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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Imagine Indigenous people getting to vote for the first time — and voting for John A. Macdonald. Many did. And it was Canada’s first prime minister who gave them the vote. The Conservative leader also kept Aboriginal communities fed (against fierce Liberal opposition) when the buffalo disappeared and protected them from disease, as Patrice Dutil, author of the new book, Sir John A. Macdonald and The Apocalyptic Year 1885, tells Brian. And, yes, Macdonald also offered Indigenous children schooling: a well-intended initiative he’s now being vilified for. But Canada now unfortunately privileges ahistorical, ignorant, and often spiteful slanders against John A. while lionizing a murderous secessionist like Louis Riel. As Dutil explains, Macdonald was a fascinating, brilliant, and benevolent founding father. It’s time we remembered that again. (Recorded November 28, 2024)

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What was once the best immigration system in the world has been turned on its head, former immigration minister and premier Jason Kenney tells Brian this week — all because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has preferred pandering platitudes over practical policy. After eight years of mass migration, Canadians everywhere — including immigrants — are suffering with problems in housing, health care and employment. What’s more, all these millions of temporary residents and unverified asylum-claimants he let in know we lack the capacity to make them leave. Now, Kenney warns, with Trump about to start deportations, we could soon be flooded with hundreds of thousands — or even millions — more. (Recorded November 29, 2024)

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You’re not welcome in “so-called Canada.” That’s what academics and activists call this country, which they declare “illegitimate.” And, as Adam Kirsch, author of the new book On Settler Colonialism tells Brian, these people aren’t using metaphors. They truly see anyone who isn’t Indigenous as an active colonizer and criminal who doesn’t belong. The idea is steadily gaining currency in our schools, society and government, and it’s brutally playing out against Israel, where Hamas supporters euphorically envision forcing out all Jews (despite the Jews’ own indigeneity). But don’t kid yourself, Kirsch warns: They’re working to dismantle other countries, too — especially this one. And with every land acknowledgment and libel against our nation’s history, we’re helping them do it. (Recorded November 15, 2024)

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The federal Liberals are likely facing an even less friendly Donald Trump administration than last time. And they’re in an even weaker position than they were then, as Brian discusses this week with Postmedia columnist Chris Selley. Their minority government is teetering, mounting scandals are weighing them down, and their mass-immigration and anti-oil policies have hobbled our economy. Meanwhile, Republicans are steamed about our neglect of defence and security, and the president-elect will remember that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has spent the last four years using “MAGA” as an insult. With Washington likely to become extremely pushy and protectionist, Ottawa could get crushed. (Recorded November 15, 2024)

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