The Bill Kelly Show Podcast:

Premier Doug Ford is set to introduce changes that would let Canadian health-care workers registered or licensed in other provinces start immediately practicing in Ontario.

Currently, health-care professionals must be registered with one of Ontario’s health regulatory colleges before working in the province. However, in an effort to “overcome bureaucratic delays,” Ontario is prepared to loosen those rules.

The Ford government said it will introduce these legislative changes in February.

GUEST: Colin D’Mello, Queen’s Park Bureau Chief, Global News

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The Canadian Real Estate Association said average house prices in Canada dropped a record 12 per cent in 2022, while sales fell more than 39 per cent from December 2021.

The average national home price in December was $626,318, down from over $816,000 when the market peaked in early 2022, said CREA in a new report.

The once high-flying Canadian real estate market has been hit hard by a series of interest rate hikes over the past year, and many observes expect more trouble ahead as homeowners grapple with mortgages rates over 6 per cent.

GUEST: Mike Moffatt, Senior Director at the Smart Prosperity Institute & Assistant Professor with the Ivey Business School at Western University

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David Crosby, the legendary singer-songwriter who founded some of the defining rock groups of the 1960s, has died at the age of 81, according to media reports on Thursday.

GUEST: Eric Alper, Publicist and music commentator

The Bill Kelly Show Podcast:

Ontario’s integrity commission and auditor general will launch probes into the Ford government’s decision to open portions of the Greenbelt for development, acting on requests from the Ontario NDP and other opposition parties.

The integrity commissioner accepted a request on Wednesday from incoming Ontario NDP leader Marit Stiles, to look into whether housing minister Steve Clark broke conflict of interest and insider information rules

GUEST: David Crombie, former federal cabinet minister, Former

Mayor or toronto & former chair of the Greenbelt Council

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Health Canada is reiterating that it expects provinces to fund medically necessary health services as one company raises fears of two-tiered health care in Ontario.

Maple, a Loblaw-funded virtual care business based in Toronto, charges $69 per doctor's visit (or $30 per month for 30 visits per year) — a service that would be free in person.

The Canada Health Act requires provincial and territorial health insurance plans to cover "all medically necessary services," Health Canada spokesperson Anne Génier said in a statement.

Charging Ontarians for insured services is banned by provincial legislation in accordance with the Canada Health Act.

Ontario has insured virtual visits under OHIP, but Maple has found a way around the province's insurance.

GUEST: Dr. Jason Profetto, Family Physician & Chair of Clinical Skills and MD Admissions with McMaster University

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We discuss all the big topics like encampments, transparency and Airbnb rentals with Hamilton Mayor, Andrea Horwath.

GUEST: Andrea Horwath, Mayor of Hamilton

The Bill Kelly Show Podcast:

Topics Include:

·        Ottawa’s aggressive measures to clean immigration backlog

·        McKinsey’s federal contracts are worth more than $100M. Will MP’s vote to probe?

GUEST: Muhammad Ali, Senior Consultant for Crestview Strategies

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The fight is not over to find records that could answer “hard questions” about unmarked graves at Canada's residential schools, including who the missing children were and how they died, said the woman appointed to work with Indigenous communities in searches underway across the country.

ALSO: A First Nation located in Kenora, Ont. says it has discovered 171 anomalies on the grounds of a former residential school.

GUEST: Dr. Ken Coates, Canada Research Chair with the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan, and a Senior Fellow of Aboriginal and Northern Canadian Issues with the Macdonald Laurier Institute

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The association representing Canada’s multibillion-dollar defence sector is the latest to sound the alarm over this country’s unexplained absence from a security pact between some of its closest allies: Australia, Britain and the United States.

The warning from the head of the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries, known as CADSI, follows similar concerns from a senior Canadian military officer about the potential ramifications of Canada’s exclusion from the trilateral treaty known as AUKUS.

GUEST: Christian Leuprecht, Professor at both the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen's University, and a Fellow at the Macdonald Laurier Institute

The Bill Kelly Show Podcast:

Ontario Premier Doug Ford is vowing to move up to 50% of surgical procedures out of hospitals and into private, for-profit health facilities permanently.

Asked specifically which procedures he is looking to move to private health facilities, 97% of which are for-profit facilities, Ford offered a list of surgeries that he described as not “serious” – including procedures provided by Ford’s political donors who also lobbied the Premier’s Office for this change.

Will Premier Ford's health care plan help or hurt health care in Ontario?

GUEST: Dr. James Tiessen, Director of Health Administration & Community Care and Associate Professor with Toronto Metropolitan University

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Ottawa on Monday approved an environmental assessment for a lithium mine project in Quebec that will produce 5,480 tonnes of ore per day once completed amid a growing global push to secure supplies of critical minerals.

The James Bay Lithium Mine Project, which is located about 100 kilometres east of James Bay in the Eastmain Cree Community in Quebec, will produce lithium — a key ingredient in clean technology like electric vehicle batteries and solar panels, the government said Monday.

GUEST: Moshe Lander, Senior Economics Lecturer with Concordia University

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When some of the world's wealthiest and most influential figures gathered at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting last year, sessions on climate change drew high-level discussions on topics such as carbon financing and sustainable food systems.

But an entirely different narrative played out on the internet, where social media users claimed leaders wanted to force the population to eat insects instead of meat in the name of saving the environment.

The annual event in the Swiss ski resort town of Davos, which opens Monday, has increasingly become a target of bizarre claims from a growing chorus of commentators who believe the forum involves a group of elites manipulating global events for their own benefit.

GUEST: Marcus Kolga, Director of DisinfoWatch.org and Senior Fellow with the Macdonald Laurier Institute

GUEST: Andy McNamara, National Fantasy Football Host and Journalist for Rogers Sportsnet

GUEST: David Lepofsky, Chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance