Full Comment

Liberals are ‘hijacking’ the Charter, says Canada’s last living framer of the Constitution

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 10:00:00 -0000

Former Newfoundland premier Brian Peckford is the one man still alive who was personally in the room with then prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau when provinces and the federal government agreed, together, to a new Constitution Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He talks to Brian about the real basis for Section 33 — the notwithstanding clause — and how it came into being. He explains why the story that the federal government is telling about the clause’s alleged misuse is false, why Ottawa’s attempts to override it are unconstitutional, and why the Supreme Court has no authority to weigh in on its use, as the justices are now doing at the justice minister’s request. (Recorded April 17, 2026)

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Trump’s plan for Cuba isn’t what you’ve been told

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 10:00:00 -0000

It’s running short of oil, electricity, food, medicine and currency, but Cuba’s communist regime is digging in as the Trump administration demands economic and democratic reforms. Brian discusses the situation with his guests, former State Department insider Mike Gonzalez, now with the Heritage Foundation, and author and longtime regime critic Humberto Fontova. They explain Washington’s imperative to finally curb Cuba’s malign global influence, including inside the U.S.; the motivations for the Castro family and its cronies in defying the pressure; and the challenge of total regime change. They also explain why news about President Donald Trump’s plan is scarce and largely spurious, and why so few people know what’s really going on. (Recorded April 17, 2026)

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Canada’s defence is still a mess despite Ottawa’s NATO-spending claims

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 10:00:00 -0000

It’s not actually official that Canada’s defence budget meets NATO’s two per cent of GDP target, despite the press releases claiming so. Yes, spending has been going up, but what is it really meant for? This is Brian’s discussion this week with David Perry, president of the Global Affairs Institute, and Christian Leuprecht from the Royal Military College of Canada. They explain how the government still can’t figure out if it wants to project power or sit on the sidelines and criticize those who do, and whether it wants excellent equipment or just the grandest job-creation promises. We might suddenly think we’ve become serious about defence, but our allies and our enemies have reason to question how serious we really are. (Recorded April 2, 2026)

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Mark Carney is about to get hammered left and right by populism

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 10:00:00 -0000

Canada’s two national opposition parties, the Conservatives and NDP — now under Avi Lewis — are relentlessly focused on affordability and dismantling a system they say screws non-elites. As this week’s panel discusses, both Lewis and Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre clearly stand for something, which raises questions about what Prime Minister Mark Carney stands for … besides fighting President Donald Trump. Brian is joined by former Conservative campaign director Jenni Byrne, longtime NDP strategist Kim Wright, and former Liberal adviser Warren Kinsella. They break down how the new NDP leader, unlike the last one, will make life more difficult for the Liberals. They also consider the likelihood Carney will prorogue Parliament after securing a majority, and how much it will (or won’t) help him. (Recorded April 1, 2026)

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The Supreme Court will just make stuff up to subvert the notwithstanding clause

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0000

If you think the Supreme Court will be reluctant to rewrite the Constitution, as Ottawa wants it to by handcuffing Section 33, then you haven’t been paying attention, as Bruce Pardy tells Brian. It doesn’t matter that the notwithstanding clause explicitly gives parliaments the right to override certain court rulings, or that it was key to the Charter of Rights being passed in the first place, says Pardy, a constitutional scholar at Queen’s University. The rule of Canadian constitutional decisions is that there are no rules. For decades, justices have simply invented interpretations and dreamt up Charter “values” that align with their left-wing politics. And our constitution is conveniently designed to keep that happening — forever. (Recorded March 27, 2026)

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What happened to the Mark Carney who promised to make things better?

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0000

When he first became prime minister a year ago this month, Mark Carney vowed to improve affordability, build badly needed projects quickly and make Canada more resilient and competitive in the face of President Donald Trump’s trade antagonism. As William Robson, president emeritus of the C.D. Howe Institute, discusses with Brian, the situation on all those fronts isn’t much better and, in several respects, worse than before. Canada keeps getting poorer, our fiscal situation is worse, the investment climate remains uncompetitive, projects we need aren’t happening, and Carney’s fiscal moves, from the GST grocery refund to green subsidies, are as economically misguided as the policies from the last guy. Carney can’t just blame Trump for it all. (Recorded March 20, 2026)

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The former CBC host blowing the lid off its bias and dysfunction

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0000

Travis Dhanraj is not who you’d expect from a CBC critic. He’s not a conservative. He supports public broadcasting. As the host of Canada Tonight, he championed diversity. But as he tells Brian, he eventually discovered how shallow the broadcaster’s commitment was to its proclaimed values and its mandate. He explains how political coverage was controlled by a handful of politically biased personalities exercising veto control over shows seeking conservative perspectives. He also tells Brian about the preposterous stunts the CBC used to pay lip service to its standards, the corporation’s degrading human resources practices, and the lack of accountability and transparency from the top that, once he dared to challenge it, had network executives trying to silence him. (Recorded March 12, 2026)

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Your private property may not be safe from Aboriginal-title court cases

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0000

Confusing messages are the only guarantee after the Cowichan ruling and the Musqueam deal. The August court case confirmed a First Nation band has “title” over B.C. land that belongs to private property owners, while the federal government’s deal confirms Musqueam rights and title over Vancouver. Dwight Newman, a law professor specializing in Indigenous rights, tells Brian that assurances to private property owners that they won’t lose their land only go so far. What might not be targeted today could be tomorrow, he says. They discuss how the court case and government deal, along with the growing power of UNDRIP in Canadian law, only give more power and leverage to First Nations. And not just in B.C., but across Canada. (Recorded March 5, 2026)

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Trump’s Iran attack is also aimed at China

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 11:00:00 -0000

Tehran’s nuclear-weapons race was a risk the U.S., Israel and others couldn’t tolerate, and its terrorism and brutality have only worsened. Its development of weapons that could reach Europe is a growing, grave threat. But as more than one of this episode’s guests says, the war with Iran involves other states, too — including China, which faces losing another supplier of the cheap oil powering its own ambitions. It’s also a message from U.S. President Donald Trump to Beijing that the U.S. won’t ignore adversarial aggression. Brian speaks with John Bolton, former presidential security advisor; Rick Hillier, Canada’s former chief of the defense staff; former U.S. intelligence officer, Jonathan Panikoff; Eylon Levy, former Israeli government spokesman; Vivian Bercovici, former ambassador to Israel; and Postmedia’s Adam Zivo, reporting from Tel Aviv. (Recorded February 27–March 1, 2026)

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Canadian politics plays right into the Carney Liberals’ hands

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 11:00:00 -0000

A third Conservative crosses the floor. Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre runs damage control after one of his MPs goes off script on the trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump. And Ottawa wins a “psychological victory” after the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s emergency tariffs. Chris Selley and Lorne Gunter join Brian to discuss how, with all these developments and more, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s mojo seems to just get better every day. Meanwhile, Conservatives can’t seem to catch a break. With a snap election still extremely possible, and the NDP seeming only weaker and unlikelier to compete for Liberal votes, they discuss why Poilievre is facing a dangerous situation for his party, and his leadership. (Recorded February 20, 2026)

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Why are Liberals attacking efforts to end Trump’s tariff war?

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 11:00:00 -0000

Not many people can do what Jamil Jivani did — maybe not even the prime minister. In a whirlwind trip to Washington, D.C., the Conservative MP met Vice President JD Vance, the secretary of state, the U.S. trade representative, and even chatted with President Donald Trump. As he tells Brian, he saw his longtime friendship with Vance as helpful in ending the trade war devastating automaking jobs in his riding. You’d think everyone wants that, yet Liberals attacked and mocked him. Jivani discusses what he discovered on his trip, why he’s concerned the Liberal government doesn’t really have the auto sector’s back, and how they seem alarmingly blithe about an imminent CUSMA review that could make things here much, much worse. (Recorded February 13, 2026)

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Carney's China deal is deeper and more dangerous than tariffs

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:00:00 -0000

It’s setting off alarm bells in the White House for good reason: Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new “strategic partnership” with Beijing is bigger than just the diversification and freeing up of trade in Canadian food exports and Chinese electric vehicles that he claims. As Brian discusses with longtime China-watcher Sandra Watson Parcels, there are details of the pact that haven’t been widely covered. And it risks making Canada increasingly vulnerable to Beijing’s coercive power tactics while putting us on the wrong side of the urgent effort necessary to preserve the western-backed global system from the threats of a rising revisionist power. There’s a case for trading with China, Watson Parcels says, but not on terms like this. (Recorded February 2, 2026)

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The Conservatives’ plan to outflank Carney in a snap election

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 11:00:00 -0000

Brian Lilley was live on the floor of the Conservative convention in Calgary, where the party gave emphatic support to keeping Pierre Poilievre as leader — and expectations were high for the Liberal government to call an election this spring. While there, Brian spoke with longtime Conservative MPs Michelle Rempel-Garner and Chris Warkentin about why they think Prime Minister Mark Carney is more vulnerable at the ballot box than he might think. He talks to campaign manager Steve Outhouse about the strategy when an election comes; and Gary Keller, a veteran of the Conservative organization, about what could be giving Carney second thoughts. He also chats with Jamil Jivani about the party’s changing image among voters, especially younger ones. (Recorded January 31, 2026)

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Fighting with Trump is a Liberal strategy for a fresh election

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 11:00:00 -0000

The bromance between Donald Trump and Mark Carney is over. The president is back to jeering at the prime minister after Carney’s “hegemon” speech in Switzerland. And Liberals are back in their election comfort zone, acting as defenders of Canada against American hostility, as Brian discusses with Stuart Thomson and Tasha Kheiriddin, hosts of Postmedia’s Political Hack newsletter. It worked so well for Carney last election, they say this could be just the thing for Carney to call an election to try for a majority. But what about damage to Canada? They get into the advantages and risks, and the problem for Conservatives, who are still trying to regroup from the last time they got flattened by this drama. (Recorded January 23, 2025)

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The activist class is conspicuously quiet about Iran

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 11:00:00 -0000

Untold numbers of people demanding basic human rights have been killed by a corrupt, bigoted regime, but in the West there are no tent cities on campuses or raucous marches. As Iranian-Canadian human-rights lawyers Payam Akhavan and Kaveh Sharooz tell Brian, Western leaders, and even U.S. President Donald Trump, are proving largely ineffectual at helping the people of Iran. For now, the regime still seems to have the upper hand against a populace mostly abandoned by the international community. And while this is much wider and deeper than previous uprisings in Iran, it could end just as tragically — or worse. (Recorded January 15, 2025)

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What Venezuelans say about Trump’s incursion isn’t what we’ve been told

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 11:00:00 -0000

Emilio Figueredo and Freddy Guevara understand better than any western analyst the Venezuelan reality, the regime of dictator Nicolas Maduro, and the aftermath of his capture by President Donald Trump. Figueredo, editor of independent Venezuelan news outlet Analitica, talks to Brian from Caracas and explains what it’s like there now, why Maduro was foiled by his reliance on Cuba, and why Trump needed to leave the Bolivarian regime in power — for now. Guevara, an exiled opposition politician once imprisoned by Maduro, tells Brian about support among Venezuelans for the military operation and why foreign complaints about Trump violating international law carry little weight there. Both describe Venezuelans’ hopes as higher than they’ve been in a long time, although freedom hasn’t come yet. (Recorded January 8, 2026)

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How the CBC lost its purpose

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 11:00:00 -0000

Canada once had a public broadcaster in the true sense of the word. Now we have a behemoth we pay nearly $1.5 billion a year for that almost nobody watches and doesn’t come close to serving its original purpose, as David Cayley tells Brian. Cayley, author of the new book, The CBC, was a producer there for decades. He says even the news division it prides itself on proved its inability to serve the public during the COVID pandemic, when it consciously chose to promote government narratives, blacklisted dissenting scientists and failed to ask basic questions. Amid stark audience polarization and an unprecedented media revolution, Cayley explains why the CBC needs a total rethink if it’s going to justify its continued existence. (Recorded November 27, 2025)

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BEST OF 2025: Don’t let police take away your right to self-defence

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 11:00:00 -0000

Over the holidays we’re looking back at some of the best episodes of 2025. Self-defence laws are back in the news, with Alberta’s government recently directing Crown prosecutors to refrain from charging people for using force in “defending themselves and their loved ones.” Yet police suggest that if you face a violent home invasion, you need to give up and not fight back. That’s wrong, as criminal lawyer Solomon Friedman told Brian Lilley: The power to defend yourself, your home and others (including killing an assailant if it’s justified) is backed by the courts and the law. In this episode, Friedman and Lilley discussed why the message cops keep sending risks making innocent people into defenceless targets while encouraging criminals to become fearless. (Originally recorded September 5, 2025.)

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BEST OF 2025: How a few rich dairy farmers are sabotaging Canada’s big, beautiful trading future

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 11:00:00 -0000

Over the holidays, we’re looking back at some of the best episodes of 2025. As in July, Canada’s restricted dairy market was recently raised again by U.S. officials who say it stands in the way of ending disputes and settling trade deals. This summer, Brian spoke with Martha Hall Findlay about how Ottawa’s refusal to liberate our globally detested supply-management system from trade negotiations continues to hurt our economic potential while causing endless headaches with major trading partners — all to benefit of a few thousand dairy-farmer millionaires. In this episode, Hall Findlay explains how this small cartel works, why it’s so powerful and why it hurts not just consumers, but every other trade-exposed Canadian business. (Originally recorded July 4, 2025)

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Carney helps Chinese interference make a comeback

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 11:00:00 -0000

All the hostage-taking, election meddling and spy rings are being swept aside by a Liberal Prime Minister who, like the last one, seems only too eager to cozy up to China. That’s what Brian discusses with Charles Burton, former diplomat to China, who has a new book: The Beaver and the Dragon: How China Out-Manoeuvred Canada's Diplomacy, Security, and Sovereignty. Burton points out the alarming way Carney has obligingly adopted Beijing’s spin on bilateral relations, even as the communists continue to harm Canada, including with tariffs on agriculture. Xi Jinping has succeeded in “subordinating” Carney, Burton says, while the dictator revs up more subversion and undermining of what he believes is now the most Chinese-infiltrated country in the western world: ours. (Recorded December 5, 2025)

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Say hello to pro-pipeline First Nations in B.C.

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 11:00:00 -0000

Listen to the premier of B.C., or the CBC, or the Association of First Nations and you’d think that Indigenous groups on the West Coast are determined to stop a new oil pipeline from Alberta. As MP Ellis Ross, former chief councillor of the Haisla Nation near Kitimat, tells Brian, a lot of First Nations are open to the opportunity for resource development to help them break dependency on Ottawa and find prosperity for their people. He also talks about how U.S. anti-oil groups are exploiting First Nations by offering them much-needed funding in exchange for backing their activist campaigns — like the widely quoted “Coastal First Nations” group that doesn’t even represent the area’s First Nations. (Recorded December 5, 2025)

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No Western country seriously wants Ukraine to win

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 11:00:00 -0000

The Trump administration has been lambasted for its proposed peace plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war given its generosity to Moscow — yet Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he’s willing to build from it. As Matthew Bondy discusses with Brian, Kyiv has few options but to encourage America to step in and end the brutal, nearly four-year war, despite the deal’s insulting terms and the White House’s apparent warmth toward Russia. That’s because Ukraine isn’t winning, and Europe, Canada and other purported supporters keep offering more lip service than meaningful help. Bondy, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, tells Brian if Western countries won’t stop a barbarous but weak Russia, it raises the question of whether they care to defend western civilization at all. (Recorded November 28, 2025)

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Liberals are playing silly games with the military again

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 11:00:00 -0000

Canada’s reputation for politically driven flip-flopping over important military purchases is getting bad, especially given Ottawa’s plans to dramatically beef up our forces. But here we go again: the Liberals, after cancelling the purchase of the F-35 next-generation fighter jet, then reversing years later, are considering cancelling again to spite a U.S. president who will be gone in 2028. Brian talks with David Bercuson, director of the University of Calgary’s Centre for Military and Strategic Studies and Alan Williams, former assistant deputy minister of materiel at the Department of National Defence. They discuss why the F-35 was picked in the first place (and then picked again) and how short-term politics is corrupting a momentous decision that could have grave consequences in a more dangerous world. (Recorded November 21, 2025)

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Conservatives lived through this same party drama before and emerged victorious

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 11:00:00 -0000

The federal Conservatives were still licking their wounds from the Liberals’ recent minority election victory when they were rocked by a stunning and dispiriting floor-crossing. And they failed to stop the government from passing its budget by a razor-thin margin. That was 20 years ago, as Ian Brodie, former chief of staff to prime minister Stephen Harper, reflects on with Brian. And it looked a lot like what Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are going through today. Back then, it took less than a year before the government fell and Harper’s Conservatives won their first of three election victories. Brodie explains what lessons Poilievre and his team can learn from that time, and why Conservatives shouldn’t be too shaken by their recent troubles. (Recorded November 14, 2025)

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Mark Carney shoots blanks, again

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 11:00:00 -0000

He promised a historic budget. He warned of big sacrifices. He said he had a vision. But what Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered was not much more than a big-spending, big-government Trudeau-style plan, with a bit less hostility to business and some long-overdue military funding, as Tasha Kheiriddin and Stuart Thomson, curators of Postmedia’s Political Hack politics newsletter, discuss with Brian. They look at some of the odder budget choices and at the rough reception the plan has gotten from some corners. They also consider Carney’s lack of progress on other promises. And they discuss the floor-crossing frenzy that (so far) seems to have fizzled out with a single defector from the Conservatives — and why it played out the way it did. (Recorded November 7, 2025)

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Cautionary tales from a refugee of NDP and Green party ecopolitics

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 11:00:00 -0000

From Elizabeth May’s permanent iron grip on the Green party; to Jagmeet Singh’s self-destructive Liberal alliance; and the sabotaging of NDP campaigns by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein’s “leap manifesto”: Mark Leiren-Young, a committed environmentalist, saw all of it from a front-row seat. He had worked to help elect the politicians he thought were committed to fighting for his cause. But, as he tells Brian — and describes in his new book Greener Than Thou: Surviving the Toxic Sludge of Canadian Ecopolitics — he discovered they turned out to be more committed to fighting with each other, while being lousy at politics. For people truly interested in his kind of change, Leiren-Young explains why these parties might be better to disappear entirely. (Recorded October 31, 2025)

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The epic trolling behind Trump’s ad-trashing trade tantrum

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 10:00:00 -0000

Did Republican icon Ronald Reagan detest tariffs or love them? For President Donald Trump and his fiercely loyal army of acolytes, the answer is whatever the president says. As Brian discusses with Postmedia political columnists Lorne Gunter and Chris Selley, there’s no reason to be surprised that Trump blew up trade talks over an ad being run by Ontario that quotes Reagan denouncing tariffs, saying it was “fake” (it wasn’t). The lies, absurdism and overbearing demands of a president who insists his word is law have become a familiar pattern. But Canadian politicians like Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Prime Minister Mark Carney who think they can appeal to America’s logic are acting just as irrationally. (Recorded October 24, 2025)

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Why Carney is blowing trade talks with Trump

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 10:00:00 -0000

The elbows are down, the prime minister is backslapping President Donald Trump, but America’s tariffs just keep coming, and hurting Canada more. The ugly truth is that Ottawa’s been foundering in trade talks with the White House, as former diplomat to the U.S., Louise Blaise, and former trade minister Ed Fast discuss with Brian this week from the Banff Forum in Quebec City. They explain how Mark Carney’s government missed important opportunities, failed to maximize its leverage, and unnecessarily antagonized Trump with anti-American rhetoric, needless irritants and, most recently, a gratuitous Palestinian declaration. As we near negotiations for the crucial Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, they explain how Ottawa can alter course to improve things — before they get far worse. (Recorded October 17, 2025)

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How Qatar supports terrorists and still enjoys vast western influence

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 10:00:00 -0000

It’s a major backer of Hamas. It’s an ally of the United States. It has alienated Arab neighbours and spreads toxic propaganda through Al Jazeera but maintains relations with Israel. Since Oct. 7, 2023, the enigmatic Qatar has been a linchpin in negotiations over the war in Gaza. Brian talks to two guests about how this tiny, gas-rich emirate has taken an outsized role in the Middle East. Alon Ben-Meir, retired New York University professor and author, explains how Qatar became central to a Hamas-Israel peace deal. And Haras Rafiq, who tracks Islamism and terrorism, discusses how Qatar nonetheless continues to promote radical Islamism in the region and in the West, especially in Canada. (Recorded October 10, 2025)

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The many deceptions of the Liberals’ gun ‘buyback’

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 10:00:00 -0000

The public safety minister admitted his government’s sweeping plan to confiscate thousands of previously legal gun models with a “buyback” is badly flawed. But as Ian Runkle, a lawyer specializing in firearms law, tells Brian, it’s far more troubling than that. Ottawa plans to recreate a form of the hated gun registry that it abandoned long ago. And gun owners won’t necessarily be compensated for turning in their weapons, but will risk violent police raids if they don’t. Tens of thousands of resisters, including no small number of Indigenous Canadians, could face arrest and jail time. And, says Runkle, it all seems for the sake of placating one small Quebec anti-gun group and punishing non-Liberal voters. (Recorded October 3, 2025)

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It’s now thinkable that Carney and co. don’t want Israel to win

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 10:00:00 -0000

No military in history has been as careful as Israel to minimize civilian casualties in war. And no country has been criticized for it like Israel has — including by Canada. That’s the assessment of guests Richard Kemp and John Spencer, former military men and two of the highest authorities on urban warfare. They explain to Brian the groundbreaking lengths the IDF goes to in Gaza to mitigate harm, and wholeheartedly reject claims against Israel by Prime Minister Mark Carney and his confederates in the U.K., France and Australia who last week recognized a Palestinian state. The antagonism of Canada and co. suggests they don’t really want Israel to succeed, helping Hamas to prolong the war. The West, they say, has “blood on its hands.” (Recorded September 26, 2025)

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Carney’s high-flying promises come crashing back to earth

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 10:00:00 -0000

When he was elected, Prime Minister Mark Carney promised a trade deal with President Donald Trump, a blaze of new major infrastructure projects and a return to affordable middle-class home ownership. Today, Canadian and American trade negotiating teams are barely speaking, the only prioritized projects recently announced were already in the works, and the housing plan looks like a monumental boondoggle with hazy deliverables, as Brian discusses this week with Stuart Thomson and Tasha Kheiriddin, the team behind Postmedia’s Political Hack insider newsletter. As Stuart and Tasha describe, Carney enjoyed a good first week in the House with civility from returning Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. But that can’t last as so many of the high expectations Carney has set collide with governing reality. (Recorded September 18, 2025)

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Think runaway immigration is being fixed? Think again

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 10:00:00 -0000

The Liberals claim they’ve stopped the flood of temporary workers, foreign students and other immigrants that blew up our housing crisis and devastated the youth job market. Michelle Rempel Garner, the Conservatives’ immigration critic, tells Brian that the reality is nothing close to what they say. Five-million people remain here on temporary visas. Hundreds of thousands of more people are still being allowed in. And the asylum system is being exploited as a backdoor by thousands more making dubious refugee claims. Rempel Garner explains why we need drastic solutions to close temporary residency programs, weed out unfounded asylum claimants and start sending non-permanent workers home. (Recorded September 12, 2025)

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Don’t let police take away your right to self-defence

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 10:00:00 -0000

What can you do when someone attacks you or your family? After recent high-profile, violent home invasions, police have made it seem like you need to give up and not fight back. That’s wrong, as criminal lawyer Solomon Friedman tells Brian. Friedman explains how the power to defend yourself, your home and others, including killing an assailant if it’s justified, is consistently endorsed by court rulings from long before it was codified in Canadian legislation. But police don’t seem to like it. He and Brian discuss why the message cops are sending is so dangerous, making innocent people into defenceless targets while encouraging criminals to become fearless. (Recorded September 5, 2025)

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The rich, populist Republican radical who paved the way for Trump

Mon, 01 Sep 2025 10:00:00 -0000

The U.S. Republican party today isn’t what it used to be. But the evolution toward President Donald Trump’s MAGA-ism began decades ago when William F. Buckley launched a revolution on the American right. As Buckley’s official biographer Sam Tanenhaus tells Brian, the late conservative icon was a lot like Trump: a media-savvy wealthy elite who rebelled against the very establishment he came from. In his new book, Buckley: The Life and Revolution That Changed America, Tanenhaus lays out the improbable, fascinating story of the arch-Catholic New Englander who chummed around with hardcore leftists but transformed the GOP into a political powerhouse. In no small part by engaging Republicans in the culture war that eventually put Trump in the White House. (Recorded July 24, 2025)

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They crushed our rights for COVID. We still haven’t won them back

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 10:00:00 -0000

We all know governments used the pandemic as rationale for stripping away basic Charter rights, even if some think it was justified. John Carpay, president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, remains at the forefront in fighting to get them back. He has a new book out, Corrupted by Fear: How the Charter was betrayed and what Canadians can do about it. And he discusses with Brian why it’s so important to expose the junk science, careless courts and gross media negligence that made it easy for governments to wield dangerous powers so irresponsibly. COVID may be over, Carpay explains, but if we don’t rebuild our culture of freedom, history tells us governments will do it again — and sooner than we think. (Recorded July 11, 2025)

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The man who saved Canada’s Conservatives from political irrelevance

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 10:00:00 -0000

Before Pierre Poilievre, before Brian Mulroney, there was one leader who made federal conservatives an electoral force to be reckoned with. Before John Diefenbaker, Canada had begun to resemble a Liberal one-party state. Bob Plamondon, author of the new book Freedom Fighter: John Diefenbaker's Battle for Canadian Liberties and Independence, talks with Brian about how Dief became a political sensation bigger than any other prime minister. How he stood against Soviets, while standing up to America, and championed equality before it was fashionable. And Plamondon explains how the three-time prime minister created the blueprint for the common-man conservatism that animates the party even today, turning the Tories “from a party of losers into a party of winners.” (Recorded June 26, 2025)

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Putin is fighting to stave off Russia’s looming collapse

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 10:00:00 -0000

A lot of people in the West misunderstand the motives of Russian president Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine. As Andrew Natsios, editor of the new book Russia Under Putin, tells Brian, we won’t understand the war unless we understand demographics. Russia’s population is cratering; the largest country by land mass is rapidly depopulating and becoming vulnerable, particularly to China. While posing as a defender of traditional values has won Putin fans among some American right-wingers, it’s a sham, used for propaganda purposes, and even Russians don’t believe it, says Natsios. He shares his fascinating insights into Putin’s power, tactics and fears for anyone who wants a genuine understanding of what the authoritarian Russian leader is really up to. (Recorded July 28, 2025)

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Mark Carney falls right into a Hamas trap

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 10:00:00 -0000

For two years, Hamas has used the suffering of Palestinians to manipulate global opinion. As Brian discusses with this week’s guests, it worked: The Hamas-engineered hunger crisis in Gaza has prompted Canada, with France and the U.K., to recognize a Palestinian state based on unenforceable conditions like democratic elections and Hamas relinquishing power — which it says it will never do. Iddo Moed, Israel’s ambassador, says the declarations have already destroyed ceasefire talks. Eylon Levy, former spokesman for Israel’s government, says these naïve western “student politics” invite everlasting war. And Conservative MP Shuvaloy Majumdar, who has worked with fledgling Mideast democracies, explains how Carney has, ironically, subverted Canada’s democracy, and interests, with his reckless decision. (Recorded August 1, 2025)

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Canada’s justice system is bringing itself into disrepute

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 10:00:00 -0000

One-day sentences for aiding and abetting the Islamic State terror group, a few short years for murder, but possibly more if you’re an anti-vaccine trucker: these stories and loads of others from recent Canadian court cases seem to be undermining the public’s faith in our justice system. Brian chats with Postmedia columnists Jamie Sarkonak and Chris Selley about how things went so wrong and what to do about it. They also discuss the recent acquittal of the five hockey players for sexual assault, and how the judge’s exceptional handling of the case shows that all is not lost if we want to fix the system — if anyone in government is ever willing to try. (Recorded July 25, 2025)

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How Canadian fentanyl smuggling to the U.S. really works and who’s behind it

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 10:00:00 -0000

Between President Donald Trump claiming there’s a flood of fentanyl from Canada to the U.S., and people here insisting there’s almost none, the truth is elusive. A new American report gets to the bottom of what’s really going on, and its author, Jonathan Caulkins, talks to Brian about what he found. Specializing in crime systems, the professor from Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College breaks down how global supply chains run by criminal organizations moving from Mexico to China to Australia feed Canadian labs with precursor chemicals. And how much of the final made-in-Canada product actually ends up on America’s streets — including, unexpectedly, in Alaska.

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We have no idea what our federal leaders stand for anymore

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 11:00:00 -0000

We’ve lost sight of where Prime Minister Mark Carney is pointing his elbows as U.S. President Donald Trump keeps smacking Canada with more economic threats. Brian talks this week about Carney’s erratic political shapeshifting with Conservative adviser Ginny Roth and veteran Liberal adviser Warren Kinsella, and asks: Is our new prime minister emerging as a progressive, a conservative, or someone who will just say anything to placate the public? They also discuss the not-so-certain future of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, now boxing against a shadow opponent while his party members try to decide if he’s the right man to keep leading them. And, if so, what will he stand for if Carney keeps stealing his ideas? (Recorded July 11, 2025)

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How a few rich dairy farmers are sabotaging Canada’s big, beautiful trading future

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 10:00:00 -0000

For a moment it seemed all Canadians understood that, facing President Donald Trump’s tariff war, we had to make our economy as resilient and competitive as possible. As Martha Hall Findlay discusses with Brian, there was finally talk of ending Ottawa’s war on oil and gas, building infrastructure and boosting productivity. The government even yanked the aggravating digital services tax. But, explains Findlay, a former Liberal MP, now director of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, politicians just kneecapped nearly every Canadian exporter by exempting our globally detested dairy supply management system from trade talks … forever. Hall Findlay explains how this small cartel of millionaires works, why it’s so powerful, and why it hurts not just consumers, but every other trade-exposed business. (Recorded July 4, 2025)

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Iran’s ‘mafia’ regime won’t be giving up that easily

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 10:00:00 -0000

Make no mistake: the blows that Israel and America delivered to the Islamic tyrants in Tehran were in many ways crippling. As Kaveh Shahrooz, an Iranian-born Mideast analyst and human rights activist, tells Brian this week, the devastating targeted assassinations of nuclear scientists and military leaders indicate Israel has infiltrated the regime at its highest level. Its nuclear program is shattered, although we wait to learn by how much. And Israel has amputated Iran’s terror network by crushing Hamas and Hezbollah and helping end Syria’s Assad dictatorship. But, as Shahrooz explains, the ayatollahs face a disorganized opposition and will use all means necessary to keep their mafia-like hold on Iran. Expect more weapons, brutality and mayhem. (Recorded June 27, 2025)

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How Canada got on the wrong side in the war against Iran

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 10:00:00 -0000

As the Islamic Republic’s missiles rain down on the Jewish state, and with massive U.S. attacks against Iran’s nuclear sites ratcheting up the war, Brian talks to two Canadians living under fire as they frantically duck in and out of bomb shelters. Postmedia columnist Adam Zivo has been stuck in Israel, unable to get out, while former Canadian ambassador to Israel Vivian Bercovici (also a Postmedia columnist) has been helping evacuate fellow expatriates abandoned by Canada’s government. They talk about how Canada hasn’t only been largely useless in helping its citizens; as Bercovici says, the Carney government’s feeble demands for “de-escalation” in this critical, historic war to stop the global menace of an Iranian nuclear bomb has put Canada on the foolish side of history. (Recorded June 20, 2025)

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What cops ‘covered up’ about the Nova Scotia massacre

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 10:00:00 -0000

There are many lingering questions about the two-day killing spree by Gabriel Wortman that killed 22 people in 2020 in Nova Scotia, even after a joint federal/provincial commission wrapped up its inquiry. Investigative journalist Paul Palango joins Brian to discuss why he thinks all signs point to RCMP covering up that Wortman was working undercover for them before his rampage, as he exposes in his new book, Anatomy of a Cover-Up. He explains that it’s why police did nothing about reports that Wortman had illegal guns, and why the story of Wortman’s eventual killing by cop, and the account of his girlfriend, don’t line up with the evidence. If he’s right, then Canadians have been fed a lot of lies by officials — and we finally deserve the truth. (Recorded June 12, 2025)

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Canada’s on the brink of trade peace with Trump

Mon, 09 Jun 2025 10:00:00 -0000

Don’t call it a done deal until it’s done, but America’s ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, tells Brian this week that negotiations between Ottawa and President Donald Trump’s administration are making progress. He explains why he believes things are moving quickly in the right direction to settle the trade war between our two countries. Hoekstra also talks about why he’s looking forward to the next phase of the longstanding bilateral relationship, when he thinks Canada and the U.S. will work harmoniously and productively again, allied in eliminating the fentanyl scourge from both countries and building the two strongest economies in the industrialized world — although he still thinks Canada will be eating America’s dust. (Recorded June 6, 2025)

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Carney projects calm but he’s facing serious trouble

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 10:00:00 -0000

With the King opening Parliament, and a disciplined agenda, the prime minister modelled a poised and assured break from his unserious predecessor while sending a message to the world about Canadian sovereignty. That’s the verdict of Postmedia’s politics columnist John Ivison and parliamentary bureau chief Stuart Thomson, who join Brian to discuss the first week of Mark Carney’s re-elected government. Now, the easy part is over. Despite promises to cut spending, new estimates show bureaucracy out of control. President Trump has revived his “51st state” ultimatum, using missile defence as a cudgel. And provincial premiers are circling with demands in advance of a first ministers’ meeting. The panel runs through all the hard stuff for Carney that’s just getting started. (Recorded May 30, 2025)

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Making our streets unsafe for Jews is part of the plan

Mon, 26 May 2025 10:00:00 -0000

Jews get arrested in Toronto for standing up to Hamas cheerleaders; Judaic students hide their identity while public school teachers extol Islam; progressives, along with media and politicians, compare Israel to Nazis and cast Palestinians as blameless martyrs. These are among the reasons Brendan O’Neill, author of After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation, tells Brian why he thinks the West has been successfully taken over by people who hate our society, heritage and values. He explains how they’ve weaponized the fight against Islamophobia to return us to an era where antisemitism is systemic. And they’ve made it fashionable again to persecute Jews as the scapegoat for all the world’s ills. (Recorded May 8, 2025)

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Mark Carney has already started seriously harming the economy

Mon, 19 May 2025 10:00:00 -0000

He won last month’s election for the Liberals promising he had a plan to protect Canada’s economy from the predations of the American president. But since returning to Ottawa, Prime Minister Mark Carney has sent alarming signals to business and scaring off badly needed capital investment, as economist and professor Ian Lee tells Brian this week. The Liberal government’s decision to avoid tabling a budget makes it seem like there actually is no plan, Lee says. Meanwhile, comments from Carney’s cabinet that they’re wavering on a new oil export pipeline suggest that the country will be just as unwelcoming to resource development as the last one. Now, it’s looking like the man elected to reverse Canada’s long-running decline might just instead make it worse. (Recorded May 16, 2025)

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It’s not just Alberta flirting with western separatism now

Mon, 12 May 2025 11:00:00 -0000

Torn at for nine years by the divisive Trudeau Liberals, Canadian unity is seriously frayed, with Alberta now preparing for a possible secession referendum. In this episode, Brian talks with Reform Party founder Preston Manning, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, and longtime Liberal pollster Dan Arnold to get a sense of how dire the situation has become. Manning explains that the separatist sentiment isn’t just in Alberta but spread across much of the West and even parts of the North. And all three warn that the threat needs to be taken seriously. They also consider the opportunity Prime Minister Mark Carney has with a fresh mandate to begin repairing the fractures if he’s genuinely willing to. But if he isn't, the nation is in serious danger. (Recorded May 9, 2025)

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Poilievre built a new Conservative party. He’ll need to build another

Mon, 05 May 2025 11:00:00 -0000

The big election surprise was that Conservatives can do so well and still lose. Leader Pierre Poilievre created a new Tory coalition, sweeping up working-class NDPers and anti-establishment People’s Party voters, as Brian discusses with Tasha Kheiriddin and Stuart Thomson from Postmedia’s Political Hack newsletter. But Poilievre now needs even more to beat the Liberals — which means building bridges with moderate conservatives he’s shunned. That likely includes people in the laptop class, like those in Carleton who voted him out of his long-held seat, and provincial Tories (even the antagonistic Doug Ford). The panel also considers who’ll lead the NDP now; why President Donald Trump’s warming to Mark Carney; and whether Carney will ever get warm with the West. (Recorded May 2, 2025)

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The Conservatives’ post-election power struggle has begun

Sun, 27 Apr 2025 10:00:00 -0000

Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party, with the campaign’s momentum and tightening polls, could yet declare victory in the federal election. But the party infighting that started early in the campaign already has some sniffing around a potential leadership change, as the Political Hack newsletter’s Tasha Kheiriddin and Stuart Thomson discuss with Brian this week. Our 2025 election panel also gets into the surprises that could come with last-minute voters, the curious advertising blitzes of the two front runners in the race’s dying days, and Liberal Leader Mark Carney’s exorbitant platform promises and his growing smugness about his standing. They also consider the new, likely power status of the Bloc Québécois, should either party need the separatists to sustain a minority. (Recorded April 25, 2025)

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Say hello to the new Liberal-NDP alliance

Mon, 21 Apr 2025 11:00:00 -0000

If there’s anyone other than U.S. President Donald Trump who can take credit for helping the Liberals try to hang onto power, it’s NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh. After years protecting the Liberal government from falling in the House, Singh spent last week’s debates inexplicably assisting Liberal Leader Mark Carney, as Brian discusses with Tasha Kheiriddin and Stuart Thomson from the Political Hack newsletter. They consider whether Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s performance moved the needle enough to overtake this new Liberal-NDP alliance in the federal election, and the difference voter turnout will make. They also get into other interesting developments, from Poilievre’s advocacy for the notwithstanding clause to Carney’s curious defence of tax avoidance and the disgraced gun buyback. (Recorded April 18, 2025)

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Bonus episode: Pierre Poilievre gets personal

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 00:29:00 -0000

In a rare, casual interview Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre talks to Brian about what it’s been like campaigning for an election with his wife and kids, what he thinks about people saying he’s too “angry,” and what he does to stay in shape during the race. He also discusses what he makes of provincial conservatives in Ontario publicly criticizing his campaign, and fear tactics being used against him to scare seniors about their benefits. Of course, Poilievre also gets into his plan for handling President Donald Trump, the problem of younger Canadians losing hope in the future of their country, and his plans to improve housing and the cost of living. (Recorded April 12, 2025)

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Mark Carney’s brittle image is cracking

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 11:00:00 -0000

The latest questions about his support from China and his corporate tax dodging have had Mark Carney stumbling and snapping at reporters, even suspending his campaign to seek refuge in the image-friendly prime minister’s office. But the bigger question is whether he can avoid fumbling his front-runner status in the last two weeks of the campaign, as Brian discusses in our weekly election panel with Tasha Kheiriddin and Stuart Thomson from Postmedia’s Political Hack newsletter. They also consider whether Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s campaign will finally get the boost it needs with the coming leaders’ debates after weeks of struggling against U.S. President Donald Trump’s intrusions and irksome infighting conservative infighting. (Recorded April 11, 2025)

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The Conservative gains the Liberal-led polls could be missing

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 11:00:00 -0000

Things are happening in the election campaigns behind the headlines that may reveal a different version of what’s showing up in the polls. Stuart Thomson and Tasha Kheiriddin, the team behind Political Hack, Postmedia’s politics insider newsletter, join Brian to talk about some of the challenges inside Liberal Leader Mark Carney’s campaign, which Stuart travelled with this week. Brian and Stuart discuss the fragility of a Liberal polling lead that relies on President Donald Trump’s seemingly softening tariff attack, while Stuart talks vulnerabilities in Carney’s campaigning abilities. And Tasha and Brian consider the supporters who might not be counted in surveys, and could be Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s secret weapon. (Recorded April 4, 2025)

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Conservatives are caught in a perfect electoral storm, but aren’t blown away yet

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 11:00:00 -0000

In any other election the kind of poll numbers Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are putting up would be cause for celebration. And their campaign so far has been perfectly executed, as Stuart Thomson and Tasha Kheiriddin from Postmedia’s Political Hack newsletter discuss with Brian this week. Meanwhile Liberal Leader Mark Carney has stumbled and underwhelmed. But the dynamics of this race in the first week played entirely to the Liberals’ sole advantage and they’re dominating the polls. So far Conservatives have mostly stuck to their main pre-Donald Trump message of affordability and change. On our Election 2025 panel this week, Tasha, Stuart and Brian hash out whether Conservatives should pivot or stay focused, while waiting (and hoping) for a shift in voters’ thinking. (Recorded March 28, 2025)

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We’re still being deceived about the carbon tax

Mon, 24 Mar 2025 11:00:00 -0000

It’s finally dead… or is it? New Liberal Leader Mark Carney reduced the carbon-tax rate to zero before calling an election, but as Franco Terrazzano tells Brian, there are still questions about what Canadians will pay. Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation, is author of the new book Axing the Tax. He discusses how the federal Liberal government snuck in the carbon tax and managed to convince everyone (even Conservatives!) that it was popular, effective and affordable — until a new Tory leader, Pierre Poilievre, exposed the lie. Now Carney wants a tougher business carbon tax claiming it’s necessary not for the environment, but for trade. And again, Terrazzano says, Liberals are hiding the truth about what it will really cost us all. (Recorded March 20, 2025)

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Liberals can win with Trump’s foreign interference

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 11:00:00 -0000

Canada’s crucial relationship with the U.S. is in its worst crisis ever. And Mark Carney’s first urgent trip as prime minister is … to Europe. Brian talks with John Ivison and Lorne Gunter this week to assess Carney’s first curious moves as the newly selected Liberal leader. But while Carney’s already saddled with loads of negative baggage — and just added more with some cabinet picks — none of it may matter, they say. Climate-regulatory alarmism like Trudeau on steroids? Weak French? Soft on crime? Cosy with China? Carney can skate past all of it by calling an election soon, as long as Trump keeps threatening us and Liberals keep persuading voters Carney’s the right man to handle him. (Recorded March 14, 2025)

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Trump seems ready to settle this trade war

Mon, 10 Mar 2025 11:00:00 -0000

Shock and awe followed by erratic moves is how Donald Trump is used to negotiating, as historian, businessman and Postmedia columnist Conrad Black (who occasionally speaks with the president) tells Brian this week. Trump is determined to end the era of other countries picking America’s pocket in myriad ways and is using tariffs to do it. Black says he gets the impression the Trump administration wants out of this Canadian trade war. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get back the free-trade world we had. So, he advises, Canada had better adapt to the dramatically changed economic and geopolitical reality and get a prime minister who can build our economy despite Trump (and Mark Carney isn’t it). (Recorded March 6, 2025)

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How Canada turned itself into a fentanyl playground

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0000

If you want a thriving fentanyl trade in your country, attracting heavily armed cartels, super labs, and a large and growing market of users subsidized by the government and unimpeded by law enforcement, just do everything Canada’s been doing. So says Marshall Smith, former chief of staff to the Alberta premier, a former addict, and a prominent dissenter from the entrenched harm-reduction dogma of addiction treatment. Smith discusses with Brian how the fentanyl situation became so cataclysmic in Canada that our burgeoning drug exports are now aggravating Washington. Smith also explains how the Alberta model of enforced treatment, while getting serious about drug crime, is proof that the crisis can be turned around if governments are finally willing to take it seriously. (Recorded February 27, 2025)

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Why Doug Ford keeps steamrolling his Ontario election critics

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0000

They said his calling an early provincial election was hubris, and yet Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford may win an even bigger majority on Feb. 27. They scoffed when he claimed a vote was needed to fight U.S. tariffs, but that turned out to be all Ontarians were thinking about. And, as Brian discusses this week with Postmedia’s Ontario columnists Chris Selley and Lorrie Goldstein, Ford’s tough-talking tariff campaign has only boosted his popularity. One reason they suggest Ford is winning could be that Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie and NDP Leader Marit Stiles can’t understand what voters see in the guy. But they also weigh whether voters have simply lost faith in idealistic politicians promising they can fix things, anymore. (Recorded February 21, 2025)

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Here in Washington, the Trump vs. Canada reality isn’t what we think

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0000

The premiers blitzing the U.S. capital wasn’t the pointless fiasco reports made it out to be, and President Trump’s plan for Canada may not really about tariffs or fentanyl. In this special episode, Brian reports from the ground in Washington, D.C. where he interviews Canadian provincial and business leaders who were there and hears about their actual progress in trying to dissuade the Trump administration from a trade war. He also sits down for an eye-opening discussion with Steve Bannon, Trump’s former confidant and strategist. Bannon explains why he thinks the president’s fixation with overpowering Canada is, at root, about the pivotal position we would play in what Trump thinks will be inevitable global confrontations with Russia and China. (Recorded February 14, 2025)

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Why Trump isn’t just joking about taking over Canada anymore

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0000

It might seem unbelievable, but some Americans, including President Donald Trump, really think it’s possible that Canada, or parts of it, might join the U.S.A. Joel Pollak, California-based editor for Breitbart News and author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, tells Brian that the president’s unexpected, confrontational tariff pressure on Canada isn’t just another of his many early tactics to keep rivals and partners unbalanced while he aggressively advances a drastic agenda (although it is that, too). As Pollak explains, tariffs are Trump’s way to get us all following his radical new rules, as he overturns conventional thinking on everything from free trade, to foreign aid, to China, to Gaza to … annexing Canada. (Recorded February 7, 2025)

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Trump has already changed everything in the Middle East

Mon, 03 Feb 2025 12:00:00 -0000

It’s the deal no one thought they wanted and one the Biden administration couldn’t get done. Then Donald Trump showed up, sending his envoy Steve Witkoff to force it through. Soon, the hostages starting coming home, in their tortured bodies, telling their unspeakable stories. As Vivian Bercovici tells Brian from Israel, where she was formerly Canada’s ambassador, everything has changed now. Many hard-right Israelis who opposed the deal suddenly support it. People are swallowing the revolting prospect of freeing murderous Palestinian terrorists to rescue Jewish innocents from hell. Bercovici and Brian also discuss Trump’s determination that Hamas will not keep Gaza, and his unprecedented proposals for extinguishing the Palestinian death cult once and for all. (Recorded January 31, 2025)

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The reason Trump plans to crush Canada that our politicians just don’t get

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0000

It’s not just about tariffs. If you examine what the America First advisers around Trump really think, you’ll understand their determination to undertake a sweeping overhaul of the global economic system — and why they’re starting with Canada. Brian’s guests this week, trade researcher Carlo Dade, from the Canada West Foundation, and Ian Lee, public policy professor at Carlton University, have done their homework. That’s unlike many of our political leaders, who seem oblivious to the real threats — or who, worse, like certain Liberals, think they can exploit a destructive tariff war for partisan gain. As Ian and Carlo tell Brian, the people around Trump aren’t scared of higher import prices, and what they’re really interested in from Canada doesn’t even seem to be on Ottawa’s radar. (Recorded January 24, 2025)

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The dirty fight shaping up between Carney and Freeland

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0000

Was a photo of Mark Carney with Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend leaked by Chrystia Freeland’s team? Who sent the Rolls Royce to Carney’s campaign launch event? Is Karina Gould’s candidacy just a strategy to undermine Freeland? Brian talks with Liberal strategists Sharan Kaur, who worked inside the Trudeau government, and Kieran McMurchy, consultant at Navigator, to break down the hits and misses in the first days of the front-runner Freeland and Carney campaigns — and how their duel could get much dirtier. They also consider the bemusing other candidates in the race to replace Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader and prime minister. Plus, they ask the biggest question of all: Whether any winner could salvage the wreck Trudeau made of the Liberal party. (Recorded January 17, 2025)

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Paul Godfrey wants to make Toronto pretty good again

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0000

By sheer force of will, Paul Godfrey built a Major League Baseball team in what was then Canada’s sleepy second city, when everyone doubted it could be done. (He ended up in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and the Blue Jays would go on to win two World Series.) He helped shake up a staid and boring local newspaper scene with the scrappy Toronto Sun, before going on to build a national media empire. Now, after 14 years at the helm of Postmedia, Godfrey is pivoting again. The legendary politician and businessman talks with Brian this week about his astounding rise from his humble start in local government to where he is now. And he says one of his next projects will be to trying to once again help Toronto, the city he loves, which he says has become a city in decline. (Recorded December 18, 2024)

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BEST OF 2024: The COVID lies they told us continue to warp our lives

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 12:00:00 -0000

Over the holidays, we’re looking back at some of the best episodes of 2024, which in December marked the fifth anniversary of the COVID virus escaping China and wreaking global havoc. We’re still learning how institutions and officials politicized science during the pandemic to justify economic lockdowns, border closures, school shutdowns and other measures that lacked supportive evidence but carried grave consequences. Vanessa Dylyn is the award-winning director of the documentary Covid Collateral, which shows how real scientific methods and debate were sidelined, even banished, as governments faked expertise during COVID-19 with the help of compliant doctors and journalists. She joins Brian this week to talk about the shocking things she discovered while investigating the official responses to COVID; the damaging public health policies that continue to affect individuals and our society; and how we can hopefully prevent this all from happening again when the next pandemic comes. (Recorded June 27, 2024)

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BEST OF 2024: Jordan Peterson on why everyone should be afraid of what happened to him

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0000

Over the holidays, we’re looking back at some of the best episodes of 2024, a year that may have marked the beginning of the end for left-wing political censorship, especially by professional bodies. Last January, the courts shut the door on overturning a decision by the College of Psychologists of Ontario that ordered Jordan Peterson into a mandatory rehabilitation program for his politically incorrect tweets, which had nothing to do with his practice and involved none of his patients. As Peterson tells host Brian Lilley, his options are now to either lose his licence, try moving somewhere else or submit and undergo “re-education” for his controversial opinions. But even more importantly, Peterson says that if Canada’s speech police can come for a famous psychologist and bestselling author like him, they can certainly come for anyone — including you. (Recorded Jan. 20, 2024)

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Trudeau’s taking you all down with him

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0000

His finance minister has quit in disgust. He seems only able to come up with increasingly bad ideas. His government is in disarray, with crises in immigration, housing, the cost-of-living, deficits, debt and more. And the U.S. is about to hit Canada with economy-killing tariffs. Yet, as Brian discusses with Postmedia’s Lorne Gunter and Chris Selley on our year-end political panel, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems determined to tough it out and stick around as long as he can. The trouble is, Trudeau’s refusal to admit to his disastrous defeat — and his party’s unwillingness to force him out — is seriously hurting innocent Canadians. (Recorded December 19, 2024)

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You won’t believe how badly your bank is fleecing you

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0000

Canadians have been deceived into believing that having strong, stable banks means sacrificing competition, as Andrew Spence, author of Fleeced: Canadians Versus Their Banks, tells Brian. So, we have no real competition, which means we pay more — loads more — for ATMs, Interac, mortgages, NSF fees, exchange rates and more, than people do in comparable countries. No wonder Canadian banks are making out like bandits relative to their U.S. and U.K. peers. Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way, Spence explains. Especially as new, disruptive fintech firms are ready to offer us better, cheaper and more convenient banking services. But the Big Six are doing everything they can to stop that from happening. And they’re succeeding — with the government’s help. (Recorded November 29, 2024)

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John A. helped Indigenous people, Riel didn’t, and other unpopular realities

Mon, 09 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0000

Imagine Indigenous people getting to vote for the first time — and voting for John A. Macdonald. Many did. And it was Canada’s first prime minister who gave them the vote. The Conservative leader also kept Aboriginal communities fed (against fierce Liberal opposition) when the buffalo disappeared and protected them from disease, as Patrice Dutil, author of the new book, Sir John A. Macdonald and The Apocalyptic Year 1885, tells Brian. And, yes, Macdonald also offered Indigenous children schooling: a well-intended initiative he’s now being vilified for. But Canada now unfortunately privileges ahistorical, ignorant, and often spiteful slanders against John A. while lionizing a murderous secessionist like Louis Riel. As Dutil explains, Macdonald was a fascinating, brilliant, and benevolent founding father. It’s time we remembered that again. (Recorded November 28, 2024)

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Trudeau did ‘almost everything wrong’ on immigration. It’s about to get worse

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 12:00:00 -0000

What was once the best immigration system in the world has been turned on its head, former immigration minister and premier Jason Kenney tells Brian this week — all because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has preferred pandering platitudes over practical policy. After eight years of mass migration, Canadians everywhere — including immigrants — are suffering with problems in housing, health care and employment. What’s more, all these millions of temporary residents and unverified asylum-claimants he let in know we lack the capacity to make them leave. Now, Kenney warns, with Trump about to start deportations, we could soon be flooded with hundreds of thousands — or even millions — more. (Recorded November 29, 2024)

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They call us ‘settlers’ because they’re planning to kick us out

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 12:00:00 -0000

You’re not welcome in “so-called Canada.” That’s what academics and activists call this country, which they declare “illegitimate.” And, as Adam Kirsch, author of the new book On Settler Colonialism tells Brian, these people aren’t using metaphors. They truly see anyone who isn’t Indigenous as an active colonizer and criminal who doesn’t belong. The idea is steadily gaining currency in our schools, society and government, and it’s brutally playing out against Israel, where Hamas supporters euphorically envision forcing out all Jews (despite the Jews’ own indigeneity). But don’t kid yourself, Kirsch warns: They’re working to dismantle other countries, too — especially this one. And with every land acknowledgment and libel against our nation’s history, we’re helping them do it. (Recorded November 15, 2024)

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The Trump train is bearing down on Trudeau

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 12:00:00 -0000

The federal Liberals are likely facing an even less friendly Donald Trump administration than last time. And they’re in an even weaker position than they were then, as Brian discusses this week with Postmedia columnist Chris Selley. Their minority government is teetering, mounting scandals are weighing them down, and their mass-immigration and anti-oil policies have hobbled our economy. Meanwhile, Republicans are steamed about our neglect of defence and security, and the president-elect will remember that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has spent the last four years using “MAGA” as an insult. With Washington likely to become extremely pushy and protectionist, Ottawa could get crushed. (Recorded November 15, 2024)

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Revenge of the normal people, from Trump to Canada

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 12:00:00 -0000

The presidential election came down to the clevers versus the normals, guest John Robson tells Brian this week. Those succeeding in the establishment’s ever more complicated system of official and unofficial rules around work, business, education and identity politics went for Kamala Harris. Everyone else —feeling left behind, ignored and scorned — went for Donald Trump. Including many minorities. Robson, an American historian and National Post columnist, says Trump is clearly unfit for the White House, so it should petrify Democrats they’re seen as worse. But it shows that the anti-Western, woke-activist, mass-immigration, climate-obsessed political package repulses people everywhere. And, as the Trudeau Liberals are discovering, the common-people counter-revolt is building in Canada, too. (Recorded November 8, 2024)

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If Trump is a ‘garbage’ candidate, Harris is a ‘vacuous sociopath’

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 12:00:00 -0000

It’s the final hours of a “dumpster fire” of a presidential election, as guest and American political writer J.D. Tuccille calls it. And it’s hard to imagine a worse one. Democrats are back to comparing Donald Trump to Hitler, and Republicans say the Democrats are communists. The vice-presidential picks JD Vance and Tim Walz have had minimal impact while the U.S. media has again beclowned itself running interference for Kamala Harris. But, as Tuccille discusses with Brian, there are serious issues facing America, including uncontrolled immigration and runaway living costs, not to mention serious foreign crises. Voters are left to sort through Harris’s “word salads” and Trump’s bluster to decide which of the two is the least inadequate. (Recorded Oct. 31, 2024)

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Trudeau survived. He’s still screwed.

Mon, 28 Oct 2024 11:00:00 -0000

So, the rebels in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s caucus couldn’t convince him to quit. But they’re still fed up, and they still have forceful ways of showing it, as veteran Postmedia politics columnist John Ivison discusses with Brian this week. That may just include sabotaging a confidence vote that could bring down their own government. Now Trudeau is desperately trying anything to survive — including reversing key policies and playing politics over foreign interference. Backtracking on his beloved carbon tax may even be next. Meanwhile, the House is paralyzed in a procedural standoff and prorogation seems like the best option for Trudeau in what Ivison says seems like the “end of days” for this government. (Recorded October 25, 2024)

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The underqualified, anti-racist activist doctor will see you now

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 11:00:00 -0000

Prioritizing medical expertise and skill in doctors is so passé. If powerful activists pushing to redesign Canada’s physician regulators get their way, tomorrow’s doctors will be focusing on promoting anti-oppression and anti-racism. Dr. Mark D’Souza has been on the forefront of the fight to prevent that. He explains to Brian how the radicals’ plan could endanger patient health by sidelining merit in medical schools in favour of equity quotas, while eliminating critical distinctions of sex in diagnosis and treatment. The good news? D’Souza, author of the new book Lost and Found: How Meaningless Living is Destroying Us and Three Keys to Fix It, believes most Canadian doctors oppose the changes. The bad news is they’re cowed from speaking out. (Recorded September 13, 2024)

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David Eby is pivoting in panic away from the NDP’s unpopular policies

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 11:00:00 -0000

British Columbia voters are so unhappy that they might elect a party this week that barely existed two years ago: the Conservatives led by John Rustad. No wonder. As veteran B.C. politics columnist Vaughn Palmer tells Brian, voters see crime as out of control; drug decriminalization creating no-go zones everywhere; and immigration soaring even as the housing crisis seems worse than ever. Meanwhile, their made-in-B.C. carbon tax has become punishing. NDP Leader David Eby appears desperate to disown his record since taking over as premier last year. But, as Palmer explains, although Rustad is less polished and has some problematic candidates, the surprising closeness of this race speaks to how bad things seem to so many. (Recorded October 10, 2024)

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Alberta finally builds its ‘firewall’ to keep Ottawa out

Mon, 07 Oct 2024 11:00:00 -0000

The now legendary “firewall letter” stunned Canadian political watchers. Officially called the Alberta Agenda, it called on the province to start taking back powers from the federal government, refusing to be taken further advantage of. And for 20 years, Alberta governments largely ignored it. But as former provincial finance minister Ted Morton discusses with Brian, Alberta’s UCP government is finally changing that. He was one of the letter’s signatories, along with Stephen Harper, who later became prime minister. As Morton discusses his new memoir, Strong and Free: My Journey in Alberta Politics, he explains how a new conservatism is changing his province — and Canada. (Recorded September 25, 2024)

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We know the UN is immoral. This guy rubs it in their face

Mon, 30 Sep 2024 11:00:00 -0000

You’d have to be a fool not to see how the UN has been taken over by malevolent dictatorships. But rather than give up on the ideals the United Nations was founded on, Hillel Neuer forces the world body to face its hypocrisy, antisemitism and despot-worship. The Montreal-born executive director of UN Watch joins Brian this week to talk about his work in Geneva, where he tirelessly torments corrupt UN bodies and delegates by revealing their complicity with the worst human-rights abusers and terrorists, while persecuting liberal democracies — especially Israel. Neuer discusses the many ways Iran, China, North Korea and Russia pervert the UN’s noble ambitions and what can be done to make it live up to its noble aspirations. (Recorded September 25, 2024)

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Trudeau belongs to the Bloc separatists now

Mon, 23 Sep 2024 11:00:00 -0000

The Conservatives’ attempt to bring down Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government with a non-confidence motion was virtually DOA when the Bloc Québécois quickly said it would refuse to support it. No wonder: With no NDP deal to back the Liberals, the Bloc suddenly finds itself with significant power over the Liberals, as Brian discusses in our politics roundtable with columnist Tasha Kheiriddin and Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson, the team behind Postmedia’s Political Hack newsletter. They also get into what the recent Montreal byelection says about how badly Liberals are losing Quebec to the Bloc. And why the recent Winnipeg byelection shows that the Tories’ big challenge in many ridings come the next election will be winning over alienated New Democrats. (Recorded September 18, 2024)

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‘Wokeness’ is a mind disease…but it can be beaten

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 11:00:00 -0000

If you’ve ever wondered how some self-proclaimed feminists can defend the brutal rapists of Hamas, or how people can passionately believe men can get pregnant, Gad Saad has an explanation. As an academic researcher in behavioural science, Saad has spent his career studying how perceptions and ideas can produce biological effects. He joins Brian this week to discuss how “woke” concepts like postmodernism, moral relativism and social constructionism act like pathogens on people’s minds. He explains how wokeness can spread, damaging people’s ability to think rationally, in the same way that other dangerous ideologies have warped the minds of masses in the past. And he talks about how he, and others, are working hard to save society from the disease. (Recorded August 30, 2024)

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Jagmeet Singh faces demolishing what’s left of his credibility

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 11:00:00 -0000

The leader of the federal NDP has spent two years thundering righteously against the Liberals —while propping up their minority government through a supply-and-confidence deal. Now, Jagmeet Singh has said he’s for sure, no-joking, super-duper fed up with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and he’s cancelled their bargain, which means giving up his leverage to advance NDP priorities. As former, longtime NDP power-player Karl Bélanger discusses with Brian this week, Singh is out of excuses for denouncing Trudeau while backing the government on confidence votes. Bélanger says the NDP leader will destroy his credibility if he keeps exuding hypocrisy. But he also stands a chance of turning around his party’s unpopularity and salvaging its fortunes for the next election. (Recorded September 6, 2024)

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Now we’re ‘racist’ if we don’t give people free heroin

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Fast enough to make your head spin, Canada’s “harm reduction” approach to helping drug addicts went from a few safe injection sites to giving away powerful opioid drugs to addicts. As Adam Zivo, journalist and director of the Canadian Centre for Responsible Drug Policy discusses with Brian, ideologically radical public health officials now even insist that any addiction treatment other than giving addicts more free drugs is racist and colonialist. And despite overdose deaths rising and more addicts being created by the diversion of so-called safe supply, Zivo says these drug-policy extremists won’t stop until they make all dangerous street narcotics legal — and as easy as possible for anyone to get. (Recorded July 25, 2024)

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The COVID lies they told us continue to warp our lives

Mon, 26 Aug 2024 11:00:00 -0000

We’re still learning how institutions and officials politicized science during the pandemic to justify economic lockdowns, border closures, school shutdowns and other measures that lacked supportive evidence but carried grave consequences. Vanessa Dylyn is the award-winning director of the new documentary Covid Collateral, which shows how real scientific methods and debate were sidelined, even banished, as governments faked expertise during COVID-19 with the help of compliant doctors and journalists. She joins Brian this week to talk about the shocking things she discovered while investigating the official responses to COVID; the damaging public health policies that continue to affect individuals and our society; and how we can hopefully prevent this all from happening again when the next pandemic comes. (Recorded June 27, 2024)

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Now the world thinks Canadian social policies are the ‘edge of crazy’

Mon, 19 Aug 2024 13:00:00 -0000

Not long ago, our practical, moderate approaches were considered exemplars that countries around the world tried to emulate. But as Postmedia’s Tristin Hopper discusses with Brian this week, in just a few years Canada went from paragon to cautionary tale. A model of how one should definitely not handle drug policy, euthanasia, housing, online censorship, gender policy, immigration, and more. Sure, some of this is the work of an activist federal government, Hopper says — but not all of it. Social-policy extremists have infiltrated myriad levels of Canadian policy-making. Ending the havoc might take more than a change in government, he predicts. It may require a new quiet revolution led by a (still-moderate) Canadian majority. (Recorded July 29, 2024)

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Get hitched. Have kids. Save society from anti-marriage progressive elites

Mon, 12 Aug 2024 13:00:00 -0000

The statistics are undeniable: married people tend to be happier, amass more wealth and live longer, healthier lives than unmarried people, as sociologist Brad Wilcox tells Brian this week. Marriage also reduces child poverty and makes communities safer. So why are so many so-called progressives in politics, the media and other influential spheres so invested in destroying the traditions of marriage and familyhood? There’s something bizarre afoot, notes Wilcox — author of the new book Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization — when society’s elites are predominantly married with children, gaining all the benefits that come with that, even as they discredit traditional families … for everyone else. (Recorded June 27, 2024)

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Trudeau gazes upon a wasteland of Liberal leadership

Mon, 05 Aug 2024 13:00:00 -0000

Chrystia Freeland talks like a patronizing schoolmarm. Mark Carney comes off like a visiting aristocrat. Yet, the federal Liberals face a reckoning sooner or later, and they’ll eventually need someone to replace Justin Trudeau. Having turned his party into a suppressive cult of personality, however, Trudeau has thwarted the rise of any real heirs or heiresses apparent. This week, Brian and former Liberal strategist Warren Kinsella feverishly scour our list of rumoured contenders for a would-be leader to rebuild from the wreckage when Trudeau’s reckoning finally comes. The pickings are worse than slim, but there may be one of two with just enough brains, charm and non-radioactivity to offer the Liberals a new ruler with some real royal jelly. (Recorded July 30, 2024)

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Kamala Harris and J.D. Vance compete on awfulness

Mon, 29 Jul 2024 13:00:00 -0000

As the honeymoon quickly fades for the unelected but anointed Democratic candidate, the ugly truth about Kamala Harris is emerging. As U.S. political columnist J. D. Tuccille details with Brian this week, Harris has proven herself to be alarmingly unserious and personally difficult, with a problematic record on rights. And for Americans who want change, Harris looks like Biden rebranded. Her one advantage, Tuccille says, may be that Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance as his vice-presidential candidate, a mediocre senator and speaker who does little to broaden Trump’s appeal. Meanwhile, Harris still has a chance to pick a strong veep — if her party’s antisemitic faction doesn’t tie her hands. (Recorded July 25, 2024)

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Behind Canada’s ‘moral panic’ around suspected graves at residential schools

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 13:00:00 -0000

It’s been three years since the bombshell media reports first spread claims there was a “mass grave” found at a former Kamloops residential school, and the truth has been playing catch-up ever since. But as our guest this week explains, anyone with knowledge of history should have known the grisly allegations that residential schools had been disappearing children and secretly disposing of them didn’t make sense. Tom Flanagan, co-author of Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools), discusses with Brian how the country was seized with moral panic that overrode skeptical questions. Even as the facts come out now, says Flanagan, there are those in power still working to keep false narratives alive. (Recorded June 20, 2024)

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One province is still fighting Trudeau’s carbon taxes—and winning

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 13:00:00 -0000

The province causing pain in Ottawa’s side these days isn’t Quebec or Alberta — it’s Saskatchewan, where Premier Scott Moe this year unilaterally declared his province would not be forced to pay carbon taxes on natural gas. So far, the courts are backing him up. John Gormley, former dean of the province’s talk radio (and former MP), joins Brian this week to explain how the onetime NDP heartland has turned rebel against the left’s centralized-control agenda, as it fights against Justin Trudeau’s carbon taxes and censorship policies. He also discusses how brewing problems in the ageing Saskatchewan Party government (including a bizarre texting scandal) risk undermining all of it. (Recorded July 11, 2024)

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Here’s what it’s like living under Hezbollah’s constant attacks

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 13:00:00 -0000

While the world fixates on the war in Gaza, Israelis in the north are under daily attack from Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Islamist group that’s a key part of Iran’s multi-front war against the Jewish state — and the entire western-led world order. Sarit Zehavi speaks to Brian from her home in the Galilee, as missiles explode in the background, and lush forests around her burn from Hezbollah’s indiscriminate bombing. Zehavi is head of the Alma Research and Education Centre, specializing in Israel’s security challenges on its northern border. She discusses the dangers facing the country, and the world, as the looming threat of a wider war grows with Tehran’s mounting aggression (Recorded July 4, 2024)

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The inescapable implosion of Trudeau’s bizarro Liberal party

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 13:00:00 -0000

A collapse of their Toronto—St. Paul fortress is just the beginning. All that remains to be seen is how extensive the Liberals’ inevitable ruin will be once Justin Trudeau’s strange, destructive experiment is over. As Liberal activist and strategist Andrew Perez tells Brian, the prime minister has made the once-mighty, centrist “natural governing” party into something unrecognizable — and likely unelectable — by driving out moderates and effectively merging with the NDP. While pundits and politicos gossip about when or whether Trudeau will quit, Perez says Liberals face a more existential crisis, years in the making. The party is lost. And it’s not clear how, or under whom, it can find its way again. (Recorded June 28, 2024)

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Water rationing could be coming to your city next

Mon, 24 Jun 2024 13:00:00 -0000

If you want the real story about why residents in one of Canada’s biggest cities have for weeks been under orders to ration their water usage, you won’t get it from Calgary’s mayor or city bureaucrats. As local veteran Postmedia journalist Don Braid tells Brian in this week’s episode, the catastrophic water-main explosion is a tale of municipal mismanagement, inferior infrastructure and wilful political blindness. And, Braid says, the same factors — including a whole lot of disintegrating water pipes — are lurking in a lot of other cities, maybe even yours, and just waiting to burst open. (Recorded June 20, 2024)

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Canada’s biggest superfan says leave your ethnic hatreds at the door

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 13:00:00 -0000

Nav Bhatia is instantly recognizable as the turbaned, fanatically exuberant Raptors superfan courtside at every home game. As he tells Brian, he immigrated to Toronto from an India riven by ethnic conflict, to find peace and undreamed-of prosperity here. Discussing his new memoir, The Heart of a Superfan, Bhatia talks about his experience with bigotry, his rise to success, his love for the Raptors, and why he thinks Canada is still the envy of the world. And he explains why he thinks all of us, including other immigrants, can do better than the angry protests in our streets and learn to love each other and leave intolerance behind. (Recorded April 17, 2024)

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Liberals have good reason to fear Pierre Poilievre

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 13:00:00 -0000

It may be that the leader of the Conservative party has been preparing for the job of prime minister his whole life. He once entered an essay contest about “If I were prime minister,” advocating for making Canada a bastion of freedom. As Andrew Lawton, author of the new biography, Pierre Poilievre: A Political Life, discusses with Brian, the now opposition leader’s crusade hasn’t much changed since then. Along the way, as Lawton details, Poilievre has innovated new ways of campaigning, messaging and communicating that have devastated his opponents. The Liberals have never faced a competitor like this before. And while they’re working overtime to make Poilievre seem scary to voters, they might be more scared for themselves. (Recorded May 30, 2024)

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Regular-people rules don’t apply to ‘Prince’ Trudeau

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 13:00:00 -0000

He gets away with wearing blackface while calling other people racist. He spoils himself with opulent trips abroad and refuses to answer for it. As Stephen Maher, author of a new book, The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau, explains, the prime minister has always seen himself as having been born into royalty — and he’s acted like it. That lofty self-image has given Trudeau preternatural confidence and bravado, but it’s also made him capricious and vain, as Maher tells Brian, as they recount the moments in the prime minister’s political life that show why Trudeau isn’t like the rest of us. (Recorded May 31, 2024)

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We’re under attack from Chinese electric cars

Mon, 27 May 2024 13:00:00 -0000

They sound like a bargain: Cheap Chinese EVs selling in Canada for around $15,000 each. They’re an even better deal for the Chinese, because our government promises to pay them more than that sale price for every EV they sell here, as Flavio Volpe tells Brian this week. The president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association explains how the ultra-low price is made possible by China’s dubious business practices and its aggressive plan to dominate strategic industries, dumping boatloads of cars here that will overwhelm North American businesses and workers, all while raking in subsidies from Canadian taxpayers. A worried Washington just whacked Chinese EVs with a 100-per-cent tariff. Canada is doing nothing — something Volpe says needs to change “yesterday.” (Recorded May 17, 2024)

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It’s too late now for Liberals to replace Trudeau

Mon, 20 May 2024 10:00:00 -0000

Polls suggest the Tories are just too far ahead for Liberals to avoid a decimation in next year’s election. The prime minister seems defiantly bound to leading his party into 2025, even as his attacks against Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre grow more incoherent, as Chris Selley discusses with Brian this week. The big problem, Chris suspects, is that the Liberals have no better option — no obvious candidate who could outdo Trudeau. Chris and Brian also talk about the Liberals’ denial of a growing sense of Canadian lawlessness — from campus invasions to killers out on bail — and Poilievre’s intriguing and unprecedented promise to use the notwithstanding clause to get tough on crime, if need be. (Recorded May 16, 2024)

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TikTok terror: How Hamas successfully hijacked your social media

Mon, 13 May 2024 13:00:00 -0000

Praising terrorist “martyrs,” open praise for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, and inciting violence toward Jews: social media platforms have been flooded since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, with alarming and disturbing content that American online platforms seem unable to control. Tal-Or Cohen Montmayor, whose organization CyberWell deploys open-source monitoring of antisemitism on social media, joins Brian this week to explain how Hamas and its backers exploit weaknesses in online content screening. And, she says, they can leverage the algorithms in TikTok, Twitter and Facebook to spread messages that promote terror, spread misinformation and fuel the hatred seen at protests gripping our cities and our university campuses. (Recorded May 2, 2024)

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Profiting from despair: How decriminalization advocates exploited B.C.’s opioid crisis

Mon, 06 May 2024 13:00:00 -0000

fIt wasn’t just that funding for the out-of-control opioid crisis flowed to those promoting radical, unproven policies. Advocates leading the charge to B.C.’s doomed drug decriminalization experiment were personally investing in businesses to supply opioids to addicts, profiting off the back of a massive social crisis, as Vancouver psychologist Dr. Julian Somers tells Brian this week. Meanwhile, leaders promoting ever more “safe supply” grew too friendly with pharmaceutical producers. Somers, an addictions specialist, explains how this complete abandonment of harm-reduction principles, including any focus on recovery, created the catastrophe that has B.C. now desperately reversing course — even as other Canadian governments plan to repeat its mistakes. (Recorded May 2, 2024)

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How China played Canada for a sucker

Mon, 29 Apr 2024 13:00:00 -0000

Don’t expect the foreign interference inquiry to do much to impede Beijing’s stunningly successful capture of Canada’s critical institutions, says Jonathan Manthorpe, author of Claws of the Panda. China’s most insidious infiltration isn’t happening at the ballot box but in our universities, corporations, the political class — and, perhaps most corrosively, our mindset. We been fooled into believing we need China: for trade, for friendship, for influence. But we don’t, and never have, says Manthorpe, who’s releasing an updated edition of his influential book in May. But, as he tells Brian, China does need Canada — to manipulate and exploit. And we’ve played right into its hands. (Recorded April 19, 2024)

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Ottawa just guaranteed we’ll all be paying higher taxes soon

Mon, 22 Apr 2024 13:00:00 -0000

The recent budget’s tax hikes won’t be enough to get us out of the fiscal mess the Trudeau Liberals have made with unrestrained spending and endless deficits, as Robert Asselin tells Brian. Asselin once advised Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau and is now with the Business Council of Canada. He says that with deficits becoming structural and interest on the debt now eating up massive amounts of revenue, the imbalance between spending and revenues is so out of whack that economic growth alone can’t save us. The only way out of disaster will be doing what the Liberals have tried to avoid: Whacking middle-class workers with higher taxes. (Recorded April 17, 2024)

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Gen. Rick Hillier says Canada faces ‘death by a thousand cuts’

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 13:00:00 -0000

The Canadian Victoria Cross has never been awarded in its 31 years of existence. Gen. Rick Hillier aims to change that, and he joins Brian to discuss the new “Heroes Among Us” project launching with Postmedia — and his worries about the general state of our military, and our nation, today. Hillier lays out in stark detail how Canada’s world stature has sunk from its former greatness, why we’re a “parasite on defence,” why the army is “essentially broken,” and why Ottawa’s new defence policy doesn’t reassure him in the least. He also talks about why he thinks Canada is being divided by leaders whose job it should be to unite us. (Recorded April 12, 2024)

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Canada has become a hub of Islamist terror financing

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 13:00:00 -0000

Islamist extremism is on the march, as Hamas, ISIS, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis and al Shabab unleash attacks against the West. Highly organized support for radicalized violence parades openly on our city streets. What connects them all is money, as Haras Rafiq tells Brian this week. And he says Canada has become a critical nexus of funding from Qatar, Iran and other sponsors connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. Rafiq is at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy and served as anti-extremism adviser to top U.K. ministers. He explains how Islamists exploit Canada’s system to launder billions here and spread money globally to promote their ideology of destroying Israel and spreading shariah law worldwide. (Recorded March 27, 2024)

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‘Target on my back’: Selina Robinson on the NDP’s surrender to antisemites

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 13:00:00 -0000

All she did was tell the truth. Before she knew it, Selina Robinson was being hounded out of B.C.’s cabinet for saying the UN had allotted Jews a “crappy piece of land” in 1948, with anti-Israel activists accusing her of insulting Muslims. Robinson joins Brian this week to recount how she was first targeted weeks prior by a “vicious” mob who wanted revenge after the then post-secondary education minister criticized an overtly pro-terrorist college instructor. Robinson recounts how B.C. Premier David Eby and her former colleagues in the NDP turned betrayed her, and why she quit the party over its blindness to the antisemitism in its midst. (Recorded March 27, 2024)

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Trudeau’s big party tent is coming apart at the seams

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 13:00:00 -0000

New Democrats and even other Liberals are now fighting Justin Trudeau’s carbon-tax scheme. This, as the prime minister’s abandonment of Israel has lost him a significant segment of long-time supporters. Postmedia’s Lorne Gunter joins Brian Lilley this week to unpack the chaos that appears to be consuming the Liberal party right now. They get into how the NDP threw the government into disarray with its Palestinian statehood motion, while the Conservatives seemingly have Liberals cornered on environmental policy. The upshot is that Trudeau’s one-time big tent party looks to be collapsing into a few rapidly shrinking slivers of special interests. (Recorded March 21, 2024)

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Liberals cry 'racism' to cover up another Chinese interference scandal

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 13:00:00 -0000

The Trudeau government didn’t just fight for years to hide the embarrassing truth about two scientists caught leaking secrets from Canada’s highest-risk pathology laboratory to China — including for bioweapons research. As former CSIS analyst Phil Gurski and Conservative MP Michael Chong discuss with Brian this week, the Liberals tried painting concerns about Beijing’s interference as bigoted, just as they have whenever warnings have been raised about Chinese infiltration. As Chong and Gurski discuss, it points to an alarmingly blithe attitude about national security, which has demoralized our intelligence agencies and unnerved our allies, who wonder whether Canada can still be trusted. (Recorded March 14, 2024)

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The ‘Online Harms’ Act could censor Twitter, Netflix, and us

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 13:00:00 -0000

Beware of governments making laws to “protect the children,” warns Ian Runkle, this week’s guest. The Liberals’ Bill C-63 rules to stop online child exploitation and revenge porn seem well-intentioned. But the Online Harms Act is so broad it could end up censoring popular streaming entertainment, says Runkle, a lawyer specializing in civil liberties and host of YouTube’s Runkle of the Bailey. More worryingly, as Runkle tells Brian, it’s all wrapped up with stiff new penalties and powers against supposedly harmful ideas that are so prone to abuse they can only encourage platforms to pre-emptively block Canadians’ speech — including yours. (Recorded March 6, 2024)

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We're getting zapped by Guilbeault's radical, no-fuel, electrified future

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 14:00:00 -0000

We won’t need roads where we’re going. At least that’s how Liberal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault wants it. He wants to end funding for new roads in Canada and ban cars that use gas or diesel, while forcing our heating and energy to become all-electric. Meanwhile, as energy researcher and commentator Parker Gallant tells Brian this week, we’re throwing billions at battery plants that lack materials and even markets, as buyers shun EVs, as we push demand for power infrastructure we don’t have. As Gallant explains, all these “net-zero” plans being forced on us by Ottawa look like they could well be ruinously costly — while driving us in the wrong direction. (Recorded February 21, 2024)

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Danielle Smith challenges Trudeau to call an election

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 14:00:00 -0000

The tension between Ottawa and Alberta is rising. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has most recently attacked Premier Danielle Smith’s plans to restrict children from medically transitioning genders. This, after his environment minister demanded the province curb its oil industry and overhaul its gas-dependent power grid. Smith joins Brian Lilley this week, and says that while she would prefer to collaborate with Trudeau, she’ll fight if necessary. Smith also tells Brian why she thinks Trudeau has already begun campaigning for his next election by beating up on Alberta. In that case, she says to him, “let’s just do it”: call an election and let Canadians decide whether they prefer federal -provincial confrontation or co-operation. (Recorded February 22, 2024)

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Israel is invading Rafah regardless of what Trudeau says

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 14:00:00 -0000

Eylon Levy spends his day debunking all the patently ridiculous propaganda against Israel. The latest uproar the government’s official spokesman is facing is the fevered campaign to try keeping Israel from invading Rafah. As Levy tells host Brian Lilley, this plays right into Hamas’s hands. Levy discusses how the international media and naive governments, including Canada’s, are swallowing Hamas’s disinformation, unwittingly doing the terror group’s bidding. And he explains how Israel’s success so far in smashing Hamas is driving the hysteria around the plan to take Rafah — the terror group’s last remaining stronghold. (Recorded February 11, 2024)

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Not all transgender people think Danielle Smith’s gender policies are unhinged

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 14:00:00 -0000

It’s been a frenzy since Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced sweeping new policies limiting gender transitioning for children. She’s been accused of endangering lives and was blasted by the prime minister. What isn’t happening, as guest Julia Malott tells Brian this week, is a respectful discussion that accepts that all sides want what’s best for kids. Malott is a parent, columnist and online commentator. She’s also transgender. She explains why she doesn’t think Smith’s plans are completely unreasonable, even if she disagrees with certain elements. And why she believes there are no easy answers in this issue, so we all need to dial back the hysteria and talk it out like adults. (Recorded February 8, 2024)

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Jean Chrétien looks better now compared to the alternative

Mon, 05 Feb 2024 14:00:00 -0000

Liberals were praising Jean Chrétien on his 90th birthday recently. Then, almost immediately afterward, they were distancing themselves from Canada’s 20th prime minister after news he had once tried watering down an Indigenous rights declaration. That’s the peculiar, contradictory legacy of “the little guy from Shawnigan” that former Liberal party president Stephen LeDrew and National Post columnist Chris Selley appraise this week with host Brian Lilley. They discuss the reverence for Chrétien in the Liberal party and certain media, despite his cringey opinions and debatable morality. They also look at how much weirder the Liberals have become since the man stepped down. (Recorded January 18, 2023)

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‘Islamofascism-phobia’ and the Iranians standing with Israel

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 14:00:00 -0000

After Hamas’s Oct. 7 mass slaughter of Jews in Israel, a surprising thing happened: Iranians inside the Islamic Republic and Persians around the world declared their support for … Israel. Ontario MPP Goldie Ghamari was one of them. She joins Brian this week to explain how Islamofascism promoted by Tehran and Hamas is the common enemy that Jews and the West share with people from Iran. She also discusses Iran’s alarming infiltration into Canada, how it menaces anti-regime Iranian-Canadians, and the Trudeau government’s inexplicable appeasement of a brutal dictatorship that represses women, sponsors global terror and has the blood of hundreds of Canadians on its hands. (Recorded January 11, 2023)

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Jordan Peterson on why everyone should be afraid of what happened to him

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 01:00:00 -0000

The verdict is final. The courts have now decisively refused to overturn a decision by the College of Psychologists of Ontario that ordered Jordan Peterson into a mandatory rehabilitation program for his politically incorrect tweets, which had nothing to do with his practice and involved no actual patients. As Peterson tells host Brian Lilley, his options are now to either lose his licence, try moving somewhere else, or submit and undergo “re-education” for his controversial opinions. But even more importantly, Peterson says that if Canada’s speech police can come for a famous psychologist and bestselling author like him, they can certainly come for anyone — including you. (Recorded January 20, 2024)

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The Liberal MP who thinks his party is getting things wrong

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 14:00:00 -0000

He’s publicly objected to his own Liberal government and the prime minister turning against Israel’s war on Hamas. He fought for his party to stand firm for Quebec anglophones against the province’s attacks — and lost. Anthony Housefather has been breaking publicly a lot lately with his own Liberal party on major issues. This week, host Brian Lilley talks to Housefather about what it’s been like to lose these key policy battles and how he manages to keep working alongside caucus colleagues when they are opposed to his own principles. (Recorded January 11, 2023)

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We shouldn’t be making things this hard for Canadian winemakers

Mon, 08 Jan 2024 14:00:00 -0000

Somehow Donald Ziraldo beat the odds: He and his business partner made an international success out of their Inniskillin Winery in Ontario. Starting back in the days when Canadian wine was dismissed as inferior plonk, they went on to produce and sell highly regarded, award-winning vintages all over the globe. But their story is far too uncommon, as Ziraldo tells Brian in this week’s episode. He believes that Canada is perfectly capable of selling far more excellent wine to the world and making wine a much bigger part of our export economy. That is, if only Canadian policies and governments would get out of the way. (Recorded November 2, 2023)

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Best of 2023: Canada’s great addictive hard-drug giveaway experiment somehow goes awry

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 14:00:00 -0000

Over the holidays, we’re looking back at some of the best episodes of 2023, a year where serious questions were raised about whether Canada’s “safe supply” approach to drug addiction was making things worse. A long-time proponent of harm reduction, Dr. Sharon Koivu, an urban doctor in London, Ont., discusses with host Brian Lilley how she has watched with alarm as Canada’s drug policy has shifted from safe, supervised consumption, to pumping quantities of extremely addictive opioids onto the streets, where they’re often sold cheaply for cash, or harder drugs. And she discusses how she’s seen first-hand how the diversion of inexpensive “safe supply” opioids is creating new addicts, and overdoses — including, horrifyingly, among schoolkids. (Recorded May 23, 2023)

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Best of 2023: England’s ‘strictest headmistress’ on how old-school education saves kids

Mon, 25 Dec 2023 14:00:00 -0000

Over the holidays, we’re looking back at some of the best episodes of 2023, a year that saw massive controversy over the state of Canada’s schools. At Katharine Birbalsingh’s inner-city free school in London, students are not to speak in the hallways. Discipline is strict. The kids, heavily drawn from minority groups, memorize knowledge and learn duty. It’s what used to be considered a typical education. But as Birbalsingh tells Brian Lilley this week, she’s now considered a “radical.” The results? The students at Michaela Community School are excelling and parents are delighted. Birbalsingh explains what she thinks educators in Canada are getting so wrong. (Recorded September 28, 2023)

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Special: Rex Murphy’s year-end interview with Pierre Poilievre

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 14:00:00 -0000

An extended video version of this interview will be available starting Tuesday, December 19, 2023, online at National Post (nationalpost.com).

Special guest host Rex Murphy sits down in person with federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre for a year-end interview. They discuss what’s behind the Tories’ remarkable rise in the polls this year. Poilievre explains why he thinks Trudeau’s increasingly stringent climate policies aren’t what they seem. He and Rex also discuss the identity politics roiling Canadian schools. And Poilievre tells Rex what he thinks about Trudeau’s latest position on Israel, and why he’s accusing the prime minister of going easy on Hamas and its sponsors in Iran. (Recorded December 15, 2023)

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Trudeau botched 2023. The Liberals won’t allow a repeat in 2024

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 14:00:00 -0000

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau started the year in fine form. Twelve months later his party is melting down in the polls and Pierre Poilievre is heading what looks like an election-winning juggernaut. But the Conservative leader shouldn’t get too comfortable, as the Full Comment year-end politics panel discusses. Host Brian Lilley is joined this week by Conservative guru Kory Teneycke and former Liberal adviser Warren Kinsella to talk about the federal Liberals’ rebound possibilities in 2024, as well as the big political comeback stories of 2023: from Danielle Smith’s election victory in Alberta to Doug Ford’s fall and rise over the greenbelt in Ontario. (Recorded December 8, 2023)

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Canada is a criminal hotbed and the Mounties can’t handle it

Mon, 04 Dec 2023 14:00:00 -0000

It’s no secret the RCMP is broken. But as Garry Clement discusses with Brian this week, the force’s inability to investigate serious national crimes — money laundering, narcotics, organized crime, Chinese interference, terrorism and more — is turning Canada into a haven for lawlessness. And innocent people are paying for it with their lives. Clement served in the force for 30 years, from undercover to senior roles. In his new book, Under Cover: Inside the Shady World of Organized Crime and the RCMP, Clement explains how the neglect and dysfunction of the storied police force has left Canada utterly unprepared to combat the sophistication of today’s transnational criminals. (Recorded November 16, 2023)

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Canada’s worst fiscal crisis in generations is brewing

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 14:00:00 -0000

The financial trouble the Trudeau Liberals have put Canada in looks disturbingly unlike previous debt and deficit hangovers, as William Robson tells Brian Lilley this week. The losses Ottawa has pushed onto the Bank of Canada are choking off desperately needed income, explains Robson, president and CEO of the C.D. Howe Institute. Wages are losing ground. Business investment indicators are the worst since the 1940s. Unfunded pensions are soaring. Federal spending keeps rising. And the government continues adding enormous immigration inflows to a strained economy. Canada, Robson says, is “going down a very strange path” — and Ottawa seems not to care. (Recorded November 24, 2023)

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As CBC defunding looms, the network doesn’t know what to do

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 14:00:00 -0000

A lot of the criticisms against Canada’s public broadcaster are fair, acknowledges Richard Stursberg, who was the CBC's executive vice president from 2004 to 2010: The programming doesn’t always reflect the country outside of downtown Toronto; the CBC competes with private broadcasters for advertising, even though it’s government-funded. The problem, which Stursberg says was the case then and remains the case now, is that no one knows what the CBC is supposed to be. And that goes as much for Mother Corp.’s decision-makers as it does for government policy-makers. As Stursberg discusses with host Brian Lilley this week, there remains a distinct lack of vision for the CBC, save Conservative Leader Pierre Polievre’s plan to defund it. (Recorded November 9, 2023)

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Hamas controls the narrative now

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 14:00:00 -0000

Journalists for major news organizations joining the terror attack against Israel. Newscasters that refuse to call Hamas terrorists. Campus lefties insisting the torturers, rapists and murderers are the real victims. All of this and more are how the story westerners hear about the Israel-Hamas war is being distorted to vilify the Jewish state and benefit Hamas, as Israeli-based journalist Caroline Glick discusses with Brian this week. She explains how the number of civilian war casualties publicized by Hamas are inflated, and how politicians and journalists malign Israeli soldiers. While average westerners remain on the side of Israel, she says, elites in media and academia are working overtime to manufacture hatred against it. (Recorded November 9, 2023)

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Driven into the ditch by Trudeau, Liberals have no clear way out

Mon, 06 Nov 2023 14:00:00 -0000

Almost exactly eight years after rebuilding the Liberals and winning government, Justin Trudeau looks like he could be done as party leader. His once powerful personal brand seems irreparably ruined, especially after his recent surrender on his signature carbon-tax policy. As National Post columnist Chris Selley and host Brian Lilley discuss this week, a Liberal party that became Trudeau’s cult of personality is being dragged back down into potential electoral disaster with him, with no clear saviour waiting in the wings to come to the rescue. (Recorded November 2, 2023)

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Ben Shapiro on why every Jew he knows is getting a gun

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Host Brian Lilley is joined this week by American podcaster, journalist and author Ben Shapiro to discuss the antisemitic pro-Hamas marches in Canada and the U.S. after the terrorist attacks in Israel — and the sense of danger that has American Jews buying guns in case they need to defend their families. How did our society become so degraded? Shapiro tells Brian it’s because we’ve permitted hate to fester in certain communities while surrendering our western values — falling for the sadistic “decolonization” ideology that dehumanizes the people it targets. And, Shapiro says, Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau are already weakening in confronting it. (Recorded October 26, 2023)

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The difficult history behind the Nazi soldier in Parliament

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Historical ignorance is the generous explanation for the House of Commons applauding a veteran of the Nazis’ Waffen SS Galicia division during a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But the embarrassment and outrage that followed shed little light on exactly how Ukrainians like Yaroslav Hunka found themselves first wearing the infamous Nazi SS uniform, then immigrating to live peaceful postwar lives in Canada. Myroslav Shkandrij, author of a new book, In the Maelstrom: The Waffen-SS 'Galicia' Division and Its Legacy, joins Brian this week to discuss the unsettled history of the controversial unit, and why the story doesn’t lend itself to easy narratives. (Recorded October 12, 2023)

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Obliterating Hamas in Gaza is Israel’s only option now

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Gaza not long ago had one of the fastest-growing economies in the world — until Hamas took over, turned it into a terror base and began using Gazans as cannon fodder for anti-Israel public relations, just as its doing now. As Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, discusses with Brian this week, Hamas’s Islamist theocracy has few fans among the Palestinians of Gaza, or indeed elsewhere in the Muslim world. The Israeli government must abandon its failed strategy of trying to contain a genocidal regime, Pipes explains. Now is the time for Israel to eradicate Hamas in Gaza so it can replace it with Palestinians it can work with. (Recorded October 12, 2023)

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The housing crisis is a sign of worse things to come

Mon, 09 Oct 2023 13:00:00 -0000

The shocking political realities behind Canada’s badly broken housing market are sinking in — and the damage spreads much deeper and wider than the generations being unfairly priced out of starter homes. Ben Rabidoux, founder of Edge Realty Analytics, is the guy both federal Conservatives and Liberals turn to for deep housing insights. He joins Brian this week to discuss how waving in millions of temporary residents, many of them students, is causing far more harm — to us and them — than just wildly inflated rents. And he explains how the massive capital reallocation away from productive businesses into housing speculation could wreak havoc in the Canadian economy for many years to come. (Recorded September 28, 2023)

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England’s ‘strictest headmistress’ on how old-school education saves kids

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 15:34:35 -0000

At Katharine Birbalsingh’s inner-city free school in London, students are not to speak in the hallways. Discipline is strict. Students wear uniforms, sit in rows and listen to instruction. It’s teacher-led learning, not child-centred. The kids, heavily drawn from minority groups, memorize knowledge and learn duty. It’s what used to be considered a typical education. But as Birbalsingh tells Brian this week, she’s now considered a “radical.” The results? The students at Michaela Community School are excelling and parents are delighted. Birbalsingh discusses what she thinks educators in Canada are getting very wrong — and why the ones paying most dearly for it are disadvantaged children. (Recorded September 28, 2023)

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Trudeau isn’t being taken seriously about India

Mon, 25 Sep 2023 13:00:00 -0000

After the prime minister dropped his bombshell assassination accusation against India, the world has waited for him to back it up. But Ujjal Dosanjh says that when it comes to credibility on this file, Justin Trudeau — and Canada — don’t have much. And the unserious way Trudeau has handled allegations around the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar hasn’t helped. Dosanjh, a former Liberal cabinet minister and B.C. NDP premier, joins Brian this week to explain what’s really going on with the allegations, Indian diaspora politics, and how Ottawa has undermined Canada’s global reputation with its shallow approach to the significance of India and the issue of Khalistan separatists in Canada. (Recorded September 21, 2023)

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Welcome to the tolerance witch trials

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Don’t call it cancel culture: that masks the grimness of the authoritarian era we’re living in, says author Brendan O’Neill. It’s an anti-enlightenment, he says, that is rapidly and fervently obliterating centuries of western civilizational progress. O’Neill, author of the new book A Heretic’s Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable, joins Brian this week to expose the shibboleths we’re all being forced to accept, even though we know they’re not true. And he shows how those of us living in once-liberal societies are being cowed into self-censorship, rightly fearing that the wrong opinions will get us denounced, ostracized and possibly even arrested. (Recorded August 15, 2023)

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The working class inevitably becomes conservative

Mon, 11 Sep 2023 13:00:00 -0000

It’s not just that Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are leading in national polls: it’s that the party is bringing in new groups, including “the people who get stuff done,” as guest Lord Daniel Hannan calls the working class. The prominent British journalist and Tory politician joins Brian from the Conservative policy convention in Quebec City, where he delivered the keynote address, coming from the U.K. where Conservatives have held government more than 13 years. Hannan discusses why the right is the new political home for the proletariat in Canada, the U.S. and U.K., as workers feel abandoned and betrayed on economics and culture by liberals and the left. (Recorded September 8, 2023)

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Pierre Poilievre is picking the right fights

Mon, 04 Sep 2023 13:00:00 -0000

As federal Conservative party members prepare to gather for their policy convention in Quebec City, they’ll be pushing for a platform that takes on the culture wars, head on. Meanwhile, polls currently show party leader Pierre Poilievre on his way to a majority government as voters rally to his message about the rising costs of housing and living. Long-time Conservative power player Kory Teneycke, manager of Doug Ford’s landslide-winning 2022 Ontario campaign, joins Brian this week to discuss how Poilievre finds the right balance between staying true to his diehard conservative base while trying to keep the Liberals and the media from painting his party as scary bigots. (Recorded August 30, 2023)

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The amazing story of Terry Fox you haven’t heard

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Bill Vigars was starting a new gig at the Canadian Cancer Society when he flew to the East Coast to check out an unknown kid with one leg planning to run a personal marathon a day across Canada for cancer research. Before he knew it, Vigars was helping Terry Fox make the Marathon of Hope a national phenomenon that’s kept Terry’s legacy alive for decades, with nearly a billion dollars since raised in his name. Vigars joins host Brian Lilley this week to talk about his new book, Terry and Me, and to share some never-before-told stories behind the incredible saga that carries on today in Canada and around the world. (Recorded August 10, 2023)

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How COVID’s ‘pandexicon’ changed the way we speak—and think

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Things were different in the “before times.” Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we weren’t all experts in viral variants or polymerase chain reaction tests. We’d never heard of “vaccine apartheid” or “social distancing.” No one drank “quarantinis” after enduring a “covidivorce.” And “self-isolating” and “lockdowns” were things to be avoided. In his new book Pandexicon, author Wayne Grady has chronicled the words that emerged from the COVID-19 catastrophe to decode the message and meaning behind them. He joins host Brian Lilley this week to discuss what our viral vocabulary says about who we are. And how the pandemic has indelibly changed us all in the “after times.” (Recorded July 25, 2023)

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Inside Canadian school boards, ‘if you disagree…you’re punished’

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Mike Ramsay was friends with former Toronto principal Richard Bilkszto, whose suicide after allegedly enduring false bigotry accusations in an anti-racism session has shocked Canadians. And Ramsay says he’s experienced similar vilification. He’s been called a “white supremacist.” He’s been suspended as a school trustee in Waterloo, Ont. He says it’s because he fights to keep schools focused on learning and achievement, not identity politics and radical race theory. He also happens to be Black. Ramsay joins Brian this week to discuss how Canadians can take school boards back from the extremists who want to teach political indoctrination over skills, and won’t stop until they’ve silenced all dissent. (Recorded August 8, 2023)

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Crime reporting today is making things worse

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Formerly one of Canada’s top crime reporters, Tamara Cherry witnessed gruesome violence and terrible trauma. What she says she didn’t realize was how the way she and others covered the crime beat was worsening pain for survivors, responders and reporters themselves. Cherry, author of the new book The Trauma Beat: A Case for Re-Thinking the Business of Bad News, joins host Brian Lilley, himself no stranger to crime reporting. Cherry explains how she came to discover the damaging psychological toll crime reporting was taking on her, the victims and even the public, and the new approach she wants the media to take when it comes to covering everyone’s worst nightmares. (Recorded July 21, 2023)

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The real reasons Taylor Swift isn't coming to Canada (for now)

Mon, 31 Jul 2023 13:00:00 -0000

The economics of the music business have been turned upside down in recent years. For artists and fans alike, concerts now are king. Legendary publicist, writer and music maven Eric Alper joins Brian this week to discuss why this summer’s concert season in particular is making history, why some concert tickets now cost more than plane tickets, and the most obvious reasons why Taylor Swift left Canada off of her latest tour. (And when she’s likely to finally come.) (Recorded July 19, 2023)

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Canada could be an Arctic superpower, but Ottawa walked away

Mon, 24 Jul 2023 13:00:00 -0000

It’s where we should be building up capabilities against Russia’s hypersonic missiles and Chinese spy aircraft coming over the North Pole. But news the Liberal government is closing the Canadian International Arctic Centre is the latest indication Ottawa doesn’t get the importance of the North. After the Harper government made the Arctic a bigger priority, the last eight years have revealed Ottawa’s lack of ambition and enthusiasm for the region, says Heather Exner-Pirot, one of Canada’s most prominent authorities on the Arctic. As Exner-Pirot discusses with host Brian Lilley, we’ve left behind a northern vacuum — and other countries are filling it. (Recorded July 6, 2023)

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Price-fixing at Canada’s grocery stores is bigger than just bread

Mon, 17 Jul 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Food inflation is showing no signs of letting up soon, as guest Sylvain Charlebois tells Brian Lilley this week. But grandstanding politicians yelling about “greedflation” by allegedly avaricious grocers are looking in the wrong place, says Charlebois, professor of food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University. The recent guilty plea by Canada Bread, admitting to years of bakery price-fixing; allegations that Maple Leaf Foods may have done the same with meat; and revelations of “blackout” periods of fixed supplier prices all point to a bigger problem than inflation — and possibly a much dirtier one. (Recorded July 6, 2023)

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Everyone’s wrong about what’s behind the forest fires

Mon, 10 Jul 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Climate crusaders are convinced this year’s fire season is global warming. Conspiracy theorists think it’s eco-terrorism from arsonists to scare us about climate change. The reality, as Kenneth Green tells Brian this week, is much more complicated, with everything from poor forest management practices, natural burn cycles, and yes, also some climate and some human causes, playing roles — in addition to countless other factors (including psychological ones). In fact, as Green, an environmental scientist and author of the new book The Plague of Models: How Computer Modeling Corrupted Environmental, Health, and Safety Regulations, explains, this fire season may not necessarily even be all that exceptional. (Recorded July 6, 2023)

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Spies, sabotage, secret police and the time the Irish invaded Canada

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 13:00:00 -0000

It’s one of the most dramatic episodes in Canada’s early years, although it’s often neglected by our history lessons: Irish republicans attacked Canada from the south as part of a wild plan to win independence for Ireland. As we celebrate the Canada Day weekend, host Brian Lilley is joined by David Wilson, author of Canadian Spy Story: Irish Revolutionaries and the Secret Police. They discuss the stranger-than-fiction chapter in our history, which saw Canadian troops killed battling invading American Fenian armies and John A. Macdonald deploying secret police to infiltrate a fifth column that had surreptitiously operated at some of Canada’s highest levels. (Recorded June 22, 2023)

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Blaine Higgs on why he won’t relent on New Brunswick’s school-gender controversy

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Cabinet ministers have quit. Some party leaders are calling for him to resign. But New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs tells Brian Lilley he’ll stake his political career to take a stand for parents in his province to be involved when their kids ask at school to be identified by a different gender or name. Higgs discusses what he thinks of attempts by Justin Trudeau, activists, and progressive media to portray him as “far right,” and why he’s confident the public is on his side. The premier also shares his own thoughts about the prime minister and federal policies he believes are hurting New Brunswick — and the country. (Recorded June 22, 2023)

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Identity politics puts its progressive spin on old-school anti-Semitism

Mon, 19 Jun 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Hatred toward Jews is the oldest and most pernicious form of prejudice. Although anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and the persecution of Jews have always been around, the rise of social media, populism and identity politics have made it seem increasingly pervasive. Author Philip Slayton joins Brian Lilley to discuss his new book, Antisemitism: An Ancient Hatred in the Age of Identity Politics, and why he believes the fight against anti-Semitism needs to adapt to its modern expressions. Inevitably, he says, that means not expending energy on crackpots and trolls, but focusing resources on real and present dangers of harm directed toward the Jewish people. (Recorded June 1, 2023)

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Canada’s great addictive hard-drug giveaway experiment somehow goes awry

Mon, 12 Jun 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Dr. Sharon Koivu says it’s like the reverse of the ethical “trolley problem”: in the effort to help an opioid user, Canada’s “safe supply” drug policy puts many more people in danger. A long-time proponent of harm reduction, Koivu, an urban doctor in London, Ont., tells host Brian Lilley how she has watched with alarm as policy has shifted from safe, supervised consumption, to pumping quantities of extremely addictive opioids onto the streets, where they’re often sold cheaply for cash, or harder drugs. She discusses how she’s seen first-hand how the diversion of inexpensive “safe supply” opioids is creating new addicts, and overdoses — including, horrifyingly, among schoolkids. (Recorded May 23, 2023)

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Danielle Smith could govern Alberta for a ‘very, very long time’

Mon, 05 Jun 2023 13:00:00 -0000

It was late in the game, and the United Conservative Party was set to lose the Alberta election, when it finally discovered a way to win over voters and eke out a victory. The secret? Being just moderate enough to comfort city people and just conservative enough for everyone else, as former federal Conservative MP and Alberta public affairs consultant Monte Solberg tells Brian Lilley this week. If Danielle Smith can manage to keep that up, Solberg explains, the NDP might never have as good a chance to govern again. (Recorded June 1, 2023)

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Cracking the $20-million Pearson Airport gold heist

Mon, 29 May 2023 13:00:00 -0000

A cargo container filled with millions in gold and valuables landed at Toronto’s international airport one day this past April. Then it vanished. Weeks later, police haven’t found it. Scott Andrew Selby, co-author of Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History, has studied sophisticated high-stakes robberies. He joins Brian Lilley this week to discuss what we know about how the recent Pearson heist went down, what the thieves might be doing to stay one step ahead of the cops — and other criminals after their loot — and what their odds are of getting away with the haul. (Recorded May 18, 2023)

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Canadians don’t deserve a passport of shame

Mon, 22 May 2023 13:00:00 -0000

How did we end up with a new passport design that replaces stirring images of Canadian identity — Nellie McClung, Terry Fox, the Mounties, and Vimy — with vapid graphics of squirrels, autumn leaves and snowmen? The problem lies in our classrooms, prominent Canadian historian David Bercuson tells Brian Lilley this week. Canada has a great deal to be proud of in our history, says Bercuson, but generations of students are being taught instead to focus on a few stains. Fortunately, we have the power to change that — if we choose to. (Recorded May 18, 2023)

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When the baby boomers die, where will we put all the bodies?

Mon, 15 May 2023 13:00:00 -0000

The traditional ways of dealing with our dead are running into problems. Cities are running out of space for cemeteries. Cremation and burial are being shunned for their environmental damage. And there’s a huge wave of boomers running out of time. Ian Sutton, author of The Big Exit, joins host Brian Lilley to discuss the trouble of dealing with so many humans dying off, and the creative alternatives being explored — including feeding us to mushrooms, blowing us into space, crushing us up, and putting us to sleep with the fishes. (Recorded April 20, 2023)

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A wine expert spills about the darker side of the vino world

Mon, 08 May 2023 13:00:00 -0000

When Natalie MacLean broke out of the Ottawa tech scene to become a globally celebrated wine writer, travelling the world, paid to drink, she thought she had everything she could want. Then, like a glass toppling off a table, her life was shattered: her marriage collapsed, she was pilloried in an journalistic ethics scandal, and she realized wine had gone from career to crutch. MacLean, bestselling author of the new book Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Depression, and Drinking Too Much, joins Brian Lilley to discuss the perils of the wine world for women and why she’s speaking out against the dangers of today’s “wine mommy” mania. (Recorded April 26, 2023)

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Colonialism isn’t as bad as everyone thinks

Mon, 01 May 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Canada isn’t the only place where left-wing activists are blackening the names of colonial-era figures like John A. Macdonald and Henry Dundas for not living up to modern, ultra-progressive ideals. When British ethicist Nigel Biggar found himself defending 19th-century mining magnate Cecil Rhodes against exaggerated claims of racism from Oxford University students, he recognized the need to bring more balance — and historical literacy — to arguments over British colonialism. Biggar joins host Brian Lilley to discuss his new bestselling book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, and why, despite its many flaws, British imperialism is getting an unfair rap (Recorded April 25, 2023)

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How the Two Michaels’ freedom was won

Mon, 24 Apr 2023 13:00:00 -0000

For 1,019 days Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig were China’s hostages, cruelly imprisoned by the communist regime as leverage for the release of Meng Wanzhou, held under house arrest in Canada on a U.S. warrant. Then, suddenly, one day, they were free, thanks to a White House-brokered deal. Mike Blanchfield and Fen Osler Hampson, authors of the new book The Two Michaels, join host Brian Lilley to discuss what went on behind the headlines. They explain why Beijing targeted the Canadians, why the ordeal dragged on as long as it did, and what led to the bargain that finally broke the nearly three-year impasse. (Recorded April 20, 2023)

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A former NYC captain’s insights into stopping Canada’s crime wave

Mon, 17 Apr 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Billy Gorta saw the rise of violent attacks in New York City back in the ’70s and ’80s, when politicians took a soft-on-crime approach. If that sounds familiar, that may be because Canadians are facing a shocking crime wave — and many point the finger at looser bail and police-defunding policies. As an NYPD captain, Gorta was in the room when leaders finally got serious about cracking down on crime. Gorta, who went on to become a journalist, joins host Brian Lilley this week to talk about what we can learn from New York’s experience, and what it will take to get serious about making Canada’s streets safer again. (Recorded April 12, 2023)

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What the ’15-minute city’ means — and why it’s nonsense

Mon, 10 Apr 2023 13:00:00 -0000

The new buzzword among urban planners is the “15-minute city,” but it’s the same old idea they’ve been pushing for decades — their dream of getting us all living in small, densified urban condos, and out of our cars. Urban Policy Analyst Wendell Cox joins host Brian Lilley to explain what the “15-minute city” really is and why it’s doomed. He discusses how planners ignore how we really want to live, how cars and suburbs improve our lives, and how the ways the pandemic changed our work and our world should rightly put an end to these schemes once and for all. (Recorded March 29, 2023)

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This is Israel’s most dangerous moment since the Yom Kippur War

Mon, 03 Apr 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Wars, terrorism, boycotts, a nuclear Iran: Since the 1948 founding of the modern State of Israel, the Jewish state has faced seemingly endless threats to its security — and, at times, its very existence. As it approaches its 75th birthday, the biggest threat comes from within, says Vivian Bercovici. Canada’s former ambassador to Israel joins host Brian Lilley from Tel Aviv to explain what’s really behind the massive, unprecedent protests against the government’s so-called judicial reforms. And why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won’t back down — threatening what Bercovici believes could be a 75th birthday that is more civil war than celebration. (Recorded March 29, 2023)

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The schoolteacher who rejected wokeness—and paid for it

Mon, 27 Mar 2023 13:00:00 -0000

When Chanel Pfahl started teaching at an Ontario public school she didn’t expect the curriculum to include lessons about how everything is racist, including math. When she told her Facebook followers about her disagreement with what she considered the indoctrination of students into critical race theory, she found herself under investigation by the Ontario College of Teachers. Pfahl joins Full Comment host Brian Lilley to discuss why she’s worried about what she sees being taught to Canadian kids, the refusal to allow parents and teachers to question it, and how she’s working to change it. (Recorded March 21, 2023)

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The Canadian lawyer taking up arms to fight for Ukraine

Mon, 20 Mar 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Canadian lawyer Dan Bilak didn’t expect his legal career to end up with him training to fight Russian soldiers invading Ukraine, but here he is. Bilak joins host Brian Lilley this week to explain the unlikely story of how he went from practising corporate law to practising clearing booby-trapped houses. And he discusses why he thinks the stakes of this war are so high for the western world, why he believes so strongly in the cause, and why he believes his fellow Canadians should, too. (Recorded March 10, 2023)

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The agent who warned Ottawa about Chinese political infiltration years ago

Mon, 13 Mar 2023 13:00:00 -0000

Project Sidewinder, a joint CSIS and RCMP report, found evidence of Canadian politicians under Chinese influence, Beijing’s agents funnelling money to Canadian political parties, and communist spies infiltrating Canadian assets and institutions. That was back in 1997. With fresh allegations of China’s electoral interference in Canada, Michel Juneau-Katsuya, the former CSIS intelligence officer behind Project Sidewinder, joins host Brian Lilley to discuss how China has managed to penetrate Canadian politics at every level — and in every party. Juneau-Katsuya also explains why the Sidewinder allegations were ignored, and how Canada can finally get serious about China’s interference. (Recorded March 10, 2023)

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Saskatchewan raises a shield to stop Justin Trudeau’s intrusions

Mon, 06 Mar 2023 14:00:00 -0000

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is a big believer in Confederation, he tells host Brian Lilley . But he thinks it only works when the provinces are strong and Ottawa respects the rules of the game — something he says the Trudeau government isn’t doing. Moe joins Brian to discuss how his province’s Saskatchewan First Act can prevent Trudeau from using environmental excuses to stomp all over Saskatchewan’s constitutional rights to develop its resources. And why he’s determined to frustrate Ottawa’s plans to pit province against province, and make Canada a place where we celebrate our successes from east to west. (Recorded February 23, 2023)

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Invoking the Emergencies Act will get easier

Mon, 27 Feb 2023 15:40:28 -0000

The Trudeau government convinced inquiry commissioner Paul Rouleau that it was justified in invoking the Emergencies Act during the Freedom Convoy. But vindicating the Liberals’ claims the act can be used to limit damage to the economy sets a worrisome precedent for a tool with such sweeping powers to suspend people’s rights, as Cara Zwibel from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association discusses with host Brian Lilley. And Rouleau’s suggestion that the definition of “emergency” should be redefined could just make it easier for Ottawa to do again. (Recorded February 23, 2023)

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The murky, ruthless private army tycoon getting rich from Putin’s wars

Tue, 21 Feb 2023 00:23:04 -0000

A mysterious syndicate of private soldiers, many brutal Russian convicts, is doing the dirtiest work for Putin in Ukraine, Syria and Africa. Yevgeny Prigozhin, an enigmatic ex-con who built a business empire from a hot dog stand, rents his Wagner Group mercenary army to Putin in exchange for lucrative mining and oil assets. Prigozhin has a history of hiring U.S. and U.K. lawyers to legally demolish journalists who get too close to his business. Some journalists have ended up dead. That hasn’t stopped investigative reporter Miles Johnson from digging into Prigozhin’s convoluted operation. Johnson joins host Brian Lilley to explain what the Wagner Group is all about, and the truth about Prigozhin that is now finally being exposed. (Recorded February 10, 2023)

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Chinese spy balloons are taking over

Mon, 13 Feb 2023 14:00:00 -0000

The shocking revelation that China has been sailing spy balloons over North America, and who knows where else, has abruptly created a massive foreign policy crisis for the U.S., Canada… and China. The discovery has popped the communist regime’s polite pretenses, says Bill Bishop, China analyst and author of the influential Sinocism newsletter. Bishop joins Full Comment host Brian Lilley this week to discuss how the exposure of an apparently vast global surveillance operation by the People’s Liberation Army has torpedoed Beijing’s hopes of finding better footing with the Biden administration, and how relations between the two powerhouse nations now face the dangerous potential of “free fall.” (Recorded February 10, 2023)

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The doctor suing to free Canadian patients from deadly medicare waiting lists

Mon, 06 Feb 2023 14:00:00 -0000

Canadians are the only people in the developed world forced to wait for government to provide them necessary medical care — except the wait lists are long, their chances of dying are higher, and the quality of care rates poorly by international standards. Dr. Brian Day has been on a decades-long crusade to free patients from the life-threatening medicare monopoly. He discusses with guest host Brian Lilley how Canadian medicare went so wrong. And he explains why he’s fighting all the way to the Supreme Court to free Canadians from broken government health-care promises, and for the right to choose allowed by every other universal health-care system on earth. (Recorded January 27, 2023)

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We should have listened to the Great Barrington Declaration

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 14:00:00 -0000

In October 2020, three prominent medical professors from Stanford, Harvard and Oxford universities, issued an open letter warning the world that COVID lockdowns caused more harm than good and should stop. They were dismissed, attacked and vilified, despite thousands more scientists signing onto their Great Barrington Declaration. Now, three years after the pandemic began, the human wreckage caused by unnecessary lockdowns is undeniable, vindicating the declaration. But, as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of its main authors, tells guest host Brian Lilley, authorities refuse to admit their mistakes. Bhattacharya explains why he fears the rise of authoritarian public health means lockdowns, and the “noble lies” used to manipulate us during the pandemic, will be deployed too easily again. (Recorded January 27, 2023)

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In the former U.S.S.R., ‘everything could collapse’

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 14:00:00 -0000

The shadow of the iron curtain looms over Eastern Europe again. Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is the latest move to put back together the Russian empire lost at the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. Canadian journalist Paule Robitaille lived in the former Soviet Union and witnessed its collapse; recently, she returned to Ukraine, Latvia and Georgia to talk to soldiers, leaders and everyday citizens fighting to stop Moscow’s iron fist from snatching up their countries once again. Robitaille joins guest host Brian Lilley to discuss what she found. You can read more of her reporting in the National Post series Back to the U.S.S.R. (Recorded January 12, 2022)

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Harry and Meghan are the Royal Kardashians

Mon, 16 Jan 2023 14:00:00 -0000

The hatchet job Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been doing on the Royal family never seems to end. The exiled Royal couple have been dishing out interviews, documentaries, and now Harry’s “tell-all” book, all banging on about how badly they think they were treated. Even Americans, with their soft spot for celebrity victimhood, are tiring of the shtick, says Kinsey Schofield, long-time Royal watcher and creator and host of the royal-news website ToDiForDaily.com. She joins this week with guest host Brian Lilley to discuss what the self-exiled couple’s end game is. As Schofield explains, the all-American “trash for cash” reality-TV lifestyle may be the best option they have. (Recorded January 12, 2023)

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The unlikely Conservative ‘pit bull’ of Parliament

Mon, 09 Jan 2023 14:00:00 -0000

Melissa Lantsman doesn’t fit the Conservative stereotype, which may be why the Liberals seem to fear her relentless question period attacks. The daughter of Jewish immigrants and a proud lesbian in an urban Toronto riding, Lantsman has been a rising star in Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party. Lantsman talks with guest host Brian Lilley about how she came to be Conservative. And why she thinks the Trudeau Liberals have emboldened intolerance, and made living in Canada more difficult and less appealing — not just for immigrants like her parents, but for large numbers of Canadians, and young people in particular. (Recorded December 12, 2022)

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Best of 2022: Killing off the sad and the poor with MAID

Mon, 02 Jan 2023 14:00:00 -0000

Over the holidays, we’re looking back at some of the best episodes of 2022. With disturbing recent developments in the federal Liberals’ medical assistance in dying (MAID) regime, including government workers pushing it on injured veterans, and doctors pondering euthanizing babies, we’re revisiting our interview with Dr. Sonu Gaind. He’s supporter of MAID for those suffering terminal illnesses. He’s even the physician chair of the MAID team at Toronto’s Humber River Hospital, where he’s chief of psychiatry. But he’s grown alarmed since Canada stopped requiring a reasonably foreseeable death for euthanasia, as he tells host Anthony Furey. People who are poor, lonely or battling mental illnesses, whose lives might get better with help, are being offered a lethal injection instead. And children could be next. (Recorded May 12, 2022)

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Best of 2022: ‘Used by the CBC’ — Wendy Mesley after the ‘N-word’ incident

Mon, 26 Dec 2022 14:00:00 -0000

Over the holidays, we’re looking back at some of the best episodes of 2022 and this was one of our biggest hits. After a stellar, decades-long career at Canada’s public broadcaster, Wendy Mesley made a big mistake: she used the “N-word” with colleagues, off the air, while talking about covering the racism issue. She paid dearly for it: her reputation was ruined, she was portrayed as a bigot and her nearly 40-year CBC career was flushed away. Mesley, now free to speak her mind as co-host of “The Women of Ill Repute” podcast, joins host Anthony Furey to talk about what happened, how she thinks the CBC, grappling with its own institutional racism charges, exploited her mistake, and about the bleak world that unforgiving Twitter-driven pile-ons are creating. (Recorded July 7, 2022)

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Special: Rex Murphy in discussion with Premier Danielle Smith

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 14:00:00 -0000

An extended video version of this interview will be available starting Tuesday, December 20, 2022 online at National Post (nationalpost.com).

Special guest host Rex Murphy sits down with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to discuss her recent elevation to the premier’s office, why she’s determined to stand up to those, from environmental groups to the federal government, that she believes have been unfairly targeting Alberta — and how she's already begun to fight back. (Recorded December 17, 2022)

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Offering euthanasia to struggling veterans is government policy

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 14:00:00 -0000

Multiple veterans looking for help say they were instead offered medical aid in dying by Veterans Affairs Canada. It’s clear that it’s not just one rogue agent — it’s department policy, as Mark Meincke discusses this week with guest host Brian Lilley. Meincke, himself a veteran recovering from PTSD, is host of Operation Tango Romeo, a trauma recovery podcast for veterans and first responders, where he’s spoken to several vets who were offered death by their own government. Meincke explains the scandalous obstacles that veterans face in getting basic supports for treatable injuries and what needs to be done to fix a system that would rather terminate wounded soldiers than help them. (Recorded December 8, 2022)

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Interview with the lieutenant general cancelled for speaking unwokely

Mon, 05 Dec 2022 14:00:00 -0000

Lt. Gen. (ret) Michel Maisonneuve is heavily decorated, after serving 35 years in the Canadian Armed Forces. Then he gave a speech, while accepting the Vimy Award for his “outstanding contribution” to defending Canada and democratic values, where he criticized cancel culture, statue topplers, our weakened military, and damaging climate policies, while saluting personal responsibility and urging Canada to become a serious country again. Since then, he has been attacked and forced to resign from various groups. Maisonneuve joins guest host Brian Lilley to discuss his speech, the fallout, why he believes Canada is no longer meeting its potential, and how we can achieve greatness again. (Recorded November 30, 2022)

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The truth in Xi's 'very naive' insult to Trudeau

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 14:00:00 -0000

Agents of Beijing are reportedly meddling in our elections. Chinese spies have been caught infiltrating our institutions. China runs police stations on Canadian soil. When Chinese President Xi Jinping insulted Canada's prime minister recently, calling Justin Trudeau "very naive," he wasn't kidding, as Charles Burton, a long-time China scholar who served at Canada's embassy in Beijing, discusses with guest host Jackson Doughart. Xi will keep exhibiting his dominance over a Canadian government that has allowed itself to get played again and again by Beijing, explains Burton. But the Liberals might finally be ready to abandon their credulous China policy, if only because they have no choice. (Recorded November 24, 2022)

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Black people can be racist, after all. (Antisemitic, too.)

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 14:00:00 -0000

Kanye West’s bigoted comments about Jews cost him his branding deal with Adidas. Kyrie Irving was suspended from the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets for promoting antisemitic conspiracies. No one should be surprised that Black celebrities are susceptible to spouting stupid, racist stuff, says Wilfred Reilly, author of the race-myth-busting book Taboo: 10 Facts You Can't Talk About. Reilly, a political science professor at Kentucky State University, joins guest host Jamil Jivani this week to discuss the bigotry that still thrives in parts of the Black community, why we avoid talking about it, and the effort to cover it up with inane claims that Black people can’t be racist. (Recorded November 9, 2022)

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Why Trump’s ‘new right’ politics are still a force

Mon, 14 Nov 2022 14:00:00 -0000

The U.S. midterm elections didn’t deliver Republicans the “red wave” they expected. As easy as it is to blame Donald Trump, the reality of today’s American politics is more complicated, as Jai Chabria, a senior adviser to the successful Trump-backed Ohio Senate campaign of J. D. Vance, discusses with guest host Jamil Jivani this week. Although he’s not a Trump supporter himself, Chabria explains what he thinks some Republicans misunderstand about American voters, why Trump’s brand of politics can still win, and why he thinks Trump remains the prohibitive favourite for becoming the GOP’s presidential nominee for 2024. (Recorded November 9, 2022)

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A weaker Biden can be better for Canada

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 14:00:00 -0000

The U.S. midterm elections on November 8 have consequences for Canadians. An end to Democratic control of Congress could push President Joe Biden toward more Canada-friendly policies on oil and alliances, as Christopher Sands discusses with guest host Adrienne Batra. Sands, the director of the Wilson Center’s Canada Institute in Washington, D.C., explains how recent American ambivalence to energy security and asserting western power has impacted Canada’s foreign policy. And why younger U.S. voters, who now outnumber baby boomers, are starting to demand more realism from Washington. (Recorded October 26, 2022)

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The Emergencies Act inquiry exposes a broken system

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 13:00:00 -0000

Evidence at the inquiry into Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act against this year’s Freedom Convoy in Ottawa has revealed that police and officials were unprepared and adrift. Politicians had left police ‘holding the bag,’ without resources and tools needed to deal with the protest, as Christian Leuprecht discusses in this week’s episode with guest host Adrienne Batra. Leuprecht, professor and author of Public Security in Federal Polities, explains why Canada’s policing system is poorly suited for a new era of mass public protest, and why Canadians will need real leadership to fix it. (Recorded October 26, 2022)

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How central bankers broke the economy

Mon, 24 Oct 2022 13:00:00 -0000

Make no mistake: out-of-control inflation in the U.S. and Canada is the consequence of a radical experiment by the Bank of Canada and the U.S. Federal Reserve. The unfairness it has created for younger generations and the middle class has been devastating. Meanwhile, the wealthy have thrived, as guest host Sabrina Maddeaux discusses with Christopher Leonard, author of the recent bestseller The Lords of Easy Money. The economic and political consequences are roiling North America even as central bankers refuse to take responsibility. As Leonard explains, undoing the immense damage will be difficult and terribly painful. (Recorded October 12, 2022)

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How I barely survived a bear eating me alive

Mon, 17 Oct 2022 13:00:00 -0000

It’s the stuff of nightmares, but for Colin Dowler it was terrifyingly real. Riding his bike alone on an isolated B.C. logging road, he ran smack into a nine-foot-long male grizzly bear that brutally mauled and tried to consume him. With the predatory attack this month of a black bear that tried to eat two women in B.C., Dowler tells guest host Sabrina Maddeaux about his own harrowing tale of becoming bear prey. He describes how he fought back to narrowly escape with his life, and explains why, despite the horrific wounds he suffered, he keeps finding himself back in bear country. (Recorded October 14, 2022)

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Parents are fighting to take back race-obsessed, ‘hypersexualized’ schools

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 13:00:00 -0000

Critical race theory and radical gender ideology are turning schools from educational institutions into indoctrination centres. Asra Nomani has helped lead the battle of U.S. parents who are winning back control of schools from woke administrators and trustees. With new fronts in the school culture wars opening up in Canada, Nomani joins Anthony this week with advice for parents about how to be ‘unapologetic’ in standing up for their honour and values. And how they can get their local school to stop obsessing about sexuality, gender and race, and back to respecting achievement and merit. (Recorded September 29, 2022)

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Iran’s ‘revolution in the making’ isn’t just about hijabs

Mon, 03 Oct 2022 13:00:00 -0000

Protests continue to rage across Iran, weeks after erupting in response to the police killing of a young woman arrested her for not wearing her hijab. But this unleashed fury of the Iranian people has been building up for many years, as Alireza Jafarzadeh, a prominent regime critic and deputy director of the Washington office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, discusses with host Anthony Furey. The growing number of regime scandals and atrocities, he says, is catching up with Iran’s hardline theocratic rulers, and their end, after more than 40 years in power, may finally be near. (Recorded September 29, 2022)

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Our parole system makes Canadians ‘literal sitting ducks’

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 13:00:00 -0000

Myles Sanderson was in breach of parole, after 59 convictions, when he butchered 10 innocent people in Saskatchewan. A police officer and a Toronto man were murdered by a former gang member with an “extensive” record, flagged as high risk to reoffend. Dangerous people walking the streets is not an “aberration,” defence lawyer Ari Goldkind tells Anthony this week. Activism about systemic racism and anti-policing permeate Canada’s justice system, so high-risk convicts get too many breaks. But, Goldkind says, because they’re released into communities they came from — not where the activists and legislators live — people in power don’t seem to care. (Recorded September 16, 2022)

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Poilievre turns conservatism into ‘a choice, not an echo’

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 13:00:00 -0000

The remarkable thing about Pierre Poilievre’s victory in the Conservative leadership race isn’t just how overwhelmingly he won, but that he signed up legions of new members, many of them young people, from all regions in the country. They were attracted to exactly what Poilievre’s opponents and mainstream pundits don ‘t like about him: that he’s a Conservative unafraid to stand somewhere more interesting than the middle ground, as veteran Tory strategist Michael Diamond discusses with Anthony this week. While previous leaders watered down policies during elections, Diamond explains why Poilievre will be different, and why sticking to his principles will be his winning formula again. (Recorded September 15, 2022)

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Reasons to keep calm over COVID

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 13:00:00 -0000

After more than two years of pandemic, life has returned to normal for most of us, despite panic fanatics who want us living in fear forever. But while COVID can still be dangerous, the situation is nothing like 2020 or 2021, as infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch explains in this week’s episode. And whatever this new stage is — pandemic or endemic — the important thing now, he says, is for officials to be far more honest and transparent with the public about not just the risks and realities of COVID and vaccines, but about a health-care system still terribly unprepared for future viral waves. (Recorded September 1, 2022)

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Oops, we hired a raving bigot to teach anti-racism

Mon, 05 Sep 2022 13:00:00 -0000

The federal Liberals handed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Laith Marouf, an “anti-racism” coach, who publicly called Jews “human feces” deserving a “bullet to the head, while also insulting Blacks, Indigenous people and others. As embarrassed officials scramble an “extensive review” into government anti-racism funding, Jonathan Kay, the Quilette editor who helped bring Marouf’s hateful behaviour to light, joins Anthony this week to discuss how the Liberals, desperate to be woke, seemingly fell in with Marouf. And how “anti-racism” training and bigotry sometimes overlap in ways that can make haters feel at home. (Recorded September 1, 2022)

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Inside the new telescope that probes the wonders of the universe and life itself

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 13:00:00 -0000

The James Webb Space Telescope is unlike anything that’s gone before it – in terms of size, power and what scientists hope it will help them understand. Greatly exceeding the capabilities of its predecessor, the Hubble Telescope, some of the Webb’s first findings have only recently been made public. Professor Adam Muzzin, an astronomer at York University, breaks down the wonders of the universe the telescope will have the power to probe – such as the formation of galaxies and planets and the very origins of life in the universe. Muzzin also discusses the plans for future space exploration and the pros and cons of a new space race led by billionaires. (Recorded August 11, 2022.)

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Supporting Taiwan in the face of Xi’s overbearing China

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 13:00:00 -0000

The threats made by the Chinese government in response to Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan underscores how increasingly overbearing China’s authoritarian government in Beijing has become. Everyone is asking what will happen next and how the West will respond. While concerns about China dropped out of the headlines in Canada following the return of the two Michaels, the long-term issues continue to fester and worsen, says lawyer and author Gordon G. Chang. We need to get serious, argues Chang, when it comes to decoupling from the Communist country with a notoriously poor human rights record. (Recorded August 11, 2022.)

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“This is a hill to die on” – the looming fight against Liberal fertilizer rules

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 13:00:00 -0000

While the Trudeau government says new plans to reduce emissions from agricultural fertilizer usage are a harmless way to combat climate change, many farmers across the country say otherwise. It could in fact mean a reduction in food production, the closure of farms and more increases in food prices. Gerry Ritz was Canada’s agriculture minister during the Stephen Harper Conservative government and before that was a farmer in Saskatchewan for 20 years. Ritz breaks down the role fertilizers actually play in farming and why farmers are so opposed to seeing any government-imposed reductions. (Recorded August 11, 2022.)

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The open-minded Canada I immigrated to is no more

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 13:00:00 -0000

Lamenting the loss of a Canada that was once more serious, more liberal and less obsessed with guilt and identity politics isn’t just for cranky old men anymore. Lydia Perovic came here in the ’90s, from a home riven by ethnic strife, enamoured with this country’s shared ideals and its agnosticism toward blood and race. But progressive media and culture mavens are dismantling so much of what attracted her, as Perovic tells Anthony in this week’s episode. The author of the new book Lost in Canada: An Immigrant’s Second Thoughts, Perovic has a warning for all Canadians, new and old. (Recorded June 9, 2022)

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LIV Golf is ‘sportwashing’ a bloody Saudi regime

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 13:00:00 -0000

The golf world is at war, the instigators are a brutal, despotic regime, and it needs to be stopped, says acclaimed sports journalist Rick Reilly. The Saudi-backed LIV pro tour has golfers squaring off over the PGA versus the allure of vast sums of easy, dirty money, all while fans get the shaft. No one needed this mess, says Reilly, the bestselling author of the new book So Help Me Golf: Why We Love the Game. He joins Anthony this week to talk about how LIV’s damage can still be contained before it’s too late, and why the sooner the Saudi regime loses interest and drops its gimmicky intrusion, the better it will be for everyone. (Recorded July 7, 2022)

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‘Used by the CBC’: Wendy Mesley after the ‘n-word’ incident

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 13:00:00 -0000

After a stellar, decades-long career at Canada’s public broadcaster, Wendy Mesley made a big mistake: she used the “n-word” with colleagues, off the air, while talking about covering the racism issue. She paid dearly for it: her reputation was ruined, she was portrayed as a bigot, and her nearly 40-year CBC career was flushed away. Mesley, now free to speak her mind as co-host of The Women of Ill Repute podcast, joins Anthony to talk about what happened, how she thinks the CBC, grappling with its own institutional racism charges, exploited her mistake, and about the bleak world that unforgiving Twitter-driven pile-ons are creating. (Recorded July 7, 2022)

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Things you can't say about residential school grave discoveries

Mon, 18 Jul 2022 13:00:00 -0000

There’s plenty of awful things to say about Canada’s abusive residential school system. But last summer, the nation was gripped by reports that “mass graves” of children were discovered at some school sites. What you can’t say, apparently, is that those reports were mistaken and that nothing new was really discovered last year, as veteran journalist and author Terry Glavin established with his meticulously reported recent National Post feature reviewing what actually happened. Glavin joins Anthony to talk about the attacks he’s faced for reporting truths people didn’t want to hear. And about how journalistic negligence, political opportunism and white guilt-tripping hijacked what First Nations have really been saying. (Recorded June 23, 2022)

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Airport hell is not going away

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 13:00:00 -0000

Canada recently ranked in the world for air travel delays. Flights are being cancelled by the thousands, flyers face hours-long lineups and planes sit stranded on the tarmac. Duncan Dee, former chief operating officer of Air Canada, saw this disaster coming months ago and sounded the alarm to anyone who would listen. But, as he tells Anthony in this week’s episode, federal politicians and bureaucrats ignored obvious warning signs pointing to a summer of misery, chaos and billions of dollars in tourist losses. Now, even with airports in full meltdown mode, Dee sees Ottawa refusing to take critical steps to start fixing it. (Recorded July 7, 2022)

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Conservatives have a real chance to win — or die

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 13:00:00 -0000

People are angry. Justin Trudeau has betrayed the middle class in particular, and made us all poorer for it. How Conservatives respond to this populist moment can elevate them to Canada’s party of choice or it could kill them, says Tasha Kheiriddin, author of the new book The Right Path: How Conservatives can unite, inspire and take Canada forward. The good news? Tories don’t need to become Liberal-lite to win over young, urban or immigrant groups looking for an alternative to the Liberal-NDP duo, says Kheiriddin. In fact, after the damage of the last six years, she says, the country has never needed genuine conservatives more. (Recorded June 23, 2022)

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More lockdowns are coming. Danielle Smith says she’s the resistance.

Mon, 27 Jun 2022 13:00:00 -0000

When infections inevitably start rising soon, expect pressure on provinces to start locking down again. But Danielle Smith tells Anthony there will be no such thing ever again in Alberta if she’s in charge. Smith, the former Wildrose party leader now running for leader of Alberta’s United Conservative Party and premier, explains why her first order of business will be breaking the province’s toxic relationship with Ottawa. And why that means no longer following national directions on pandemic policy while outright rejecting federal laws that hurt Alberta’s people and industry — even at the risk of a constitutional crisis. (Recorded June 23, 2022)

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The whole truckin' story behind the Freedom Convoy

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 13:00:00 -0000

One of the many bewildering things about the recent Freedom Convoy is how little agreement exists about the basic facts of what actually happened. Andrew Lawton was embedded inside the convoy and spent many hours interviewing its organizers. He joins Anthony to talk about his new book, The Freedom Convoy: The Inside Story of Three Weeks That Shook the World (Sutherland House press, available everywhere June 24). He discusses how it all really started, the tensions among convoy organizers, and battles against misinformation from politicians and media that all led up to the prime minister invoking the historic Emergencies Act. (Recorded June 9, 2022)

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Justin Trudeau is ‘gaslighting law-abiding gun owners’

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 13:00:00 -0000

There’s a ‘cynical trick’ being played with gun politics in Canada, says Gary Mauser, one of Canada’s foremost authorities on gun control. By exploiting American shootings to layer on yet more regulations for Canadian hunters, farmers and sport shooters, the prime minister is taking advantage of the ignorance of his supporters, Mauser tells Anthony in this week’s episode. And while more Canadians are clueing in to the reality that Ottawa’s latest gun-control proposals aim at the wrong target, they’d be surprised to learn how little the government is doing to address the real problem of firearms smuggled in illegally from the U.S. (Recorded June 9 2022)

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Scott ‘peacemaker’ Aitchison wants to make us less angry

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 13:00:00 -0000

For someone who’s spent his career in politics, Conservative MP and leadership candidate Scott Aitchison doesn’t have a lot of good things to say about politicians. He thinks elected leaders today are all about stoking division to bump their popularity with their base, as he tells Anthony in this latest instalment of Full Comment’s discussions with federal Conservative leadership candidates. The result, Aitchison says, is that real people and concerns are being ignored in favour of cheap political wins, making us all a lot angrier. And, as he explains, he’s running for party leader because he’s determined to fix it. (Recorded May 26, 2022)

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What Doug Ford has that Jason Kenney doesn’t

Mon, 30 May 2022 13:00:00 -0000

Ontario endured strict and lengthy pandemic lockdowns, especially compared to Alberta’s much lighter touch. But conservative voters seem ready to reward Doug Ford’s Ontario PCs with re-election while, out west, angry conservatives in Alberta have driven their premier from office. Hamish Marshall, a former national Conservative campaign manager, joins Anthony this week to discuss how Ontario’s political culture has shifted since COVID and how Ford — unlike Kenney — has captured the conservative mood in his province, all while stealing traditional supporters of the Liberals and NDP. (Recorded May 26, 2022)

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Killing off the sad and the poor with MAID

Mon, 23 May 2022 13:00:00 -0000

Dr. Sonu Gaind is a supporter of “medical assistance in dying” (MAID) for those suffering profoundly with terminal illnesses. He’s even the physician chair of the MAID team at Toronto’s Humber River Hospital, where he’s chief of psychiatry. But he’s grown alarmed since Canada stopped requiring a reasonably foreseeable death for euthanasia, as he tells Anthony in this week’s episode. People who are poor, lonely or battling mental illnesses, who’s lives might get better with help, are being offered a lethal injection instead. And children could be next. What once threatened to be euthanasia’s slippery slope, says Gaind, has turned out to be a cliff. (Recorded May 12, 2022)

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The nightmare of inflation was made worse in Ottawa

Mon, 16 May 2022 13:00:00 -0000

No one wants to take the blame for Canada's soaring inflation rate. Not the Bank of Canada. And not the government. But the problem was clearly exacerbated by policy-makers in Ottawa who kept pumping gargantuan inflationary stimulus into the economy well after the pandemic recovery had begun, as Ian Lee discusses with Anthony on this week's episode. Canadians will pay a steep price in unintended consequences, says Lee, associate professor at Carleton's Sprott School of Business. Young people especially will have more reasons to feel shafted, he says. And it's all very likely to get worse before it gets better. (Recorded May 12, 2022)

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‘There’s going to be payback’ against our political elites

Mon, 09 May 2022 13:00:00 -0000

Voters around the world are saying they’re angry. They’re unhappy that the promise of upward mobility is over and they’re frustrated that government policies animated by elitist values keep making life harder for the middle and working classes, as Joel Kotkin tells Anthony this week. Younger voters around the world are already flocking to more extremist solutions after feeling abandoned by the establishment, explains Kotkin, a noted authority on global, economic, political and social trends, from California’s Chapman University. It’s all creating a powerful political volcano, he says, and the explosion won’t be pleasant. (Recorded April 28, 2022)

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The Trudeau Liberals’ ‘clear overreach’ to control the internet

Mon, 02 May 2022 10:00:00 -0000

The federal Liberals probably never predicted that their efforts at internet regulation would see Silicon Valley comparing them to regimes in Iran, China and North Korea, but here we are. Website blocking, government-ordered takedowns and regulating YouTubers are just some of the alarming ideas coming out of Ottawa recently. Michael Geist, professor of internet law at the University of Ottawa, joins Anthony this week to talk about the dangers these approaches pose to speech rights and other Canadian freedoms, and why the Liberals seem so intent on putting government controls on the online world. (Recorded April 28, 2022)

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‘Canada’s democracy is in doubt’ says Tory candidate Roman Baber

Mon, 25 Apr 2022 10:00:00 -0000

After fleeing the Soviet Union and building a life in Canada, Roman Baber believes deeply in upholding democracy and freedom, as he tells Anthony in this latest instalment of Full Comment’s discussions with federal Conservative leadership candidates. In fact, Baber’s opposition to Ontario’s drastic government lockdown restrictions got him kicked out of Doug Ford’s PC caucus. Baber explains why he believes Canadians’ rights and liberal institutions are steadily being undermined by government control, anti-freedom ideology and censorship. And why he believes he can unite the federal Conservative party to lead the fight for rights — and win. (Recorded April 14, 2022)

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The joys of ‘duking it out’ over Jason Kenney

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 14:01:04 -0000

Votes are now being cast to decide the fate of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. A rebellion largely over COVID policies has triggered a review of his leadership and his rivals are openly gunning for him. It’s a reckoning that other provinces aren’t having — but maybe they should. Alberta political strategist Evan Menzies joins Anthony to break down all the drama. Menzies, who has worked with both Kenney’s United Conservative Party and Alberta’s Wildrose Party, also gets into the forces at play that could deliver a democratic eye-opener to Kenney’s adversaries. (Recorded April 14, 2022)

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Will Smith’s slap smacks of celebrity cancel culture

Mon, 11 Apr 2022 13:00:00 -0000

Movie stars used to seem so cool. But when Will Smith hit Chris Rock at the Academy Awards over a joke, and then later got a standing ovation for his Oscar win, people in the real world were appalled. Somehow today’s cossetted movie millionaires seem much more cringe than classy, as celebrity watcher, talk-show host and media personality Shaun Proulx discusses with Anthony in this week’s episode. Proulx explains how thin-skinned celebrities and Hollywood cancel culture are losing in a competition against a new breed of stars who are being born every day on TikTok and YouTube. (Recorded March 31, 2022)

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This probably won’t end well for Vladimir Putin

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 14:09:55 -0000

Things in Russia have usually gone Vladimir Putin’s way. He has consolidated power, eliminated rivals, stamped out independent media and remains popular despite immense corruption and an economy in shambles. Marcus Kolga — who was recently ordered banned from Russia over his connections to Putin’s democratic opponents — joins Anthony this week to explain how things have suddenly gone seriously awry for the Russian president with his ill-conceived attack on Ukraine. As the war drags on, even Russians themselves could be losing faith in their supposedly great leader, says Kolga, a senior fellow at the Macdonald Laurier Institute. And Putin’s iron grip on power may already be slipping (Recorded March 31, 2022)

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How the Liberal-NDP deal could damage democracy

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 13:00:00 -0000

The Liberal-NDP "supply and confidence" agreement will have longstanding ramifications for Canada beyond just the policies these two parties plan to enact. Yes, we may get free dental care -- but it could also come with the effective end of what's known as responsible government, as Howard Anglin explains to the Anthony Furey in this week's episode. Anglin, a lawyer who worked in the offices of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, breaks down how Canadians may no longer get the effective scrutiny and opposition that is supposed to be a hallmark of our system of governance. It could also mean the normalization of coalition governments in the years forward. (Recorded March 24, 2022)

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Leslyn Lewis says her social conservatism means smaller government

Mon, 21 Mar 2022 15:25:09 -0000

A few things have changed since Leslyn Lewis ran for federal Conservative leader in 2020 with an unexpectedly strong campaign. While government spending, debt and hostility to the West and Canada’s resources have only gotten worse she says, the Liberal government’s questionable use of the Emergencies Act, the undermining of democratic institutions, and the threat to freedoms have since become key issues for her. Lewis joins Anthony this week to explain why she thinks her socially conservative positions will appeal to a broader base of Canadians than many people expect and why she believes she stands an even better chance at winning the leadership this time around. (Recorded March 17, 2022)

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Signs of hope for Canada’s hopeless young homebuyers

Mon, 14 Mar 2022 13:00:00 -0000

After 20 years of housing bubble-blowing, the thought of ever owning a home now seems virtually impossible for legions of younger Canadians. But there are reasons to take heart, as Garry Marr tells Anthony in this week’s episode. Marr, a journalist who has covered Canadian real estate for decades, details how government policies have continued to inflate housing prices in Canada’s biggest cities, frustrating the ownership dreams of younger generations while older generations gut their retirement savings to help out their kids. It can’t go on like this. Marr explains how markets and mentalities are finally starting to shift in ways that could make home ownership for young families realistic again. (Recorded March 4, 2022)

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Report from inside Ukraine under attack

Fri, 04 Mar 2022 13:00:00 -0000

Canadian journalist Neil Hauer is on the ground in Ukraine living through a Russian invasion. He was in Kyiv as cruise missiles rained down and heard the gunfire as special forces advanced on the city. He joins Anthony from Lviv, Ukraine to describe what it’s really like on the ground in a country in the midst of an invasion, how Ukrainians have been trying to fight back, and some of the unexpected problems that have hampered Moscow’s plans so far. Hauer, who specializes in reporting on Eastern Europe, also discusses the harrowing nuclear threat and the dangerous possibilities of what could happen if Vladimir Putin starts to feel cornered. (Recorded March 3, 2022)

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Our ‘remarkable period of peace’ could be coming to an end

Mon, 28 Feb 2022 14:00:00 -0000

Canada’s former chief of the defence staff Tom Lawson joins Anthony this week to discuss why NATO countries are watching Russia’s ruthless invasion of Ukraine with caution, and why a confrontation between western troops and Russian forces is a serious escalation that neither side should want. Lawson, who was also formerly deputy commander of the North American Aerospace Defence Command, also talks about why this is an important moment for Canada to take stock of its own military capabilities as we contemplate what could be “the end of a remarkable period of peace.” (Recorded February 24, 2022.)

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The Emergencies Act is far more dangerous than you think

Mon, 21 Feb 2022 14:00:00 -0000

The Emergencies Act invoked by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has never been used before — and for good reason. The law that replaced the War Measures Act is so powerful, it was essentially designed to be unusable, as constitutional lawyer Ryan Alford discusses with Anthony in this week’s episode. Alford, author of the book Permanent State of Emergency, details the alarming breadth of the act’s powers, its incompatibility with the constitution, its use to target certain political viewpoints, and why its use could foreshadow an even graver expansion of state authority. (Recorded February 17, 2022.)

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Pierre Poilievre says his freedom fight includes truckers

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 14:00:00 -0000

As other federal Conservatives distance themselves from the Freedom Convoy they once backed, Pierre Poilievre joins Anthony to declare his continued support for the movement. The first declared candidate for the federal Conservative leadership race explains why he thinks government overreach during the pandemic, and too much government meddling everywhere else, has made life harder, less affordable and less promising for Canadians. And he discusses how, if he becomes prime minister, he intends to fix it with more freedom. (Recorded February 10, 2022.)

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Truckers rip the mask off the COVID consensus

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 14:00:00 -0000

First they were portrayed as a small, ignorable fringe. Then they were portrayed as dangerous hooligans with “unacceptable” views. But once the trucker convoy rolled into Ottawa it defied expectations about the size and scope of Canadians fed up with government pandemic overreach. Rupa Subramanya, a columnist for the National Post, lives in downtown Ottawa and has been walking the city’s streets and talking with protestors. She joins Anthony this week to discuss what’s really happening on the ground in the nation’s capital, why it doesn’t fit the predictable narratives, and why so many Canadians see in the protests a version of their own ordinary frustrations. (Recorded February 3, 2022.)

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Olympians competing in the shadow of lockdowns, boycotts and vaccines

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 14:00:00 -0000

Olympic medallist and world champion figure skater Elvis Stojko joins Anthony this week to talk about what the last two years have been like for elite athletes as they’ve been restricted from their normal training routines, missed out on competitions, and had to struggle with the possible impacts on their performance from either getting COVID or getting vaccinated. All of this has happened, meanwhile, on top of the problems and uncertainty surrounding the 2022 Games in Beijing and calls for boycotts over China’s crimes against humanity. Stojko discusses the serious toll it’s all taking on athletes, how he tries to help them through it, and why it won’t be an easy recovery. (Recorded January 20, 2022.)

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The ethical failures in Canada’s pandemic response

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 14:00:00 -0000

The COVID-19 crisis has presented a minefield of bioethical questions, which Canadian policy-makers have largely stomped all over. It’s not just the damage of lockdowns, the treatment of children, demonizing the unvaxxed, and the privacy invasions. It’s also the callous disregard for anything happening beyond Canada’s borders. Bioethicist Dr. Kerry Bowman joins Anthony this week to discuss the problems created by neglecting bioethical considerations during the pandemic. And why he’s worried that doing so may have changed the very fabric of Canadian society for the worse. (Recorded January 20, 2022)

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The ’60s left-wing activist turned Canadian housing-market multimillionaire

Mon, 17 Jan 2022 14:00:00 -0000

He served jail time in Mississippi for defying racial segregation laws. He was there at the founding the NDP. And he once believed that private property was a crime. But Michael Audain has come a long way since then, becoming one of the most successful players in B.C.’s torrid housing sector. And he’s made a massive fortune — his foundation recently gave $100 million to the Vancouver Art Gallery — from a market he used to denounce. The founder of Polygon Homes joins Anthony to discuss his eventful life, his (mostly) changed beliefs, and his new memoir One Man In His Time. (Recorded January 6, 2022.)

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Time to end our ‘warped risk perception’ of COVID

Mon, 10 Jan 2022 14:00:00 -0000

We’re the safest we’ve ever been from COVID: The vast majority of us are vaccinated and the highest-risk people have boosters. The virus has mutated into its mildest version ever. Yet, in Canada, governments are once again closing schools, locking down businesses and deploying the same fearful, knee-jerk responses they’ve always used. Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, a frontline infectious diseases specialist at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga, Ont., joins Anthony this week to explain why it’s time to declare an end to these needless lockdowns — and to start moving towards a post-pandemic mindset, where COVID stops being the primary focus of everything we do. (Recorded January 6, 2022.)

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The professor fighting to stop woke warriors from destroying science

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 22:27:33 -0000

McGill University scientist Patanjali Kambhampati is on the cutting edge of laser research, but government funders refuse to support him — simply because he doesn’t believe in “diversity, equity and inclusion.” As a minority who has experienced racism himself, Kambhampati joins Anthony to discuss why he believes science is a true meritocracy, and why critical scientific advancements rely on people demonstrating their abilities, not their race, religion or gender identity. Kambhampati also explains why so many scientists who agree with him are afraid to speak out — and what’s at stake if science doesn’t take a stand against social-justice engineering. (Recorded December 9, 2021.)

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Why Omicron means ‘we have to stop counting cases’

Mon, 13 Dec 2021 14:00:00 -0000

Canada’s reaction to the new COVID-19 variant suggests we haven’t yet learned from our past mistakes, Dr. Neil Rau tells Anthony in this episode of Full Comment. The flight bans to stop Omicron will prove pointless, explains Rau, an infectious-diseases expert and medical microbiologist in Toronto. Meanwhile, officials’ outdated attitudes about case counts, PCR tests, vaccinations and restrictions threaten a “tsunami of quarantine.” Eventually, Canadians will have to get a more realistic perspective on a virus that will simply keep mutating, Rau says — and it’ll be better for us all if we get there sooner, rather than later. (Recorded December 9, 2021.)

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A vaccine-passport surveillance state isn’t just sci-fi

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 14:00:00 -0000

Desperate to get out of the pandemic, Canadians have rushed to give up their privacy. We offer our sensitive digital health information to go out in public. Contact tracing, COVID-19 apps and QR codes trace our movements. Meanwhile, we’re building an information network that can give governments vast surveillance powers that remain long after the pandemic, says privacy expert Ann Cavoukian. The former Ontario privacy commissioner, and author of Privacy by Design, joins Anthony this week to explain why she’s alarmed by this zero-sum arrangement that trades privacy for health security. And she explains how we can keep public health without creating a permanent digital surveillance state — but only if we demand it. (Recorded November 25, 2021.)

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A trans person, a Christian and a feminist walk into a comedy bar

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 14:00:00 -0000

There’s something funny about the attempts by woke warriors to cancel “problematic” comedians like Louis C.K. and Dave Chapelle — because it never works. Legendary comedy-club impresario Mark Breslin joins Anthony this week to tell stories about the comic wars he’s been through since he opened his first Yuk Yuk’s in 1976. And he explains why the scolds who try to take the laughs out stand-up shows always end up bombing, and why today’s woke, wet blankets are just as likely to end up laughed off the stage. (Recorded November 25, 2021.)

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Let’s definitely not copy what they’re doing in Europe

Mon, 22 Nov 2021 14:00:00 -0000

North American elites wish we were all a bit more European. From work-life balance to climate progressivism, Europeans seem to embody the paragon of sophistication that liberals dream of. In real life, however, Europe is a mess. Outside its fashionable capitals lie sprawling impoverished suburbs. Unemployment haunts millions of unassimilated immigrants. Europe’s business innovation is lagging, its workers are less productive, and its energy costs are punitive. David Harsanyi, author of a new book, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent, joins Anthony to explain why we should stop trying to emulate Europe, and instead celebrate the freedom, work ethic and assimilationist ideas that have worked so well on this side of the Atlantic. (Recorded November 10, 2021.)

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Bob Woodward on ‘Question Man’ Biden and Trump 2024

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 14:00:00 -0000

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post in 1972. Since then, Woodward has written books about presidents Nixon, Clinton, Obama, Trump, and both president Bushes. His latest book, Peril, is about the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, and the tumultuous transition from Trump to President Joe Biden. Woodward is the speaker this year at the Audi Innovation Series in Canada (that talk will be released Nov. 17 by Audi via Twitter and Facebook). But first, Woodward sat down with Anthony to discuss the serious troubles facing the Biden presidency, Trump’s plans to run again in 2024, the Steele Dossier fiasco, and what it means for the state of American journalism today. (Recorded Nov. 10, 2021.)

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Why this nurse chose firing over a vaccine

Mon, 08 Nov 2021 14:00:00 -0000

Canada might never fully solve the pandemic problem until we understand why some people are so resistant to getting the vaccine. That means actually sitting down and talking to people who aren’t typical anti-vaxxers but are suddenly opting to lose their jobs rather than roll up their sleeves for a COVID shot. Anita Davis is one of those people. After 30 years as a nurse, she was just terminated from a health-care system already starved for staff because she isn’t comfortable getting the COVID vaccines right now. She joins Anthony to explain why she felt so strongly about her decision and what we can learn from someone who would sacrifice a decades-long career over vaccine choice.

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The coming death of ‘citizenship’ and how to stop it

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 13:00:00 -0000

The concept of the “citizen” is found rarely throughout human history, and those lucky enough to have it must guard it jealously. It is one of the most cherished ideals of our liberal, democratic societies. But the forces of globalization and progressivism, and the elites who benefit from them, are working to erode it. Victor Davis Hanson is a prominent American intellectual, a scholar of ancient Greece and military history, and a prolific commentator on contemporary U.S. politics. He joins Anthony to discuss his new book, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America. (Recorded October 21, 2021.)

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Preparing for war with China over Taiwan

Mon, 25 Oct 2021 13:00:00 -0000

Beijing’s threats to invade Taiwan are getting serious. Military tensions are ramping up. And a war — perhaps even a Third World War — is not out of the question. It could even be inevitable. Scott Simon, co-chair of Taiwan studies at the University of Ottawa, joins Anthony to explain why he thinks Xi Jinping’s China today looks a lot like Hitler’s Germany in 1938, bullying the world to appease its territorial demands before it moves towards even more aggressive expansion. And, he says, unless Canada and the West start demonstrating more strength, we will be falling right into China’s trap. (Recorded October 21, 2021.)

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Chef Michael Hunter fights for the ‘right to eat wild food’

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 13:00:00 -0000

He became famous for refusing to back down to animal-rights protestors picketing his meat-focused Toronto restaurant, defiantly butchering and eating a leg of deer in front of them in 2018. But the climate for Michael Hunter's Antler restaurant, and for wild-game enthusiasts, remains hostile. He joins Anthony this week to discuss the devastation to restaurants caused by government pandemic policies, the suddenly soaring cost of food, and why he thinks that, despite the growing movement to get us all eating plant-based synthetic products, people are loving wild food — including game meat — more than ever. (Recorded October 13, 2021.)

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How to rescue Erin O’Toole’s Conservatives from irrelevance

Mon, 11 Oct 2021 13:00:00 -0000

After their latest election loss, Canada’s Conservatives are discovering that they simply don’t have what Stephen Harper and Brian Mulroney once relied on to win federal elections. And Erin O’Toole’s shape-shifting, from a hard-right leadership candidate to a Liberal-lite campaigner, clearly didn’t prove to be the path to victory. Tasha Kheiriddin, national politics columnist for Postmedia, joins Anthony to discuss how the Tories are missing opportunities to connect with many voters naturally inclined to support a conservative vision for Canada. And the dangers that lie ahead for the party if it doesn’t learn the right lessons, fast. (Recorded October 6, 2021)

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The end of affordability in Canada—and what to do about it

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 13:00:00 -0000

Housing prices keep soaring. Inflation is hot again. Even the upper middle class is struggling to keep up. Today, life in Canada is becoming harder than living elsewhere. Meanwhile, governments keep making matters worse by pumping out money, raising taxes and creating energy crises, while pushing elaborate economic transitions. Martin Pelletier, portfolio manager at Wellington-Altus Private Counsel, joins Anthony to discuss what we all need to know about the biggest risks to Canadians’ financial security, how we can prepare for them, and how we might even prevent some of them. (Recorded September 30, 2021.)

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Maxime Bernier’s anti-lockdown People’s Party is not going away

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 13:00:00 -0000

The People’s Party of Canada didn’t elect any MPs in Canada’s recent federal vote, but its platform opposing vaccine passports and promoting free markets and reduced immigration got nearly a million votes, roughly tripling the PPC’s support over its 2019 debut at the polls. Bernier was excluded from the leaders’ TV debates and his party was hammered with negative coverage during the campaign for its anti-mask stance and for attracting certain unsavoury characters (one since-removed party official threw gravel at Justin Trudeau) — yet it still managed to double the vote share of the Greens. Bernier joins Anthony to explain why he thinks his party is much more than a protest against repressive pandemic policies. And why, thanks to the softening of the federal Conservatives and the advantages his party has earned after reaching five-per-cent support, he’s confident the PPC will be even stronger next time around. (Recorded September 24, 2021.)

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Global terrorism gets a new lease on life in Afghanistan

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 13:00:00 -0000

Peter Bergen was the first journalist to produce a TV interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, where the terrorist leader first declared war on America. In his reporting from Afghanistan since the ’90s, Bergen witnessed how the Taliban-controlled country became a safe haven for bin Laden’s al-Qaida and for global terrorism. Now, 20 years after 9/11, the Biden administration has surrendered Afghanistan to Taliban rule once again. And Bergen, author of the new book The Rise and Fall of Osama Bin Laden, joins Anthony to explain the danger the world now faces as terrorists return to their former base in Afghanistan — to train, organize and kindle a new wave of global violent jihadism. (Recorded Sept. 16, 2021.)

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Trudeau resorts to ‘Project Fear’ for his rescue

Mon, 13 Sep 2021 13:00:00 -0000

With his journey to a majority government hitting the rocks, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is ditching his sunny ways and doing all he can to spook swing voters away from the Conservatives and frighten NDP voters into saving his Liberals from a split vote. He’s warning that Tory Leader Erin O’Toole will ban abortion, empower anti-vaxxers, and open the floodgates to more assault weapons, climate change and privatized health care. John Ivison, National Post Ottawa bureau chief and columnist for Postmedia, joins Anthony to discuss what he has witnessed on the leaders’ campaign tours, and why the Liberals’ scare tactics are more desperate, possibly dangerous, and seemingly less effective than they were last time. (Recorded September 9, 2021.)

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Why vaccine passports make things worse

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 13:00:00 -0000

The majority of Canadians have been clamouring for vaccine passports as a way to make them feel safer about COVID-19. But while feeling safe isn’t the same as actually being safe, politicians are rushing ahead with these polarizing policies anyway. Christine Van Geyn, litigation director at The Canadian Constitution Foundation, talks to Anthony about why passport policies probably won’t work, but they will likely cause serious harm both to individuals and to our society. (Recorded September 2, 2021.)

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What Mark Norman thinks now

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 10:00:00 -0000

In 2017, Mark Norman was in line to be Canada’s next chief of defence staff — until he was accused of and criminally charged with leaking government secrets. It was an accusation that was widely seen as a political witch-hunt by the Liberal government, and the House of Commons eventually offered an all-party apology for it when the charges were dropped. Had that not happened, the retired vice-admiral and former vice-chief of the defence staff would have very likely been in charge of the Canadian Forces today. In this exclusive one-on-one interview, Norman joins Anthony to discuss the shocking Afghanistan evacuation, the threats facing Canada now, military sexual misconduct scandals, and the serious identity crisis he sees in the Canadian Forces now. (Recorded on August 4 and 20, 2021)

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Erin O’Toole on Afghanistan, COVID and the case for electing Conservatives

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 13:00:00 -0000

Federal Conservative leader Erin O’Toole takes a break from the campaign trail for an exclusive one-on-one conversation with Anthony to discuss Ottawa abandoning Canada’s allies to the Taliban, and how Conservatives, if elected, will offer a more serious foreign policy, particularly when it comes to China. O’Toole also explains why he believes the Liberals under Justin Trudeau are fumbling the economic recovery from COVID; why monetary policy is something a prime minister actually should think about; and why he thinks a Conservative government can help heal the alienation and anger that has created dangerous divisions in Canada over the last few years. (Recorded August 19, 2021)

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Preston Manning on the broken state of Canadian politics

Mon, 16 Aug 2021 13:00:00 -0000

Description: Separatism is rising in the West. Federal leaders wield fear to win power. Division and dirty politics are only getting worse. And all indications are that this election could intensify distress and disunity. Preston Manning, founder of the populist Reform and Canadian Alliance parties, joins Anthony to discuss the threat to Canada if politicians continue to perpetuate the problems that are fracturing the nation. And he explains how populism, done right, could actually be a force for good in Canadian politics. (Recorded August 3, 2021).

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That virus that mutated the movies

Mon, 09 Aug 2021 13:00:00 -0000

Hollywood’s box-office formula is infected with COVID. The pandemic got audiences more used to streaming at home, instead of heading out for a pricey night at the theatre. And it doesn’t look like they’ll be racing back to the cineplex soon just for more played-out superhero sequels, pretentious dramas or preachy woke films. Mark Daniell. Entertainment editor at Postmedia, joins Anthony to talk about the way show business has had to rewrite its recipe over the last 18 months. And how Hollywood will need to work a lot harder if it wants to get regular people going out to the movies again. (Recorded August 3, 2021).

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Time to stop being always afraid of COVID

Mon, 02 Aug 2021 13:00:00 -0000

Negativity seems to be the only thing we hear from media and public officials about the virus: An endless narrative of more fear, more warnings and more waves. Throughout the pandemic, Canada has acted entirely out of proportion to the problem. And now we’re being warned that, with the Delta variant, the worst may still be to come, while rare “breakthrough” infections are played up for scary headlines. Infectious disease specialist Martha Fulford joins Anthony to discuss why it’s time to accept that the vaccines have defanged the virus, to stop being terrified, and to move on with our lives. (Recorded July 21, 2021.)

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Why Justin Trudeau ‘prime minister for life’ might not happen

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 03:12:02 -0000

It’s obvious: the Trudeau Liberals are prepping to call an election, apparently confident they can cruise to another victory. But Jenni Byrne knows polls and pundits have been wrong before — very wrong. Byrne was a key manager in national campaigns for Stephen Harper during his years leading the Conservatives to power from 2006 to 2015. She joins Anthony to explain why Erin O’Toole’s Conservative campaign may turn out better than the conventional wisdom believes, and why no one should assume anymore that Justin Trudeau simply can’t be stopped. (Recorded July 21, 2021).

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Rex Murphy on the 'progressives' that are recklessly vandalizing Canada's legacy

Sun, 18 Jul 2021 23:11:32 -0000

Legendary journalist Rex Murphy joins Anthony to discuss what he sees as the deliberate destruction of Canada's history and institutions. Murphy says it's the work of a radical minority determined to impose a Great Reset on not just the national economy, but on our democracy, our culture and our society. And he explains how the Trudeau Liberals are eagerly helping it along. (Recorded July 7, 2021)

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What ‘Burn It All Down’ Church-Hating Extremists Need To Hear

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 13:00:00 -0000

The fanatics burning down churches on Indigenous reserves and the Twitter pseudo-intellectuals who cheer them on have one thing in common: They presume to speak on behalf of Aboriginal people. Not letting First Nations speak for themselves is nothing new: if it’s not it’s church-burning cheerleaders, it’s politicians cancelling Canada Day, or environmentalists hijacking First Nations’ economic opportunities. Melissa Mbarki, a policy analyst at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute hailing from Saskatchewan’s Treaty 4, talks to Anthony about how all of them stand in the way of the genuine reconciliation with non-Aboriginal Canadians that so many Indigenous people want.

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The perils of ‘white saviours,’ Black Lives Matter and critical race theory

Sun, 04 Jul 2021 23:08:27 -0000

What happens when a young, Black academic dares to criticize Black Lives Matter in the media? Her words get deleted, of course. That’s what happened to Sonia Orlu, a PhD student at Simon Fraser University, whose interview with a Canadian news station was recently erased for its “potential negative impact.” In this episode of Full Comment with Anthony Furey, Orlu explains how she came to realize that the BLM movement she once supported practices “emotional blackmail” that actually harms the Black community. And why she thinks there are many people of colour who see much more wrong with the current panic over systemic racism than self-appointed white liberal “saviours” realize.

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How Communist China drives drugs, violence and inflated housing prices in Canada

Mon, 28 Jun 2021 18:01:50 -0000

It’s a story so shocking it’s hard to believe. A Canadian politician laundering Asian drug money. A crime boss running Chinese gang wars from his Vancouver home. A local fentanyl super-factory capable of killing scores of Canadians. What they all have in common is their link back to Communist Chinese agents, who use criminal syndicates to corrupt Canadian officials, flood Canada’s streets with dangerous drugs, intimidate local Chinese communities, and buy up vast swaths of Canadian real estate. Anthony talks to veteran journalist Sam Cooper, whose bombshell new book, Wilful Blindness: How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons and CCP Agents Infiltrated the West, lays out in gory detail the horrifying story of how Canada is letting this happen.

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The Overthrow of Free Speech, Merit, and Equality in Post-Liberal Canada

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 13:00:00 -0000

There is a revolution afoot in Canada. Long-held principles about what it means to be a liberal democracy — free expression, equality under the law — are getting pushed out. Amazingly, it’s a revolt not being led by the masses, but by governments and elites. Anthony talks to law professor Bruce Pardy about the shocking speed of the transformation, and how the federal Liberal government is pushing it further with C-10, the bill that will regulate the internet.

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An ICU Doctor explains mistakes we've made (and still make) with COVID

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 13:00:00 -0000

Dr. Kwadwo Kyeremanteng has been at ground zero throughout the pandemic, as a critical care and palliative care doctor who has seen the worst of what COVID can do. He also has serious concerns with how governments handled an outbreak that was fatal for some, but not for the overwhelming number of people. Even now, many of the problems haven’t been fixed, but dissenting voices are silenced. Anthony discusses with Dr. Kyeremanteng what it was really like behind hospital doors, how we could have responded much better, and what we’re still doing wrong that must be fixed.

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Full Comment with Anthony Furey: The Transformation of Sex and Love in the Time of COVID

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 13:00:00 -0000

With a viral pandemic raging, casual relationships suddenly faced a whole new level of danger. Dating, hook-ups, and even strip clubs were thrown into turmoil. When just a coffee with someone new could present frightening risks, let alone touching, kissing, or something more, the issue of consent took on a very different meaning. In this special pandemic check-in, Anthony talks to three guests — a single woman with an active dating life, a strip-club manager and a sex and relationship columnist — about how COVID changed everything for them.

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How Canadians’ basic freedoms have been locked down during the pandemic

Mon, 31 May 2021 13:00:00 -0000

Random police stops. Provincial border guards. Free-speech restrictions. The last 15 months have arguably represented the most intense throttling of Canadian civil liberties by governments — ever. And it hasn’t stopped yet. This has all been done in the name of public health. But Michael Bryant, executive director and general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Union, explains why that isn’t always the case, how the balance between rights and safety was neglected, and why the courts meant to uphold our rights haven’t been much help. (Recorded May 27, 2021).

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How China seizes on global ‘chaos’ so it can dominate Canada — and the world.

Mon, 24 May 2021 13:00:00 -0000

China has been holding Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig captive for two years as it plays “hostage diplomacy.” Ottawa seems paralyzed even as pressure mounts for difficult decisions about allowing Chinese telecom into Canada’s 5G networks and calling out credible charges of a Chinese-perpetrated “genocide” against Uyghur Muslims. Josh Rogin, Washington Post columnist and author of Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century, joins host Anthony Furey to explain how China benefits from the turmoil. (Recorded May 14, 2021).

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Ian Lee reveals the alarming economic reality facing Canada

Mon, 17 May 2021 13:00:00 -0000

What if everything the government told you about why it’s racking up huge deficits and debts wasn’t actually true? Dr. Ian Lee, a professor at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business, explains how the federal Liberals’ recent budget is about to spend more than $100 billion solving problems that don’t actually exist — while ignoring real ones that threaten a very troubling future for Canadians. (Recorded May 14, 2021).

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Lindsay Shepherd on the battle against campus cancel culture

Mon, 10 May 2021 17:03:32 -0000

Lindsay Shepherd went from being an unknown graduate student at an Ontario university, to becoming a subject of international controversy, all for playing a five-minute clip during a class discussion, recorded from a mainstream Canadian news program. Her professors didn’t like the conservative ideas discussed in the clip, claimed she was spreading hate and bigotry, and tried to discipline her. But she fought back. In this episode of Full Comment, Anthony Furey talks to Lindsay about her story and her new book, Diversity and Exclusion: Confronting the Campus Free Speech Crisis. (Recorded May 5, 2021).

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Episode 2: Dr. Jennifer Grant

Mon, 03 May 2021 13:00:00 -0000

For over a year, Canadian governments have responded to the COVID pandemic with the same lockdowns and restrictions, but are they really the best approach? Anthony talks to Dr. Jennifer Grant, a microbiologist and infectious diseases physician at UBC, about why we’ve taken the path we have and whether we can do better. Recorded April 15, 2021.

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Episode 1: Celina Caesar-Chavannes

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 13:06:31 -0000

In the debut episode of Full Comment with Anthony Furey, Anthony interviews Celina Caesar-Chavannes.

Caesar-Chavannes, a former Liberal MP an parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, talks about her disillusionment with Trudeau's commitments to equity and diversity, her new book "Can You Hear Me Now?" detailing her experience, and why she very publicly quit the Trudeau Liberals. Recorded April 15, 2021.

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Introducing Full Comment

Thu, 01 Apr 2021 15:01:23 -0000

Host Anthony Furey introduces Full Comment, Postmedia's new podcast for compelling interviews, controversial opinions and fascinating discussions.

We'll go where other media outlets won't, ask the tough questions, and feature the colourful opinions you have come to expect from us.

We're not worried about pushing buttons. We'll be bringing you interesting opinions and compelling ideas, even if they are a little bit controversial.

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