The Bill Kelly Show Podcast:

Canada’s military is preparing to pull Canadians out of its embassy in Afghanistan.

A number of Afghans who worked for Canada and their families are currently inside a Canadian compound hoping to be rescued along with Canadian citizens.

Canadian special operations forces will be deployed to begin evacuating Canadians at its embassy in Kabul.

They have told Global News that Canadian Special Operations units helping to evacuate the embassy includes the Canadian Special Operations Regiment (CSOR) and Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2), the latter of which specializes as an elite terrorist and hostage rescue unit.

GUEST: Aurel Braun, Professor of International Relations and a Senior Member of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to launch a federal election campaign this Sunday, with the vote set to be held as early as Sept. 20, sources have confirmed to Global News. But at this time, Canadians are more occupied by fears of a fourth wave of COVID-19 than politics.

Amid a surge in new infections, anxiety among parents over the safety of unvaccinated children returning to school in person, and other worries, the latest data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds that the number of people in this country expressing concern about personally contracting COVID-19 increased five points from July to 52 per cent.

GUEST: Peter Graefe, Professor of Political Science with McMaster University

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Polling scope of a federal election

GUEST: Darrell Bricker, CEO of IPSOS Polling

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A B.C. Supreme Court judge who must decide whether Meng Wanzhou can be extradited to New York to face a fraud charge says she doesn’t understand the U.S. allegation against the Chinese executive.

The revelation came more than a year and a half after the extradition hearing started, and on the first day of its evidence phase – the all-important segment in which the Attorney-General of Canada, representing the U.S. Department of Justice, presents the case against Ms. Meng.

Before Robert Frater, lawyer for the Attorney-General, could begin to lay out the evidence, Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes of the B.C. Supreme Court questioned whether the U.S. had explained the essence of the crime it alleged Ms. Meng had committed – and in particular, its connection to sanctions against Iran.

“I’ve had great difficulty understanding,” she said. The judge – a former prosecutor specializing in corporate crime – went on to pose questions about how the United States set out the allegations in the record of the case (ROC) it supplied to Canadian authorities.

GUEST: Andrew Furgiuele, Lecturer with the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto

Chief’s Townhall with Hamilton Police Chief Frank Bergen 

Topic include: Encampment Bylaw, Police Use of Force Data, Community roundtables and more. 

GUEST: Hamilton Police Chief Frank Bergen

The Bill Kelly Show Podcast:

With cases of COVID-19 on the rise across Canada after a summer drop, doctors say the country has entered a fourth wave of the pandemic.

Canada’s seven-day average for new COVID-19 cases is nearing 1,300, up 60 per cent from last week. The bulk of new infections are in British Columbia, which reported more than 1,000 new infections between Sunday and Tuesday, followed by Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec.

Dr. Fahad Razak, an internal medicine physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, said Canada is now in a fourth wave.

GUEST: Dr. Timothy Sly, Epidemiologist and Professor Emeritus in the School of Population and Public Health with Ryerson University

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With September around the corner and the government revealing their back-to-school plan, preparing for another unpredictable school year is on the minds of most parents. The provincial government announced that all students will be able to return to the classroom full-time this September. After a year of virtual learning and school closures, parents may feel overwhelmed while helping their children transition back to ‘normal.’ “This year however things look and feel very different,” observed psychotherapist Colleen Blake-Miller. “In addition to backpacks and notebooks, parents will need to navigate emotions and anxieties associated with children returning for in-person learning post-COVID.”

GUEST: Colleen Blake-Miller, Registered Psychotherapist

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Another day, another heartbreaking headline.

There have been so many about the “two Michaels” and Robert Schellenberg, Canadians locked away in China who appear to be political pawns in a game we cannot win.

But the truth is we should have seen this coming. And we chose not to.

Schellenberg isn’t the only Canadian to receive a death sentence on a drug charge following Meng’s arrest.

Three other Canadians were sentenced to death within two years of Meng’s arrest. Ye Jianhui, Xu Weihong and Fan Wei all face death.

They are Canadians, but they aren’t white.

Read the full article HERE

GUEST: Gordon Houlden, Director of the China Institute and Professor of Political Science with the University of Alberta

The federal government is committing $321 million in new funding for programs to help Indigenous communities search burial sites at former residential schools and to support survivors and their communities.

Justice Minister David Lametti says he will appoint a special interlocutor to work with Indigenous communities and the government to propose changes to federal laws, policies and practices that are related to unmarked graves at residential schools.

Speaking to a virtual news conference on Tuesday, he says Canada currently does not have the necessary legal tools needed to deal with the complex issues presented by the findings of unmarked graves.

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett says $83 million will be added to an existing $27-million program to fund searches of burial sites and commemorate the children who died at residential schools.

GUEST: Coralee McGuire-Cyrette, Executive Director of the Ontario Native Women's Association