The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, and Fidelity Investments Canada.

Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites. A fellow podcaster on the show today. But leaving his credentials there would be selling our guest very short indeed. 

Michael Liebreich is here!

He’s an acclaimed thought leader on clean energy, mobility, technology, climate, sustainability and finance. The CEO of Liebreich Associates and co-managing partner of EcoPragma Capital, which focuses on companies committed to the net-zero transition. Michael’s former roles include membership in the UK’s Taskforce on Energy Efficiency, advisor to the UK Board of Trade, as well as advisor to the UN on Sustainable Energy for All. He’s addressed the UN General Assembly.

His very own podcast is called “Cleaning Up” where he hosts in-depth conversations with leaders in climate change and its solutions.  Guests have included Tony Blair, Prince Albert of Monaco ... and some fellow named Mark Carney.

So today, I’m talking with Michael about clean energy and the energy transition. Lessons learned from efforts until this point. I want to know how clean electrification moves forward and accelerates as political interest in western democracies wanes. And lastly, what should Canada’s role in all of this be?

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.

Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.

The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, and Fidelity Investments Canada.

Alright, greetings you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites. A special show today. If you’re any kind of regular listener to either this podcast or Curse of Politics, you know my brilliant friend and mentor Elly Alboim passed away almost 2 weeks ago.

To précis a remarkably accomplished professional life, Elly was a journalist for the CBC for almost a quarter century, before becoming Parliamentary Bureau Chief for TV news and National Political Editor. He was a senior policy and strategy advisor to Paul Martin and Kathleen Wynne.  And a long-time educator in Journalism at Carleton and Principal at Earnscliffe Strategies.

I want to remember Elly’s life and work today. The kind of man he was. His influence on people, on the country and beyond. 

With me to do that are 3 friends and colleagues who worked with him, sparred with him, learned from him, loved him:

Peter Mansbridge, Keith Boag and Peter Nicholson.

2 titans of the CBC. An economist and head of policy. Herle Burly alumni, all.

Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.

Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.

The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, AltaGas, and Fidelity Investments Canada.

Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Fred DeLorey is here!

For those who may not know, Fred was the National Campaign Manager for Erin O’Toole in 2021. Before that the Director of Field Operations for Ontario Premier Doug Ford. And he’s a former Director of Political Operations for Stephen Harper. As well as Director of Comms and National Spokesperson. Today, he’s Chair and Chief Strategy Officer at NorthStar Public Affairs.

So, with that kind of CCV ... Conservative Curriculum Vitae ... we’re going to get an operative’s perspective on the mood and moves of Canada’s Conservatives, campaigning against Carney, referendums in Alberta and Quebec – lots more.

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.

Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.

The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.

Originally aired May 25, 2023, this episode is rebroadcast in memory of Elly Alboim: an uncommon mind and a rare presence. Elly was brilliant, incisive, and deeply generous as a mentor and with his counsel. For anyone lucky enough to work with him, Elly was the person who could see the whole board at once. He was the person you wanted to speak last in a meeting because his opinion simply mattered most. This episode captures that gift in full for our audience. Elly died at the age of 78. 

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The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, and AltaGas.

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ORIGINAL POD DESCRIPTION: We’re bringing together 2 people —  “The Interns” — who mean a helluva lot to me in both a professional and personal sense. As mentors, colleagues, advisors and friends.

Elly Alboim and Bill Fox are here!

Both Elly and Bill are now 2-time Herle Burly guests. An honorific I’m assuming will go right to the top of their CVs. But listen up to their bona fides: Elly was a journalist for the CBC for almost a quarter century, before becoming Parliamentary Bureau Chief for TV news and National Political Editor. He was a senior advisor to Paul Martin as well as Kathleen Wynne. Today he’s an Associate Professor of Journalism at Carleton and a Principal at Earnscliffe Strategies. And he wrote a fantastic piece on today’s topic, called “Eliminating the CBC”, which you can check out at Air Quotes Media. Bill began as working journalist and became Ottawa and Washington bureau chief for The Toronto Star. He then turned his eye toward politics as Director of Communications for Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Today, he’s got about 18 academic degrees from small shops like Harvard and Carleton, and he’s a leading analyst of media and communication. His latest book is “Trump, Trudeau, Tweets, Truth: A Conversation” which is a fantastic read.

We’re going dive into a topic that’s become quite the political battleground over the last little while: The role and importance of CBC news … How the news division is performing … the case for dismantling … other legitimate journalistic alternatives … but first, media coverage of China election interference.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, and AltaGas.

Greetings you curious, you courageous Herle Burly-ites! Courage – real courage – is a pretty valuable commodity in the current geo-political climate. Speaking out, truth telling as the situation warrants it, and according to one’s own principles, is a manifestation of that.
 
Our guest today is Jason Kenney, the 18th Premier of Alberta, and a multi-portfolio Cabinet Minister for Stephen Harper’s Conservatives from 2006-2015.
 
Jason has been nothing but forthright in his statements about Canada’s current relationship with the U.S., as well as the Trump administration’s repeated provocations and threats to our sovereignty.
 
Today we’re going to talk about:

• Trump and the MAGA movement 
• The just completed CPC Convention in Calgaryand the endorsement of Pierre Poilievre
• And, about Alberta’s separatists and the prospect of a referendum.

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.

Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.

The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, and AltaGas.

Alright, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Sound the horns, because we have a 3-time guest on the show today. Pollster, campaign guru, and political strategist Nick Kouvalis is here.

If you follow Nick on Twitter, you’ll know him as candid. At times, shockingly so. And perhaps never more so than this week in politics. Which is to say, Nick has been clear he’s a Conservative Party and Poilievre supporter, and he’s anti-Trump. He’s also said that Carney’s Davos speech was true in every respect and exactly what he wanted to hear from his Prime Minister in this political moment. 

So, with all that as context, and with the Conservative Convention in Calgary just days away, I want to talk to Nick, broadly, about today’s Canadian electorate, the Conservative voting coalition, and why he thinks Poilievre will be PM after the next election ... a few years from now.

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.

Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.

The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, and AltaGas.

Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! It occurs to us here at Air Quotes Media, that when the Prime Minister goes to China ... makes an historic trade deal ... and then invokes the term “New World Order” in his statement to the press – Carney said it slowly, dramatically, deliberately – you gather the most expert people you can think of and record a podcast about it, immediately.

David Mulroney and Jennifer Welsh are with me today.

David was Canada’s ambassador to the People’s Republic of China from 2009 to 2012. Prior to that he headed Canada’s office in Taiwan and served as our Senior Official for Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation. His 2016 book about our relationship with China, Middle Power, Middle Kingdom, was awarded with J.W, Dafoe Prize.

Jennifer is the Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security at McGill University and the Director of the Max Bell School of Public Policy. She’s a Rhodes Scholar, earning a Master and Doctorate in International Relations at Oxford, and co-founded the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.

So today, I want to talk about what Trump, and the U.S. is saying, and doing, and the shifting world order. What might it look like? What are the implications for Canada? Can we influence it in any meaningful way? And the actions Prime Minister Carney has taken to date, the deal with China, and also his work in Europe and the Mid-East.

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.

Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.

The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail.

Greetings and a happy 2026, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! What better way to kick off our podcast year than by convening the most popular panel we run at Air Quotes Media. So demanded by this listenership, we’ve welcomed back The Chiefs to give us their governance wisdom!

These are 3 former Chiefs of Staff to some of Canada’s most accomplished heads of government: Ian Brodie, Brian Topp and Tim Murphy.

Today on the show, 3 core conversations:

• I want to talk about the enormously delicate task of managing the Canada/U.S. relationship.
• Ana Bailao, Douglas Guzman, and Dawn Farrell – 3 outsiders brought in by Prime Minister Carney – each charged with a key element of the government’s agenda. How’s it going to work? Is it going to work?
• And Prime Minister Carney’s time abroad and how to run a government while he's travelling.

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.

Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.

The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail.

Alright, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites. We’ll get right into it, because we have a Cabinet Minister on the Christmas pod today. And not just any Cabinet Minister ... The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s Minister of Finance and National Revenue!

Today marks his 2nd appearance on The Herle Burly and you all know he delivered Budget 2025 in the House, just 7 weeks ago, so that’s what we’re going to talk about for the next 45 minutes, and, in the broadest sense: the state of the economy.

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.

Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.

The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, CPA Ontario, and the Port of Vancouver.

Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites. I’m looking for the most accurate adjective to sum up the year in Canadian politics. Watershed ... Pivotal ... Seismic.

They all fit to some extent. But they don’t really capture the whole of it, eh? So, the pod today is a Journalists Panel to do a fulsome Year in Review on all that went down politically across the country, in 2025.

Joining me are 3 titans of the Canadian political pen: Paul Wells, Tonda MacCharles, and Kathleen Petty.

When you’re a titan at something, and work in media to boot, you’re obviously pretty well known, so just as a primer:

Paul Wells – formerly at Maclean’s, the National Post and The Gazette. He now publishes his own brilliant and widely read newsletter: paulwells.substack.com.

Tonda MacCharles – Ottawa Bureau Chief and Senior Reporter for the Toronto Star. Spent nearly a decade on CBC’s The National and The Fifth Estate.

Kathleen Petty – Host of West of Centre Podcast. Host of Alberta at Noon. Former executive producer of CBC News Calgary and host of The House.

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.

Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.

The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.