Mike Ramsay was friends with former Toronto principal Richard Bilkszto, whose suicide after allegedly enduring false bigotry accusations in an anti-racism session has shocked Canadians. And Ramsay says he’s experienced similar vilification. He’s been called a “white supremacist.” He’s been suspended as a school trustee in Waterloo, Ont. He says it’s because he fights to keep schools focused on learning and achievement, not identity politics and radical race theory. He also happens to be Black. R...
Aug 14, 2023•47 min
Formerly one of Canada’s top crime reporters, Tamara Cherry witnessed gruesome violence and terrible trauma. What she says she didn’t realize was how the way she and others covered the crime beat was worsening pain for survivors, responders and reporters themselves. Cherry, author of the new book The Trauma Beat: A Case for Re-Thinking the Business of Bad News, joins host Brian Lilley, himself no stranger to crime reporting. Cherry explains how she came to discover the damaging psychological tol...
Aug 07, 2023•50 min
The economics of the music business have been turned upside down in recent years. For artists and fans alike, concerts now are king. Legendary publicist, writer and music maven Eric Alper joins Brian this week to discuss why this summer’s concert season in particular is making history, why some concert tickets now cost more than plane tickets, and the most obvious reasons why Taylor Swift left Canada off of her latest tour. (And when she’s likely to finally come.) (Recorded July 19, 2023) Learn ...
Jul 31, 2023•49 min
It’s where we should be building up capabilities against Russia’s hypersonic missiles and Chinese spy aircraft coming over the North Pole. But news the Liberal government is closing the Canadian International Arctic Centre is the latest indication Ottawa doesn’t get the importance of the North. After the Harper government made the Arctic a bigger priority, the last eight years have revealed Ottawa’s lack of ambition and enthusiasm for the region, says Heather Exner-Pirot, one of Canada’s most pr...
Jul 24, 2023•39 min
Food inflation is showing no signs of letting up soon, as guest Sylvain Charlebois tells Brian Lilley this week. But grandstanding politicians yelling about “greedflation” by allegedly avaricious grocers are looking in the wrong place, says Charlebois, professor of food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University. The recent guilty plea by Canada Bread, admitting to years of bakery price-fixing; allegations that Maple Leaf Foods may have done the same with meat; and revelations of “blackout”...
Jul 17, 2023•39 min
Climate crusaders are convinced this year’s fire season is global warming. Conspiracy theorists think it’s eco-terrorism from arsonists to scare us about climate change. The reality, as Kenneth Green tells Brian this week, is much more complicated, with everything from poor forest management practices, natural burn cycles, and yes, also some climate and some human causes, playing roles — in addition to countless other factors (including psychological ones). In fact, as Green, an environmental sc...
Jul 10, 2023•35 min
It’s one of the most dramatic episodes in Canada’s early years, although it’s often neglected by our history lessons: Irish republicans attacked Canada from the south as part of a wild plan to win independence for Ireland. As we celebrate the Canada Day weekend, host Brian Lilley is joined by David Wilson, author of Canadian Spy Story: Irish Revolutionaries and the Secret Police. They discuss the stranger-than-fiction chapter in our history, which saw Canadian troops killed battling invading Ame...
Jul 03, 2023•46 min
Cabinet ministers have quit. Some party leaders are calling for him to resign. But New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs tells Brian Lilley he’ll stake his political career to take a stand for parents in his province to be involved when their kids ask at school to be identified by a different gender or name. Higgs discusses what he thinks of attempts by Justin Trudeau, activists, and progressive media to portray him as “far right,” and why he’s confident the public is on his side. The premier also ...
Jun 26, 2023•43 min
Hatred toward Jews is the oldest and most pernicious form of prejudice. Although anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and the persecution of Jews have always been around, the rise of social media, populism and identity politics have made it seem increasingly pervasive. Author Philip Slayton joins Brian Lilley to discuss his new book, Antisemitism: An Ancient Hatred in the Age of Identity Politics, and why he believes the fight against anti-Semitism needs to adapt to its modern expressions. Inevitabl...
Jun 19, 2023•37 min
Dr. Sharon Koivu says it’s like the reverse of the ethical “trolley problem”: in the effort to help an opioid user, Canada’s “safe supply” drug policy puts many more people in danger. A long-time proponent of harm reduction, Koivu, an urban doctor in London, Ont., tells host Brian Lilley how she has watched with alarm as policy has shifted from safe, supervised consumption, to pumping quantities of extremely addictive opioids onto the streets, where they’re often sold cheaply for cash, or harder...
Jun 12, 2023•50 min
It was late in the game, and the United Conservative Party was set to lose the Alberta election, when it finally discovered a way to win over voters and eke out a victory. The secret? Being just moderate enough to comfort city people and just conservative enough for everyone else, as former federal Conservative MP and Alberta public affairs consultant Monte Solberg tells Brian Lilley this week. If Danielle Smith can manage to keep that up, Solberg explains, the NDP might never have as good a cha...
Jun 05, 2023•41 min
A cargo container filled with millions in gold and valuables landed at Toronto’s international airport one day this past April. Then it vanished. Weeks later, police haven’t found it. Scott Andrew Selby, co-author of Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History , has studied sophisticated high-stakes robberies. He joins Brian Lilley this week to discuss what we know about how the recent Pearson heist went down, what the thieves might be doing to stay one step ahead of the cops — and oth...
May 29, 2023•43 min
How did we end up with a new passport design that replaces stirring images of Canadian identity — Nellie McClung, Terry Fox, the Mounties, and Vimy — with vapid graphics of squirrels, autumn leaves and snowmen? The problem lies in our classrooms, prominent Canadian historian David Bercuson tells Brian Lilley this week. Canada has a great deal to be proud of in our history, says Bercuson, but generations of students are being taught instead to focus on a few stains. Fortunately, we have the power...
May 22, 2023•42 min
The traditional ways of dealing with our dead are running into problems. Cities are running out of space for cemeteries. Cremation and burial are being shunned for their environmental damage. And there’s a huge wave of boomers running out of time. Ian Sutton, author of The Big Exit, joins host Brian Lilley to discuss the trouble of dealing with so many humans dying off, and the creative alternatives being explored — including feeding us to mushrooms, blowing us into space, crushing us up, and pu...
May 15, 2023•44 min
When Natalie MacLean broke out of the Ottawa tech scene to become a globally celebrated wine writer, travelling the world, paid to drink, she thought she had everything she could want. Then, like a glass toppling off a table, her life was shattered: her marriage collapsed, she was pilloried in an journalistic ethics scandal, and she realized wine had gone from career to crutch. MacLean, bestselling author of the new book Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Depression, and Drink...
May 08, 2023•59 min
Canada isn’t the only place where left-wing activists are blackening the names of colonial-era figures like John A. Macdonald and Henry Dundas for not living up to modern, ultra-progressive ideals. When British ethicist Nigel Biggar found himself defending 19th-century mining magnate Cecil Rhodes against exaggerated claims of racism from Oxford University students, he recognized the need to bring more balance — and historical literacy — to arguments over British colonialism. Biggar joins host Br...
May 01, 2023•47 min
For 1,019 days Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig were China’s hostages, cruelly imprisoned by the communist regime as leverage for the release of Meng Wanzhou, held under house arrest in Canada on a U.S. warrant. Then, suddenly, one day, they were free, thanks to a White House-brokered deal. Mike Blanchfield and Fen Osler Hampson, authors of the new book The Two Michaels, join host Brian Lilley to discuss what went on behind the headlines. They explain why Beijing targeted the Canadian...
Apr 24, 2023•43 min
Billy Gorta saw the rise of violent attacks in New York City back in the ’70s and ’80s, when politicians took a soft-on-crime approach. If that sounds familiar, that may be because Canadians are facing a shocking crime wave — and many point the finger at looser bail and police-defunding policies. As an NYPD captain, Gorta was in the room when leaders finally got serious about cracking down on crime. Gorta, who went on to become a journalist, joins host Brian Lilley this week to talk about what w...
Apr 17, 2023•40 min
The new buzzword among urban planners is the “15-minute city,” but it’s the same old idea they’ve been pushing for decades — their dream of getting us all living in small, densified urban condos, and out of our cars. Urban Policy Analyst Wendell Cox joins host Brian Lilley to explain what the “15-minute city” really is and why it’s doomed. He discusses how planners ignore how we really want to live, how cars and suburbs improve our lives, and how the ways the pandemic changed our work and our wo...
Apr 10, 2023•45 min
Wars, terrorism, boycotts, a nuclear Iran: Since the 1948 founding of the modern State of Israel, the Jewish state has faced seemingly endless threats to its security — and, at times, its very existence. As it approaches its 75th birthday, the biggest threat comes from within, says Vivian Bercovici. Canada’s former ambassador to Israel joins host Brian Lilley from Tel Aviv to explain what’s really behind the massive, unprecedent protests against the government’s so-called judicial reforms. And w...
Apr 03, 2023•41 min
When Chanel Pfahl started teaching at an Ontario public school she didn’t expect the curriculum to include lessons about how everything is racist, including math. When she told her Facebook followers about her disagreement with what she considered the indoctrination of students into critical race theory, she found herself under investigation by the Ontario College of Teachers. Pfahl joins Full Comment host Brian Lilley to discuss why she’s worried about what she sees being taught to Canadian kid...
Mar 27, 2023•38 min
Canadian lawyer Dan Bilak didn’t expect his legal career to end up with him training to fight Russian soldiers invading Ukraine, but here he is. Bilak joins host Brian Lilley this week to explain the unlikely story of how he went from practising corporate law to practising clearing booby-trapped houses. And he discusses why he thinks the stakes of this war are so high for the western world, why he believes so strongly in the cause, and why he believes his fellow Canadians should, too. (Recorded ...
Mar 20, 2023•39 min
Project Sidewinder, a joint CSIS and RCMP report, found evidence of Canadian politicians under Chinese influence, Beijing’s agents funnelling money to Canadian political parties, and communist spies infiltrating Canadian assets and institutions. That was back in 1997. With fresh allegations of China’s electoral interference in Canada, Michel Juneau-Katsuya, the former CSIS intelligence officer behind Project Sidewinder, joins host Brian Lilley to discuss how China has managed to penetrate Canadi...
Mar 13, 2023•46 min
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is a big believer in Confederation, he tells host Brian Lilley . But he thinks it only works when the provinces are strong and Ottawa respects the rules of the game — something he says the Trudeau government isn’t doing. Moe joins Brian to discuss how his province’s Saskatchewan First Act can prevent Trudeau from using environmental excuses to stomp all over Saskatchewan’s constitutional rights to develop its resources. And why he’s determined to frustrate Ottawa’s...
Mar 06, 2023•39 min
The Trudeau government convinced inquiry commissioner Paul Rouleau that it was justified in invoking the Emergencies Act during the Freedom Convoy. But vindicating the Liberals’ claims the act can be used to limit damage to the economy sets a worrisome precedent for a tool with such sweeping powers to suspend people’s rights, as Cara Zwibel from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association discusses with host Brian Lilley. And Rouleau’s suggestion that the definition of “emergency” should be redefin...
Feb 27, 2023•42 min
A mysterious syndicate of private soldiers, many brutal Russian convicts, is doing the dirtiest work for Putin in Ukraine, Syria and Africa. Yevgeny Prigozhin, an enigmatic ex-con who built a business empire from a hot dog stand, rents his Wagner Group mercenary army to Putin in exchange for lucrative mining and oil assets. Prigozhin has a history of hiring U.S. and U.K. lawyers to legally demolish journalists who get too close to his business. Some journalists have ended up dead. That hasn’t st...
Feb 21, 2023•41 min
The shocking revelation that China has been sailing spy balloons over North America, and who knows where else, has abruptly created a massive foreign policy crisis for the U.S., Canada… and China. The discovery has popped the communist regime’s polite pretenses, says Bill Bishop, China analyst and author of the influential Sinocism newsletter. Bishop joins Full Comment host Brian Lilley this week to discuss how the exposure of an apparently vast global surveillance operation by the People’s Libe...
Feb 13, 2023•44 min
Canadians are the only people in the developed world forced to wait for government to provide them necessary medical care — except the wait lists are long, their chances of dying are higher, and the quality of care rates poorly by international standards. Dr. Brian Day has been on a decades-long crusade to free patients from the life-threatening medicare monopoly. He discusses with guest host Brian Lilley how Canadian medicare went so wrong. And he explains why he’s fighting all the way to the S...
Feb 06, 2023•34 min
In October 2020, three prominent medical professors from Stanford, Harvard and Oxford universities, issued an open letter warning the world that COVID lockdowns caused more harm than good and should stop. They were dismissed, attacked and vilified, despite thousands more scientists signing onto their Great Barrington Declaration. Now, three years after the pandemic began, the human wreckage caused by unnecessary lockdowns is undeniable, vindicating the declaration. But, as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, ...
Jan 30, 2023•39 min
The shadow of the iron curtain looms over Eastern Europe again. Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is the latest move to put back together the Russian empire lost at the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. Canadian journalist Paule Robitaille lived in the former Soviet Union and witnessed its collapse; recently, she returned to Ukraine, Latvia and Georgia to talk to soldiers, leaders and everyday citizens fighting to stop Moscow’s iron fist from snatching up their countries once again. Robitail...
Jan 23, 2023•41 min
