Background and career
Benedict Martin Paul Mulroney (born March 9, 1976) is a Canadian radio and television host. He is the eldest son of Brian Mulroney, the 18th Prime Minister of Canada. Best known for his 20-year broadcasting career with the Canadian network CTV, Mulroney began as an entertainment reporter on CTV's former morning show Canada AM in 2001, and co-hosted the entertainment news program etalk from 2002 to 2020, Canadian Idol from 2003 to 2008, and CTV's national morning show Your Morning from 2016 to 2021. Mulroney departed etalk in June 2020. A year later, on September 29, 2021, Mulroney departed both Your Morning and CTV. Mulroney currently hosts The Ben Mulroney Show mornings on 640 Toronto, syndicated nationally on Corus Entertainment's talk radio stations. He returned to television in 2025, hosting the 15th season of The West Block on Global Television Network, during Mercedes Stephenson's parental leave.
Mulroney was born in Montreal, Quebec, and grew up in Ottawa, Ontario. He is the second of four children born to former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mila Pivnički Mulroney, who is of Serbian descent. Mulroney is one of several children of former Prime Ministers who became Canadian media personalities between 1998 and 2001. He is fluent in both French and English. His older sister, Caroline, is a former provincial Cabinet minister, and had been an unsuccessful candidate for the 2018 Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership election. Maclean's later revealed that he helped her rehearse scripts during the leadership campaign. Mulroney attended Lycée Claudel d'Ottawa and the Hotchkiss School, and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree, with a major in history, from Duke University. He subsequently earned a Bachelor of Laws degree from Université Laval. During the Oliphant hearings, it was revealed that all the Mulroney children's university educations were paid from the cash that their father received from Karlheinz Schreiber.
In the late 1990s, Mulroney wrote a regular column for the Toronto Sun. At the time, his father, Brian Mulroney, was on the board of directors of Quebecor which owned the Sun chain.
He began his career as an entertainment reporter as the Quebec City correspondent for The Chatroom in 2000 on CTV-owned digital channel Talktv and became one of five co-hosts of the show in July 2001. From 2001 to 2002, he was entertainment reporter on Canada AM. He hosted Canadian Idol from 2003 to 2008.
Mulroney hosted the entertainment news program etalk from 2002 to 2020, where he covered major events in entertainment, including the Oscars, the Golden Globes, and the Juno Awards. In April 2009, Mulroney also became host of the CHUM Radio show, etalk 20. The two-hour radio program was broadcast on 11 radio stations across Canada and counted down the top 20 chart-topping hits and includes celebrity interviews. In February 2010, Mulroney and other staff from etalk covered the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games for CTV. On June 22, 2020, Mulroney announced his resignation as host of etalk saying, "More than ever, we need more Black voices, more Indigenous voices, more people of colour in the media as well as every other profession – and that is why I have decided to immediately step away from my role at etalk to create space for a new perspective and a new voice." His resignation came in the wake of a controversy in which his wife was accused of harassing Sasha Exeter, a black influencer.
In June 2016, he was announced as the co-host, with Anne-Marie Mediwake, of CTV's new morning show Your Morning, which replaced the venerable Canada AM. He left the program, effective October 1, 2021, saying it was to "pursue a career as a producer, developing unique projects for both Canadian and global audiences".
