On this episode we unpack the roll out of of Bill 1 and it’s fascinating evolution from a Bill that Smith sold to an angry base as being a Bill that would redefine how Alberta relates to confederation to it’s current form which appears to be business as usual with added red tape and the flawed expectation that MLA’s can interpret the constitution better than the courts. Plus, she’s really angry about straws. We also take a much deeper look at Danielle Smith’s bizarre decision to buy 5 million bo...
Dec 12, 2022•1 hr 44 min
There’s a pediatric health crisis in Alberta and with it a major shortage of children’s tylenol (acetaminophen) and childrens ibuprofen. On Monday Danielle Smith announced that she had arranged for the purchase of 5 Million bottle of children’s acetaminophen and ibuprofen. Only problem is, the company that she bought it from doesn’t make it yet, they aren’t legally allowed to seek drugs Canada yet, and many estimates put the drugs arriving in the spring of 2023. Plus the press conference was a d...
Dec 08, 2022•1 hr 28 min
The last few days have been moving at breakneck speed in Alberta politics. In under 4 days we went from having UCP MLA’s and Ministers swearing that Smiths Sovereignty Act was perfect to having Smith herself acknowledge some of the foundational flaws that exist within the act, and we try and track that all down. In addition we’re joined by advocate Don Slater to get his take on AISH being reindexed before we’re joined by strategist and politico Sarah Biggs to try and make sense of the rollercoas...
Dec 05, 2022•2 hr 11 min
Danielle Smith has finally introduced her Alberta Sovereignty Act and despite the wide expectation that it was going to be watered down, to the shock of many it is actually much, much worse! We sat down with Sarah Biggs who has been in Edmonton for the throne speech and the introduction of the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act as well as Deirdre Mitchell-Maclean to try and figure out some of the implications of this democratically corrosive piece of legislation. As always, if you ap...
Dec 01, 2022•1 hr 7 min
On November 29th, Danielle Smith finally unveiled her Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act, and as much as people were expecting it to be be bad, it turns out it’s actually much worse and gives the UCP the power to create and change laws with no oversight whatsoever. To try and make sense of it, we held a special live episode with the help of Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean that got more than a little feisty! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here a...
Nov 30, 2022•1 hr 13 min
Danielle Smith worked extremely hard to change the channel on her many incendiary comments on Wednesday with her paid provincial address, but it seems like she’s already committed to changing the channel back after her stunning comments on vaccination on her weekly “You province, your premier” radio show, and with the help of Sarah Biggs and Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean, we try to make sense of that! We also take a look at the ongoing health care crisis, trailers at the Children’s Hospital in Calgar...
Nov 28, 2022•1 hr 23 min
On this live episode of The Breakdown, we run down the big events in Alberta politics with help from Sarah Biggs and Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean with a special focus on the recent televised address from Danielle Smith and the kinda-sorta announcements she made! Before that though, we get into Smiths continued heritage scandals, more Shantrums from Justice Minister Tyler Shandro and the recent communications debacle from the Alberta Paramedic Association! As always, if you appreciate the kind of con...
Nov 24, 2022•1 hr 20 min
On another live episode of The Breakdown, we run down the big events in Alberta politics with help from Sarah Biggs and Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean! We start with the costs of the border blockades, Smiths false Cherokee claims, Indigenous condemnation for the “Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act” and we pull back the covers a bit on Danielle Smiths proposed train from Calgary to Banff and look at where the motivations might be coming from and who stands to gain! As always, if you appreci...
Nov 21, 2022•1 hr 23 min
Continuing with our new format of running episodes twice a week, we run down the last week in Alberta politics with help from Sarah Biggs and Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean! With education minister Adriana Lagrange making blatantly false comments about masking at a recent press conference, we start by asking where the real leadership is on in addressing the respiratory virus that’s cutting through Albertas kids right now. From there we get into the new mandate letters, Danielle Smiths apparently debun...
Nov 17, 2022•1 hr 29 min
On another live episode of The Breakdown, we run down the last week in Alberta politics with help from Sarah Biggs and Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean starting with the ongoing health care crisis before moving on to mandate laters, addiction myths and finally we somehow land on dinosaurs walking with humans! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consider signing up as a monthly supporter at our Patreon site at www.patreon.com/thebrea...
Nov 15, 2022•1 hr 31 min
In a special live episode recorded on November 8th during the byelection that saw the election of Danielle Smith to the Alberta Legislature, we combined our weekly rundown of Alberta politics with a live play by play of the byelection and all of the implications with the help of political strategist Sarah Biggs and political pundit Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consider signing up as a monthly...
Nov 10, 2022•2 hr 26 min
Danielle Smith is pushing a program called R* (R- Star) to encourage resource development and well sitecleanup, but there’s no shortage of critics condemning the program. We sat down for an in-depth discussion with Mark Dorin and Regan Sawchuk to learn a little more about this program and why it’s so controversial! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consider signing up as a monthly supporter at our Patreon site at www.patre...
Nov 06, 2022•1 hr 17 min
4.56 - On our very first mid-week round-up, we’re joined by politico and strategist Sarah Biggs to try and get caught up on the events of Alberta politics since our last episode, and there’s a lot! Danielle Smith and the UCP continue to crank out scandals, we take a look at the Super PAC that has seized control of much of the UCP “Take Back Alberta”, we run down the Q3 political party fundraising numbers and we chat about the NDP decision to remove a candidate after that candidate spoke out agai...
Nov 03, 2022•1 hr 14 min
4.55 - On another live episode of The Breakdown, we run down the last week in Alberta politics starting with the new UCP cabinet, Danielle Smith's war against reason, healthcare and the WEF before navigating our way through the many ongoing conflicts of interest and scandals that have showed up in the Smith byelection campaign! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consider signing up as a monthly supporter at our Patreon site...
Oct 31, 2022•56 min
On another live episode of The Breakdown, we run down the last week in Alberta politics starting with the new UCP cabinet, Danielle Smiths war against reason, healthcare and the WEF before navigating our way through the many ongoing conflicts of interest and scandals that have showed up in the Smith byelection campiagn! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consider signing up as a monthly supporter at our patreon site at www....
Oct 31, 2022•56 min•Season 4Ep. 55
With Danielle Smith declaring a by-election on November 8th in Brooks-Medicine hat in order to try and score herself a seat in the legislature, we sat down with one of her opponents, Leader of the Alberta Party, Barry Morishita! Not only does Barry have very deep roots in the constituency, but he has some pretty strong views on Smith and the kind of politics she’s trying to bring to Alberta! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, plea...
Oct 26, 2022•42 min•Season 4Ep. 54
On another live episode of The Breakdown, we run down the last week in Alberta politics starting with the new UCP cabinet before navigating our way through the many ongoing scandals of Danielle Smith and the UCP. We also take a look at the recent resignation by an AHS board member because of Smith and her policies and start to take a look at the UCP’s interest in the R-Star program before we open up the floor to one of our most robust town halls to date! As always, if you appreciate the kind of ...
Oct 24, 2022•2 hr 12 min•Season 4Ep. 53
The Alberta Teachers Association is holding a rally for public education on October 22 at the Legislature in Edmonton! This comes at a time where a new premier with some deeply disruptive (and not necessarily in a good way) views on the future of education in Alberta has just taken office. To learn more about the rally and why it’s both important and needed, we sat down at Alberta Teacher Association President Jason Schilling for a conversation in the rally, the current state of education and wh...
Oct 19, 2022•40 min•Season 4Ep. 52
On another live episode of The Breakdown, we start of by focusing on the bombshell press conference that followed Danielle Smiths swearing in as the new premier of Alberta. Her appalling comments about discrimination overshadowed other parts of the press conference, including what Smith would be focusing on and when she intends to do it, although re-indexing of AISH was notably missing. So before we began our weekly town hall, we shared another conversation with AISH advocate Don Slater where he...
Oct 17, 2022•1 hr 57 min•Season 4Ep. 51
In this episode we sit down with the leader of the Green Party of Alberta, Jordan Wilke! The Green Party is stepping into election 2023 with an extremely unconventional platform built almost entirely around the idea of bringing proportional representation to Alberta, so we caught up with Jordan to get the story of what brought him into politics, the Green Party and their unusual approach to a provincial campaign! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here ...
Oct 14, 2022•53 min•Season 4Ep. 50
On another live episode of The Breakdown, we round up the week in Alberta Politics by taking a look at the recent Parkland Institute report on the failures of the UCP Tax Cut that appears to have actually lost jobs, we do a mini deep dive on the recent firing and hiring of the board of directors for Athabaskan University, we take a look at the recent changes to opioid treatment, we try and keep up with the recent challenge of the oath to the king by three Indigenous women and we catch up on all ...
Oct 10, 2022•1 hr 37 min•Season 4Ep. 49
The Louise Dean Center in Calgary is a unique school that’s provides educational services for young pregnant women and young mothers, and it’s future is currently uncertain. We caught up with two graduates from the program to find out what the problems are and why the school, and it’s critical programming are at risk! Most importantly, we actually have some ways that you can try and help this critical program and the support it brings underage mothers. You can help by because there will be an on...
Oct 08, 2022•43 min•Season 4Ep. 49
On another live episode of The Breakdown, minutes after the results we hosted a town hall on twitter spaces to try and figure out what the election of Danielle Smith as UCP Leader means for the future of Alberta and democracy! In this extended episode, we heard from a number of engaged Alberta’s in a conversation that evolved from the starting point of Smiths election to a much deeper conversation on what engaged citizenship even means and how people can make a difference in Alberta politics! As...
Oct 07, 2022•2 hr 13 min•Season 4Ep. 48
On this live episode of The Breakdown We update Danielle Smith and her vaccine go fund me debacle continues, Justice Minister Tyler Shandro asking the RCMP to not enforce the law, Doctors reaching a deal with the province, UCP Policy Resolutions, the appeal to develop Grassy Slopes is denied and more! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consider signing up as a monthly supporter at our patreon site at www.patreon.com/thebrea...
Oct 04, 2022•1 hr 45 min•Season 4Ep. 47
On this episode we revisit how The Breakdown came to be and what the immediate future for our little show holds. You can help at https://gofund.me/e47e0ea1
Sep 26, 2022•18 min•Season 4Ep. 46
On this live episode of The Breakdown and with government shut down following the death of the Queen, we take a bit of a deep dive on two stories to try and make sense of things! FIrst we unpack all of the twists and turns of the scandal surrounding the appointment and then the revocation of he appointment of the chair of the Alberta Human Rights Commission. From there, we do a very deep dive into the gofundme scandal/confusion that has followed UCP Leadership candidate Danielle Smith for the la...
Sep 19, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 4Ep. 45
Danielle Smith is running to be the new leader of the UCP, which will in turn make her the new Premier of Alberta. But there’s more than a few questions that she has refused to answer. On this episode we sit down with founder of The National Telegraph Wyatt Claypool to not only get his take as a very conservative voter on what the concerns are with Smith, but we also get into the gofundme scandal that has been dogging her since July and that she has refused to clearly address. As always, if you ...
Sep 17, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Season 4Ep. 44
The Breakdown - Sunday Live edition! Another live episode so big, we had to split it into two! In Part One of this episode we are proud to present our regular weekly round up of some of the biggest stories of the week, including Mount Queen Elisabeth, ALL the the UCP Leadership things, fact check a bunch of lies from a certain UCP Leadership Candidate , a scoop on who ACTUALLY de-indexed AISH and more! In Part 2, we start off with a rousing discussion on the state of the federal conservatives an...
Sep 12, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Season 4Ep. 43
The Breakdown - Sunday Live edition! Another live episode so big, we had to split it into two! In Part One of this episode we are proud to present our regular weekly round up of some of the biggest stories of the week, including Mount Queen Elisabeth, ALL the the UCP Leadership things, fact check a bunch of lies from a certain UCP Leadership Candidate , a scoop on who ACTUALLY de-indexed AISH and more! In Part 2, we start off with a rousing discussion on the state of the federal conservatives an...
Sep 12, 2022•51 min•Season 4Ep. 42
On this episode we sit down with psychologist, advocate and artist Dr. Angela Grace! Dr Grace has been advocating for better curriculum and after being asked by multiple NDP MLA’s and candidates to consider running, she threw her hat into the ring seeking a nomination candidacy! And then, despite there being no constitutional mechanism to allow for it, her candidacy was rejected! Dr Grace sat down with us for a discussion on why she was rejected and what it potentially means for the future of ho...
Sep 08, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Season 4Ep. 41
