00:11:14.040There's a lot of, you know, excitement around Parliament, at least for us, who are, I'm sure, normal people.
00:11:19.160One thing I did want to mention, though, what we've been kind of talking about over the course of this weekend is the passing of Ken Dryden, a Canadian giant, on both the hockey side, but also on a politician side, an author as well.
00:11:32.620Warren, I know you wanted to mention something about Ken Dryden as well.
00:11:35.760Yeah, I had the great fortune of working with him during the period when I was advising Michael Ignatieff, and he was, like, he truly was a remarkable person, along with being one of the best goalies in the history of the NHL, successful politician in York Centre for many years, best-selling author.
00:11:58.700I mean, this is the guy who articled while he was still playing in the NHL, and in person, I found him to be approachable, reasonable, like, focused, one of the most focused politicians I'd ever worked with, and it's a real loss to the country.
00:12:18.540See, it's very touching hearing some of the anecdotes yesterday, including, you know, going to House of Commons committees and hearing that Ken Dryden may have not wanted to participate in the kind of political rhetoric that gets involved there and was very much a listener to the people that were before those committees.
00:12:32.540So, I know there's a lot of people that miss that kind of even-keeled type of personality as well up on the Hill.
00:12:39.720Turning our attention to some news that was happening this week, we heard from Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday announcing, essentially, a mini-budget, I think.
00:12:48.920Earlier in the week, he had said that they were going to pursue austerity and investments in this year's budget during their cabinet meeting this week.
00:12:55.680So, I wanted to ask you guys, you know, can the government do both?
00:12:59.280I think you can, but I don't get the sense that this is what this is going to be.
00:13:03.380We saw on Friday a $5 billion rapid response fund, this canola biofuel production incentive by Canada.
00:13:10.020We've had defense announcements as well, big projects.
00:14:24.260And the main message coming out of this mini non-budget that he announced this week is also an oxymoron.
00:14:31.600Like, I don't know how they communicate an austerity budget that has major investments in it.
00:14:37.920It's like, you know, guys, you've got to pick a lane.
00:14:40.020And this has been a bit of a problem for the Prime Minister, who we've got to remember is a newbie to politics, you know, since the election.
00:14:49.860You know, for example, elbows up, well, then it was elbows down.
00:14:53.740And so he's walked back some key positions on some key issues in recent weeks.
00:15:22.600But they really need to get their Communications Act together.
00:15:26.040Carl, are you expecting austerity when the budget comes down?
00:15:28.540Because, yeah, as you mentioned here, some of the programs that have already been put in place by the Trudeau government, but also some of the commitments that have already been made by Mark Carney here.
00:15:36.780You know, three and a half percent of our GDP in NATO spending by this coming March.
00:15:41.420Like, there's some big investments that have already been announced.
00:16:33.880They are going to pick a lot of losers and a few winners.
00:16:37.220And, you know, the measures that were announced this week with regards to, you know, the response to the trade war and what it means to Canadians.
00:16:45.180Like, for instance, the retooling program for 50,000 workers.
00:16:53.080You can't complain about that, except for the fact that in August alone, 66,000 people lost their job.
00:16:59.780So it's not going to make it – we're not going to have enough to provide help for the people that need it.
00:17:06.280Yeah, and it seems like we're just kind of starting.
00:17:09.060The economic uncertainty has already been here, but it seems like it is, you know, steadily getting worse here as we continue to go on.
00:17:14.800And it has fallen into the laps of this government here.
00:17:17.540The other kind of thing I wanted to mention about the Friday announcement was, you know, two areas in particular, this EV mandate,
00:17:23.020and then there was this announcement about criminal bail reform.
00:17:25.080I'll start with you, Warren, on this one.
00:17:27.940Do you think this is more about the policy here that's involved, or is this trying to, you know, cut out a possible conservative attack at its knees?
00:17:36.020I mean, these have been two big preoccupations of Pierre Polyev, on which he was right.
00:17:41.740I mean, you know, as we've talked about the panel before the summer, you know, EVs are problematic, you know, for governments.
00:17:49.440They cost a lot more than internal combustion engine vehicles, you know, people have anxiety about where they're going to get them re-electrified.
00:18:00.800They have a range problem, and then you have problems like Elon Musk, and, you know, people don't feel as good about buying them anymore.
00:18:09.080So Polyev was on the right track with that.
00:18:11.480And on bail reform, anybody who lives in or around the Toronto area in the past week knows that bail reform is huge.
00:18:19.540From Manitoba, we had somebody on bail allegedly killing somebody.
00:18:23.620I had a client this week, a family I was helping, who was the target of an assassination attempt,
00:18:30.220and the alleged accuser was 12 years old, out on bail.
00:18:34.460They brought him in, charged him, and he got out on bail again.
00:18:37.960And so, you know, the Conservatives are on the right track with this.
00:18:43.060So I think that's why, you know, Carney is doing that proud old Liberal tradition,
00:18:47.360which is stealing other people's good ideas.
00:18:50.420As to who will be the beneficiary, I guess we'll see.
00:18:53.420But those two, I really felt the government had no choice.
00:18:57.100And Melanie, do you think it's going to work in a sense of heating off some of those attacks from the opposition Conservatives?
00:30:50.600Now, they're in the worst place, right?
00:30:52.040Because now they've irritated the Trump people after extending and then refusing the invitation.
00:30:57.040But, I mean, this is, we're starting to see a bit of a pattern.
00:31:00.140The thing that disturbed me more, as somebody who's worked for many years in anti-tobacco measures, is seeing Carney have a senior advisor within his PMO with substantial involvement with big tobacco.
00:31:15.580And when it was brought to his attention by the Globe and Mail this week, Carney just shrugged and said, too bad.
00:31:22.960Well, actually, in fact, it is an issue.
00:31:25.040And it kills and has killed millions of people around the world and many thousands of people in Canada still.
00:31:33.340And I found it, I was really, really disappointed that that was the response of the Prime Minister of Canada about big tobacco having a foothold in his PMO to say, who cares?
00:32:16.520You don't need to agree with a single word that they are saying, but you should at least listen to the thought process behind their policy agenda.
00:32:25.960And there might be things that, yeah, sure, it's all been written down before, but that's like saying that we shouldn't bother having former campaign operatives or campaign managers on panels because we've already seen how the election went.
00:32:39.140So we don't need to know what they were thinking.
00:32:43.080So I think they were absolutely right to invite him.
00:32:46.020I think it's unfortunate for the country, frankly, that he didn't end up coming and talking to them because what a missed opportunity to hear directly from the horse's mouth about what the Americans are planning next.
00:32:58.240That's something that I want my government to know about and to be three steps ahead on.
00:33:02.440That is Melody Parody, also joined this morning by Warren Kinsella and Carl Belanger.
00:33:06.420Guys, thanks so much for joining us this morning.
00:34:28.160You, you say there are no truths, but I would like to call a truce.
00:34:52.660At the risk of sounding quite trite I don't think you are quite
00:35:03.660Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show.
00:35:27.200Before we get to our This Week in Politics panel, a quick update for you on a story
00:35:33.080That took place in Ontario but certainly has the nation's attention.
00:35:36.920You'll remember that there were videos of what appear to be new Canadians, probably of Indian extraction, just going to town with their guns in Muskoka, blowing up trees and a bridge and really breaking the silence and the peace up there.
00:35:53.840And the RCMP, or the OPP rather, started investigating.
00:35:57.440And so this is a follow-up to that story.
00:36:00.760The Bracebridge OPP announced the arrest of 24-year-old Gurkanwal Singh, who was charged with two counts of careless use of a firearm.
00:36:10.020So we will, of course, keep that story front and center because, yeah, that gave a lot of us the ick, as my kids would say.
00:36:18.120Anyway, we're joined now for our This Week in Politics final panel of the week, the Friday edition.
00:36:23.620We've got Chris Chapin looking dapper in his suit, in his blazer, political commentator and managing principal at Upstream Strategy.
00:36:35.760We're going to be joined by Warren Kinsella, former special advisor to Jean Chrétien and CEO of the Daisy Group, in just a few minutes.
00:36:41.720Once he gets here, we will fold him into the conversation.
00:36:44.580But, Chris, all right, this show, it doesn't air at the same time everywhere across the country.
00:36:50.520And so in a lot of places, this will be airing after people hear the Mark Carney big announcement.
00:36:57.580Apparently, the very big press conference is coming.
00:37:00.080So I'm going to give you an opportunity to sound really smart and predict what he's going to say.
00:37:05.560Well, listen, I think, you know, Ben, the Prime Minister's spent a lot of time leading up to this announcement and foreshadowing it for some time.
00:37:20.580And I think, you know, he's certainly been critical about that.
00:37:25.200You know, he's been criticized about that.
00:37:26.760There's been a lot of questions about what's taken the Prime Minister so long to demonstrate to Canadians what his plan for the Canadian economy is.
00:37:36.700And so I think we're going to see, you know, you know, a very strong direction about, you know, huge, huge billion dollar investments, whether that's, you know, this the the radar system that clearly was something that's been used and been ideally used to broker a deal with with President Trump.
00:37:55.380Or, you know, some of the some of the larger projects that I suspect we'll hear more and more of in the coming days, whether that's the, you know, the expansion of the Port of Churchill and getting liquefied natural gas to markets in Europe.
00:38:07.720I think the big question I have when it comes to to Prime Minister Carney and the federal liberal government is, can they actually get this done?
00:38:17.560Because, you know, this is a tall task.
00:38:58.420I mean, we're all hearing the rumors that this is going to be at the level of the type of budget that Chrétien Martin had, that I was involved with as a staffer 31 years ago.
00:39:14.680You know, the historic budget that saw enormous cutbacks in the federal government at the staffing level, at the programming level, Canadian forces bases, you name it.
00:39:24.240It was a big, big change in the way Canada's books were run.
00:39:29.300And so we're hearing the same sort of stories coming out of Ottawa and coming out of PMO.
00:39:34.980The big problem I think that Carney has still got is, you know, the mandate he received in the election was for sure to deal with the red ink and to get Canada back into the black and to be more of a progressive conservative.
00:39:50.140And he's been that, you know, with carbon tax and capital gains and defense spending and so on.
00:39:55.700The problem is on the fundamental issue in the election campaign, you know, Pierre Polyev being elbows down and Mark Carney being elbows up.
00:40:11.580But Warren, doesn't that I mean, doesn't that take a backseat if if in this announcement we have the the the getting rid of the EV mandate and we hear about some of these big projects of national importance and we hear about a pipeline and we hear about, like we said, a port of Churchill and we hear maybe maybe we hear about the tanker ban being tweaked in one way or another.
00:40:33.400I mean, if those things happen, those are the things that we have said as a as a nation, not just one side of the political spectrum or the other as a nation.
00:40:41.780These are the things we need to get the country moving, whether or not Donald Trump is a good or bad actor.
00:40:46.980These are the things we have to we have to take care of what's happening at home.
00:40:50.360And I think he'll get a lot of credit if he does those things.
00:40:53.860No, I don't think it takes a backseat.
00:40:56.760OK, it is the fundamental issue from the election campaign, and it's starting to show up in public opinion polling abacus last week showing the Tories ahead, not by lot, but ahead for the first time in months.
00:41:09.060Now, Angus Reid this morning showing the Tories ahead.
00:41:12.100Now, Pierre Polyev continues to be baggage for them and is probably dragging them down.
00:41:16.700But the main reason why the Conservative Party is now ahead of the Liberal Party for the first time in many months is because people feel that he flip flopped on the key promise he made.
00:41:29.040So all these other things, yes, for sure, they can work for you on a regional basis.
00:41:34.680But in terms of the macro, in terms of the national question, did he do what he said he was going to do?
00:41:41.480And that's why he's paying a price now in the polls.
00:41:43.560Chris, this is a story that we didn't send you, but I'm sure you have an opinion on this.
00:41:48.580You know, we talk on this show and on talk radio stations across this country about what feels like an increase in violent crime and citizens not feeling as safe as they once did.
00:42:00.480That was something that Pierre Polyev, that was a drum that he beat incessantly in the last election campaign.
00:42:06.340And I've heard people say that if he wants to if he wants to take one issue away from the Liberals, it could be domestic security, like at home security.
00:42:16.260And he does seem to be right on a lot of these things.
00:42:19.980Can the Liberals rest control of that with some changes to bail reform and criminal justice reform?
00:42:28.300I think it comes back to the same points I raised, you know, a couple of minutes ago about what's taking them so long.
00:42:33.820I think you look at what Prime Minister Carney said right after he was first elected.
00:42:37.880He said, you know, I'm going to touch bail reform and told the premiers I'm going to touch bail reform in the fall.
00:42:43.140And then we've had a summer ripe with, you know, you can't you can't go a day of the news without hearing some home invasion, some violent carjacking.
00:42:50.120Things we just we were never used to hearing in this country.
00:42:54.240And and I think he's ceded that ground to to the conservatives who have always been stronger on, you know, law and order issues.
00:43:03.180But there's a lot of people now publicly calling for things like Castle Law and being able to protect your house.
00:43:08.600You know, I think there's a lot of people who are fed up with hearing the police say, oh, just comply with the burglars.
00:43:14.280And so there would have to be quite the about face.
00:43:16.500Now, to Warren's point, I think we've seen so far Mark Carney be quite willing to lean to the right, whether it is, you know, abandoning the carbon tax or abandoning the capital gains tax.
00:43:25.720But that's a big question for his party and the coalition he's built.
00:43:29.180Would he look at doing something like, you know, bringing back Harper's, you know, minimum sentencing laws?
00:43:36.700Would would he look at something like real strict bail reform that, you know, many in his party believes impedes on, you know, violent offenders, charter rights?
00:43:43.980And so could he grapple that ground back from the conservatives?