The Ben Mulroney Show - Why is Justin Trudeau allowed to stack the senate?

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Why is Justin Trudeau allowed to stack the senate? with Guest: Andrew Scheer, Opposition House Leader, former Opposition Leader -It's time to revitalize our Canadian Military with Guest: Spencer Fernando, Campaign Fellow for the National Citizens Coalition  -Is Donald Trump's Iron Dome for America actually achievable? with Guest: Richard Goldberg - Senior Advisor The Foundation for Defense of Democracies If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I just shook my head and chuckled and said, of course. Of course he is. And if you drill down into the article, conservative Senator Claude Carignan took issue with this move, saying he has the power to appoint senators, but after resigning, I don't think he has the legitimacy to do so. Let's talk to somebody who is one of the boots on the ground in Ottawa, Andrew Scheer, opposition house leader and former opposition leader.

Mr. Scheer, welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Good morning, Ben. Thanks for having me back on. So not only has he resigned, and therefore you could make the argument that he doesn't have the legitimacy to do this, but I thought we were prorogued. I thought all of this business was put on pause. Well, exactly. You know, it's not like he was residing because he had reached the end of his career in a stable government and he was going to pass the torch on to a successor. He resigned because he's lost the confidence of literally every party in the House of Commons, including his own. And our system is based on the awesome power of the Prime Minister that can do so many

things in this country, make appointments, pass regulations, is predicated on the fact that the elected people who represent voters have confidence in that Prime Minister. So Justin Trudeau resigned, basically pushed out by his own MPs, and now he's going to use this power to stack the Senate with people who could be there until they turn 75 years old. It's a complete affront to democracy. And it's a major assault on one of our democratic institutions. Now he after he took power, there are a whole bunch of vacancies that he had to fill. And he changed the nomination process.

He, he, he called up upon an advisory committee to recommend candidates based based according to what they said, based on merit. But increasingly, these have been partisan nominations. Over two-thirds of his nominations since he took office have been affiliated with either his party or the center-center left. And so there's an awesome amount of influence for the Liberal Party and its vision in inside our Senate. Well, exactly. It's a completely bogus con job that he tried to fool the K and people with on this whole notion of independent senators. They either, as you point out, they either have direct partisan ties or they share his

radical agenda. I mean, we've got senators who opposed taking the carbon tax off of farm products in an inflationary crisis where people are cutting back on their groceries. We've had senators who have said that criminal changes to our criminal code that let offenders out earlier don't go far enough. We've got Senators who have said that even more hard drugs need to be legalized in our country. Those are all Trudeau-affiliated Senators who share his extreme agenda that Canadians are rejecting. And I guess that's the point here, you know, we're hopefully just a few weeks or months away from an election. It's clear that the Canadian people at least least wanna have their say in what comes next.

Certainly most Canadians have fed up with this liberal government. He does not have a mandate from the people to stack the Senate with people who share his extreme agenda that voters are rejecting. Well, he doesn't even have a mandate from his cabinet who are picking sides right now. They're already saying, we're with Mark Carney or we're with Christia Freeland.

He's a prime minister, almost in name only. But however, Mr. Scheer, I do want to, you're right, 77% of Canadians, regardless of who they want to vote for, want an election yesterday. That's in a recent poll. However, there's also news that Ottawa is planning pandemic level relief for workers and businesses if Trump imposes tariffs. So here's my fear is this becomes some version

of a national emergency and the Trudeau government in an effort to get something like this through does a deal with the NDP and says, listen, we're willing to spend a lot of money here and we're gonna need your help. And Jagmeet is able to use that as cover to vote for this vote in lockstep with the government yet again, and we may not see ourselves

go to the polls until October. Well, that's a very scary thought. And I think we have to back up a little bit and say, how did we get here? Liberal members of parliament, this is where every single Liberal MP share the responsibility and blame for Trudeau's misery that he's inflicted on Canadians because they could have grown up and grown a backbone back in the fall or last spring, pushed Trudeau out or voted non-conference to give Canadians that election. We would have already had an election, we would have already had a new government with a strong mandate from the people to deal with President Trump's

tariff. Instead, they literally had to drag him out of the Prime Minister's office, there's probably still fingernail scratches on the desk, and now he's put Canadians in this terrible position of uncertainty and chaos with this US threat, all for his own personal and partisan self-interest. So to answer your question, I don't trust Jagmeet Singh. He's flip-flopped before. He's made dramatic statements promising to rip up the deal and that the coalition with the government was off only to vote to prop them up dozens of time after that. So we're gonna be watching this very carefully and I think

voters need to remember Jagmeet Singh has said clearly that no matter who wins the Liberal leadership, no matter what happens with the US-Canada dynamic, that he will vote non-confidence and give Canadians the election they so desperately want. So we need to hold him to account if he flip-flops. Mr. Sher, what do you make of so many liberals, so many people who stood shoulder to shoulder with Justin Trudeau voting in favor of his vision for the country? What do you make of their willingness, their eagerness to call the last nine years a mistake and to say that they're heading in a new direction, a new era, we're turning the page, it's a

new chapter, it's a new book. What does that say about that party? It says that they will literally say anything to cling on to power. But more than that, it just goes to show that they don't actually believe in any, their highest belief is them staying in power. Now, I will point out though that it is it is awfully shameless. I mean, you got someone like Christia Freeland, who brought in a capital gains tax hike on workers and small businesses and entrepreneurs said this was the best way to fix the economy and to help pay for things. And real Canadians wouldn't feel it.

And now she's already flip-flopped on that. You've got Mark Carbon Tax Carney, who says he loves carbon pricing, says Trudeau's carbon tax was too low, was advising him to raise it. Now he's starting to offload it, but my fear is that this is gonna be just like what happened in the Soviet Union when you had terribly unpopular leaders

and the party apparatus would dump them and push them out only to bring somebody in that would do the exact same types of things. And that's what this is going to be. It's going to be meet the new boss, same as the old boss after this liberal leadership is over. They all share the same radical ideology. They all supported Trudeau as he was doubling housing costs, he was unleashing crime waves

across our city, legalizing hard drugs and raising taxes. No matter who wins this leadership race, it's the party itself. It's the radical ideology that is causing this misery and nothing will change regardless who wins the liberal leadership. Mr. Scheer, I saw a journalist on another network talking about how no matter where he goes in the city that he lives in, people aren't talking carbon tax anymore. They're talking the looming threat of Donald Trump tariffs.

Does that change the conservative party's calculus in terms of how they want to approach an election whenever it comes? I know a lot of people, for so many people, the carbon tax is as important as it was yesterday or the day before. It's just that there's this new thing that seems to be sucking all the oxygen out of the room. Well, it's, people are rightly worried about it. It's a massive threat to our economy. We're an export driven economy. But our leader, Pierre Poliev, has been very loud and proud standing up

for Canada and speaking out against these tariffs and pointing out that Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party has imposed tariffs on ourselves. The carbon tax is effectively a tariff. It's a penalty on Canadian production that the Americans don't pay. We've got a Liberal Party that killed pipelines that would have taken Canadian energy products to Asian and European markets. We've had a Liberal Party that said no to LNG. So we've had opportunities over the last nine years of this Liberal government to diversify our trade, to not be so dependent on selling things to the U.S. And not only have they not pursued those opportunities, they've shoved a big close

sign on the door when European leaders and Asian leaders come knocking, begging to buy our products. So our leader, Pierre Polly, will have a comprehensive plan to deal with this threat. will have a comprehensive plan to deal with this threat. The Conservative Party will put Canada in a position of strength so that more U.S. investors are fighting to get into Canada. Mr. Chair, we're going to have to leave it there, but I thank you. I hope you come back soon. Thank you very much, Ben. Calling all sellers, Salesforce is hiring account executives to join us on the cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword. It's a way of life. You'll be solving customer challenges faster with agents, winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be.

Let's create the agent-first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more. We've talked a lot about military history, we're talking a lot about the state of the Canadian military, we're talking about the demands that being placed on the federal government for Canada to live up to its military responsibilities. And so we're joined now by Spencer Fernando, campaign fellow for the National Citizens Coalition, who knows far more about these things than I ever will. Thank you very much for joining us again, Spencer. Good to be here. So you wrote a piece that talks about how there are a great many Canadians who feel the, they hear the call to join

the Canadian military, they put themselves forth, they want to put themselves in harm's way, they want to defend Canadian values and yet it's very very hard for them. In the last year for which full numbers were available 70,000 Canadians want to join the Canadian Armed Forces but fewer than 5,000 applications were accepted. Talk to me about the the state of play as it is today and how we can change it for the better. Yeah well one of the reasons I wanted to you know talk about that is that people I the state of play as it is today and how we can change it for the better? Yeah, well, one of the reasons I wanted to, you know, talk about that is that people, I see a lot of people online saying, oh, no one wants to join the military. Everyone's demoralized.

You know, we can't build our military up. And, you know, I think it's important for people to realize that's not actually the case. You know, people shouldn't, you know, given to this kind of attitude that no one wants to join up and that there's no hope. There are in fact, a lot of people who want to join, but the government has not done a good job of making it easier for people to join. So yeah, the last last year for day for data that's available, 70,000 wanted to join fewer than 5000 applications accepted. So when we say, Oh, we can't build the military up, we can't, you know, become a stronger country. That's just not true. Yeah,

there's there's people who want to join. Yeah, well, I certainly was one of those people who assumed that people didn't wanna join. That's why the numbers were so low. And so, yes, on one hand, it gives me hope that there is this appetite in the Canadian population to sign up and to defend us. But we have to get to a place where we have the ability

to intake those people and give them something to do. That's right. And that's part of the problem is also, you know, you have to have new equipment for them to use. It's kind of a chicken or the egg scenario, right? You need people to use equipment. But you know, if you want people to join, you also have to they have to know that they're

going to have good equipment, right? So at some point, the government needs to just start making large investments in the military to send a signal to people that yes, if you join, you're going to be taken care of. If you're put in harm's way, you're going to have the best equipment possible, which I think that's the bare minimum we should say to anyone who's brave enough to sign up. But you know, the government has to take certain steps and you'll probably mentioned they are taking a few initial steps now to speed up the recruiting process. Well, yeah, well, there's also this news that the Canadian Armed Forces no longer automatically

disqualifying applicants with certain medical conditions. What are those medical conditions? Yeah, one of them was ADHD, I believe. Then let's see, I know there's a story here where they- Allergies or something? That's one of them too? Yeah, ADHD and allergies, which I think the chief of defense staff made an interesting point, which is that they're the diagnostic tools are a lot better now.

Yeah, catching things they wouldn't have copped before. And again, if you look at the way warfare is changing, I think we do need to start making changes on who is accepted. A lot of warfare in the future is going to be sitting in front of a screen, you know, moving a drone around, moving an advanced autonomous weapon system or controlling an advanced system. And so the idea that everyone needs to be at peak physical condition, obviously people in the front line should be, but the idea that everyone in the military needs to be in peak physical condition is just not really realistic anymore. Spencer, like where's the low hanging fruit here? Where, what are the easiest ways for us to move the

ball down the field to get to a place where we have the fighting force that we need as a country? I mean, are there best practices from around the world that we should be adopting? Yeah, I think one of the most important things to do is to look at the Air Force. I wrote an article recently on I think the Air Force should be our main focus for one, because it fits into areas where Canada already has some expertise. We have a pretty strong aerospace sector. We have a strong tech sector. So I think becoming a leader in drones is something we should

focus on. You know, invest a few billion dollars in building up a domestic Canadian drone industry. You know, with the threats we're facing from the states in terms of trade problems, I think we should still buy the F-35. It's still a great plane, and Canada contributed to building it. So we should still buy that, but we should also supplement that order with perhaps some Gripen fighters from the European Union. And so I think the Air Force, and it makes sense. Canada, we don't have that large of a population.

A Navy takes a long time to build and is very expensive. So if you wanna protect a large line mass and you wanna do it in a way that's relatively efficient, then a strong air force is the way to go. And you know, yesterday on the show, I referenced something that the leader of the opposition, Pierre Poliev said a while ago, he was asked about under a Poliev government, could Canada live up, would Canada live up to its 2% NATO commitment? And he said, listen, before we get there, recognize that when I become prime minister, I'm going to open up the federal books and it's going to be even worse.

The finances of this country are going to be even worse than we've been told. He said, so I'm going to have even less money to do the things I need to do than we're being told I'll have. He said, however, one thing I can promise is that money spent on the military under a polio of government will be optimized.

It will be far more efficiently and effectively deployed than under the Trudeau government that he said was wasteful and inefficient. Is that when you hear a statement like that, does that ring true to you? Are we inefficient and ineffective in the way that we deploy funds to service our military? Are we inefficient and ineffective in the way that we deploy funds to service our military? To a certain extent, I think the procurement process is obviously horrendous. I mean, I don't think there's anybody in the country who knows anything about the military who would disagree with the idea that we need to fix the procurement process. I do think, unfortunately, and this is something I think I've seen with liberal and conservative

governments for quite some time in Canada, is yes, yes, we do need to be more efficient. Certainly Canada, I'm sure the new conservative government, if they get elected, is going to open the books and see some pretty bad things. At a certain point, though, you just do need to spend a lot of money. I know that's not what people want to hear right now, but that's that's just the way the world works. At a certain point, Canada is going to have to spend a lot more money. I mean, to be honest, 2% probably isn't enough. It's going to need to be 3%.

Yeah. But Spencer, isn't there, shouldn't, I feel we are in desperate need of sort of a realignment on the discussion that an investment in our military is not simply an outlay of cash. It's not simply an expense. I mean, there are benefits that come from it. There are financial benefits that come from having a strong military as well. I mean, the building up of the of the the industries around those are, you know, there are armaments and as you said, drone technologies, those are those are going to be the the industries of the future that currently are kind of anemic in this country. Yeah, I mean, it would mean a large investment in research and development so that benefits universities air bases and military bases across the country Which often benefits small towns builds up local economies. I mean mission production drone production construction jobs

Information technology jobs and so yeah and again There's there's a whole lot of young people in this country who are struggling very badly financially and having a chance to have a military career, which builds extremely good skills. I mean, people love to hire veterans because the skills people build up are amazing and the work ethic is amazing. And having so many young people get into the military and then have some financial security from that, I think would be very beneficial.

So I think that's a very good point you make. We shouldn't just look at it as a cost. It's also about helping the economy and strengthening our country. And lastly, I'm so glad we are having this conversation. I think, former Premier of Quebec Jean Charest last week said, you know, 20 years from now, we as a nation may look back at Donald Trump and thank him for holding up a mirror to this country and forcing us to take a real hard look at what our priorities

are, how we've been running this country and how the decisions that we've made have led us to this place and we can improve from here. And when I hear that Canada's chief of the defense staff says that the next prime minister needs to pay attention to our defense and take responsibility for Canada's territorial integrity, pointing to other countries whose sovereignty has been breached these past few years. I say to myself with sadness, why does this even need to be said? Why have we gotten to a point

where our chief of defense staff says something that should be, is one of the most sacred responsibilities of any prime minister? Yeah, we've been living in a delusion for a long time. I think you know, I'm obviously not a fan of The way the US president speaking about Canada, but again, we don't control what the US president does We don't control the US does how we can controls our response. And so we certainly made a mistake Many years ago. I mean, it's not it's not just a recent mistake Assuming that the US would always be reliable assuming that we could always depend on And again, it's not about not having alliances. I think we need more alliances. We should deepen

our military and economic cooperation with the European Union. But at a certain point, you need to say, look, a country needs to be able to defend itself. And that means you need to invest a lot of money in your military. We've neglected that. And now we're going to have to pay a price and that price is going to be a lot more spending. Spencer Fernando, Campaign Fellow for the National Citizens Coalition, thank you so much, great article, and I hope to talk to you again soon. Sounds good. If you've been following the war in the Middle East, then you know that

Israel's got a lot of stuff going for it, and not the least of which is the Iron Dome. And the Iron Dome is a defensive technology that has been protecting civilians from the mass murderers who are trying to kill them. And I have a guest now who'll give you a better description of the Iron Dome. And let's welcome Richard Goldberg, Senior Advisor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies to the show. Richard, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me back. So Donald Trump has said that he wants an Iron Dome for America.

Before we get to that, do me a favor and explain to the listeners what the Iron Dome is in Israel. Yeah, Iron Dome is part of Israel's layered missile defense. When you see the big missiles that have come at Israel over the last year from Iran or from the Houthis in Yemen, you're seeing something called the Arrow Missile Defense System that's going up to take out these big ballistic missiles coming across from Iran. When you've seen some of the larger missiles coming in from Hezbollah, cruise missiles

coming, they've had something called a David Sling missile system. And then for years, Israel didn't know what to do with Hamas rockets that were coming over from Gaza. These thousands of rockets you always heard about where kids were running into bomb shelters and playgrounds were under attack and you had 15 seconds of warning. And so the Israelis developed with U.S. assistance an incredible technology where they can fire these little interceptor missiles that go out and search for a rocket. The radar can figure out exactly where this rocket's going to fall.

They don't need to hit that, it's going to fall into a field. Yes, need to hit that, it's going to hit a school. And then it goes up, finds it, hits the target, takes it out of the sky, and the threat's been eliminated. It was a game changer for many years. It was not a solution, obviously, since we saw October 7th happen despite Iron Dome. But the concept was the skies of Israel would be fully protected. There would be a dome around Israel from the rocket threat. Well, I mean, the technology and know-how required to use a rocket to shoot down another

rocket is just absolutely incredible. Let's hear what Donald Trump had to say about an American Iron Dome. And in a little while I'll be signing four new executive voters. First is that I'm directing our new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who's going to be great by the way, to immediately begin the construction of a state-of-the-art iron dome missile defense shield which will be able to protect Americans. You know we protect protect other countries, but we don't protect ourselves. And when Ronald Reagan wanted to do it many years ago,

luckily we didn't, we didn't have the technology then. It was a concept, but we didn't. And now we have phenomenal technology. You see that with Israel. Okay, so I mean, he's got a bold vision, but sometimes a vision doesn't work in the actual reality we live in. How feasible is it that with a landmass as large as the United States that this would even work? I mean, it's the United States is

443 times bigger than Israel. Yeah, so it's very feasible. And here's why Iron Dome is a concept. It's a brand, right? It's the idea of you could create a dome around the United States that could defeat incoming missiles. In the specifics, we're not talking about short-range homemade rockets like the Hamas threat of old that Iron Dome was developed for. We're talking about the concept of creating a dome around the United States. We already have a limited type of national missile defense. We've had it for many, many years. We have these big interceptors out in Alaska and in California to defend the United States from a potential North Korean long-range missile threat or a Russian or Chinese long-range missile threat. But the threats that we have seen over the last two decades have absolutely proliferated

and advanced in technology. You're talking about long-range ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missiles, long-range cruise missiles, hypersonic missiles that go five times the speed of sound and are highly maneuverable. What we have in California and Alaska is not enough to defend the homeland. We have now the ability to think about space-based interceptors and sensors and technology to actually use lasers and other types of technology from space potentially, along with what's actually on the coast of the United States to defend ourselves from all of these threats. It's not going to be easy, but people have been doing a lot of thought on this

for a long time. And if there's actually funding available, investment, and a willingness to do this, including space space technology, it's absolutely possible. So I'm speaking with Richard Goldberg. He's the senior advisor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. We're talking about an American Iron Dome. And the president, if you take him at his word, he's not looking at signing an executive order for a feasibility study. He said for the construction of this. So is he saying that this is getting done as soon as he signs that executive order? Well, he's basically ordering the planning to start.

Give me what you're going to do next. How is it going to happen? Where are we going to go? Remember, in his first term, he set up a space force and nobody's really understood what does the space force do. This is going to be part of the mission of the space force. It's going to be a big part of it. And when he talks about the fact that we do this for other countries already, remember we were on track to try to do this 20 years ago. The Obama administration defunded the effort and said we're not going to put investments

into defense of the US homeland. We're not going to put investments into defense of the US homeland. We're instead going to do what's called regional missile defense. So we have sea-based on destroyers capabilities to intercept missiles that you've seen in the Red Sea against the Houthis, for example. We've put other kind of missile defense mobile systems that can roll on, roll off into other countries when there is a conflict that arises. But investing in our own homeland defense is something we haven't done for almost 20

years. Richard Goldberg, thank you so much for your time. A very exciting time for sort of the military history of the United States. For the most important stories from around the world. We are here in Jerusalem. We just heard the siren. For many people, the worst days of this disaster are still to come. Told by the best journalists in the country.

I'm Donna Friesen in Berlin. Just keep your head down. He's away, he's away, go, go, go. Watch Canada's number one national newscast. A rail strike could cost this one southern Alberta farm as much as a million dollars. The award-winning Global National with Donna Friesen.