Time for another Alberta Politics roundup! On this episode we start by catching up with a missing MLA, before we take a look at the potential privatization of healthcare, the history of the lab services debacle before we do a deep dive on the recent settlement of the lawsuit where the Calgary Stampede admitted liability and negligence for decades of abuse, but for seemingly inexplicable reasons Danielle Smith seemed determined to soft pedal the Stampede's admitted responsibility. All this and a ...
Jul 31, 2023•1 hr 30 min•Season 5Ep. 60
We return for our first live recording in two weeks! Donairs! Healthcare crisis! Management Opportunities in Alberta! And Alberta Pension Plan! Cronyism Contracts? Danielle Smith's Secret Council for the future of energy in Alberta! Our FOIP results for who runs Smith's Social Media and how many accounts has SMith blocked? All this and a whole lot 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 sup...
Jul 24, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 5Ep. 59
The conclusion to our conversation with Energi Media Founder Markham Hislop! Markham has been reporting on Energy and the future of Energy for years following an entire career and lifetime in the energy industry, and in this conversation we go through Parts 1 & 2 of his “Unethical Oil” series! What’s the future of Oil and Gas in Alberta? What’s the future of bitumen? What’s going on with abandoned and orphan wells? And why didn’t the NDP capitalize on Carbon Capture and Storage during the el...
Jul 22, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Season 5Ep. 58
We’ve got a conversation with Energi Media Founder Markham Hislop that’s so big we’re breaking it into two episodes over this week! Markham has been reporting on Energy and the future of Energy for years following an entire lifetime and in the energy industry, and in this conversation we go through Parts 1 & 2 of his “Unethical Oil” series! What’s the future of Oil and Gas in Alberta? What’s the future of bitumen? What’s going on with abandoned and orphan wells? And why didn’t the NDP capita...
Jul 20, 2023•1 hr 8 min•Season 5Ep. 57
Crossover event! In a special episode of The Breakdown, we sit down with the 905’er podcast from Ontario to discuss the state of politics, provincially and nationally, what Alberta’s future looks like and we re-litigate the 2023 Alberta provincial election! (Note- this episode was recorded on June 16th when it appeared that the memo of the hiring and firing of Dr. Deena Hinshaw had been fabricated. That has since been proven to have happened, although the details of how it occurred remain unknow...
Jul 17, 2023•1 hr 36 min•Season 5Ep. 56
Following the appalling comments by then UCP candidate Jennifer Johnson regarding trans kids, Jonathan and the Leduc Pride began trying to reach out to Johnson to try and not only educate her, but also to heal the community. Johnson hasn't committed to a time yet, but Jonathan isn't giving up and he took some time to share with us a bit of the progress he and Leduc Pride are making in their community! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Break...
Jul 13, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Season 5Ep. 55
On this live episode of The Breakdown, we take a look as the anti-LGBTQs+ protests that are claiming to be protecting kids, but more and more it looks like they're weaponing them! From there we take a look at the BC Ports strike, the Preston Manning Report, the toxic supply crisis, the catastrophic drop in FIrst Nations life expectancy, before we get into Danielle Smith's recent interview with the Rebel and the retconning of her being found to break the law. All this and we end up our round up w...
Jul 10, 2023•1 hr 43 min•Season 5Ep. 54
We're excited to present a conversation with Executive Director for the Queer Alberta Safety Net William Conner! The QASN started out as a grassroots facebook community providing mutual aid support for members of the LGBTQ2S+ community and with the rise of hate targeting their community have made the decision to rise to the challenge! We chatted with Will to learn the history of the QASN and where they intend to go from here! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to ...
Jul 06, 2023•55 min•Season 5Ep. 53
On this episode of The Breakdown... This week, Leduc made the news for all of the wrong reasons, and we try and put some proper context and apply some facts to the hate filled rants that came out of the Leduc CIty Council chamber. Take Back Alberta also made the news with not a small amount of internal and external drama, the Hinshaw hiring and Un-hiring spent a lot of time in the news and in what likely comes as no surprise Alberta premier Danielle Smith made headlines with her outright rejecti...
Jul 03, 2023•1 hr 57 min•Season 5Ep. 52
On this episode of The Breakdown... What's all the fuss about Supreme Court judges? What are the scandals with Danielle Smith and why is the NDP calling for an RCMP investigation? It turns out the Hinshaw memo was REAL! What was behind that survey that made so many people so upset? And we have a chat with Disability Advocate Don Slater who raised concerns about whether or not the province will ensure that C-22 is used to support people on AISH/Disability and that the province doesn't claw back a...
Jun 26, 2023•1 hr 56 min•Season 5Ep. 51
Collin May is a highly educated lawyer who made the news in 2022 when he was appointed to be the chair of the Alberta Human Rights Commission, but that was only the start of his media coverage… Later that year, an academic book review he provided was portrayed as being Islamophobic by some and racist by others. Collin was eventually fired from his position by the government and has since initiated multiple legal actions. We sat down with Collin to hear his story and what he shares is not only sh...
Jun 22, 2023•1 hr 28 min•Season 5Ep. 50
If you thought Alberta Politics were going to be less dramatic after the election... That's definitely not the case. So on this episode, we try to make a little sense of all the drama of the last week, from the real stats about the wildfires being investigated for arson to Danielle Smith using her platform as premier to plug her restaurant and then claiming to be cancelled from Facebook when she wasn't! All of this and our usual Speakers Corner! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content t...
Jun 19, 2023•1 hr 42 min•Season 5Ep. 49
He's been a hard core conservative activist, a firebrand city councilor and for the last two years he has been on something of a journey of self discovery that has led him across a continent, up more than a few mountains and sees him recently teaming up with former Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi to call out the UCP and their candidates. We sat down with Jeromy to hear his story in his own words for a fascinating conversation that covers a tremendous amount of ground! And yeah, we get into the arena...
Jun 15, 2023•1 hr 21 min•Season 5Ep. 48
TIme for another roundup! We start of by taking a look at Danielle Smith's revisionist history attempts (from just this week) before we cover off the air quality complaints in schools here in Calgary followed by a look at Smiths new cabinet! And then, we do a deep dive on the recent audio from an Edmonton School where a teacher has become the centre of controversy from alleged Islamophobic comments, and we ask the question, but were the comments actually the way they're being portrayed in what i...
Jun 12, 2023•2 hr 7 min•Season 5Ep. 47
With Adriana Lagrange being the newly appointed minister of health, we decided to do our very first episode mashup! Back in December of 2021, we started telling a story of a potential abuse of power by Lagrange to ensure wealthy donors got paid as part of the mask procurement for kids in school, and that story ended up spanning almost an entire year! So in recognition of Lagrange's new appointment, we've put the entire saga into one bonus episode! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content...
Jun 10, 2023•33 min
With the election dust settling,we sat down again for another chat with former MLA, Minister and Deputy Premier Thomas Lukaszuk for his thoughts on what went right and what went wrong in election 2023 as well as what the future holds for Alberta and how Albertans can make that future as positive as possible! 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/...
Jun 08, 2023•1 hr 26 min•Season 5Ep. 46
On another weekly run down of the week in Alberta politics, we take a look at how so far, 2 new MLA's who were faced scandal over comments they made about the Trans community during the election have both failed to acknowledge Pride Month despite commitments to "do the work". From there we take a look at how multiple UCP MLA's (past and present) manage to fail upward despite major lapses in judgement and we take a look at the massive job cuts coming out of the oil patch! All this and more plus o...
Jun 05, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 5Ep. 45
We're back and coming in hot! On this episode we get through the last couple of days since the election before we get into the first of several deeps dives! We start with a look at the election itself before presenting a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the NDP campaign that we've been putting together with conversations with experts for the last couple of weeks! From there we get into our open mic and the anxiety that many are experiencing with the election of Sm...
Jun 01, 2023•3 hr 8 min•Season 5Ep. 44
With affordability on the forefront of many minds, we sat down with energy economist David Gray to try and make sense of why it is that electricity prices continue to skyrocket! Not only that, but David has been active in politics for more than a few years and had a front row seat to Danielle Smith's infamous floor crossing, so we get his insight on that as well! 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 m...
May 22, 2023•1 hr•Season 5Ep. 43
On the eve of the election, we sat down with 6 (then) Alberta Party candidates to have an extended discussion on Where, Who and Why is the Alberta Party. That conversation covered the candidates and their own histories, why they chose to run for the Alberta Party and a whole lot more. If you're interested in what on of the smaller option parties is all about, this episode is for you! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consi...
May 15, 2023•1 hr 59 min•Season 5Ep. 42
We're 10 days into the Alberta Provincial Election and it's already shaping up to be one of the most controversial campaign trails in living memory! To start with, we try and break down the major events of the last week, including the ongoing UCP scandals, Danielle Smith's tattoo (does that really have to be an election issue? Really?) and a whole lot more before we get into... The videos. Multiple new videos of Danielle Smith making wildly controversial comments made the rounds on social media ...
May 11, 2023•2 hr 17 min•Season 5Ep. 41
We are extremely excited to present this long form conversation with the legendary Charles Adler! We cover a lot of ground in this chat, starting with his history in media, his shock at where Alberta "conservatism" has gone, his endorsement of Rachel Notley and his historic interview with Jason Kenny during the 2019 election! 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 a...
May 08, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Season 5Ep. 40
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...
May 06, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Season 4Ep. 56
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...
May 06, 2023•1 hr 17 min•Season 4Ep. 57
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...
May 06, 2023•2 hr 26 min•Season 4Ep. 58
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...
May 06, 2023•1 hr 31 min•Season 4Ep. 59
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...
May 06, 2023•1 hr 29 min•Season 4Ep. 60
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...
May 06, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Season 4Ep. 61
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...
May 06, 2023•1 hr 20 min•Season 4Ep. 62
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...
May 06, 2023•1 hr 23 min•Season 4Ep. 63
