One of the many bewildering things about the recent Freedom Convoy is how little agreement exists about the basic facts of what actually happened. Andrew Lawton was embedded inside the convoy and spent many hours interviewing its organizers. He joins Anthony to talk about his new book, The Freedom Convoy: The Inside Story of Three Weeks That Shook the World (Sutherland House press, available everywhere June 24). He discusses how it all really started, the tensions among convoy organizers, and ba...
Jun 20, 2022•42 min
There’s a ‘cynical trick’ being played with gun politics in Canada, says Gary Mauser, one of Canada’s foremost authorities on gun control. By exploiting American shootings to layer on yet more regulations for Canadian hunters, farmers and sport shooters, the prime minister is taking advantage of the ignorance of his supporters, Mauser tells Anthony in this week’s episode. And while more Canadians are clueing in to the reality that Ottawa’s latest gun-control proposals aim at the wrong target, th...
Jun 13, 2022•29 min
For someone who’s spent his career in politics, Conservative MP and leadership candidate Scott Aitchison doesn’t have a lot of good things to say about politicians. He thinks elected leaders today are all about stoking division to bump their popularity with their base, as he tells Anthony in this latest instalment of Full Comment’s discussions with federal Conservative leadership candidates. The result, Aitchison says, is that real people and concerns are being ignored in favour of cheap politic...
Jun 06, 2022•35 min
Ontario endured strict and lengthy pandemic lockdowns, especially compared to Alberta’s much lighter touch. But conservative voters seem ready to reward Doug Ford’s Ontario PCs with re-election while, out west, angry conservatives in Alberta have driven their premier from office. Hamish Marshall, a former national Conservative campaign manager, joins Anthony this week to discuss how Ontario’s political culture has shifted since COVID and how Ford — unlike Kenney — has captured the conservative m...
May 30, 2022•37 min
Dr. Sonu Gaind is a supporter of “medical assistance in dying” (MAID) for those suffering profoundly with terminal illnesses. He’s even the physician chair of the MAID team at Toronto’s Humber River Hospital, where he’s chief of psychiatry. But he’s grown alarmed since Canada stopped requiring a reasonably foreseeable death for euthanasia, as he tells Anthony in this week’s episode. People who are poor, lonely or battling mental illnesses, who’s lives might get better with help, are being offere...
May 23, 2022•55 min
No one wants to take the blame for Canada's soaring inflation rate. Not the Bank of Canada. And not the government. But the problem was clearly exacerbated by policy-makers in Ottawa who kept pumping gargantuan inflationary stimulus into the economy well after the pandemic recovery had begun, as Ian Lee discusses with Anthony on this week's episode. Canadians will pay a steep price in unintended consequences, says Lee, associate professor at Carleton's Sprott School of Business. Young people esp...
May 16, 2022•44 min
Voters around the world are saying they’re angry. They’re unhappy that the promise of upward mobility is over and they’re frustrated that government policies animated by elitist values keep making life harder for the middle and working classes, as Joel Kotkin tells Anthony this week. Younger voters around the world are already flocking to more extremist solutions after feeling abandoned by the establishment, explains Kotkin, a noted authority on global, economic, political and social trends, fro...
May 09, 2022•44 min
The federal Liberals probably never predicted that their efforts at internet regulation would see Silicon Valley comparing them to regimes in Iran, China and North Korea, but here we are. Website blocking, government-ordered takedowns and regulating YouTubers are just some of the alarming ideas coming out of Ottawa recently. Michael Geist, professor of internet law at the University of Ottawa, joins Anthony this week to talk about the dangers these approaches pose to speech rights and other Cana...
May 02, 2022•42 min
After fleeing the Soviet Union and building a life in Canada, Roman Baber believes deeply in upholding democracy and freedom, as he tells Anthony in this latest instalment of Full Comment’s discussions with federal Conservative leadership candidates. In fact, Baber’s opposition to Ontario’s drastic government lockdown restrictions got him kicked out of Doug Ford’s PC caucus. Baber explains why he believes Canadians’ rights and liberal institutions are steadily being undermined by government cont...
Apr 25, 2022•37 min
Votes are now being cast to decide the fate of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. A rebellion largely over COVID policies has triggered a review of his leadership and his rivals are openly gunning for him. It’s a reckoning that other provinces aren’t having — but maybe they should. Alberta political strategist Evan Menzies joins Anthony to break down all the drama. Menzies, who has worked with both Kenney’s United Conservative Party and Alberta’s Wildrose Party, also gets into the forces at play that...
Apr 18, 2022•40 min
Movie stars used to seem so cool. But when Will Smith hit Chris Rock at the Academy Awards over a joke, and then later got a standing ovation for his Oscar win, people in the real world were appalled. Somehow today’s cossetted movie millionaires seem much more cringe than classy, as celebrity watcher, talk-show host and media personality Shaun Proulx discusses with Anthony in this week’s episode. Proulx explains how thin-skinned celebrities and Hollywood cancel culture are losing in a competitio...
Apr 11, 2022•28 min
Things in Russia have usually gone Vladimir Putin’s way. He has consolidated power, eliminated rivals, stamped out independent media and remains popular despite immense corruption and an economy in shambles. Marcus Kolga — who was recently ordered banned from Russia over his connections to Putin’s democratic opponents — joins Anthony this week to explain how things have suddenly gone seriously awry for the Russian president with his ill-conceived attack on Ukraine. As the war drags on, even Russ...
Apr 04, 2022•40 min
The Liberal-NDP "supply and confidence" agreement will have longstanding ramifications for Canada beyond just the policies these two parties plan to enact. Yes, we may get free dental care -- but it could also come with the effective end of what's known as responsible government, as Howard Anglin explains to the Anthony Furey in this week's episode. Anglin, a lawyer who worked in the offices of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, breaks down how Canadians may no longe...
Mar 28, 2022•44 min
A few things have changed since Leslyn Lewis ran for federal Conservative leader in 2020 with an unexpectedly strong campaign. While government spending, debt and hostility to the West and Canada’s resources have only gotten worse she says, the Liberal government’s questionable use of the Emergencies Act, the undermining of democratic institutions, and the threat to freedoms have since become key issues for her. Lewis joins Anthony this week to explain why she thinks her socially conservative po...
Mar 21, 2022•41 min
After 20 years of housing bubble-blowing, the thought of ever owning a home now seems virtually impossible for legions of younger Canadians. But there are reasons to take heart, as Garry Marr tells Anthony in this week’s episode. Marr, a journalist who has covered Canadian real estate for decades, details how government policies have continued to inflate housing prices in Canada’s biggest cities, frustrating the ownership dreams of younger generations while older generations gut their retirement...
Mar 14, 2022•38 min
Canadian journalist Neil Hauer is on the ground in Ukraine living through a Russian invasion. He was in Kyiv as cruise missiles rained down and heard the gunfire as special forces advanced on the city. He joins Anthony from Lviv, Ukraine to describe what it’s really like on the ground in a country in the midst of an invasion, how Ukrainians have been trying to fight back, and some of the unexpected problems that have hampered Moscow’s plans so far. Hauer, who specializes in reporting on Eastern ...
Mar 04, 2022•36 min
Canada’s former chief of the defence staff Tom Lawson joins Anthony this week to discuss why NATO countries are watching Russia’s ruthless invasion of Ukraine with caution, and why a confrontation between western troops and Russian forces is a serious escalation that neither side should want. Lawson, who was also formerly deputy commander of the North American Aerospace Defence Command, also talks about why this is an important moment for Canada to take stock of its own military capabilities as ...
Feb 28, 2022•43 min
The Emergencies Act invoked by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has never been used before — and for good reason. The law that replaced the War Measures Act is so powerful, it was essentially designed to be unusable, as constitutional lawyer Ryan Alford discusses with Anthony in this week’s episode. Alford, author of the book Permanent State of Emergency, details the alarming breadth of the act’s powers, its incompatibility with the constitution, its use to target certain political viewpoints, and ...
Feb 21, 2022•47 min
As other federal Conservatives distance themselves from the Freedom Convoy they once backed, Pierre Poilievre joins Anthony to declare his continued support for the movement. The first declared candidate for the federal Conservative leadership race explains why he thinks government overreach during the pandemic, and too much government meddling everywhere else, has made life harder, less affordable and less promising for Canadians. And he discusses how, if he becomes prime minister, he intends t...
Feb 14, 2022•34 min
First they were portrayed as a small, ignorable fringe. Then they were portrayed as dangerous hooligans with “unacceptable” views. But once the trucker convoy rolled into Ottawa it defied expectations about the size and scope of Canadians fed up with government pandemic overreach. Rupa Subramanya, a columnist for the National Post, lives in downtown Ottawa and has been walking the city’s streets and talking with protestors. She joins Anthony this week to discuss what’s really happening on the gr...
Feb 07, 2022•51 min
Olympic medallist and world champion figure skater Elvis Stojko joins Anthony this week to talk about what the last two years have been like for elite athletes as they’ve been restricted from their normal training routines, missed out on competitions, and had to struggle with the possible impacts on their performance from either getting COVID or getting vaccinated. All of this has happened, meanwhile, on top of the problems and uncertainty surrounding the 2022 Games in Beijing and calls for boyc...
Jan 30, 2022•34 min
The COVID-19 crisis has presented a minefield of bioethical questions, which Canadian policy-makers have largely stomped all over. It’s not just the damage of lockdowns, the treatment of children, demonizing the unvaxxed, and the privacy invasions. It’s also the callous disregard for anything happening beyond Canada’s borders. Bioethicist Dr. Kerry Bowman joins Anthony this week to discuss the problems created by neglecting bioethical considerations during the pandemic. And why he’s worried that...
Jan 24, 2022•43 min
He served jail time in Mississippi for defying racial segregation laws. He was there at the founding the NDP. And he once believed that private property was a crime. But Michael Audain has come a long way since then, becoming one of the most successful players in B.C.’s torrid housing sector. And he’s made a massive fortune — his foundation recently gave $100 million to the Vancouver Art Gallery — from a market he used to denounce. The founder of Polygon Homes joins Anthony to discuss his eventf...
Jan 17, 2022•35 min
We’re the safest we’ve ever been from COVID: The vast majority of us are vaccinated and the highest-risk people have boosters. The virus has mutated into its mildest version ever. Yet, in Canada, governments are once again closing schools, locking down businesses and deploying the same fearful, knee-jerk responses they’ve always used. Dr. Sumon Chakrabarti, a frontline infectious diseases specialist at Trillium Health Partners in Mississauga, Ont., joins Anthony this week to explain why it’s tim...
Jan 10, 2022•48 min
McGill University scientist Patanjali Kambhampati is on the cutting edge of laser research, but government funders refuse to support him — simply because he doesn’t believe in “diversity, equity and inclusion.” As a minority who has experienced racism himself, Kambhampati joins Anthony to discuss why he believes science is a true meritocracy, and why critical scientific advancements rely on people demonstrating their abilities, not their race, religion or gender identity. Kambhampati also explai...
Dec 20, 2021•47 min
Canada’s reaction to the new COVID-19 variant suggests we haven’t yet learned from our past mistakes, Dr. Neil Rau tells Anthony in this episode of Full Comment. The flight bans to stop Omicron will prove pointless, explains Rau, an infectious-diseases expert and medical microbiologist in Toronto. Meanwhile, officials’ outdated attitudes about case counts, PCR tests, vaccinations and restrictions threaten a “tsunami of quarantine.” Eventually, Canadians will have to get a more realistic perspect...
Dec 13, 2021•44 min
Desperate to get out of the pandemic, Canadians have rushed to give up their privacy. We offer our sensitive digital health information to go out in public. Contact tracing, COVID-19 apps and QR codes trace our movements. Meanwhile, we’re building an information network that can give governments vast surveillance powers that remain long after the pandemic, says privacy expert Ann Cavoukian. The former Ontario privacy commissioner, and author of Privacy by Design, joins Anthony this week to expla...
Dec 06, 2021•38 min
There’s something funny about the attempts by woke warriors to cancel “problematic” comedians like Louis C.K. and Dave Chapelle — because it never works. Legendary comedy-club impresario Mark Breslin joins Anthony this week to tell stories about the comic wars he’s been through since he opened his first Yuk Yuk’s in 1976. And he explains why the scolds who try to take the laughs out stand-up shows always end up bombing, and why today’s woke, wet blankets are just as likely to end up laughed off ...
Nov 29, 2021•47 min
North American elites wish we were all a bit more European. From work-life balance to climate progressivism, Europeans seem to embody the paragon of sophistication that liberals dream of. In real life, however, Europe is a mess. Outside its fashionable capitals lie sprawling impoverished suburbs. Unemployment haunts millions of unassimilated immigrants. Europe’s business innovation is lagging, its workers are less productive, and its energy costs are punitive. David Harsanyi, author of a new boo...
Nov 22, 2021•39 min
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post in 1972. Since then, Woodward has written books about presidents Nixon, Clinton, Obama, Trump, and both president Bushes. His latest book, Peril, is about the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, and the tumultuous transition from Trump to President Joe Biden. Woodward is the speaker this year at the Audi Innovation Series in Canada (that talk will be released Nov. 17 by Audi via Twitter and Facebook). But first, Woodwa...
Nov 15, 2021•28 min
