Inside Policy Talks

Macdonald-Laurier Institute
  • 3.9 (12)
  • POLITICS

Inside Policy Talks is the premier video podcast of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Ottawa's most influential public policy think tank. The Macdonald-Laurier Institute exists to make bad public policy unacceptable in our nations capital.

  1. 5 HRS AGO

    Dennis Molinaro: Canada under assault from Chinese state interference

    Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent high-profile international trip included a visit to China where he announced a new “strategic partnership” with Beijing. In the aftermath, attention has focused on the canola and electric vehicle deals that emerged, while far less has been said about the “guardrails” Carney previously stated are necessary for dealing with Beijing. But those promised guardrails deserve serious scrutiny — especially after decades of foreign interference in Canada carried out by China. To discuss that history, Dr. Dennis Molinaro joins Inside Policy Talks. Molinaro is the author of the recently published book Under Assault: Interference and Espionage in China's Secret War Against Canada. The book describes Molinaro’s incredible investigation into Beijing’s five decades of interference in Canada’s political and public life. Molinaro is a historian and an expert in security, espionage, and counter-intelligence. He’s worked in government as a national security analyst and policy advisor, and is now a faculty member at Ontario Tech University. On the podcast, he tells Christopher Coates, director of foreign policy, national defence, and national security at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, that if Canada wants to trade with China, it must do so with an “understanding of the country that China is, not the country that Canada wants it to be.” “The reality is China is an authoritarian system. It is a dictatorship. You have there an immense security state apparatus,” says Molinaro. “This is not a Western country. This isn't just a normal economic viable alternative to trading with the United States.”

    46 min

  2. JAN 22

    Using lived experience to fight human trafficking and abuse: Michelle Abel, Armando de Miranda, and Peter Copeland for Inside Policy Talks

    Every year, thousands of women and children in Canada and the United States are drawn into human trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, and online abuses. These victims are often hidden in plain sight, but the harms they endure ripple out across families and communities. It's a gut-wrenching issue, but there's some signs of hope. Our culture is becoming more aware of how vulnerable people are targeted, and how all of society is affected by factors like the omnipresence of pornography. In that context, there's growing talk about the need for laws, policies, and enforcement tools to adapt in response. But at the same time, less attention is given to how the broader liberalization of sexual norms has rapidly destigmatized behaviours that once carried moral and social boundaries. It’s a trend that coincides with – and perhaps contributes to – greater prevalence of social ills. To discuss the work they are doing to combat these challenges, Michelle Abel and Armando de Miranda join Inside Policy Talks. Abel is a survivor of family-based human trafficking who has spent the past 15 years working directly with victims, survivors, and their families in Canada and the U.S. She is the founder of the non-profit organization Bridge2Future where she leads research, advocacy, and policy work. De Miranda is a former UN peacekeeper who now works closely with Abel as the legislative strategist at Bridge2Future. On the podcast, Abel tells Peter Copeland, deputy director of domestic policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, that adverse childhood experiences – known as “ACES” – like the ones that she experienced growing up, lay the groundwork for further abuse. “Traffickers don't need to create this conditioning. They just need to exploit it,” says Abel. In that context, she pushes back against the idea that terms like “sex work” should be used to refer to activities like prostitution – which is often tied to trafficking. “I absolutely reject the term sex work, because it obscures the reality of exploitation,” says Abel, noting that around four out of every five women who enter prostitution before the age of 18 have experienced childhood sexual abuse. “They're minors, so they're not making informed employment choices,” says Abel. “The term sex work makes it look like it is a legitimate job or a career, and it's absolutely anything but that. Exploitation is never a form of a profession.”

    1h 25m

  3. JAN 15

    Daniel Hess: We need a pro-natal culture

    Reversing declining birthrates will require “a pro-natal culture stronger than you've ever had,” says researcher Daniel Hess. Across the world, births are falling – with many countries are now below replacement levels. It’s a shift could have far reaching impacts – reshaping economic growth and pensions, family life, housing markets, and the future of communities. To talk about this problem – and the solutions – Hess, a demographer who writes at his Substack More Births joins Inside Policy Talks. Hess’s research focuses on the global fertility decline: what’s driving it, what’s misunderstood about it, and what societies can realistically do if they want to reverse it. On the podcast, he tells Peter Copeland, deputy director of domestic policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, that “culture is the engine that has to turn this around.” One of the key factors Hess points to for creating a more fertile culture is marriage – which he describes as “probably the most powerful pro-natal technology ever invented.” He also says higher levels of religiosity and more conservative-leaning political views foster higher birth rates. The stakes are high. Hess says birth rates matter when it comes to long-term quality of life and economic prosperity. “More people means more innovation,” says Hess. “Contra the Malthusians, it turns out that when you have a lot of smart people working together, the sum is very much greater than the parts, and so we've had this prosperous virtuous cycle” as the global population rose. He says the opposite is also true. “If there's fewer and fewer people, you're going to lose economies of scale. You're going to actually lose innovation.”

    57 min

  4. JAN 8

    Garett Jones: Yes, immigration DOES change host countries

    Immigration has long been described as simply a net positive, and debated solely in economic terms – like jobs, wages, and GDP. But after decades of immigration from different parts of the world – with newcomers now making up increasingly large shares of the population in Canada, the United States, and other Western countries – people are starting to ask different questions. How does migration shape culture and trust? What impact does it have on social cohesion over time? To share his research on these issues, Garett Jones, an economics professor at George Mason University, joins Inside Policy Talks. Jones, author of The Culture Transplant, argues that migrants carry durable cultural attitudes like trust, saving patterns, and views of government that can persist across generations and shape the institutions and societies they move to. On the podcast, he tells Peter Copeland, deputy director of domestic policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, that “full assimilation is a myth.” “The idea that you just land in a country, and the new land transforms immigrants or their children to become basically just like everyone else around there, is totally false,” says Jones. He says that’s why when it comes to choosing who to admit as immigrants, “you better shop wisely, if you're going to make your country as good as possible.”

    48 min

  5. 2025-12-11

    Daly & Mancini: Fixing Canada’s internal trade woes is a national economic imperative

    Canada’s economic future increasingly hinges on a deceptively simple question: how free is trade within Canada itself? For decades, economists and policymakers have warned that Canada’s internal market—fragmented by duplicative rules, sector-specific carve-outs, and a thicket of provincial exceptions—acts as a drag on growth and competitiveness. Even the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, heralded as a breakthrough, is riddled with loopholes. To dig deeper, Inside Policy Talks brings together legal scholar Paul Daly and MLI senior fellow Mark Mancini for a conversation with Peter Copeland, MLI’s deputy director of domestic policy. Daly explains the central irony: removing regulatory barriers requires a mechanism with real authority to do it. Without a body empowered by both Parliament and the provinces, “what you're going to get is what we have, which is a mosaic of different provisions.” Canada needs a national coordinating agency with the power to set standards, enforce mutual recognition, harmonize where necessary, and “raise [barriers] to the ground,” as Daly puts it.  Mancini agrees, stressing that skepticism toward new agencies is understandable—but the status quo simply cannot solve the problem. This wouldn’t be “an agency for the sake of an agency,” but an institution designed to tackle a precise challenge: the inability of governments to coordinate regulatory reform on their own. With nationwide buy-in, such a body could finally move Canada beyond one-off bilateral deals toward a genuinely integrated economic union.  Together, Daly and Mancini make the case that fixing Canada’s internal trade system is not a technocratic curiosity—it’s a national economic imperative.

    46 min

  6. 2025-12-04

    Paul Warchuk: Property rights are 'precarious' in Canada

    Across Canada, some of the most heated disputes – from housing restrictions to Indigenous land claims – turn on this question: how secure are Canadians’ property rights? The answer may surprise you. Canada is one of the only developed democracies where property rights have no constitutional protection. That gap has real consequences. It can lead to family farms shuttered by regulation, homeowners caught in civil forfeiture, or even recent court decisions like Cowichan Tribes v. Canada which upended long-held assumptions about ownership itself. To unpack these issues, University of New Brunswick law professor Paul Warchuk joins Inside Policy Talks. Warchuk is the author of a powerful new MLI paper on property rights in Canada, titled Beyond patchwork protection: Towards comprehensive property rights in Canadian law. In it, he traces the philosophical and legal evolution of property from early philosophers up to the Charter era. He argues that property is not only a private entitlement but a public trust that safeguards liberty and prosperity alike. On the podcast, Warchuk tells Peter Copeland, deputy director of domestic policy at MLI, that “there is a lot of resistance to property rights,” perhaps stemming from the fact that not all Canadians believe these rights serve and protect them. He added that while most Canadians feel their property rights are secure, the situation is “precarious” because despite some basic protections “it's very easy for government to override them.” “If you find yourself in the circumstance of one of the unlucky few that is affected in this way,” says Warchuk, “your perspective would change completely, and you'd feel a little bit more of the injustice.”

    51 min

  7. 2025-11-20

    John Gilmour: Commercial encryption is a challenge for signals intelligence

    Canada faces a growing array of national security threats—from foreign interference networks to money laundering operations and organized crime groups exploiting modern digital tools. Yet many of our laws designed to protect Canadians were written for a different era. As hostile actors adapt faster than our institutions, gaps in Canada’s legal framework have become opportunities for adversaries to operate with alarming ease. What should Canadians understand about the risks created by outdated security legislation? And how should policymakers balance the need for lawful access to electronic data with the privacy protections guaranteed under the Charter? To break down these complex challenges, Dr. John Gilmour joins Inside Policy Talks. A senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Gilmour is an expert in terrorism, counterterrorism, and intelligence. He has served in the security and intelligence branch of the Privy Council Office, worked with CSIS, and now teaches at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute and Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. On the podcast, he tells Christopher Coates, MLI’s Director of Foreign Policy, National Defence, and National Security, that Canada is now “in a race it cannot afford to lose.” Criminal syndicates and foreign adversaries are exploiting digital communications at a speed that far outstrips current investigative powers. Without modernized tools—such as those proposed in Bill C-2—Canadian authorities risk being permanently outpaced.

    22 min

  8. 2025-11-13

    Hillel Neuer: The UN matters whether we like it or not

    The UN Human Rights Council contains members like China, Cuba, and Qatar. Yet it remains a highly trusted institution across Western democracies. What should the public understand about the reality of activities going on at the UN? And how should Western democratic governments address the organization’s shortcomings? To discuss some of the major concerns about the UN, Hillel Neuer joins Inside Policy Talks. Neuer is a lawyer, writer, and activist, and the executive director of UN Watch, a human rights NGO based in Geneva, Switzerland. Neuer has often testified before the United Nations and is a widely cited expert on its activities. On the podcast, he tells Casey Babb, director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Promised Land project, that with public opinion surveys continuing to demonstrate widespread public confidence in the UN amongst those living in Western democracies, what happens at the UN matters “whether we like it or not.” “What’s said at the UN influences the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of people,” says Neuer. That’s why he’s focused on delivering his message about the stark reality that the UN “turns a blind eye to human rights abuses happening in China” while making Israel a “scapegoat for everything they're not doing on catastrophes around the world.” He says Western democratic governments, like Canada’s, must use their “moral gravitas” to speak out on this imbalance at the UN.

    29 min
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3.9
out of 5
12 Ratings

About

Inside Policy Talks is the premier video podcast of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Ottawa's most influential public policy think tank. The Macdonald-Laurier Institute exists to make bad public policy unacceptable in our nations capital.

Information

  • Creator
    Macdonald-Laurier Institute
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    113
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2023 Macdonald-Laurier Institute
  • Show Website
    Inside Policy Talks

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