The premiers blitzing the U.S. capital wasn’t the pointless fiasco reports made it out to be, and President Trump’s plan for Canada may not really about tariffs or fentanyl. In this special episode, Brian reports from the ground in Washington, D.C. where he interviews Canadian provincial and business leaders who were there and hears about their actual progress in trying to dissuade the Trump administration from a trade war. He also sits down for an eye-opening discussion with Steve Bannon, Trump’s former confidant and strategist. Bannon explains why he thinks the president’s fixation with overpowering Canada is, at root, about the pivotal position we would play in what Trump thinks will be inevitable global confrontations with Russia and China. (Recorded February 14, 2025)

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It might seem unbelievable, but some Americans, including President Donald Trump, really think it’s possible that Canada, or parts of it, might join the U.S.A. Joel Pollak, California-based editor for Breitbart News and author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, tells Brian that the president’s unexpected, confrontational tariff pressure on Canada isn’t just another of his many early tactics to keep rivals and partners unbalanced while he aggressively advances a drastic agenda (although it is that, too). As Pollak explains, tariffs are Trump’s way to get us all following his radical new rules, as he overturns conventional thinking on everything from free trade, to foreign aid, to China, to Gaza to … annexing Canada. (Recorded February 7, 2025)

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It’s the deal no one thought they wanted and one the Biden administration couldn’t get done. Then Donald Trump showed up, sending his envoy Steve Witkoff to force it through. Soon, the hostages starting coming home, in their tortured bodies, telling their unspeakable stories. As Vivian Bercovici tells Brian from Israel, where she was formerly Canada’s ambassador, everything has changed now. Many hard-right Israelis who opposed the deal suddenly support it. People are swallowing the revolting prospect of freeing murderous Palestinian terrorists to rescue Jewish innocents from hell. Bercovici and Brian also discuss Trump’s determination that Hamas will not keep Gaza, and his unprecedented proposals for extinguishing the Palestinian death cult once and for all. (Recorded January 31, 2025)

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It’s not just about tariffs. If you examine what the America First advisers around Trump really think, you’ll understand their determination to undertake a sweeping overhaul of the global economic system — and why they’re starting with Canada. Brian’s guests this week, trade researcher Carlo Dade, from the Canada West Foundation, and Ian Lee, public policy professor at Carlton University, have done their homework. That’s unlike many of our political leaders, who seem oblivious to the real threats — or who, worse, like certain Liberals, think they can exploit a destructive tariff war for partisan gain. As Ian and Carlo tell Brian, the people around Trump aren’t scared of higher import prices, and what they’re really interested in from Canada doesn’t even seem to be on Ottawa’s radar. (Recorded January 24, 2025)

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Was a photo of Mark Carney with Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend leaked by Chrystia Freeland’s team? Who sent the Rolls Royce to Carney’s campaign launch event? Is Karina Gould’s candidacy just a strategy to undermine Freeland? Brian talks with Liberal strategists Sharan Kaur, who worked inside the Trudeau government, and Kieran McMurchy, consultant at Navigator, to break down the hits and misses in the first days of the front-runner Freeland and Carney campaigns — and how their duel could get much dirtier. They also consider the bemusing other candidates in the race to replace Justin Trudeau as Liberal leader and prime minister. Plus, they ask the biggest question of all: Whether any winner could salvage the wreck Trudeau made of the Liberal party. (Recorded January 17, 2025)

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By sheer force of will, Paul Godfrey built a Major League Baseball team in what was then Canada’s sleepy second city, when everyone doubted it could be done. (He ended up in the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and the Blue Jays would go on to win two World Series.) He helped shake up a staid and boring local newspaper scene with the scrappy Toronto Sun, before going on to build a national media empire. Now, after 14 years at the helm of Postmedia, Godfrey is pivoting again. The legendary politician and businessman talks with Brian this week about his astounding rise from his humble start in local government to where he is now. And he says one of his next projects will be to trying to once again help Toronto, the city he loves, which he says has become a city in decline. (Recorded December 18, 2024)

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Over the holidays, we’re looking back at some of the best episodes of 2024, which in December marked the fifth anniversary of the COVID virus escaping China and wreaking global havoc. We’re still learning how institutions and officials politicized science during the pandemic to justify economic lockdowns, border closures, school shutdowns and other measures that lacked supportive evidence but carried grave consequences. Vanessa Dylyn is the award-winning director of the documentary Covid Collateral, which shows how real scientific methods and debate were sidelined, even banished, as governments faked expertise during COVID-19 with the help of compliant doctors and journalists. She joins Brian this week to talk about the shocking things she discovered while investigating the official responses to COVID; the damaging public health policies that continue to affect individuals and our society; and how we can hopefully prevent this all from happening again when the next pandemic comes. (Recorded June 27, 2024)

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Over the holidays, we’re looking back at some of the best episodes of 2024, a year that may have marked the beginning of the end for left-wing political censorship, especially by professional bodies. Last January, the courts shut the door on overturning a decision by the College of Psychologists of Ontario that ordered Jordan Peterson into a mandatory rehabilitation program for his politically incorrect tweets, which had nothing to do with his practice and involved none of his patients. As Peterson tells host Brian Lilley, his options are now to either lose his licence, try moving somewhere else or submit and undergo “re-education” for his controversial opinions. But even more importantly, Peterson says that if Canada’s speech police can come for a famous psychologist and bestselling author like him, they can certainly come for anyone — including you. (Recorded Jan. 20, 2024)

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His finance minister has quit in disgust. He seems only able to come up with increasingly bad ideas. His government is in disarray, with crises in immigration, housing, the cost-of-living, deficits, debt and more. And the U.S. is about to hit Canada with economy-killing tariffs. Yet, as Brian discusses with Postmedia’s Lorne Gunter and Chris Selley on our year-end political panel, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems determined to tough it out and stick around as long as he can. The trouble is, Trudeau’s refusal to admit to his disastrous defeat — and his party’s unwillingness to force him out — is seriously hurting innocent Canadians. (Recorded December 19, 2024)

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Canadians have been deceived into believing that having strong, stable banks means sacrificing competition, as Andrew Spence, author of Fleeced: Canadians Versus Their Banks, tells Brian. So, we have no real competition, which means we pay more — loads more — for ATMs, Interac, mortgages, NSF fees, exchange rates and more, than people do in comparable countries. No wonder Canadian banks are making out like bandits relative to their U.S. and U.K. peers. Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way, Spence explains. Especially as new, disruptive fintech firms are ready to offer us better, cheaper and more convenient banking services. But the Big Six are doing everything they can to stop that from happening. And they’re succeeding — with the government’s help. (Recorded November 29, 2024)

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