The Bill Kelly Show Podcast:

Surging inflation has a growing number of Canadians concerned they won’t be able to stretch their dollars far enough to keep food on the table, according to the latest polling from Ipsos.

In a survey conducted exclusively for Global News from March 11-16, Ipsos found that six in 10 Canadians say they are concerned they might not have enough money to feed their families.

GUEST: Sean Simpson, VP of IPSOS Public Affairs

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has kicked off a whirlwind trip to Brussels, and will address the European Parliament later today on his second visit to the continent this month.

Trudeau’s speech is set to stress the importance of countries on both sides of the Atlantic working together to defend democracy in the face of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

GUEST: Nomi Claire Lazar, Full Professor in Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and author of the book “States of Emergency in Liberal Democracies”

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The federal Liberal-NDP accord jolting the national political scene also has Queen’s Park abuzz.

With an Ontario election just 10 weeks away, all three major political parties are trying to assess the impact on their own chances.

Speaking for Premier Doug Ford, Progressive Conservative government house leader Paul Calandra warned Tuesday that past provincial Liberal-NDP agreements — in 1985 and 2013 — led to “high debt, high taxes.”

But Calandra, noting Ford and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have worked well together during the past two pandemic years, conceded political stability in Ottawa is not a bad thing for Queen’s Park. 

GUEST: Wayne Petrozzi, Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University

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One month of war, still defiant. With its government still standing and its outnumbered troops battling Russian forces to bloody stalemates in multiple places, Ukraine is scarred, wounded, mourning its dead but far from beaten as it braces for a second month of bombing, combat, casualties and resistance.

On Feb 24th, when Russia unleashed it’s Ukraine invasion force in Europe’s biggest offensive since World War II and brandished the prospect of nuclear escalation if the West intervened, a lightning-swift toppling of Ukraine’s democratically elected government seemed possible.

But with Wednesday marking four full weeks of fighting, Russia is instead bogged down in an increasingly costly, uncertain and grinding military campaign, with untold numbers of dead, no immediate end in sight, and encircled by western sanctions biting hard on its economy and currency.

GUEST: Brain J. Karem, Political Commentator for CNN, Columnist for Salon.Com and The Washington Diplomat, and Host of the podcast "Just Ask the Question"

The Bill Kelly Show Podcast:

Globe & Mail journalist, Matthew Best is in the city of Lviv and he reports on the latest from Ukraine and Russia.

GUEST: Matthew Best, Freelance Journalist for The Globe & Mail, and Ottawa Citizen in Lviv

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The Liberal government has reached an informal deal with the NDP to stay in power until 2025, in exchange for a pledge to act on dental care, pharmacare and other key issues advocated by New Democrats.

The deal, which is tentative and still requires the approval of the NDP caucus, would not give the New Democrats any cabinet seats, according to two sources.

ALSO: Canada’s spy agencies have held back information from Parliament’s watchdogs 

GUEST: Alex Boutilier, National Politics Reporter for Global News

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For three weeks this winter, a so-called “Freedom Convoy” delivered thousands of demonstrators into downtown Ottawa, turning them into an occupying force that snarled daily life in the nation’s capital and dominated the national conversation.

But who were the demonstrators, really — and what were they after?

Many of them positioned the protest as a fight against vaccination mandates for cross-border truckers. Others saw it as a campaign against pandemic restrictions more broadly. No doubt the occupation was many things to many people. But for several of its organizers, the protest was the culmination of years of work, their best chance yet to coalesce a movement around their preferred conspiracy theories and a violent anti-government ideology.

Read to full article HERE.

GUEST: Justin Ling, Freelance Investigative Journalist