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Updated Oct 29
Business

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Updated 2019-11-07

4D AGO

BEST OF 2025: How a few rich dairy farmers are sabotaging Canada’s big, beautiful trading future

Over the holidays, we’re looking back at some of the best episodes of 2025. As in July, Canada’s restricted dairy market was recently raised again by U.S. officials who say it stands in the way of ending disputes and settling trade deals. This summer, Brian spoke with Martha Hall Findlay about how Ottawa’s refusal to liberate our globally detested supply-management system from trade negotiations continues to hurt our economic potential while causing endless headaches with major trading partners — all to benefit of a few thousand dairy-farmer millionaires. In this episode, Hall Findlay explains how this small cartel works, why it’s so powerful and why it hurts not just consumers, but every other trade-exposed Canadian business. (Originally recorded July 4, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

4d ago

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57 min
DEC 15

Carney helps Chinese interference make a comeback

All the hostage-taking, election meddling and spy rings are being swept aside by a Liberal Prime Minister who, like the last one, seems only too eager to cozy up to China. That’s what Brian discusses with Charles Burton, former diplomat to China, who has a new book: The Beaver and the Dragon: How China Out-Manoeuvred Canada's Diplomacy, Security, and Sovereignty. Burton points out the alarming way Carney has obligingly adopted Beijing’s spin on bilateral relations, even as the communists continue to harm Canada, including with tariffs on agriculture. Xi Jinping has succeeded in “subordinating” Carney, Burton says, while the dictator revs up more subversion and undermining of what he believes is now the most Chinese-infiltrated country in the western world: ours. (Recorded December 5, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dec 15

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50 min
3D AGO

How some migrant farm workers wind up exploited under the Temporary Foreign Worker program

Canada’s agriculture industry employs tens of thousands of temporary foreign workers to help pick the produce that winds up on your plate. While many see this as a lifeline, a way to earn money to send to families back home, there are concerns the system is set up to exploit, and in some cases, abuse them. Robert Cribb, founder and director of the Investigative Journalism Bureau, joins host Dave Breakenridge to discuss the conditions under which these migrants work, and how the system designed to help bring them here for employment may actually be setting them up for harm. Further reading: 'This is the new slavery': Migrant farm workers underpaid, abused and injured Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

3d ago

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29 min
DEC 8

Say hello to pro-pipeline First Nations in B.C.

Listen to the premier of B.C., or the CBC, or the Association of First Nations and you’d think that Indigenous groups on the West Coast are determined to stop a new oil pipeline from Alberta. As MP Ellis Ross, former chief councillor of the Haisla Nation near Kitimat, tells Brian, a lot of First Nations are open to the opportunity for resource development to help them break dependency on Ottawa and find prosperity for their people. He also talks about how U.S. anti-oil groups are exploiting First Nations by offering them much-needed funding in exchange for backing their activist campaigns — like the widely quoted “Coastal First Nations” group that doesn’t even represent the area’s First Nations. (Recorded December 5, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dec 8

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39 min
DEC 1

No Western country seriously wants Ukraine to win

The Trump administration has been lambasted for its proposed peace plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war given its generosity to Moscow — yet Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he’s willing to build from it. As Matthew Bondy discusses with Brian, Kyiv has few options but to encourage America to step in and end the brutal, nearly four-year war, despite the deal’s insulting terms and the White House’s apparent warmth toward Russia. That’s because Ukraine isn’t winning, and Europe, Canada and other purported supporters keep offering more lip service than meaningful help. Bondy, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, tells Brian if Western countries won’t stop a barbarous but weak Russia, it raises the question of whether they care to defend western civilization at all. (Recorded November 28, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dec 1

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44 min
NOV 24

Liberals are playing silly games with the military again

Canada’s reputation for politically driven flip-flopping over important military purchases is getting bad, especially given Ottawa’s plans to dramatically beef up our forces. But here we go again: the Liberals, after cancelling the purchase of the F-35 next-generation fighter jet, then reversing years later, are considering cancelling again to spite a U.S. president who will be gone in 2028. Brian talks with David Bercuson, director of the University of Calgary’s Centre for Military and Strategic Studies and Alan Williams, former assistant deputy minister of materiel at the Department of National Defence. They discuss why the F-35 was picked in the first place (and then picked again) and how short-term politics is corrupting a momentous decision that could have grave consequences in a more dangerous world. (Recorded November 21, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nov 24

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54 min
NOV 10

Mark Carney shoots blanks, again

He promised a historic budget. He warned of big sacrifices. He said he had a vision. But what Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered was not much more than a big-spending, big-government Trudeau-style plan, with a bit less hostility to business and some long-overdue military funding, as Tasha Kheiriddin and Stuart Thomson, curators of Postmedia’s Political Hack politics newsletter, discuss with Brian. They look at some of the odder budget choices and at the rough reception the plan has gotten from some corners. They also consider Carney’s lack of progress on other promises. And they discuss the floor-crossing frenzy that (so far) seems to have fizzled out with a single defector from the Conservatives — and why it played out the way it did. (Recorded November 7, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nov 10

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48 min
SEP 29

It’s now thinkable that Carney and co. don’t want Israel to win

No military in history has been as careful as Israel to minimize civilian casualties in war. And no country has been criticized for it like Israel has — including by Canada. That’s the assessment of guests Richard Kemp and John Spencer, former military men and two of the highest authorities on urban warfare. They explain to Brian the groundbreaking lengths the IDF goes to in Gaza to mitigate harm, and wholeheartedly reject claims against Israel by Prime Minister Mark Carney and his confederates in the U.K., France and Australia who last week recognized a Palestinian state. The antagonism of Canada and co. suggests they don’t really want Israel to succeed, helping Hamas to prolong the war. The West, they say, has “blood on its hands.” (Recorded September 26, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sep 29

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1h 8m
OCT 20

Why Carney is blowing trade talks with Trump

The elbows are down, the prime minister is backslapping President Donald Trump, but America’s tariffs just keep coming, and hurting Canada more. The ugly truth is that Ottawa’s been foundering in trade talks with the White House, as former diplomat to the U.S., Louise Blaise, and former trade minister Ed Fast discuss with Brian this week from the Banff Forum in Quebec City. They explain how Mark Carney’s government missed important opportunities, failed to maximize its leverage, and unnecessarily antagonized Trump with anti-American rhetoric, needless irritants and, most recently, a gratuitous Palestinian declaration. As we near negotiations for the crucial Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, they explain how Ottawa can alter course to improve things — before they get far worse. (Recorded October 17, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oct 20

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43 min
NOV 17

Conservatives lived through this same party drama before and emerged victorious

The federal Conservatives were still licking their wounds from the Liberals’ recent minority election victory when they were rocked by a stunning and dispiriting floor-crossing. And they failed to stop the government from passing its budget by a razor-thin margin. That was 20 years ago, as Ian Brodie, former chief of staff to prime minister Stephen Harper, reflects on with Brian. And it looked a lot like what Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are going through today. Back then, it took less than a year before the government fell and Harper’s Conservatives won their first of three election victories. Brodie explains what lessons Poilievre and his team can learn from that time, and why Conservatives shouldn’t be too shaken by their recent troubles. (Recorded November 14, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Nov 17

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51 min

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