as opposed to legal getting a, involved and saying, well, you can't do this, you can't do that. I mean, that's what great humanity is all about. Yeah. More than a marketing story, it's just a good human story. Well, that's, that's everyone rowing in the same direction. Like I, I was talking to somebody last week about, you know, bringing entrepreneurship into

government. And I pointed out, I have a theory that the larger the organization, the more people who are placed all throughout that organization and their job, their only job. is to slow things down. They're the ones who say, oh, you know, we don't have everybody here and someone's on vacation or, well, that's a good idea,

but we got to check with legal or we got to check with regulatory or let's circle back on this and next quarter. And it feels like in this situation, somebody could have put the brakes on it, but everybody gave it the green light and that's why it happened.

You know, we should make a note to your producer, Mike, that what you just talked about, I talk about a lot. You know, there's too big to fail. you know, you surround yourself bureaucracy, which is really friction. You're creating friction, friction for the customer, friction with the organization. And today these disruptors are coming along saying we can remove the friction. Everything happens in the cloud.

We can put an app out. We could do things faster, better, and more efficient. And what you used to think was too big to fail is now too slow to respond. We should actually do an entire segment on companies that have found themselves absolutely disrupted and startups. And one of the great examples is a Canadian one. Blackberry owned 30% of the market share of mobile phones. Nokia was in the number two. And Apple comes along and changes the rules of the game because they use their phone as a magic wand versus an email device.

And the big BlackBerry got disrupted. I listen, I'm not known for having good ideas, but I was very, very early on when I saw it was happening with Apple. I talked to some people at RIM at the time. And I said, ditch your operating system and go open source with Google. And just keep your security. Like, keep the security features and use and go toe to toe with this operating system that seems to be growing in leaps and bounce. But whatever. I didn't have any stock, so it didn't matter.

But, you know what? Because it's a good thing for your listener. I mean, Android was going to be the de facto operating system, smart move. Blackberry earns own security. I mean, when you have the CIA and the Pentagon, only allowing your people to have a Blackberry. You've got a brand. And to suddenly say, I'm going to chase Apple and try to be the cool brand, it was a mistake.

But again, another show for another day. Yeah, but maybe this next story has something to do with that. Because Nike at one point was it was on the top of the pantheon of brands, American brands, in clothing and in sports. And now its stock is at its lowest point in what, 11 years? Yeah. And is, and now there's an article that suggests that it's because of wokeness. Is it because of wokeness or is it because they've been too slow to respond to the changing values of their customers? Without question, too slow to respond.

Three reasons. One, their Chinese sales are tanking, double digit decline and brands like Anta, Ling Ning are coming in and they're producing a better running shoe. Yeah. That was Nike's domain. and a cooler shoe. And Nike is just sort of caught, once again, that brand that gets caught in the middle. Yeah. And they don't know which way to move. The other thing that Nike did so poorly is they treated their retailers wrong.

They thought they were the big, you know, the cat in the pajamas and sort of just said, you're going to take the shoes that I give you. Retailers started bringing in Puma, Adidas. Next thing, you know, Nike said, we'll do it all digital. Digital didn't fail. now they're begging their way back into these retailists. It's just poor execution on Nike's part. And again, thinking you're too big to fail.

And here's the other thing. Jordan, Air Jordans, Michael Jordan, is 15% of Nike sales. So you think about that. If that catches, if that sneezes, Nike catches them on you. Well, I was also reading about, and this isn't part of our conversation today, but I was reading about the demise of all birds. And I remember going to all birds was sort of the environmentally friendly, most comfortable running shoe in the world. It was a running shoe. It was like it was a walking

shoe, but it was like really well built and fairly inexpensive. At one point, they were valued at $2 billion. And from what I understand, they just got sold for $14 million. And because they thought that their values were their product or something like that, it's a, it was very confusing. When you lose the plot as a brand and you think, and you try to be something to everybody, because you want to grow your sales, instead of just being a running shoe, or a walking shoe, now we're going to be a ballerina shoe or we're going to be this shoe and that shoe. Next thing, you know, we're going to get into the shoelace. Oh, we're in shoe laces. Let's get into fleece and get into hoodies. And before you know it, people go, I don't know what your

brand is. I don't know what it stands for. Look at what happened is the gap. The gap was a de facto store for people going. And old Navy took it out. So it just shows you that if you're, you want to own a position and own a lane, don't get greedy and try sliding into somebody else's lane just because momentum. You've got to protect your core business. And if you have your core business intact, then you can stretch out. But when you just try to just go for growth for growth sake, it happens time and time again. So this last story, I mean, that Kit Kat theft from a couple of weeks ago was such an odd story. And then I never could have predicted what was going to come next. The memes from all these other companies that were suggesting that they had been in on the theft in one way or another.

And it was all very tongue in cheek like Domino's saying we're very sorry to our friends at Kit Kat for the theft of 14 million Kit Kats. On an unrelated note, you can get a Kit Kat flavored pizza at Domino's. It was all very, very funny. But now there's a, I think it's either a meme or it's a Kit Kat commercial. And it looks like a bunch of boxes. and somebody said, Artemis 2, the ultimate getaway vehicle. What can Kit Kat do to capitalize on this theft? Let the consumer hijack your brand.

Let it just release the way it's releasing. Have everybody play with it, have fun with it, as opposed to trying to sort of say, I want all that to come back to Kit Kat. They're getting hundreds of millions of dollars of benefits from this truck theft. Just let it release. You know, sometimes you just got to let these things go out. the universe and let the consumer and the means have fun with it.

But it brings us to the beginning of the show. Very often, lawyers try to shut it down. We had a bride cut off her hair just before she got married. It was a viral $3,000 video that ended up on Oprah, ended up on Jay Leno. It was one of the most successful viral shows, products of its time. And the lawyers in Unilever tried to shut it down because the brides were drinking champagne and dropping the f-bomb. So sometimes you just got to get the lawyers out of the way, get the marketers out of the way, and let the consumer have their

way. And when you do that sometimes, you see such incredible virosity. There's nothing like it, Venice. But like once you're, I know some of your clips have gone so viral out on the universe and you go, it's just like watching a beautiful pinball game with the numbers just rack it up. But the second you try to flip it and get that extra number, very often the whole momentum dies. And you know, like you can tell that something works really well when you actually sit back and say, was there even a theft or was that all orchestrated to lead to these promotional moments. That's when you know that they've done a great job leveraging the initial flashpoint. But I got to run, my friend. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you next week. Always a pleasure.

My name is Mickey Fox. Friday, February 27th on Global. I'm sheriff of Edgewater. For her, keeping the peace, cartels moving in, means every investigation. People are getting threats. It's close to home. At the end of the day, I'm responsible for this town. Secrets, loyalties, and small town justice collide in the new hit drama. I'm a damn good sheriff. Sheriff Country returns Friday, February 27th on Global. Stream on Stack TV.