The Ben Mulroney Show - Will the federal budget help you? Also, wild fireworks in Milton. Milton!

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

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Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show, and happy budget reaction day. Yesterday was the budget, the liberals, under Mark Carney, unveiled their long-awaited budget. And it's, well, it's something we're talking about. We're going to get into the good, the bad, and the ugly very, very soon. But before we do, let me say good morning to my intrepid producer, Mike Droulet. Hello there. Good morning. And in the other room, she's not with us this morning.

she's feeling sick, and so we have banished her to the darkest corner. There she is waving at us, our video producer, Amy. How can you say hi or just give us a thumbs up? There, a thumbs up. We're getting a thumbs up. And our technical producer, Dave Spargala, how are you, sir? Surviving. We all have the plague here.

We want to get you from surviving to thriving. That's where we want to get. That's what we want. Right now it feels like we're surviving in Canada. The liberals are hoping that this budget takes us from. from surviving to thriving. But today, as we focus on the reaction to the budget, we really want to always remember you, the listener, the viewer of the show.

How does it affect you? What does it mean for you? Well, the number that you cannot escape that everyone will be talking about today is the $78 billion deficit. That's roughly $1,900 for every single living, breathing Canadian. That's just for this year. What does that mean for the average Canadian? Well, we're adding roughly,

we're adding to the $1.4 trillion national debt. It means higher interest payments, right? Like, that's what it means. That is not money spent on health care, on infrastructure, on education, on social services. That's money, that's just to service the debt. Somebody said that we would need a 15% GST. just to pay the interest on the debt as it is today.

It means there's inevitably a future tax hike because where else are you going to get the money? Like it's unless we overnight become more productive. If overnight our businesses, we spend more on our businesses, then more taxes will be sent to the feds. But other than that, there's no other way to do it. That's coming at some point. And don't forget, when the government borrows money, two things happen.

inflation goes up, interest rates go up. So let's enjoy that. And if anything else goes wrong, God forbid, God forbid Donald Trump throws another tariff at us, or there's a stock market crash, or there is a banking crisis, or there is a need for Canada to do something unexpected that costs a lot of money at a federal level. That money is going to have to come from somewhere as well. So that number could go up as well. That's sort of macro level. Here's what's not in the budget as we see it for Ontario. There's nothing in it for the auto sector, right? That's all we've been talking about in Ontario since Donald Trump got elected. It's all, it's the engine, one of the engines of the economy here.

One that's certainly one of the employment drivers of, of, of, the economy in a big chunk of this province. And the Carney Liberals recognizing that this was a threat that needed to be dealt with quickly and they had to stay on top of it. They had some stopgap measures in there. There was money to be handed, essentially bailout, many bailouts, right? And they said, we'll be there for businesses if they're suffering. That wasn't the strategy. That was a stopgap as far as I see it. I'm not seeing in this document. a strategy for helping the auto sector. So that's concerning.

The budget does create a category of protecting Canada's strategic industries. That's under Chapter 2, with over $12 billion in over five years in support. That doesn't seem like a lot of money, though, does it? It doesn't. It doesn't. The auto sector was hoping for something specific to them. Because what's ailing in the auto sector is specific, right? You've got a president in the United States that refuses to acknowledge that there is no American auto sector.

There's a North American auto sector. He doesn't like that. He does not like anything that comes from north of the border in any way. And so he wants to change it. That's specific to the auto sector. There should be specific help and a specific strategy in this document for the auto sector. I would have expected something in there just simply because of the $7.8 billion. dollar deficit.

Yeah. You're spending $78 billion more than you have. Well, I would have expected something in there, something, something strategically for the sector. And let's be clear, the government brings in over $400 billion in revenue. That's how much we as a country give to them. And so they're spending almost $500 billion. That's the problem.

That to me is a problem. It's a spending issue. I don't know. I haven't gone through this line by line. line, I do not feel, I cannot believe that we've trimmed all the fat that we can trim. But also, you have to, when we're looking through some of the numbers, and again, the numbers, it's really, you'll go blind looking at this stuff. But are they costing it accurately? Because they say, well, this will cost this much? Yeah. But really, will it? Yeah. Or are there extra things

tacked on eventually? Well, and look, one of the bees that we have in our bonnet here at the Ben Mulroney show is support for small business. I have an undying gratitude for entrepreneurs and small business owners in this country. And they've been facing headwinds since the pandemic. I was hoping for something in here for them. According to Dan Kelly of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, there's nothing in here for small business. They could have, as he says,

they could have taken the reins by reducing the small business corporate tax rate, freeing up millions of dollars for investment in employees, technology and operations. What would that have done? That would have made them stronger. They would have sold more. and they would have paid more in taxes. Which we've seen in the past.

We saw that under Jean-Cretzier. There's a playbook for this, and they didn't do that. The $51 billion building communities fund... Now, this is the thing that Champagne was really touting. He said, this is great for business. Yeah, except if you drill down a little bit, it focuses on projects using unionized labor, which would effectively exclude 90% of small businesses.

So, again, it's one of those things where they say one thing, but the impact is different. And so that's disappointing. And if I were Dan Kelly, I'd be more than disappointed. There's a $1 billion regional tariff response initiative delivered by regional development agencies. And according to Dan Kelly, this misses the mark and excludes over half of the small businesses

that we deem too small or in the wrong sector. And then finally, generally speaking, what's really disappointing is, again, And it's, I believe, the Liberal Party perspective that all solutions for all problems run through Ottawa. Yeah. Like if you, if there's a problem, it cannot be solved without at least the partnership of Ottawa. Whereas a person like myself believes that in a great many situations, not all of them, but in a great many situations, the solution is Ottawa needs to get out of the way. and that to me is that's that's why this budget doesn't land with me.

It's not, I'm not saying that they can't achieve stuff with this. I'm not an economist. I would not pretend to go toe to toe with anybody on how this budget is going to work out. But fundamentally, a business thrives when they have less government involvement. Would you agree with this? I can't remember, this is probably the budget, in recent memory that impacts us more on a micro level

more than any other budget which we've been expecting because we haven't had a budget for basically the entire year 18 months and because of everything that's gone on we've been anticipating what's going to happen usually the federal budget comes and it does impact it of course it impacts us

but in terms of us our daily lives I was surprised I genuinely thought this is a generational budget this is going to change everything it's going to catalyze a trillion dollars in private sector investment. That's a big swing, right? And I don't know that you can say that today.

Like it's a hope. It's a strategy for sure. And it's a hope that they have. But I don't think you can say that that is guaranteed. What is guaranteed is the spending that we just laid out for you. It's a long way from here to a trillion dollars in private sector catalyzed investment. Everything in this budget for Carney rides on those big, massive projects happening. Yeah, so stay tuned for that.

Listen, we've got a lot to talk to, including what is in this for the city of Toronto. There's some good in it, but is that even enough? We'll tell you about that next. Welcome back to the Ben Muleruny's show. Right during the break, Mike Drolet was asking me. me, my producer asked me, do you remember any good budget stories from when you were a kid? I was like, anything fun. I was like, my dad was a conservative prime minister following a Trudeau.

There were no fun budget stories. I mean, it must have been fun to be in a Trudeau government where money was growing on trees. But then somebody has to come in and remind people that there are, there are consequences to that. You know, Trudeau's throw a great party. And then conservatives got to come in and clean up the mess. and I guess the liberals at this point are trying to clean up the mess without ascribing responsibility. I think that's a fair way of putting it. They don't want to blame themselves, even though apparently in the budget,

I think we've got James Moore talking about this later. We've had a clip from him from the CBC where in the budget itself, they point out the very people who were instrumental in laying the foundation for this mess that we have to clean up. They even say in their own budget that had Canadian productivity, kept up with American productivity from 2017 to 2023, there would be $11,000 more per Canadian in their own pockets. That's how much more they would be worth. So they recognize the whole that they put themselves into, but now we have this opportunity to fix it all. And there you go. Now, we are going to spend time on the things we don't like, obviously, but we're not going to sit here all day.

and tell you that there isn't some stuff in it to like. Now, look, parties can vote against this thing, but if it comes in, you've got to take the whole thing. We as Canadians have to, we have to accept this budget. So we have to find the good stuff in it. There is stuff to like in it. For example, in Toronto, support for first-time home buyers. In Toronto, first-time home buyers can purchase a new home up to a million dollars,

and they will save on the goods and services tax. That was a promise made in the election campaign. That's good, right? There's also a significant amount of money for the TTC, line two modernization. The budget includes $1.2 billion for our public transit, specifically enabling the purchase of new subway cars for the TTC's line two. Now, this funding is conditional on the city of Toronto implementing policies that support high-density housing near transit lines.

That's going to be an interesting one. I think we're already doing a lot of that. You see the density that's growing on in and around Eglington or up and down Young Street, where you used to have a two-story building, an entire block is going down and they're building up. That's good. That's fundamentally a good thing. And so I'm happy for that. That's what we need in a city like Toronto.

That's how we're going to be more efficient with our transit. That's how we're going to get more people riding the TTC. There's also homelessness support, the federal funding of almost 26 million over two years allocated to Toronto's unsheltered homelessness and encampments initiative, which expands outreach and enhances shelter services. It doesn't sound like a lot of money, but 12 million a year. And let's not forget, the federal government cut approximately 107 million in funding to the city of Toronto's refugee shelter and migrant hotel support in 2025. So they let a whole bunch of people in. They offered some help with how to deal with it. And then at one point that they turned off the tap, but the people are still here and they are now the responsibility of the Toronto taxpayer, which is, I think, one of the reasons why our taxes keep going up, but we don't see a commensurate rise in the quality of the services.

In fact, a lot of us would argue that the quality of services has gone down despite our taxes going up. I attribute that to money being siphoned off from those services to these additional costs that we have been forced to assume. How responsible, oh yeah, did you find, did you find the audio here? So at the top we talked about James Moore, former conservative, who was on the CBC. And I want you to just hear his take on this budget. Another thing I noted, and I think it's worth mentioning as well, Vashy, is a clear pivot away from a lot of the policies. legacy of Justin Trudeau in this budget, right? We saw it early with the elimination of the consumer carbon tax,

the flip-flop backwards on the capital gains tax proposals that Minister Freeland to put in place, the emissions caps that have now been reversed on as well. And then there's this admission, like in the budget document itself, it says this, quote, if Canada's productivity growth had matched the United States from 2017 to 2023, the median income of a family of one child would be nearly $11,000. higher. Like just explicitly in the budget saying that the last 10 years have failed, and that's text from a budget being delivered by Francois Philippe Champagne, who is a key minister in that government. I don't know how these ministers are going to frankly survive if there's going to be

credibility behind the actions of pivoting away from Justin Dudeau's policies if his ministers are the people who are delivering lines like that. That's exactly what you were talking about when you were saying that they're trying to not ascribe blame to. Yeah. It, it, it It's a fascinating time to follow Canadian politics. I mean, back in the day, under Jean-Cretzian, the Liberal Party was able to essentially go from the center, center, right, all the way to the left. They could be all things to all people. The right was divided.

The left was weak. And so they really took over the entire political spectrum. They were able to be all things to all people. But I never thought I would see this today, but we saw it in the election. So I'm not trying to re-prosecute the election. but they are the solution to the problems that they caused and people bought it people elected them to fix the problems that they caused they they hired the arsonists to put out the fire it's fascinating to me i'm not and i'm not it's it's part of it's part of our culture here

it's it's what these are the values i guess we we have as a country but in this same document that it's supposed to solve the problems they point out that the problem was caused by these same people. So it's a very fascinating thing. And we still don't know, obviously, we don't know if it's going to pass because we need support. And we're going to talk about that a little later. But we also, we just don't know if it'll work. And it's going to, this is one of those budgets where it's like signing somebody to a long-term contract and hoping that in year eight, they're going to be just as good as they are in year one. Yeah. Yeah, that doesn't often happen. That doesn't often. But you have to hope, right? Yeah. Hope is not a strategy. I remember

seeing some commercials that said that. Isn't it? Yeah. Lots of hope. Yeah. Hope. But, but, you know, we've got a, we've got a central banker at the top of the ticket. So we are, I've been told that he knows better than most. So I'm going to, I'll trust, I don't know how budgets work, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not an economist. I'm going to, I'm going to, I will defer. I'll wait and see. Let's see, you know, but like the, let's talk a little bit about cost of living in social supports because this impacts everyone what how it's going to impact you directly so this is the one like

I remember it was this is an election campaign the Tories promised a tax relief um uh income tax relief the liberals promised slightly less income tax relief they've delivered on it millions of middle class Canadians are going to see a tax cut with a typical two income family potentially saving up to 840 bucks a year that doesn't sound like a lot to me but and also what is their definition of middle class yeah that's that's the thing you really have to that's going to be in the fine print. Yeah, the consumer carbon tax has officially been scrapped. They put it on pause before. They've, they've now scrapped it, but they've bolstered the industrial carbon tax. But if they get rid of that carbon tax, it could mean, could mean lower gas prices.

Yeah, well, it did mean, it did mean, the consumer one did mean lower tax, like the, but the industrial one could, if they got rid of that, that could be lower food prices, right? And that's a huge deal. Yeah. So now the other issue, when we talk about fixing the problems that were caused by the previous government, population and immigration. They have reduced temporary residents. The government is going to significantly cut temporary resident admissions, including international students and workers. This is an attempt to alleviate pressure,

specifically a city like Toronto on our housing supply, health care on our schools. I think that's a good thing. It could also impact educational institutions like universities and colleges, not necessarily in a good way because a lot of those places have built their business models around being, you know, diploma mills for these foreign students. But we're going to delve into why that's not necessarily a good thing, at least in the

immediate term, because it feels like they're going to try to clear the rules of people who are waiting to get in, some of whom don't deserve to come here, they're just going to bring them in and say, well, yeah, we're going to clear the rules, bring everyone in and start again, right? Is that a fair assessment? That's a fair assessment. We also had that clip yesterday from the Scarborough MP who was trying to put forward a petition to say. say, hey, we want all these people from this political party in Bangladesh to come in. And it wasn't exactly what...

Yeah, that was a heck of a conversation. Anyway, up next, we're going to ask the question, why were the fireworks flying at a Milton town hall? The images, the voices, it is crazy town in Milton. So we're going to delve into that next right here on the Ben Mulrooney show. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. If you live in downtown Toronto, then you're used to a certain amount of chaos in our streets, a certain amount of shouting, a certain amount of protest.

And it's just become normalized. It's part of who we are and what we allow. And it is what it is. I've been railing against it, hoping that law and order and justice and action, reaction, all that stuff, none of that's happened. It hasn't happened. I'm like screaming into a hurry. hurricane. But I didn't think that this sort of behavior would filter into smaller communities

in the area. At Milton City Council just yesterday, they ultimately rejected a motion that was brought forth to declare the town apartheid free. Okay, because I guess it's a real apartheid. I guess it's dealing with its own brand of apartheid there, including calling for the federal government to impose and enforce a two-way arms embargo against Israel and reduce barriers to family reunification for Gazans with Canadian relatives. I think what probably happened at the Milton Town Council is they realized we are a city of 132,000 people, we are a municipality, and that's not our lane. So they rejected it. And what happened, well, let's listen to the meltdown when people didn't get their way.

I know! No, if their families are in Gaza like my family, if their families are in Gaza like my family, if their aunts are killed of starvation like my aunts, they are not human beings. They are not human beings. Shame on you, you are terrorists just like Netanyahu. You are war criminals. Shame on Canada. This is not Canada.

This is not Connecticut that we know. This is not genetic that we came here. Okay. All right. Well, yeah. I mean, it sounds like honestly, it reminded me when I heard that of what happens when I go through a grocery store and a little kid didn't get their way. The mom didn't want to buy the Oreos. And so they decided to have a fit in public.

That's what this was to me, an unreasonable reaction to a very reasonable, democratic process in a town council of 127,000. people. That video comes courtesy of Karima Saad, who's a journalist, a lawyer, and she and her team have been chronicling elements and moments like this for the better part of two years. Karima, welcome. Hi. Thanks for having. Yeah, like, I would absolutely expect that in the here and now in 2025 in Toronto. What's going on in Milton? You know, it's not just Milton. This isn't the first smaller town that I've seen like a city council

process or even school board meetings hijacked by protesters and it's you know it it uh there is truth when she says you know this isn't the canada we recognize yeah so you know there is something to that uh it's it's it's funny on the one hand um like some of the comments i i often get on protest material are why not go through proper processes, proper channels, protest at the right place, go through processes. So here you have a situation where there was an attempt to engage with process, but kind of outside the usual sort of parameters of decorum and, you know, what you expect to see when things don't go your way.

Look, Karima, there's 40% of this country. didn't get what they wanted in the last election. Anyone who voted conservative or anyone who voted for anyone other than the liberal party didn't get what they wanted. And I don't know anybody who pitched a hissy fit like this. It's, yes, this is, it was a site to behold. Yeah. And I, the motion, the apartheid free city motion.

Which is silly on its face. The Milton is an apartheid free place. You don't have to say it. it's insane it's something that I expect will be brought elsewhere as well there are cities or municipalities that have signed on

I believe Burnaby was one of the first in Canada so I don't anticipate this trend will end to your point earlier is it outside the scope and jurisdiction of what a municipality

can do yeah this is you know a focus on sort of foreign conflict. The rationale, as I understand it, from some of the delegates, was that the demographics of Milton, there's a significant part of the population that has this as a concern, and they want to feel safe and heard. And some of the other delegates expressed concerns about how it might make other constituents. Well, look, I'm glad that you brought up to shifting,

The shifting demographics, you know, it's, you know, people will, because I look the way I look, if I were to bring that up, I would be accused of all sorts of ills. But you brought it up, so let's talk about it. Like, there is a rising population in this country that come from abroad, that have certain perspectives. If we look to a city not too far from here in Dearborn, Michigan, where the, the Muslim population was able to eventually take control of the city council they now have

calls to prayer five times a day in that city and the mayor a few weeks ago was at a city a town council where a white resident

asked what I thought was a very polite question to the mayor about this changing culture in the city that he called home for so long the mayor

chewed him out it was so disrespectful I've never seen a mayor call a constituent. Our city will be better when you leave. I can't wait for the day that you get out of here. So to me, that is, there's a certain type of person. I'm not going to paint everybody with a brush,

but there is a certain type of person that wants that. They want deer born in Canada. And it feels to me that in certain cities, they're going to get that. Yeah. And, you know, that approach, which I think, you know, it doesn't really, jive with what at least is my vision of Canada as a pluralistic society. And the reaction to that is predictably regressive. And, you know, it gets people's backs up. And I think it ultimately phrase our social fabric because some of that resentment, then

comes out in ways that affect people who have nothing to do with nothing to do with that and don't have a vision of sort of takeover or dominance. Well, you know, yeah, we had a conversation a few years ago about higher education institutions adopting a policy of non, of not taking a position on these sorts of things ever, you know? Like if there's a war, if there's a, if there's a social movement, individual professors can do what they want. But as an institution, they were not going to take a position. I think Brock University was one of the first to adopt that perspective. I don't see why cities should not look at that as well.

I mean, if you have a multicultural community, then everybody should be respected. And that city shouldn't take one side or another in any conflict. It doesn't make any sense to me that people would want to deliberately push these sorts of policies that are designed to pit one group against another. Yeah, from the perspective of protesters, as I understand it, the impetus to insert this in kind of every facet, at every institution, they see it as a moral imperative. and the sort of counter to that is it prevents institutions from focusing on what their actual mandate is. Yeah. So that's the tension. That's the tension.

And with things like this, this voting down was an expression of democratic intent. It's how our system is supposed to work. You're not going to get everything you want all the time. And the fact that this is such a, this reaction happened, it concerns me for the future. It concerns me for people's tolerance for not getting their way in the democratic, in the democratic process. I fear that there will be someone who won't stop at screaming. They won't stop at shouting. They're going to take that next step, that dangerous step, that one that puts people in danger.

But please, I know that you find yourself in dangerous situations, as does your team. But the end result is us being able to see these issues with our own eyes. And we can then make our own determination as to how we feel about it. So I thank you. And I hope you and your team stay safe. Thank you. A kidnapped child whispers dark secrets from his past in a language he no longer understands. But a lost cassette will reveal the ugly truth.

From Curious Cast and Blanchard House comes a cross-continental Odyssey to recover a stolen past. This is Stop Rewind, The Lost Boy, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. You know,