Episodios
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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