The Herle Burly

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

Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Alberta voted to stay in Canada on Monday by a roughly 75/25 margin. But the real story is what the referendum did to Alberta politics. David is joined by Zain Velji, campaign strategist, co-director of Naheed Nenshi’s Alberta NDP leadership run, and partner at Northweather, and Dan Arnold, who lived most of his youth in Alberta and was former lead research strategist for the Trudeau Liberals, and is now chief strategy officer at Pollara.

They dig into why separatist support barely budged, how Trump and Musk ended up motivating federalist turnout, and why Danielle Smith lost four of the nine questions she wrote herself despite outspending her opponents ten to one. Can a premier most Albertans suspect is a separatist purge the separatists from her own party? Is the Calgary-rural coalition coming apart, and is Nenshi’s NDP building something more durable? Plus: how Pierre Poilievre navigated a split base, whether Mark Carney now has permission to engage in Alberta, and whether Ottawa should draw a line on two-tier healthcare.

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, 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, and the Canadian Climate Institute.

Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! The Chiefs are back. This franchise has spawned more sequels than The Fast and the Furious, but unlike Vin Diesel, these three bring something new every time. David is joined by Brian Topp, Ian Brodie and Tim Murphy for a wide-ranging hour on a country being tested from three directions at once:

Quebec. The Parti Québécois has won a weak minority. They discuss whether the new government will use every tool it has to build “winning conditions” for a referendum, and whether Ottawa should confront it the way Trudeau and Dion did or quietly take its issues away one by one.

Alberta. With the referendum entering its final week, they look at what Prime Minister Carney should say when he lands in the province. They also ask whether the vote could be the beginning of the end for the UCP. And one of the things they discussed with an emerging throughline in both of those votes: the potential of immigration becoming a real wedge issue in Canada again. 

Canada–U.S. There’s no deal in sight. Can Canadians hold together as the economic pain mounts, and what would it take to keep that solidarity intact?

Plus, the ever important role of the Opposition. Carney’s consensus is unusually strong. Should the Conservatives and NDP keep chipping away at it, or concede the moment and position themselves for the fight that comes after Trump?

Brian Topp was the former chief of staff to Rachel Notley and deputy chief of staff to Roy Romanow, and is now a founding partner at GT & Company. Ian Brodie was Stephen Harper’s first chief of staff and helped found the CPC; he is now a political science professor at the University of Calgary and senior advisor at New West Public Affairs. And Tim Murphy, former chief of staff to Paul Martin and now executive vice president and chief strategic affairs officer at Aecon.

Settle in for an hour of the kind of conversation you only get from people who’ve actually run government at the highest levels of Canadian government..

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, 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, and the Canadian Climate Institute.

Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! When Ukrainian drones hit the Russian internet giant Yandex this week, bot traffic and propaganda posts reportedly fell off a cliff. That tells you something about how manufactured and polluted our information space has become. Andrew MacDougall, five-time Herle Burly guest, former Director of Communications for Prime Minister Harper, now partner at Trafalgar Strategy in London, and senior policy fellow at the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, joins David to explain the attention economy. Are we paying big tech with our time and our brains instead of our money? And is it taking a wrecking our mental health and our democracy?

Andrew argues that regulators have spent years trying to clean up the mess instead of shutting off the machine that makes it. He wants to go after the business model itself: make people pay for social media, end anonymous accounts, and use competition and product liability law against addictive design. David offers a few counterpoints. He points out that Canada has managed a genuine national consensus in the face of Trump 2.0, and the two dig into why Mark Carney's steady, analogue style is landing with anxious voters. Then they tackle the AI wave about to supercharge all of it, and why governments are doing nothing about it while 75% of Canadians want it regulated.

Is democracy about to fall into the gap between our Paleolithic brains and godlike technology? Have a listen.

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, 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, and the Canadian Climate Institute.

Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! David sits down with his old friend who's now at the centre of the federal government’s policy agenda: The Honourable Steven MacKinnon, Canada’s Minister of Transport and Government House Leader.

Minister MacKinnon lays out why Ottawa the agenda is necessary as he pushes back on privatization claims and comparisons to Ontario premier Mike Harris’ sale of the 407. He explains how Bill C-39, the Building Canada Strong Act, changes federal labour disputes, and David presses him on whether it amounts to the end of the right to strike. They also discuss how the government plans to meet its duty to consult First Nations while approving projects within a year.

MacKinnon offers a candid admission that, with a crowded agenda and the previous NDP deal, the Trudeau government didn't spend enough time on the economy. The conversation wraps with his case for why the Liberal brand still owns the political centre to this day.

It's an insider's view of what the government is actually doing and why. Join us.

Order a copy of Anthony's new book here: https://www.indigo.ca/products/untitled-77?variant=46685129572562. 

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, 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, and the Canadian Climate Institute.

Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! This week David sits down with Anthony Scaramucci. The man immortalized in the dictionary as a unit of time.

From Wall Street to the White House to fellow podcaster on The Rest Is Politics: US, Anthony is out with his new book, All the Wrong Moves. He argues that three catastrophic decisions — China's admission to the WTO, the bailout of Wall Street after 2008, and the deficit-financed invasion of Iraq — set the stage for Donald Trump.

Scaramucci knows Prime Minister Carney personally, going back three decades to their Goldman Sachs days, and he doesn't hold back: calling Carney the best of any Western leader at managing Trump, "not even close." And he even brings us the receipts, literally revealing a photo of the pair at his annual Davos wine party. 

He also gets candid about his own reasons for joining the Trump administration in the first place, what it cost him personally and professionally, and why, despite still calling himself a Republican, he's actively working to see MAGA politically destroyed.

The conversation ranges from the unraveling of the post-2008 financial system and the strange marriage of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party that produced MAGA, to what a post-Trump America might actually look like, and whether the damage done to allies like Canada and the UK can ever really be undone.

Join us for a sharp, funny, and brutally honest conversation.

Order a copy of Anthony's new book here: https://www.indigo.ca/products/untitled-77?variant=46685129572562. 

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, 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, OECTA, and the Canadian Climate Institute.

Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Three years ago, David convened our second Ontario Liberal leadership debate in studio, no podiums, no clock, just candidates talking. Now, with the party searching again for its way back from third place, we’re doing it a third time.

All five contenders for the Ontario Liberal leadership sat down face-to-face with David for a wide-ranging, unscripted conversation covering affordability, healthcare, the economy, trade with the U.S., and what it actually takes to beat Doug Ford. The goal wasn't to stage a roast but to let each candidate make their case for a very serious job. If you're a party member with a vote coming up, this one's essential listening.

Five candidates, one contest, and a party finding its way out of the wilderness.

The candidates (in order of introduction): Dylan Marando, Stephanie Bowman, Navdeep Bains, Lee Fairclough, and Eric Lombardi. 

Our goal is simply this: To help eligible voters make an excellent choice. 

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, 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, and the Canadian Climate Institute.

Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! This week, we indulge in a little podcast inbreeding here at Air Quotes Media with our colleagues Mike McDonald and Geoff Meggs – hosts of Hotel Pacifico and two of the sharpest political strategists in the country – to dig into the extraordinary unraveling happening on the right in British Columbia.

Once a stable coalition of free-market Liberals and Conservatives, the province's "not-NDP" option has collapsed into open civil war under new leader Kerry-Lynne Findlay, with nine MLAs fleeing her caucus, breakaway parties multiplying, and a culture war base increasingly hostile to the "board of trade" politics that used to define the coalition. Mike, former chief of staff to Christy Clark, and Geoff, former chief of staff to the late John Horgan, walk us through how a party that nearly beat David Eby a year ago has since imploded so spectacularly. And why the province's upcoming by-election could decide whether Findlay survives at all.

But this isn't just a BC story. As Mike and Geoff argue, the forces tearing apart the province's right (radicalization, purity tests, a rejection of business-class conservatism in favour of culture-war populism) are the same ones reshaping Conservative politics nationally and beyond. David, Mike, and Geoff also get into Eby's precarious hold on power, the fight over Indigenous rights and DRIPA, the collapsing softwood lumber and forestry sectors, and whether a snap fall election is coming.

If you think what happens in BC stays in BC, this episode will change your mind. 

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, 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, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Back in July, the Wall Street Journal ran a striking series on how Europe is quietly rethinking its arrangements with the world to counter a changing, increasingly predatory United States. And surprisingly, named Mark Carney as one of the leaders pushing Europe in that direction, pointing back to his Davos speech and his idea of "variable geometry" alliances replacing the old hub-and-spoke reliance on Washington. 

We want to explore these themes: what does it means for institutions like NATO and the G7 to become secondary to newer, looser alignments? How does the Western world meet the challenge of China going forward? And what does all of this mean for Canada's economy and its place in the world?

To dig into it, we bring in two brilliant people today: Jennifer Welsh and Colin Robertson.

Jennifer Welsh is a four-time guest of the pod, Rhodes Scholar, co-founder of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict. Currently, the Director of the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University.

And making his first appearance, Colin Robertson. He served as a Canadian diplomat for over 30 years. He helped negotiate the original Canada/U.S. Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA. Currently, he’s a Fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and host of its Global Exchange podcast.

They dig into why countries from Europe to Australia to South Korea are hedging their bets on America, what "variable geometry" actually looks like in practice, whether the G7 and G20 are still fit for the world we live in, and some genuinely concrete questions too. Like whether Canada should still buy the F-35, and why Mexico deserves to be treated as a real ally rather than a partner of convenience. 

A fascinating, wide-ranging conversation about what's replacing the old international order, and Canada's surprising role at the centre of it. Stay with us for the hour. 

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, 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, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! This one's for anyone tired of the heat-with-no-light that passes for policy debate on Twitter. David brings together three super smart policy minds who understand government — spanning different ideologies and varying degrees of partisanship. It’s a rare, respectful, rational, 90-minute conversation about the predicament Canada finds itself in and what policy steps the country should take next in this trade war with the US.

Tyler Meredith, Jennifer Robson, and Ginny Roth dig into whether Canada should still be racing back to the table with the Americans, or whether this is finally the moment to build real independence from that relationship. They debate what's actually achievable through internal free trade. Tyler makes the case the economic models behind it are, in his words, "bullshit" and why Canadian businesses have been sitting on their capital for the better part of a decade.

They’ll also discuss what it means that the federal government has quietly become one of the country's biggest investors: building and owning pipelines, de-risking major projects, and increasingly deciding which sectors to grow. 

They dig into the politically thorny stuff too: interprovincial trade barriers nobody wants to touch, the tanker ban, First Nations consultation, and why "brain drain" needs to come back into the conversation. 

And they close on the immediate question of who's actually hurting right now: auto workers, steel workers, forestry towns … and whether EI, retraining, and liquidity supports are anywhere close to adequate for what's coming next. 

This is a substantive episode that spans real disagreement and real depth. Pour yourself a coffee and settle in with the panel:

Tyler is the former Head of Fiscal and Economic Policy for Prime Minister Trudeau and Ministers of Finance, Chrystia Freeland and Bill Morneau. Today, he’s a Founding Partner at Meredith/Boessenkool & Phillips Policy Advisors.

Jennifer has served in senior roles in policy development and research with the Federal Government. She’s now Program Director and Associate Professor of Political Management at Carleton University.

And Ginny has spent a life in politics, most recently as Directory of Comms for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative leadership campaign. She’s a sought after commentator across various media and a Partner at Crestview Strategy advising clients on public policy. 

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, 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, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! David spent the weekend, like a lot of Canadians, trying to process the breakdown in Canada-US trade talks and the unusually sharp statement Mark Carney delivered to the country the day before. So he called in The Chiefs: three former chiefs of staff to some of Canada's most prominent political leaders.

It gets pointed fast.

Did the Americans overplay a genuinely greedy hand? Did Carney make the right call walking away? Was the government's credibility already damaged by how it handled the Gordie Howe Bridge file and did is show weakness the Americans noticed?

There's a real disagreement over Danielle Smith's freelancing in Washington, whether the federal government has been too closed and secretive through the negotiations, and whether the actual documents from the talks should be released publicly.

They also look ahead: what a genuine pivot away from US dependence would require, the risk to public finances if bond markets get skittish, how fast major projects could realistically move, and lastly, what all of this means for Pierre Poilievre now facing renewed questions about his leadership.

A tough, sharp, no-holds-barred conversation between three pros of very different stripes who've all sat at the highest levels of government. Not to be missed.

Enjoy the hour with:

Ian Brodie – first Chief of Staff to Stephen Harper. Now, Professor of Political Science at the University of Calgary, and Senior Advisor at New West Public Affairs.

Tim Murphy – former Chief of Staff to Paul Martin. Now, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategic Affairs Officer at AECON.

Brian Topp – former Chief of Staff to Rachel Notley in Alberta and Deputy Chief to Roy Romanow in Saskatchewan. Now, founding partner at GT&co. 

Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, 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.