Beware of governments making laws to “protect the children,” warns Ian Runkle, this week’s guest. The Liberals’ Bill C-63 rules to stop online child exploitation and revenge porn seem well-intentioned. But the Online Harms Act is so broad it could end up censoring popular streaming entertainment, says Runkle, a lawyer specializing in civil liberties and host of YouTube’s Runkle of the Bailey. More worryingly, as Runkle tells Brian, it’s all wrapped up with stiff new penalties and powers against supposedly harmful ideas that are so prone to abuse they can only encourage platforms to pre-emptively block Canadians’ speech — including yours. (Recorded March 6, 2024)

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We won’t need roads where we’re going. At least that’s how Liberal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault wants it. He wants to end funding for new roads in Canada and ban cars that use gas or diesel, while forcing our heating and energy to become all-electric. Meanwhile, as energy researcher and commentator Parker Gallant tells Brian this week, we’re throwing billions at battery plants that lack materials and even markets, as buyers shun EVs, as we push demand for power infrastructure we don’t have. As Gallant explains, all these “net-zero” plans being forced on us by Ottawa look like they could well be ruinously costly — while driving us in the wrong direction. (Recorded February 21, 2024)

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The tension between Ottawa and Alberta is rising. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has most recently attacked Premier Danielle Smith’s plans to restrict children from medically transitioning genders. This, after his environment minister demanded the province curb its oil industry and overhaul its gas-dependent power grid. Smith joins Brian Lilley this week, and says that while she would prefer to collaborate with Trudeau, she’ll fight if necessary. Smith also tells Brian why she thinks Trudeau has already begun campaigning for his next election by beating up on Alberta. In that case, she says to him, “let’s just do it”: call an election and let Canadians decide whether they prefer federal -provincial confrontation or co-operation. (Recorded February 22, 2024)

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Eylon Levy spends his day debunking all the patently ridiculous propaganda against Israel. The latest uproar the government’s official spokesman is facing is the fevered campaign to try keeping Israel from invading Rafah. As Levy tells host Brian Lilley, this plays right into Hamas’s hands. Levy discusses how the international media and naive governments, including Canada’s, are swallowing Hamas’s disinformation, unwittingly doing the terror group’s bidding. And he explains how Israel’s success so far in smashing Hamas is driving the hysteria around the plan to take Rafah — the terror group’s last remaining stronghold. (Recorded February 11, 2024)

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It’s been a frenzy since Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced sweeping new policies limiting gender transitioning for children. She’s been accused of endangering lives and was blasted by the prime minister. What isn’t happening, as guest Julia Malott tells Brian this week, is a respectful discussion that accepts that all sides want what’s best for kids. Malott is a parent, columnist and online commentator. She’s also transgender. She explains why she doesn’t think Smith’s plans are completely unreasonable, even if she disagrees with certain elements. And why she believes there are no easy answers in this issue, so we all need to dial back the hysteria and talk it out like adults. (Recorded February 8, 2024)

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Liberals were praising Jean Chrétien on his 90th birthday recently. Then, almost immediately afterward, they were distancing themselves from Canada’s 20th prime minister after news he had once tried watering down an Indigenous rights declaration. That’s the peculiar, contradictory legacy of “the little guy from Shawnigan” that former Liberal party president Stephen LeDrew and National Post columnist Chris Selley appraise this week with host Brian Lilley. They discuss the reverence for Chrétien in the Liberal party and certain media, despite his cringey opinions and debatable morality. They also look at how much weirder the Liberals have become since the man stepped down. (Recorded January 18, 2023)

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After Hamas’s Oct. 7 mass slaughter of Jews in Israel, a surprising thing happened: Iranians inside the Islamic Republic and Persians around the world declared their support for … Israel. Ontario MPP Goldie Ghamari was one of them. She joins Brian this week to explain how Islamofascism promoted by Tehran and Hamas is the common enemy that Jews and the West share with people from Iran. She also discusses Iran’s alarming infiltration into Canada, how it menaces anti-regime Iranian-Canadians, and the Trudeau government’s inexplicable appeasement of a brutal dictatorship that represses women, sponsors global terror and has the blood of hundreds of Canadians on its hands. (Recorded January 11, 2023)

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The verdict is final. The courts have now decisively refused to overturn 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 no actual 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 January 20, 2024)

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He’s publicly objected to his own Liberal government and the prime minister turning against Israel’s war on Hamas. He fought for his party to stand firm for Quebec anglophones against the province’s attacks — and lost. Anthony Housefather has been breaking publicly a lot lately with his own Liberal party on major issues. This week, host Brian Lilley talks to Housefather about what it’s been like to lose these key policy battles and how he manages to keep working alongside caucus colleagues when they are opposed to his own principles. (Recorded January 11, 2023)

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Somehow Donald Ziraldo beat the odds: He and his business partner made an international success out of their Inniskillin Winery in Ontario. Starting back in the days when Canadian wine was dismissed as inferior plonk, they went on to produce and sell highly regarded, award-winning vintages all over the globe. But their story is far too uncommon, as Ziraldo tells Brian in this week’s episode. He believes that Canada is perfectly capable of selling far more excellent wine to the world and making wine a much bigger part of our export economy. That is, if only Canadian policies and governments would get out of the way. (Recorded November 2, 2023)

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