00:00:00.000It's the KinsellaCast starring Warren Kinsella.
00:00:20.520Hey, it's Warren. Welcome to the KinsellaCast. I'm up at the cabin. I'm working away at a writing
00:00:27.880project and I'm with Joey and Tommy and I'm pleased to report that Tommy has not destroyed
00:00:35.800everything, just some things. Irreplaceable, precious, expensive things. But other things
00:00:45.820have survived the Tommy weekend. Anyway, it's cold up here. Hopefully it's warm where you are.
00:00:51.780Got a hot, awkward segue, show for you. Brian Lilly, John Mraz, Tasha Carradine, Carl Belanger,
00:01:00.560Adam Zivo, and some great music. Interpol, old, old tune, PDA. But I just love the drums at the start.
00:01:08.740It reminds me of my brother's drumming. He's a great drummer. And Interpol's a great band.
00:01:15.740Um, I don't think cocaine has killed them yet, but apparently it was on its way to doing so.
00:01:21.880Um, got, um, Making Noise for, um, what's the name of the song? Making Noise for the one you love or
00:01:32.620something like that. Um, let me check this out because I'd promised you guys that I would like
00:01:37.960provide you with song titles. It is, is it Prime? No, it's Rat Boys. Yeah. Making Noise for the ones
00:01:46.180you love. Um, really noisy, kind of Jesus and Mary chain, pavement, pixies. I don't know. It's pretty
00:01:56.680good. Anyway, Rat Boys. Crummy name. Change your name, guys, gals. Uh, Angel Olson. I love her voice.
00:02:04.140Um, speaking of my brother, Angel Olson looks like my sister-in-law, uh, Barb. And she's just got the
00:02:12.500most amazing voice. Angel Olson does, not my sister-in-law. Well, maybe my sister-in-law does.
00:02:17.160I don't know. I haven't heard her sing. But you're going to hear Angel Olson sing Sweet Dreams.
00:02:22.880Got Last Night by The Haters. Despite their angry name, it's kind of blink, you know, MXPX,
00:02:31.140that kind of sound, but good tune. And then my favorite band of all time of this week,
00:02:35.760which is this Japanese all-female band. And they're not my favorite band of all time this week
00:02:43.780because they're Japanese or female. They're just my favorite band of all time this week because
00:02:50.300they're so fucking hard. Like Otoboke, I think that's how you pronounce it, Beaver. That's definitely
00:02:57.280how you pronounce that. They're four-piece. Um, I don't know where they're from. Kyoto, maybe?
00:03:05.820Oh my God. Like, and the drummer for this band, like they're just, you know, they make any of you
00:03:14.480who know punk and hardcore know what I mean when I say bad brains, okay? Bad brains are the, like,
00:03:22.640the speed limit. Otoboke, Beaver, go like 10 times the speed limit and pull it off. So anyway,
00:03:30.460great, great band and, um, great show. And I've been going on too long. Picture a schoolyard.
00:03:36.720Donald Trump's there. He's a schoolyard bully. He calls the other kids' names, threatens them,
00:03:42.600pushes them around, sometimes even hits them for no apparent reason. Other kids are in the
00:03:47.360playground and they're from all over. There's Justin Trudeau from Ottawa, Francois Legault
00:03:51.020from Quebec, Daniel Smith from Alberta, and this newer kid, Doug Ford. He's from Ontario.
00:03:57.560One day, Donald again threatens the other kids. He says he's going to take away the stuff that
00:04:01.740belongs to them. He's going to hurt them and their families. He's going to do all these things
00:04:05.620because the other kids are bad. Not him. Danielle and Francois immediately close up to Donald.
00:04:12.820You're right, Donald, they say in little tiny voices. We're bad. We'll do whatever you want.
00:04:18.980Just don't hurt us. Justin, who also has a rich dad and also thinks he's always right,
00:04:25.580like Donald, tries a slightly different approach. I'm going to come to your place and bring pizza
00:04:31.040and your favorite drink, Donald, and you can make fun of me as much as you want. The newer kid,
00:04:36.680Doug Ford, watches all of this. Doug shakes his head. He then walks over to Donald, eye to eye,
00:04:44.900and says, stop bullying us. And then he slugs Donald Trump in the nose. Now, I know all the
00:04:53.020woke manuals about bullying say the bullied should never hit the bully. Reassure your kid.
00:04:58.600Emphasize it's the bully behaving badly. Monitor the situation. Seek help. All that.
00:05:04.360But really, every parent knows sometimes when your kid or, say, your family or your friends or your
00:05:10.520neighbors or your country are being bullied for no good reason, talking a lot about it is not going
00:05:17.940to change a damn thing. Sometimes, like in the movies, Karate Kid, Back to the Future, you name it,
00:05:24.180you just have to give the bully a taste of his own medicine. And this week, finally, someone did that.
00:05:29.460After Donald Trump threatened to slap 25% tariffs on everything we sell to the Americans,
00:05:35.860which will destroy our economy, make no mistake, and put as many as 5 million Canadians out of work,
00:05:43.180Doug Ford popped Donald Trump in his mango-colored nose. Hard. Quote,
00:05:48.380We will go to the full extent, depending on how far this goes. We will go to the extent of cutting
00:05:53.080off their energy, going down to Michigan, going down to New York State, and over to Wisconsin.
00:05:57.100I don't want this to happen, but my number one job is to protect Ontarians and Canadians as a whole.
00:06:04.480End quote. That was Doug Ford. To justify his thuggery, Trump falsely said Canada is sending
00:06:12.800lots of fentanyl into his country. He falsely said we're sending huge numbers of illegal aliens into
00:06:19.400his country. Well, fentanyl? Well, in the last fiscal year, the Americans seized a few dozen
00:06:25.660pounds of the finished product coming in from Canada. Nearly 30,000 pounds of it came from other
00:06:33.040countries. Meanwhile, several thousands of people have been stopped crossing from Canada to the U.S.
00:06:40.880Canada into the U.S. last year, yes. But over a million came from Mexico alone. Does that sound fair?
00:06:48.740Does that sound reasonable? Of course not. It's bullshit. But it certainly provides a study in
00:06:54.840leadership contrast, doesn't it? Daniel Smith, for example, said she wouldn't hit back.
00:06:59.020She said Donald Trump was right. We're taking a diplomatic approach, she said.
00:07:03.720Sounding a lot like a Neville Chamberlain in a skirt.
00:07:06.780Francois Legault was similarly cowardly. I won't threaten Donald, he joked at a press conference.
00:07:11.980Yep. Yeah, that'll work, Francois. Sucking up to bullies always works, doesn't it?
00:07:17.120And Justin Trudeau sure thinks so. He had his tail between his legs and he flew down to Mar-a-Lago
00:07:23.120where Trump mocked him in front of a table full of witnesses saying Canada should join the United
00:07:29.200States. Trudeau's response? He sounded more like a busboy than a prime minister. And he posted on X,
00:07:35.140Thanks for dinner last night, President Trump. I look forward to the work we can do together
00:07:40.300again. Trump immediately renewed his terror threat. Donald Trump is like all bullies. He only
00:07:48.440understands strength. So when Doug Ford showed guts and said what he said, here's what Donald Trump
00:07:54.780responded with. Quote, That's okay if he does that. That's fine. We have a great relationship. I have so
00:07:59.900many friends in Canada. End quote. Spoken like a schoolyard bully who just got popped in the nose.
00:08:29.900You are past. You're the last winner. I'm breaking all around me. Until the last drop is behind you.
00:08:40.500Oh. You're so cute when you're frustrated. Dear.
00:08:48.700Oh. You're so cute when you're so dated. Dear. Oh, you're still. Sleep tight. Grim right. We had 200 couches where you can't sleep tight. Grim right.
00:09:18.680We had 200 couches where you can't sleep tight. Grim right. We had 200 couches where you can't sleep tonight. Sleep tonight. Sleep tonight. Sleep tonight. Sleep tonight.
00:09:48.680You are the only person who's completely certain. There's nothing here to be into. And that is all that you can do.
00:09:58.680You are past. You are the last winner. And everything we've come to. It makes you you. You. You. You cannot safely say. Well, I will be away. But you are my sinner, sadly.
00:10:22.680I will be away. But I won't take you. You will be away. But you are remembered. I can't get around me. But I can't be. I can't consider you too. And now there is this distance.
01:07:22.660Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney Show on the Chorus Radio Network. It's Friday, so it's time for our political panel this week in politics. We're looking back at all the stories that we talked about.
01:07:32.660The stories that we talked about this week that are still resonating and are still impactful. And it's time to welcome to the show both friends of the Ben Mulrooney Show and friends of Ben Mulrooney. Yes, I reference myself in the third person. Please say hi to Warren Kinsella, former special advisor to Jean Chrétien and CEO of the Daisy Group.
01:07:49.720Hey there, Ben Mulrooney. I am a friend of Ben Mulrooney.
01:07:53.220And Adam Zivo, National Post columnist and executive director for the Center for Responsible Drug Policy.
01:07:58.660It's a pleasure to be here. I'm also a friend of Ben Mulrooney.
01:08:01.160Well, there we go. I'm glad we could level set.
01:08:04.880Listen, news breaking today, gentlemen, is that the federal labor minister, Stephen McKinnon, is telling Canada Post as well as the striking workers to figure it out by the end of the year or we'll figure it out for you.
01:08:16.060So just in time for Orthodox Christmas on January 7th.
01:08:20.020It's been saved. Thank goodness, guys.
01:08:24.660If they were going to do this, shouldn't they have done this weeks ago?
01:08:28.100I mean, on the first day of the strike, I was livid saying all the problems that the workers had were still going to be there for them on January 1st.
01:08:36.440But to do this is to is to just create another problem for already struggling businesses across this country.
01:08:42.760Oh, come on, Ben. Don't be so critical.
01:08:45.640I mean, you know, when Notre Dame, when the church in Paris was burning to the ground, isn't it better to wait till it completely incinerates before you send in the fire department?
01:08:55.400That that that is the Trudeau government's like approach to this insane situation where, you know, like even if they had settled this thing yesterday, even if they'd been somehow ordered back to work yesterday, we have been told that all of the packages and all of the letters and Christmas cards and passports, everything that's hung up in the system wouldn't have been delivered in time for Christmas anyway.
01:09:25.400And like, you know, all of us, the three of us, we're all hearing from people who run small businesses who were already in trouble because of a whole bunch of reasons and mismanagement of the national economy are in huge trouble and are not going to make it to the end of January.
01:09:41.480Like this is a fiasco to me, even bigger than the tariff threat from Trump, which I suspect we're going to talk about.
01:09:49.760Like this is a total disaster for so many people and shame on the Trudeau guys for not for messing it up.
01:09:56.220Adam, how much of influence do you think Jagmeet Singh and his NDP had on the decision to be hands off in these negotiations?
01:10:05.860Because, you know, that they have they have telegraphed in the past that they do not want the government ever getting involved in labor disputes.
01:10:12.420It's up to the unions themselves to have agency over themselves and the decisions they make.
01:10:17.300And if the government is going to step in, well, then, you know, he's going to have to tape up that agreement so he can rip it up again.
01:10:23.300Well, I think he's obviously had a lot of influence here because he's propping up the Trudeau government.
01:10:28.880And had he shown more leadership and stood up for small business owners and everyday working Canadians, perhaps this would have been resolved earlier.
01:10:37.660And I think that, of course, you know, the NDP, they're very pro union.
01:10:41.020They reflexively support unions no matter what.
01:10:43.220But this is the case where you clearly have a union that is making unreasonable demands and essentially extorting taxpayers.
01:10:50.340So I just want to put a few things in perspective here.
01:10:52.220Right. So Canada Post has lost between five hundred to seven hundred million dollars each year from 2020 onwards.
01:10:59.240That's two billion dollars in the past four years.
01:11:02.040And people might say, well, you know what, it's a public service.
01:11:04.840Public services aren't supposed to run a profit.
01:11:07.600But the question here is, are they running this service efficiently?
01:11:11.460And when you look at it, full time employees get up to seven weeks of vacation and 13 personal days, which is insane,
01:11:18.180considering the fact that they're not that they're losing so much money.
01:11:20.480And on top of that, when you look at some of the things that the unions are claiming, so they say, for example, that delivering the mail is hazardous because you need to look out for for dogs and tripping hazards such as branches,
01:11:31.940as well as obstacles like scooters left in the middle of the driveway.
01:11:35.240And look, when I was 12 years old, my best friend delivered newspapers all summer and he seemed to find walking much less hazardous.
01:12:00.640They play a very important role in our society and they make they make the lives of so many people better.
01:12:05.640They've made the workplace better and on and on and on.
01:12:08.960Had they waited till after Christmas, they would have they would probably have some version of an ally in a person like myself because they have decided to to to take advantage and make life worse for the engine of the economy,
01:12:25.460for entrepreneurs who have bet on themselves, who do not have job security.
01:12:28.760They're trying to get job security on the backs of people who do not have it.
01:12:31.900They do not have one iota of support in a person like myself.
01:13:36.360So on the other side of this, when we, you know, whether they're legislated back to work or what have you, we're going to have a situation where as a country, you're going to have a lot of people like not anti-union people, serious, reasonable people saying, do we really need a national postal service?
01:13:53.840And that's a bad position for the union to have.
01:13:55.940Adam, we've got to take a look at the growing marshalling of resources and and and to to to protect Canada against this looming threat of tariffs from Donald Trump.
01:14:09.400And one of the people who's assuming a position of leadership nationally is Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who's now mulling a ban on U.S.
01:14:18.160booze across the the LCBO system in Canada, in Ontario.
01:14:24.380Do you think that that is what do you think of that?
01:14:27.840Is again, are the Americans going to feel that or is this or is it going to be like true to Trump swatting a fly?
01:14:36.560Well, I think it's going to have an actual effect because, I mean, when it comes to booze, there are other people who can other other international suppliers who can just easily replace, you know, our demand.
01:14:46.760I'm sorry, other other international purchasers.
01:14:49.260I think that the more effective strategy would be to cut off U.S.
01:14:54.140markets from Ontario's electricity exports.
01:14:56.900So we essentially export enough power to to to supply one point five million homes, you know, in New York, Michigan and Wisconsin.
01:15:04.540And that's something that doesn't really cost us a lot of money because we have excess capacity.
01:15:08.880We actually sell this electricity at a discount because we don't really know what to do with it.
01:15:13.080So this would be an opportunity for us to inflict a real cost on the U.S.
01:15:19.540in retaliation for their tariffs without actually losing too much on our end.
01:15:23.720And I think that we should be focusing on that and not on these symbolic gestures like booze sales.
01:15:28.480A warrant between Ontario's Doug Ford, Alberta's Daniel Smith and the and our federal leader in Justin Trudeau, who has who has stepped up and is is leading the charge in the most efficient, effective and optimal way right now?
01:15:47.140And, you know, what's interesting, what happened yesterday is the statement that Ford made saying, you know, his job is to defend the economic interests of Ontarians.
01:15:59.620But he also said, I'm defending the economic interests of Canadians.
01:16:03.480And like we've been starving for that.
01:16:06.320We've been waiting for somebody at the national level to say to Trump, who, as you guys know, I regard as a bully and a thug, to say no and pop him on the nose.
01:16:16.420And because it's already worked, you know, Trump, I think Trump was surprised.
01:16:20.820He said, well, I have lots of friends in Canada.
01:16:22.940Sounds like the kind of thing that a bully always says.
01:16:49.960The Kamala Harris's presidential defeat was an attack on women's progress, according to Justin Trudeau.
01:16:56.100And Adam, the question is, was he trying and failing to talk tough to Donald Trump?
01:17:01.460Or is this the beginning of his election campaign and his strategy to campaign against Donald Trump?
01:17:11.920It's hard to say, because the thing is that Trudeau seems to genuinely believe that his critics are all racist or sexist.
01:17:19.280This has been a common theme throughout his political career.
01:17:24.100And, you know, either he believes this or he doesn't.
01:17:28.360And if he doesn't believe this, then he's cynically trying to shore up his party's support at the cost of the nation's interest, because it's absurd that he's using this kind of language during a particularly sensitive time for U.S.-Canadian relations.
01:17:38.600But if he does genuinely believe this, then it epitomizes everything that's wrong with this form of progressivism, which has been so popular over the past 10 years in North America.
01:17:49.360I mean, when we look at the underlying polling data, you know, 51 percent of women voted for Harris, 45 percent voted for Trump.
01:18:20.920We were supposed to be on a steady, if difficult sometimes, march towards progress.
01:18:26.520And yet, just a few weeks ago, the United States voted for a second time to not elect its first woman president.
01:18:36.820Everywhere, women's rights and women's progress is under attack, overtly and subtly.
01:18:44.240I want you to know that I am and always will be a proud feminist.
01:18:49.160You will always have an ally in me and in my government.
01:18:52.300Now, Warren, your guy, who was an old white guy, defeated the only woman to ever run for to run as prime minister, defeated her party quite handily.
01:19:02.020Nobody accused Jean Chrétien of being anti-woman.
01:19:05.600No, and I ran his war room in that election.
01:19:08.860And, you know, I mean, as a general proposition, we should have a female prime minister by now.
01:19:15.900We should have more women in public life.
01:19:19.700So what Trudeau said, you know, he's right and he's wrong.
01:20:18.920But he's not the guy who should be saying it.
01:20:20.720And it seems as we move into our next story, it seemed a little tone deaf to be that definitive about his feminist bona fides.
01:20:27.000All while there is a trouble brewing on the home front with regard to his female finance minister in Chrystia Freeland.
01:20:35.620We've got a little bit of audio from Melissa Lansman and Pierre Polyev who lay the scene.
01:20:40.440The prime minister bullies females and he bullies finance ministers.
01:20:43.880And now he's bullying a female finance minister.
01:20:46.540How much longer is she going to put up with that?
01:20:49.000He went and got his banker friend, Carbon Tax Carney, to become his top economic advisor, stripping the power away from his finance minister.
01:20:59.900And suddenly the guardrail was broken.
01:21:03.000Is he really going to subject his finance minister to the humiliation of reading Carney's fiscal update, which busts through the guardrail?
01:21:10.120I'm going to get each of you to read the tea leaves and predict what's going to happen next week.
01:21:15.660Well, I think obviously the Trudeau government is looking for some kind of dramatic change, given that their polling numbers haven't improved in over a year.
01:21:26.220And the fact that he's continuing to court Mark Carney suggests that there will be some shivving of Freeland's career.
01:21:35.660But and it's quite obvious that, you know, there's tension between the two of them.
01:21:39.900She promised that the deficit will come under $40 billion.
01:21:41.980The parliamentary budget officer expects the deficit to reach $46.8 billion.
01:22:03.900And what I'm told by my sources, she's leaving.
01:22:06.440She's got a book coming out in February, kind of, you know, a biography, autobiography thing.
01:22:12.760And then I think she's going to pack it in.
01:22:14.500But if I were her like this is like, you know, Trudeau, like we've seen this movie before.
01:22:20.160Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould can testify to it.
01:22:23.420If you're a woman, if you have power, if you have authority and if you dared to say no to Justin Trudeau, you are going to get thrown under the proverbial bus.
01:23:28.580So the question for you, we'll start with you, Adam, is like, are we are we numb to this?
01:23:34.780Because we hear so many stories of overspending and billions of dollars lost going down rat holes and just a government addicted to spending.
01:23:43.440We heard a story last week at $34.8 million was spent on sleeping bags for the military that are unsuitable for Canadian winters.
01:23:50.360I mean, are we are we numb to this now?
01:23:53.780Well, so what I would say is that obviously this is an example of overspending.
01:23:57.240But I think the issue is being blown out of proportion.
01:24:33.820But that's what we should be focusing on.
01:24:35.460We should be focusing on the millions of dollars wasted on inefficient programs and consultants, not a few $10,000 on meals and accommodations.