State-funded church schools have been controversial in Canada since before the country was even founded, yet three provinces still maintain Catholic school-boards to this day. While most reformers seek to exorcise church control over education entirely, some (like the roundly mocked) John Tory have sought to spread the model of publicly funded religious schooling to other religious denominations.  

This week, your hosts debate the issue, with Jacob coming out swinging for religious education as a way to promote cultural pluralism and hedge against anti-state radicalization; and Liam strongly defending a singular, secular curriculum. Sparks will fly, and after hearing some classic McPherson moans at the beginning of this episode, you'll wonder if we mean that in every sense of the phrase!

Pope Francis has issued an apology (of sorts) for the genocidal actions of his church in their managing of Indian Residential Schools, but repairing the damage of forced conversion has been halting at best.

One potential source of remediation still stares politicians in the face: taxing large religious institutions. This week, Liam and Jacob discuss how the Canadian state should begin redistributing the stolen, colonial wealth that helped build the Roman Catholic Church into one of the richest organizations in human history, taking the spoils and redirecting it towards the Church's many victims.

Also on this episode, a denunciation of Elizabeth May's latest attempt to keep the Green Party in the political wilderness (by leading it once again), and a smattering of praise for Joe Manchin saving the Canadian auto industry with his signing on to a North America-wide EV credit.

Just as Liam and Jacob were recording this episode detailing a 2018 gangrape allegedly perpetrated by members of the Canadian World Junior's team, another case of alleged sexual assault featuring the 2003 Canadian World Junior's team surfaced in the news. Between these and several instances of coaches sexually predating their own, often-underage players, it seems that Hockey Canada is plagued with a violent culture more than happy to turn a blind eye to even the most disturbing forms of impropriety.

This week on the pod, your hosts discuss policy solutions that could clean up a sport very much in need of it while also vigorously debating whether or not the big money business of hockey makes this sort of misogynistic culture inevitable. With the stakes high and passions soaring, Speech from the Throne begins its first foray into the murky world of athletic politics. 

Current estimates for the number of civilians the United States has killed via drones during its War on Terror range between 900-2,200 (they've killed 10,000s of armed combatants in the same time). They were all killed without trial, even the (at least) four who were US citizens, all because they posed an imminent threat to the nation.

The current congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack has uncovered irrefutable evidence of Donald Trump's own threats to the United States, and yet, not only is he unlikely to duck away drone strikes any time soon like the rest of America's enemies, he's plotting himself a potential political comeback.

This week on the pod, Liam and Jacob will make the case for prosecuting former politicians. Although fraying institutional norms clearly can no longer reign in the overlords, the sword of justice just might. They're no fans of Madame Guillotine, but they're certainly beyond slaps on the wrist.

In this special edition of Speech from the Throne, Liam and Jacob sit down virtually with tech-sensation Blake Lemoine to discuss the Google-owned chat-bot he believes has become sentient: LaMDA. Both Blake and (according to Mr. Lemoine) LaMDA itself are primarily concerned with how humans might be threatened by the new spate of strengthening AI technology, and the pair hopes that by sounding the whistle on Silicon Valley's most disturbing practices while educating the public on how their data is used and commodified online, together they might just change the world.

(Cover art thanks to Bloomberg News)

With Patrick Brown's disqualification, Boris Johnson's resignation and Abe Shinzo's assassination taking place all in the same week, Liam and Jacob could hold their tongues no longer, which is why they're coming out of vacation with a special emergency episode that at least talks about two of the three craziest developments of Summer 2022. 

After Brown was removed from the ballot before CPC members even had a vote and Bojo was tossed the winds, the Anglo-Conservative movement clearly continues to devour its young in its relentless civil war between the far-right populists and dwindling neo-liberals. Do these shocking twists hint at a Canadian and British Tory Party ready to take the plunge into more extreme territory, or can the mythical centrists still return to save the day? Your hosts will try to make sense of it ... after they've caught a breath, that is.

Unprecedented, financially devastating inflation has rocketed its way onto the political stage in recent months and now, after months of denials or false prognostications of "temporary, transitory supply shocks", its presence and its effects are no longer up for debate. Who should be harmed most by this inflationary crisis and whose profits should be grossly enlarged by it, however, very much is. 

This week, Jacob and Liam weigh in on this contentious debate, pondering how progressives can change their messaging and policies proposals to ensure not just that ordinary workers are protected from the worst of the coming market shocks, but that Canada's largest corporations and wealthiest oligarchs are ones ultimately footing the bill. 

After generations of Canadians quietly careening our heads in shame, hoping against hope that one day our oblivious cousins to the south might acknowledge our pathetic, puny existence, it seems a polarized American media is finally turning its sights upon us, teaching too late that the only thing worse than being ignored is being seen. With Trudeau commanding world-wide condemnation from the online far-right as an epitome of the "woke", virtue-signalling leader, the PM's exploits and those of his increasingly conspiratorial opposition (i.e. the Freedom Convoy) are drawing international condemnation and inspiration from a politically-stratifying corporate media machine. American genocide-denialists are already leaking into the Canadian Residential Schools discussion, and now that the US Congressional hearings into the Jan. 6, 2021 coup attempt are in full-swing, expect to see Yankee GOP commentators supporting the dismantling of democracy, with their clips and messages conveniently packaged for rapid cross-border diffusion on social media.

Jacob and Liam examined just how trapped our political discussion appears to be while discussing what, if anything, can break through the fascist garble.

After a Liberal trouncing in Ontario, a potential red wipe-out in Quebec this fall, and thirty years of no provincially competitive Liberal party in Western Canada, the vultures are circling over the federal Liberals soon to enter the post-Trudeau era. Were the Liberals in 2011 on an inevitable downward spiral that only the celebrity and charm of Justin Trudeau could temporarily abate, or can another Grit don his mantle and save Canada's "natural governing party" from possible ruin? 

Your hosts, Jacob and Liam discuss the trouble with Trudeau: can't live with him, but if you're the federal Liberals, maybe they just can't live without him.

In the end, it wasn't even close. Doug Ford won an even larger majority than in 2018 on the backs of a perfect split in the popular vote between the Liberals and NDP. Clearly, a divided left can only bolster the PCs, so where should progressives flock? With the Liberals only growing their miniscule caucus from 7 members to 8, bereft once again of official party status and the funding it would entail, should ordinary left-wingers make like Steven Del Duca and flee en masse? And if all the NDP needed to become the true progressive choice was new leadership, which leader should they choose? Or has Horwath starved the party of so much oxygen its stars have all since faded?

Once the crying fits die down, your hosts will try to explore these questions, though with that seat count still lingering, depression is only ever a page view away.