Episódios
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A prime minister walks into a synagogue for an antisemitism speech and makes things worse. It’s not a joke, as our three guests all agree. Because Mark Carney and his government fear landing on the wrong side of Muslim leaders and their voting blocs, they say, his lecture on preserving Canadian tolerance refused to acknowledge why it’s so endangered: radicals who so rabidly hate Israel that they’re destroying Canadian values with their violent attacks against Jews. Brian is joined by Talia Klein Leighton, of Canadian Women Against Antisemitism, Amir Epstein, of the Jewish activist group Tafsik, and activist Ariella Kimmel. They explain the shock in their community after Carney’s speech and how more Jews say they now realize the Liberals are not their friends. (Recorded June 5, 2026)
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What happens when you invite the migrants of the world, as former prime minister Justin Trudeau did, to flood into Canada? You end up with an avalanche of false refugee claims, bad actors gaming the system to stall deportations, and Ottawa spending nearly $1 billion a year to provide gold-plated health plans for tens of thousands of people who shouldn’t even be here. Immigration lawyer and policy specialist Richard Kurland details for Brian the unmistakable abuse that some people are using to stay in Canada, despite not being eligible to settle here. And he explains how Trudeau’s wholesale wreckage of our once excellent screening, hearing and deportation system has made it easier than ever for them to keep doing it. (Recorded May 27, 2026)
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After a brutal decade under Justin Trudeau’s draconian anti-development policies, there’s real optimism in the western oilpatch again. Paul Colborne, CEO of Calgary-based Surge Energy, tells Brian why he’s convinced Prime Minister Mark Carney is serious about boosting oil production, including with more pipelines, and why investors are clamouring to get in on it. He explains why he even sees benefit to the carbon-tax and emissions-sequestering conditions in Carney’s memorandum of understanding with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. And why he doesn’t believe B.C., First Nations or some anti-oil Liberal MPs will stand in the prime minister’s way of using resources to get us out of the disastrous, money-printing economic dead end the last prime minister left behind. (Recorded May 22, 2026)
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The growing sense about Mark Carney in Washington is that maybe he doesn’t actually want trade peace, as Tracy Moran, National Post correspondent in the U.S. capital, tells Brian. The prime minister’s “waiting game” tactic is out of runway: Talks have dried up and there’s not enough time now to head off the July 1 deadline when President Donald Trump gets to revise, or worse, declare an end to the Canada-U.S.-Mexico agreement. Troublingly, Carney has managed to aggravate the Trump camp with continuous provocations, and the American public is souring on Canada. Meanwhile, she says, the White House is preparing tariffs that, this time, could be far more punishing than previous ones—with no more carve outs for CUSMA goods. (Recorded May 14, 2026)
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If you haven’t been paying attention to the Alberta separatism movement, you really should. It’s been making huge and rapid strides, with significant support and evidently enough momentum to trigger an independence referendum this year. To find out what’s driving the movement, Brian talks to Keith Wilson, an Alberta constitutional lawyer and leading voice for secession. Wilson explains why he thinks there is no future for the province as part of Canada — regardless of who’s in charge in Ottawa — because Confederation will always be a bad deal for Albertans compared to what they could achieve on their own. And he explains why he believes most of his fellow Albertans will soon come around to seeing that, too. (Recorded May 7, 2026)
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They’re blowing windfalls. They’re setting up government agencies to subsidize favoured schemes. They’re dithering on infrastructure. And they shrug at Canada’s uncompetitive tax regime. The policies of Mark Carney’s Liberals, confirmed in last week’s economic update, are increasingly giving off strong Justin Trudeau vibes, as Brian discusses with Ian Lee, professor at Carleton’s Sprott School of Business, and Carlo Dade, at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. They consider how, a year after getting re-elected on promises to undo the damage of Trudeau’s devastating decade and make Canada more economically resilient, the Liberals seem to have no new playbook. And they warn of more destruction, particularly in the face of U.S. trade negotiations, if they don’t find one soon. (Recorded April 29, 2026)
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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