The Ben Mulroney Show - Why would Mark Carney agree to a French Debate and then back-out

Episode Date: March 25, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Why would Mark Carney agree to a French Debate and then back-out with Guest: Dimitris Soudas, Senior Vice President at Cavalia, 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://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

Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us. And another day, another flip flop by Mark Carney. I'm not trying to be mean, but the fact is he says one thing on one day and then changes it to the next. My favorite, the one that did not get the attention from the press that it should have, was when he ransacked through Rosemary Barton of the CBC when she suggested that there could be some conflicts due to his holdings in Brookfield and God knows what else. And he said, look inside yourself. And then the very next day said, well, if there are any conflicts, then I'm going to recuse myself. He should have been raked over the coals for that. And he should have apologized to Rosemary

Barton anyway, but that's like a lifetime ago because now we got another one. He, uh, he was asked if he would participate in the TVA debate, which is the biggest network in Quebec. Possibly you could make an argument it's the biggest network in Canada. I think they get about a million and a half viewers for their news every night, find a single news outlet in the rest of Canada that gets that nationally. So it is a force in the province of Quebec. And he was asked if he would do that debate. He said, pourquoi pas? Why not? Only to change his mind a little bit later.

Yves-Francois Blanchet, the leader of the Bloc Québécois, had this take on why he decided to back out of that debate. Just because he's afraid about his French being compared to yours? So far, I don't know what he's not afraid of. This guy is supposed to be strong enough to face Donald Trump, which is one of the biggest threat on democracy and freedom for a long time. I will face the guy and then we say, hey come in Quebec and discuss with us because you want us to vote for

you. Oh I won't go and I have the perfect pretext. I say, oh, us, the Liberal Party of Canada, we do not have $75,000. We're so poor. Yeah, I do believe that. So I'm saying to him, hey, let's come and face the music. Officially, he said that he's not going to participate. He hasn't talked about the money being an issue. Yes. The Liberal Party has said that they don't want to pay the $75,000. All right here to discuss this and a couple of other issues we're joined for the very first time, hopefully not the last, Dimitri Soudas, Senior Vice President Kavalia and

former Director of Communications for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Dimitri, welcome to the Ben Mulroney Show. Hey Ben, how are you? I'm great. All right, listen, I've been all over social media trying to see what everybody's take is on this. And everyone's trying to make it so that he, Stephen Gibow went on to TV news and said, well, he didn't have all the information. And once he got the information, that's when he decided to step away.

Meanwhile, we also heard the argument. Well, it was a $75,000 to which Pierre Poliev said he would pay the $75,000. What's your take on this? So let's cut through the spin here. At the end of the day, the reason that Mark Carney chose to not participate in the French debate, which, by the way, last time around,

more than 1.2 million Quebecers watched the debate on TVA. It's because Mr. Carney's French, let's call it what it is, it's gibberish. In French we say du charabia. And Mr. Duclos, one of his MPs and ministers, former ministers said yesterday that it was about the money. Today Mr. Carney said, well because... The Green Party was an invited leader. So my advice to liberals is if you're gonna lie, can you at least pick one lie? Yeah.

Don't say one thing today, another thing tomorrow, one thing in the morning. And here's the reality, Ben. Quebecers right now are very frustrated because the current Prime Minister literally does not speak French. Yeah. Which shocked me, I gotta say. I was floored when I saw, because I heard a speech from him where he had prepared notes in French. I heard him speak here in Toronto and he spoke wonderfully off of a script, but to speak off the cuff, to answer questions, and be in a debate in an arena like a debate, he falls to pieces. Beyond that, and you even have press gallery reporters from Radio Canada, from TVA, from

Canadian Press in French, who are telling me, we are so frustrated because when we ask our questions in French, he doesn't understand them. and then we're forced to translate our questions into English You know Ben, I'll take you back in history The last time that the Liberal Party of Canada had a leader who was also Prime Minister Whose French was very weak. Yeah, he was John Turner and you know who the opponent was. Yeah Yeah, and so what do you think the impact could be on the liberal fortunes in Quebec? The Tories under Stephen Harper managed to put together a majority government without a huge presence in Quebec. They did have significant seats, but not a huge presence.

The Liberal Party needs a ton of support in that province, don't they? They do, but I want to take it beyond that, Ben. So it very well may happen that the Liberals will hold on to 20, 30 seats in Quebec. But we need to see beyond that. Right now, the PQ, the Parti Québécois, which is a party that wants to separate Quebec from Canada, is leading in the polls in Quebec may very well form the next federal government, sorry, the next provincial government, and their clear commitment is they will have a referendum in their first mandate. The top duty, the top role of the Prime Minister of

Canada is to always defend national unity in both official languages. How weak is the federation going to be with a Prime Minister who is a unilingual Anglophone? What strikes me is he has been, even though he only just recently jumped into politics, this has been on his vision board for years. He should have been taking these lessons for years. Well, let's be clear. It's been on his vision board for more than 13 years. And why do I say that?

Because back in 2012, there were rumors he was having meetings, he was meeting with Scott Bryson, he was meeting with liberals trying to figure out if there's a path for him to replace Michael Ignatius, Justin Trudeau ended up becoming prime minister and at the time he was actually asked the question by the Globe and Mail, why aren't you running to be a liberal leader? And you know what his answer was? Why don't I become a circus clown? I've never heard that before. It's in the Globe and Mail.

I'm not making this up. Dimitri, I want it. We only have a few minutes left and I really want to get your take. There is a story in the Globe and Mail that I believe is trying to make hay out of a non-story, but I'd love to hear from you who probably knows a heck of a lot more on it than I do.

The liberals keep trying to hit Pierre Poliev over this issue of security clearance. Give me the state of play as you see it. So I when I was with Prime Minister Harper, I had top secret security clearance. I will tell you the facts on this. And the facts are the following. CSIS has every authority to give any intelligence briefing to Mr. Paulyev without his security clearance. What they cannot tell him are the sources and the methods. What does that mean? Where did they get that information and how did they get that information? And today Mark Carney was actually asked about Arya Chandra that the Liberal Party just disqualified and listen to his answer said, I have my top secret security

clearance but I don't have any information on this. Hmm yeah I'm telling you like the whole thing doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me because I the the leaders who did get their security clearance over the foreign interference information came out in front of the cameras and said two completely different things. He had the Green Party saying one, he had the NDP saying the complete opposite. And the only thing I know about this is that if he gets his security clearance, there's nothing he can do with the information. Someone can lie to his face, he can know they are lying,

and he can't act on that information. To which I say, what's the point of the security clearance if you are not enabled to move forward with the information in a meaningful way? Well, not only that, and I'll conclude by saying this, Judge Hoke, who did the inquiry on this, her conclusions were that whether it's a conservative party or the liberal party and their leadership races and general elections were not compromised. Yeah. But now they're trying to, there's this implication in the news that Pierre Poliev's leadership

itself was tarnished. It's almost like they're trying to, there's certain forces at play to undermine his win in 2022. So then I will take you to the following data always says the truth. Go through the leadership results when Mr. Poliev became leader of the Conservative Party. What you will see is across the country, he literally swept every single whiting.

What's the conclusion on that? He owes nothing to nobody. Dimitri, I want you to put on your communications hat for me for about 30 seconds. Are these issues, are these stories that I think are nothing burgers, are they things that he should address head on? So the short answer is yes, but at the same time, you know, we're used to this. This is basically one political party trying to destabilize the other one.

My communications advice, stick to your message. The economy, cost of living, housing, making Canada less dependable in the United States. That is the ballot question and that is what Canadians will vote on. Dimitris Soutis, thank you so much for being here. I really do hope that we can extend another invitation for you to come back again soon. Thanks, Ben. All right. I'll be completely honest. I knew that when Justin Trudeau was set to be replaced by Mark Carney, there would be a shift in tone.

You were going to have somebody at the top of the ticket who, unlike his predecessor, presented completely differently. He presents as somebody who is deliberate, somebody who thinks hard on subjects, chooses his words carefully, not someone like Justin who sometimes, to be honest, caught flat-footed and sometimes he didn't have an answer. There were long pauses and ums and ahs. By the way, I'm not criticizing him for that. You'll hear me say those things every now and then, sometimes more than I would like. I never thought that Mark Carney, the biggest brain in the room,

would find himself in a position where he would be caught flat-footed so often, humming and hawing, trying to find his point, providing us with word salads almost on a daily basis. A reporter called out Mark Carney's questionable math, and you would expect a direct, I mean it's about math, you would expect that the banker would be able to answer a question about his math. Here's the word salad we got. During the Liberal leadership race, you said that your middle class tax cut would offset

the loss of carbon rebates. The cut you offered is up to $825. The rebates were as high as $1,800 for a family in Alberta. I'm just wondering how you square that math. We'll square it. We do square the math. We have squared the math. A couple of things. One is you look at where the rebate is today, you net the, well I'm gonna look at the camera because you're moving behind it,

I can't look you in the eye, but you square it with the carbon price, carbon tax so called, that people are no longer paying because the rebate is obviously a gross amount, you have to net off the carbon tax that's being paid. So you have our tax cut today versus that rebate and the net of the carbon tax that has gone away.

Plus we have added the rebate, an extra quarter of the rebate that goes directly to people without the carbon tax. I mean, I think I understand what he was trying to say, but I shouldn't have to think I understand. I should understand. And look, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt because I do not doubt that if I were sitting with him, and by the way, the microphone opposite me is always open to Mark Carney to join us. I promise a respectful conversation.

I promise it will not be as confrontational as I sound most days. I promise that. Good faith, fair questions, willing to get pushed back a little bit. But anyway, here's my here's my good faith, best intention interpretation. I really do think that he understands these things. And if you were in a room full of bankers, he could explain it in a heartbeat. He is trying to explain it in the way a retail politician would at a street level. And he has not yet been road tested in a way where he speaks that language. That is that is I believe that that's the answer, but that is not my problem.

The liberal party should have should have trained him to be able to communicate these retail kitchen table issues. And he has not yet been able to take the thoughts that are in his brain and turn them into sound bites that work for everyday Canadians who absolutely would have appreciated an answer to that question that made any sense. So that was yesterday. This morning, after giving more non-answer word salad to national reporters, Mark Carney, well, he was a little annoyed that he had to stick around and continue answering questions

from local reporters. Are you the last local person? Can we? Okay. I feel that. Yeah. Two minutes, please. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Carney. Yeah, I'm going to let. Very quick, Mr. Carney. Okay. I'm Jacob Moore with Acadia Broadcasting. Ah, yes. I mean, you'll stick around for a CBC question. Look, these are not good looks. And I don't know. I don't know if it matters. I don't CBC question. Look, these are not good looks. And I don't know if it matters.

I don't think I'm nitpicking. The fact is, I don't know who this man is. None of us do. I'm learning about him in real time. I believe I have the right, therefore, to break down every little thing he does and says. Every little thing he does and says. I, in fact, think it's my responsibility to do so

because the Liberal Party has not allowed us to do it up until this point. So yeah, I'm going to put him under a microscope the way I don't have to put Pierre Poliev under a microscope because Pierre Poliev has been under that microscope for 20 years and I'll say the same thing about Jagmeet Singh. I do not need to break down every little thing that Jagmeet Singh says because he's been there. He's been in the arena. He's faced the firing squad.

Mark Carney has not. So yes, you are going to hear me giving a little more scrutiny to Mark Carney because he has thus far avoided it. Now that doesn't mean we're not going to focus on Jagmeet Singh and what he says. So okay, this is a great, this is the best non-answer to a pretty direct question I've ever heard. This is a pivot upon a pivot upon a pas de bourree. This is a triple axel, this is a quadruple lutz,

but this is absolutely in no way answering the question that was put to him. We've got the question and the answer, let's go. This is Singh, David Thurton, CBC Radio. After this, we're going to be going to Toronto, taking the bus, not flying. How much sense does it make to be on a bus for six hours in a snowstorm when you're this far behind in the polls? How productive is that? We want to be in Toronto, the next city. It's an important place. Born in Toronto, got a love for Toronto. We're want to be in Toronto, the next city. It's an important place. Born in Toronto, got a love for Toronto. We're gonna be spending time

with Betilla Carpoche in downtown Toronto. It's important for us to be there as well and I want folks to know wherever you are, whether you're in Toronto, whether you're in Montreal, East Coast, West Coast, North or South, you are better off when you've got a new Democrat fighting for you. I mean, points for creativity, man. Like really, well done. But that in no way answered the question, why are we on a bus for six hours when we could have been there in an hour and a half on a plane?

It makes me wonder, do they have access to a plane all the time? What's their budget for transportation? What's the NDP able to pay for? I know that they have not been fundraising at the level that the other parties have. And so I do have to wonder whether they are going to be traveling via bus as much as possible. And that is not going to help necessarily. But honestly, I'm actually impressed that he was able to not answer that question. So that's a bad answer. But here's actually a good answer. This is Mark Carney, Jogmeet Singh, on Mark Carney. And he's talking about Brookfield and sort of the legacy of Brookfield that Mark Carney has to own. I mean, he was there for a significant part of

time and he was the chair of Brookfield. So I mean if he wants to brag about his record, he also has to accept what he did when he was in those positions. It's clear that he's made decisions and I don't fault him for making lots of money for the super rich, but for me it's hard and I ask people to ask this question. It's hard to imagine someone that was a part of a corporate It's hard to imagine someone that was a part of a corporate landlord, like a massive corporate landlord in Canada, that profited off of the housing crisis. Like Brookfield engaged in rent evictions. Rent evictions, people in Montreal, people in Toronto, people in Vancouver know all too well what rent evictions are all about. You're in a place that's affordable, you get kicked out, that same apartment gets a new

countertop, and then goes back on the market for triple the rate. I'm sure that makes a lot of money for the corporate landlord, but that contributed to the housing crisis. It profited off of the housing crisis. Yeah, I think the national press is doing the people of Canada a disservice by not pouring over every decision that was made at the board level by Brookfield while Mark Carney was chairman of the

board. I think we deserve to know what what he did and the impact that it had on Canadians and I'm not faulting him he had an obligation to his shareholders but I think it would speaks to his values and I think it's incumbent upon them to raise their game on this matter. Real quick, I did want to point something out that's very interesting. We talk about the NDP losing votes to Mark Carney, but in the case of a particular type of a union,

the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, they have never endorsed the federal conservatives ever. For the first time ever, they're coming out in favor of Pierre Poliev, saying he supports the projects that will put tradespeople to work. It's a huge endorsement. It's the first of its kind. But yes, I love that he's supporting the trades because you have to support the trades if you support all these infrastructure goals that he wants to get to. So good on him for getting that endorsement.

structure goals that he wants to get to. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardins today. We'd love to talk. Business.