The Ben Mulroney Show - Why so little uproar over Mark Carney's latest hire?

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

 Guest: Warren Kinsella, Former Special Advisor to Jean Chretien and CEO of the Daisy Group 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. Hello there, Canada. Thank you so much for spending some of your Wednesday with us. It's been a long time since we've had this next guest on the show. Very glad to welcome back. Warren Kinsella, former special advisor to Jean Kretzia and CEO of the Daisy Group. Warren, how are you? Hey, my friend. Great to hear your voice.

Actually, I'm really glad you're here for this first story because I know that you, sometimes you will point out when we have discussions that you had worked on the Hillary Clinton campaign. And I have to assume that there's back and forth between, like, you know those people. There's a group of people who peers and colleagues from across borders who have worked together or who have befriended each other. And there's a network of you guys, correct? Yeah, for sure. But they're a bigger deal than we are.

So when you heard today that Mark Carney hired Maya Johnson, a U.S. Democratic operative for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. And now she's assuming the role, a newly created role of chief operating officer as well as senior advisor on Canada-U.S. relations. First of all, do you know this woman? I don't, but I know ever. I worked in the same. I volunteered critical difference in the same office after the big leak of Podesta's emails in 2016. Yeah. You know, the Russian hack. And security was just at an optimum.

And so she was like right in the middle of it. Like even when you went to the bathroom, Ben, like above the urinal and say, be careful, you know, loose lips, things. Yeah. But at that point, the horse had left the barn and they were in big trouble. I'm, uh, uh, so when I wake up today and I see. see that. Part of me says, you know, if this had been an announcement by a conservative prime minister that they had hired an American to assume the role of chief operating officer within

the U, within the prime minister's office, I don't know that the prime minister would have had a very easy day with the press gallery. It's, do you see things the same way? I do, because it's a different order of magnitude. Like, you know, we would bring up James Carville. Or we bring up, and you know, you give them a ton of money to give a speech and they cheer up the troops. You know, the liberals do this. Tories do it.

The NDP even do it when they have money. And then they meet with some people and they do some selfies and then you hand them a big check and they go back to the United States. Yeah. But that's different. Yeah. This is firing somebody to work in the most powerful office in Canada. And I think, you know, we're entitled to know a bit more about her. and, you know, what's the rationale here for hiring somebody who's, you know,

such a senior American politico to work in PMO? I, like, honestly, Ben, I don't think that's ever happened before. No, I've never heard of it. And I'm, listen, if you want to go get the best, go get the best. But I also feel that there has been, you know, and you can, you tell me if I'm wrong, whether I've got, you know, confirmation bias here. But I was talking to somebody today, said, we should, you know, people should be able to hire the best of the best. And I said, that's it. I

absolutely agree. But you can't weaponize over the course of a generation, this fear of, you know, U.S. style politics and U.S. tactics and maple MAGA and all of this stuff coming to Canada. And then do the exact same on the other side of the political spectrum. I said, you can't, you can't piss in a pool for a generation and then jump in and expect everybody to think that's normal. And the other thing, it's kind of contradictory to what the prime minister said he was going to do in terms of his relationship, not just with Trump, but with the Americans generally. And I've got to call him in post media about this today. Yeah, this is not exactly by Canadian. Yeah, he said he was going to bite back and build a stronger Canada.

And, you know, all of that kind of stuff. and he was going to get a trade deal. And when he does something like this, it really suggests the voters, the opposite. It suggests that he's not as concerned about that. And, you know, for a banker, for a banker who, you know, an international banker like he was, that makes some sense in that world.

But in the political world, it doesn't. You've got to be really careful. Like Stefan Dienn got in a hell of a lot of trouble when it's found out he had a Canadian and a French. which passport. And Andrew Shear got in trouble when it was found out he had a dual citizenship with the United States. Those symbols really matter. And in this case, she's a staffer, but she's a, you know, she's more powerful than you and me. And, you know, it's an interesting symbol. It says something about Mark Carney's willingness to do things that others haven't done in the past.

And what does it say to you about either our prime minister or our role? relationship with the Americans that when pressed on this new deal to open the Gordy Howe bridge that sees revenues going to the Americans, that the Ottawa has made no promise to release the text of the deal? It's outrageous. It is outrageous. Canadians spent, we spent more than $60 billion building that bridge with the expectation that, you know, the tolls.

going across the bridge, would come to Canada until we were compensated. And then the American could share it in the deal. And then Trump, of course, heard from, you know, one of his big donors, the ones the Ambassador Bridge, the competitor. And Trump said, no, I'm not going to let you open your new Gordy Howe Bridge. And like that was a moment, right? That was a moment. I can't see that happening to your dad.

I can't see that happening to my former boss because I think they'd know how to deal with and Kearney just kind of froze. Yeah. And again, was not what he told us he would be during the liberal leadership or during the election campaign. And now we find out, almost certainly, that he's folded like a cheap suit. And we know that he's folded like a cheap suit because he won't show us the details. We're finding out about it from Donald Trump on truth social. Warning, it may be such a good deal that he just doesn't want to embarrass Pierre Polia.

That is a possibility. And I will say this, it made me chuckle when I realized that so many of us north of the border laughed and with scorn at Donald Trump and how delusional he was in his first term that he was going to build the wall and get Mexico to pay for it. Well, it turns out it wasn't a wall. It was a bridge. And it wasn't the Mexicans. It was the Canadians. You just gave me an idea for a column. That is exactly.

That's exactly what happened. just a different border in reverse. And it's just a bad look for Mark Carney because this is, you know, you know, he said he wasn't going to do this. He said he was going to be tough with Donald Trump. You know, he said that Pierre Pahlia was the guy who was going to bend the knee, and I'm not going to bend a knee to Donald Trump. Yeah.

Well, guess what? He did. Yeah. I got to talk about this. You know, I made a joke about Nader Skinskinsmith, the former cabinet minister, under Justin Trudeau, who was going to leave because he wanted to run for the liberal leadership in Ontario. And then he was considering possibly running for city council.

And I made the joke, you know, somebody needs to tell Nate, he's not legally required to run for things. And then I would say the same thing about the former Ontario liberal leader, Bonnie Cromby, who left her job as the mayor of Mississauga to win the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party. She lost the election. And now she wants to go back to the vote. voters of Mississauga and run for mayor again.

And what she's saying is she will see it through this time. She won't abandon her post. If you were advising Bonnie Cromby, the candidate for mayor, how would you make sure, how would you make sure that that that part of the message that she will see it through, that she's not just here until something better comes along? How do you make that stick with the voters? I don't know how that's going to work. And I think, you know, likening her to Nate, this makes sense.

Nate reminds me that old Saturday Night Live sketch about, you know, Francisco Franco, he's still dead. You know, Nate is still around. It's like, take a hint. And so Bonnie is kind of in a take-a-hint territory. I know her and I like her. Yeah. And I've known her for a long-term. She's a wonderful person.

Yes, she is. Like, you know her to her. But I think she needed a time out. and she needed to stay away from politics for a while. And then, you know, come back, revitalized and new ideas. Come back when people miss you. Entergized. Come back when people miss you.

Yeah, you got to make them miss you. And she hasn't disappeared yet. And like I'm no fan of Carolyn Parrish. I have appalled by her position on Israel and quite a few other things. So I think she is worthy of defeat. I just question whether Bonnie is the person to do it. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break.

I got more with Warren. because we've got lots more topics to hit when we come back, including the conservatives spent how much in the last election? That's coming up next. Welcome back, and I'm very glad that Warren Kinsella has stuck around for this conversation that we've been having. I want to go back and talk about the conservatives. I think the news was surprising to a lot of people

that they practically doubled the spending of the liberals in the election last year, and the difference was they spent twice as much to lose. and the liberals spend half as much to win. Look, you spend what you got to win. You leave it all on the table. So that doesn't surprise me, but it's the number that surprises me. Yeah, it surprised me too. And, you know, we're all used to in American election cycles where they spend as, you know,

in a single Senate race, what we spend in an entire national campaign. But it's the imbalance here. you know, as you point out, liberals spent 55 million and the Tories spent 99 million in 2025. And what do you got to show for it?

In those of us who work for political parties or have worked for political parties, 90% of what we fundraise goes to advertising. Because, you know, in order for us to reach the voter, they've got to see our ad at least three times before they even

have a dim recollection of it. So it, you know, that's where the money goes. That makes sense. But it's, it's got to have a good message. It can't be just buying a whole bunch of ad time. Can't be just having a big ad buy. You've got to have a message that connects with people. And the thing that's mystifying here is that they spent 100 million bucks and said precious little about the, the gorilla in the corner, which was Donald Trump. And that's, of course, what the liberals did almost entirely. I don't think they talked about anything else. And it worked for them because it wasn't a question of money. It was a question of the message. And the liberal message got them more bang for their buck.

Talk to me about fundraising and sort of the message that goes into getting people to part with their money. Because for years under, it was like the law of diminishing returns with Justin, where the Tories had this incredible fundraising machine. I believe they still have it. Talk to me about the role that hope and optimism plays in getting people. to donate to a political party. I have to believe that with Mark Carney riding so high in the polls right now, it's probably easier for them to fundraise today than it has at any point in the past 10 years. Yeah, for sure.

Social media has helped them do that. The Internet's help them do that. When I was in Krentzian's office, one of my jobs was to review all of his correspondence, but also all of the fundraising appeals that would go out. You know, and they'd have bolding of certain words and underlining. and exclamation points. And, you know, I said to the guys I dealt with the liberal party, this is super goofy. Like, I wouldn't write a, you know, a check for a buck, this stuff.

And then they came back to me the following week and they said, well, that letter you didn't like, we raised, you know, a quarter of a million dollars with it. So it's a real science, you know, how you do this stuff. And it's really important because you need it in order to tell your story, to get your advertising out there and in front of people. And because people are so busy, Joe and Jane Front Porch, you know, just stuck in traffic and trying to get their kids to ballet or hockey or whatever, you know, they're busy. So you've got to spend a lot of money to reach them. Spending it on places like 640, of course, because they should be doing that, but also, you know, on TV and

not so much print anymore, but a lot on social. And it's got to be stuff that works. Because what you've also got to spend some money on is the research. You can't be just doing this and guessing where everybody sits around the table and says, hey, let's try this. Or my cab driver said this. You've got to have it based upon science. And it sounds like the Tories relied on some polling that steered them in the wrong direction. Yeah, because they did say that they spent a big chunk of it prior to the writ dropping

because so much so much of the research that they needed to do happened before the election was called. But are you, I mean, I'm confident that even even with the headwind of a very popular liberal government, the Tories still have that tried and true fundraising machine, right? Absolutely, they do. They've always been better at fundraising. And the gap is narrowing. You know, it's not as big as it was even a week ago. There's numbers out this morning showing that the Gapitin liberals and the Tories is getting better. So I think, you know, people, they may not be in love with Polyev. They were at one point. So I think the summertime is helping him. You know, he's spending time focusing on his party and so on. But on the fundraising piece, the liberals never seem to ever cut up.

And, you know, sometimes that matters a lot. But in 2025, it didn't seem to matter at all. And if we can spend a minute on the NDP, Every time I read a story about their finances, they are dire. How do they get out of a situation like that? Well, they've got the vote subsidy, which helps them out, which is still sticking around. So if you get a certain number of votes, you get that the, you get a financial contribution back from the elections people. So all of the parties benefit from that.

And they do a lot of institutional fundraising. So like the steel workers, for example, in Hamilton. You'll see that they're big spenders with the NDP. They do do well, like the Bernie Sanders of the world, you know, the grandmother sending in a $20 check or whatever, but they need to get better. And that's particularly the case now that Avi Lewis has decided not to seek a seat in the house with one of those seven by-elections that's hanging around.

I am mystified by his decision there. He needs to get in front of guys like you. He needs to be on TV. He needs to get better known. And at the moment, he's in a witness protection program. I don't think anybody knows where he is. What my dad used to say all the time, he's like, you want to be in the House of Commons. You want people to see you, even if you only get one question a week, going toe to toe with the prime minister.

Because nobody gets to do that in that setting, but you. And if you're just going to sit on the outside chirping from the cheap seats, then people are going to look at you like you're a protester or just a regular person. And people don't vote for protesters or regular people. They vote for politicians. They vote for leaders. Yeah, and look at the two guys who achieve majorities, you know, coming into opposition. Your dad in Central Nova and 83 and Krantzian, my guy. And he ran in Boiseu, sure.

You know, he wasn't from Schoenegen to start. He was in Boisjeure in New Brunswick. You've got to be in the House of Commons. You've got to get FaceTime on TV. It helps you on the money piece. Yeah. It helps you in the polls. It's what you've got to do.

And again, I just don't understand what Louisville. Lewis is doing because I think actually Ben, he has got the best communications and TV shops of any of the leaders. Well, of course. And the other two are not bad. Avi had his own TV show on another network and he, you know, he's a likable guy. I've known him for a long time. I just don't understand why he's like hiding from public view.

It's a big mistake. So the last thing I want to talk about, we don't have too much time for it. But there is a piece on the CBC website that says gun license applications have surged in Toronto since 2016. And then the subheadline is, reason for the increase isn't clear growing interest in shooting sports likely contributing to which I don't know if I smirked or guffod because the numbers are in Peel region. The capital of home invasions in Canada, more or less, unofficial, has gone up 110% since 2025. It's got me thinking, you know, somebody goes and wants to get their license and they say, what's the reason that you want to get a license? They're not going to.

going to say I want a gun to protect my family because my next door neighbor had a home invasion. They're going to say, oh, I want to take up skeet shooting. Like that's that to me is what's going on here. Yeah, it is. I mean, you know, if you look at the data in the United States, for example, when gun purchases go through the roof is there's a surge in crime or there's a lot of reporting on some dramatic crime or there's, you know, talk about making, getting access to a gun a lot harder. I'm a gun owner, full disclosure. I know how to use them. I encourage everybody, you know, to understand. It's a very tough licensing regime as it should be.

You've got to take lots of courses. You've got to understand how to handle it. You've got to understand the law. And, you know, that's the way it should be. But I'm with you. I don't think this is people looking to join a gun club and, you know, sit around and talk about, you know, their favorite Winchester.

This is people who are worried about crime. And as we saw in Toronto this week, you know, a dozen people shot in a single weekend, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That is a situation where people get alarmed and they feel like the police are not protecting them. And that is the view in a lot of people in Toronto. And so the result is this. People are, you know, applying to get a gun.

Warren Kinsella, I thank you for your time, my friend. Great talking to you. Thanks, my friend. Take care.