The Ben Mulroney Show - Will the NDP decide who the next Prime Minister is, based on how well they do?

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Will the NDP decide who the next Prime Minister is, based on how well they do? with Guest: Tom Parkin, Principal at Impact Strategies and Canadian columnist and commentator 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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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. The fact that he headed up Brookfield, and Brookfield is a large corporate landlord in Canada that engaged in rent eviction. At a time when Canadians could not find affordable homes, he saw a way to make more profit for his company. And now I don't fault him for making profit for his company, I fault him for proposing that somehow the person that fed the housing crisis, that rent evicted people, that jacked up the price of homes that were affordable that bought up affordable homes and Turned them into unaffordable places that some of that guy could be trusted to fix the housing crisis He cannot be trusted what he's going to do is what he's done his entire career

Which is make more money for the super rich and it's gonna hurt you and your family That's what people need to know and I I'm going to point that out every time I get that was NDP leader Jagmeet Singh on the first day of the federal election campaign, taking aim squarely at liberal leader Mark Carney to discuss this as well as where the NDP go next on this election trail. We're joined now by Tom Park and principal at impact strategies and Canadian columnist and commentator Tom, welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. Thank you for having me. Okay, so that's a very strong, clear message is but is what do they do next is I guess, what do they how do they build on that?

Well, he's, he's got a theme here. So he's got to keep pushing on it. And there's lots of things that he can say. For example, Mr. Carney didn't come back from the Bank of England where he was making $1.3, $1.4 million a year to become Jimmy Carter building houses. He came back to head up Brookfield. And it's a monstrous company. It's a $1 trillion investment bank that takes in investment money from some dubious sources in the Gulf, but we can save that for another day,

but does a lot of things that are also dubious, and then, you know, investing in privatized healthcare, investing in real estate, as Mr. Singh just talked about, investing in public utilities or local utilities anyway, gas companies, that sort of thing. So there's a lot there to talk about the kind of things that Brookfield really specialized in. But really to the point is that Mr. Kearney didn't come back to Canada to build houses like Jimmy Carter. He came back to make billions for billionaires and millions more for himself. He could have done something different with his life. He had all that potential.

That's what he chose to do with his life and his talents, his formidable talents. Tom, I've got to ask you, you probably have access to polling data that I don't have. But having watched the election campaign and the results in the Ontario provincial election. It seems to me that the, at least in Ontario, the NDP have a very efficient vote, right? They don't have the most votes, but the votes that they have are well positioned for them to win at least seats on the provincial level. I've got to assume that there's some sort of parallel there

for the NDP across the board in Canada. In other words, the polling numbers that I see that suggest that the NDP support is cratered. I wonder whether that is undervaluing the efficiency of their vote. Yeah, it depends on the model of vote projection that you might be looking at. But it is very hard to model what we saw that almost every model of fails in Ontario because the indie people was very Concentrated in its in where it needed to win. Yeah, and it did drop a couple I guess dropped the three seats But still official opposition very respectable You know, they got to account for the mistakes, but you know live to fight another day

So as the official opposition, so, you know, I think there account for the mistakes, but you know, live to fight another day. So as the official opposition. So you know, I think there's two parts to this. One is that nobody should be writing off the NDP. In fact, it could be the wild card because if Singh can get Singh has the advantage of of vote concentration, and he does have the advantage of an open field if he can get onto that space. And how does he do that? Yeah, well, this is a challenge. This is very much a three dimensional problem

for Mr. Singh. He's the only one who has this, I think. Mr. Poliev is bleeding to Mr. Carney because a lot of people see Mr. Carney as a more reliable or a safer kind of conservative guy. Mr. Carney has adopted Poliev's Stand on Acts of Tax, he's adopted an income tax yesterday cut which is similar to Pierre Polyev's income tax cut. He, you know, what else has he done? He's talked about slaying the deficit, he's talked about,

you know, laying off public service, very, very conservative kind of stuff. But he's not an apple muncher, if you know what I'm getting at. Yeah. Right? So for those kinds of conservatives, they can feel very comfortable on a policy basis with some of the changes that Mr. Carney has brought to the Liberal Party.

But what happens to those people who thought, well, they're actually increasing the capital gains tax on millionaires and billionaires. That makes sense. A dental plan, that makes sense. That helps me. Electing a guy who's quite conservative and made his life project of making billions for billionaires and millions more for himself, maybe that guy's not for me.

So if Singh can get on that field, I think he's got a lot of open territory to cover. So we'll see. That's tough because he faces the problem of, you know, red door, blue door politics, which is where the two big parties and frankly, the media starts to echo this, tell you that there's only two choices. And they started excluding all the other options in the reporting and it feeds into itself the other options in the reporting, and it feeds into itself. So that's the struggle he faces. I'm speaking with Tom, I'm speaking with Tom Parkin

about what the NDP have to do moving forward in this election campaign. And look, if the liberals are going to seed part of the left by moving to the center, what policies does the NDP have to put in the window to ensure that those votes stay on the left and don't for some reason leapfrog over to the conservatives? Hmm. Yeah. Good point. For example, we've just seen today, Pierre Poli have announced an income tax cut. It really is an echo. It's almost the same, but a little bit jacked up version of the one that Carney announced on Sunday. That is, it's a shave off the first tax bracket, and that means that everybody at the top of that

bracket, which is $57,000, right up to the richest person, the Galen Weston of Canada, gets the maximum benefit. Well, I don't think that most Canadians think that's very smart. Why would we do that? Why would we not cap that benefit and make sure that the people who are really struggling with the rent and the groceries are getting maximum benefit? I think those kind of contrasts where Singh can put both the Liberal Leader and the Conservative Leader in the same boat, tax cuts for billionaires, we don't support it. That's a, that's a, those are the kind of contrast he's going to be looking for. Tom, today, just like, just like polls are a snapshot, the day in an election campaign

is a snapshot. So this will change and I'll get your take at a later date. But on this day, in this moment, what are the range of outcomes for the NDP? And be realistic with me. What's the best case scenario? What's the worst case scenario for them? Well, you know, the NDP, I've been around for the worst, which was in the, you know, kind of the drive by massacre. So I guess it was 2001 was our election. When when the Reform Party and the Progressive Conservative Party were battling it out, everybody was totally afraid of the Reform Party thinking, you know, Attila Mohan is coming. And there was a rush to support Kretschner. And in that rush, you know, the NDP got sideswiped, they lost very badly, they got nine seats. And then the liberals went on to execute the largest cut in capital gains

tax that had ever been done and the largest cut to health care that had ever been done. So people might look back and say, maybe that wasn't the best way of dealing with the situation. So that's the worst outcome I've seen. The upside. I guess, you know, my, listen, let me finish this. Let me jump in because we only have about a minute left. So I'm going to give it to you. But is there a path? Is there any way the in a best case scenario, the NDP can emulate somehow Justin Trudeau from 2015 and leapfrog from third place to first place?

Well, you know, anything can happen in election campaigns. We saw Rachel not go from fourth place to government in 2015. And that shocked everybody and said, well, things are possible. So if he grabs traction, if people say, you know what, I don't want a conservative, whether it's the nice conservative or the nasty conservative, or progressive policies, then he can get attention on that, then he's got a lot of runway. Tom Parkin, thank you. I always appreciate your honesty, your

candor, your insights, and I hope we get to do it again real soon. Cheers. Take care. At Desjardins, we speak business, we speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made to measure growth and expansion advice. And we can talk your ear off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardins Business, we speak the same language you do – business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us, and contact Desjardins today.

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