The Herle Burly

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail and Google Canada.Greetings, you intrepid Herle Burly-ites. We have a helluva Herle Burly for you today and we’re going to get right to it, because Provincial Cabinet Ministers are on tight schedules, and you don’t keep them waiting goddamit! The Honourable Monte McNaughton is our guest today. Mr. McNaughton is the Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development in Ontario. A son of Newbury Ontario, he’s been sitting as a Progressive Conservative MPP, representing the riding of Lambton-Kent-Middlesex since 2011. And here’s where I’d like to take this conversation today:How do we help working people?What’s the role of unionization?What is this government’s agenda with regard to protection for non-unionized workers?And how will they address an issue facing the Ontario and Canadian economy: the labour shortage?Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail and Google Canada.Greetings Herle Burly-ites. This week, we have a returning guest of The Herle Burly– a distinction that makes him an official “Friend of the Pod”. It’s mandatory. Whether he likes it or not, godamm*t. Kevin Carmichael is here. Kevin is Editor In Chief at the Financial Post and you don’t get to that position unless you’re one of Canada’s leading, and award winning business journalists. He’s also a member of the International Governance Innovation’s roster of researchers and commentators. Here’s where I’d like to take the conversation today: What else? Inflation. Where it’s going. What the government might do to provide relief.Bank of Canada plans and Tiff Macklem’s statement yesterday about wage growth.Then, the labour shortage. Why we have one, how we might resolve it, and the implications for the economy.And why is Minister Freeland and Finance so quiet through a tumultuous period like this?Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail and Google Canada.Greetings Herle Burly-ites. Today on the pod we’re going to talk about the state of healthcare and healthcare funding in this country and we have three former Premiers here to help us do it. Moving from East to West, Stephen McNeil, the 28th Premier of Nova Scotia. Kathleen Wynne, the 25th Premier of Ontario. And, Christy Clark, the 35th Premier of British Columbia.There’s a lot of noise out there on this topic, right now. I’d like to wade through that with the people who know the system intimately… Who know what’s it’s like to administer it… And the opportunities and challenges, therein.Can greater efficiencies be found without compromising service? How much more money does the system require and what level of government should that come from? What are the impediments leaders face, and we face, to reform of the system? In other words, let’s get past the sturm and drang, and talk about realities with people who’ve governed through these challenges.Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail and Google Canada.Greetings Herle Burly-ites. Whether you’ve been with this podcast for a few years now, or a few weeks, you know we do our best to get past the talking points of politics and campaigning, economics and public policy and give you a perspective on what’s really going on. Not just in the official meetings that take place in Ottawa and so many other boardrooms around the country. But in the meeting AFTER the meeting.Our guest today is a guy who has been in a helluva lot of those “meetings after the meeting”. Brian Topp is here. Brian is one of this country’s foremost political strategists. He’s a sought-after writer, communications planner and a former union leader. In 2015, he was Chief of Staff to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and prior to that Deputy Chief of Staff to Roy Romanow in Saskatchewan. In 2006 and 2008, Brian presided over the Orange Wave as the Federal New Democratic Party’s national campaign director. And following the death of Jack Layton in 2012, he ran for the party leadership, coming in second to Tom Mulcair. Currently, Brian is a founding partner at GT&Co. Today we’re going to tour the full horizon of Canadian politics with a look at how various parties and coalitions are reacting to the mood of the country and how individual politicians are stepping up or falling short with voters.Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.###

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail and Google Canada.Hey, I want to take a moment to thank y’all for being here week after week. I guess I’m feeling a tad introspective – and it’s likely because we’re nearing our 5-year pod-versary. Yup, 5 years ago David Axelrod was our inaugural guest, fresh off an historic Cubs World Series win. Today, the Cubs are 10 ½ games back of a Wild Card spot. They kinda stink. Democracy also seems to be a wild card in the United States these days, and Axelrod is doing what he can to preserve it, via his own podcast: The Axe Files.So … democracy in the USA … writ-large that’s what we’ll be talking about with our guest today, Keith Boag, who’s making his 3 rd appearance on The Herle Burly! In his stellar career at CBC, as Chief Political Correspondent with years working in the U.S., Keith has observed and reported on political discourse down there and stood witness to the erosion of democratic norms. So today we’re going to talk about:The January 6th hearings … what’s the import and the impact?How should Trump be treated going forward, and extrapolating further … what would another Trump term be like?What’s the media’s role in covering stories and managing issues?What will Joe Biden be doing 2 ½ years from now? And who are other potential nominees for each party?Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail and Google Canada.Herle Burly-ites, Philippe J. Fournier is here! I’m sure a good lot of you know who Philippe is and have read his work and analysis, but for our listeners who haven’t, Philippe is the creator of 338Canada, the statistical model of electoral projection based on historical trends, opinion polls and demographic data. He deconstructs and analyzes Canadian politics with the eyes of a scientist. Not at all shocking because, by day, Philippe teaches astrophysics at Cégep de Saint-Laurent! So today – and this is despite my own deep, deeeeep knowledge of astrophysics – we are going to geek out about polling and electoral data. We’ll talk about the federal race… What the different voter coalitions are… What it is that makes the Liberal vote so damn efficient. We’ll talk about Poilievre and the kind of coalition he’s trying to build… Where he needs his votes to come from in order to be PM… And whether his leadership campaign poses a risk to his electoral prospects. And then we’ll talk about Singh and the NDP…  What impact this accord with the Liberals is having on their support… And where the problem is translating feel good vibes for Singh, into votes. Finally, we’ll chat about the outlook for the upcoming Quebec election.Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.Watch conversations from The Herle Burly on YouTube. 

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. We’ve got a helluva pod today. We’re going to take a deep dive into B.C. politics with my good friend, and now 2-time Herle Burly guest, Mike McDonald! Mike is a brilliant human being. He’s the former campaign manager and Chief of Staff to Premier Christy Clark. Currently, he’s Partner and Chief Strategy Officer at Kirk & Co., one of the leading communications and public engagement firms in Canada, and a senior research associate at Pollara Strategic Insights. And he has a goddamn blog! You can read about what’s on Mike’s political mind, at Rosedeer.blogToday, we’re going to talk about the NDP in B.C., post Horgan. BC Liberals post the Liberal brand-name. And what the province thinks of Trudeau, Poilievre and Singh.Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.Watch conversations from The Herle Burly on YouTube. 

*Podcast originally aired: June 2019*Today on the pod … political commentator, Pulitzer Prize winner, and the man whom the Wall Street Journal called “perhaps the most powerful journalist in America” … George Will.Mr. Will has been the authority on American conservatism for nearly 50 years. Now he’s out with a new book, called “The Conservative Sensibility”. We’re going to talk about the book and the state of conservatism today in the United States, as well as The Republican Party, President Trump and issues from income inequality to climate change. Be sure to purchase a copy of his new book at your nearest Indigo Books: https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/the-conservative-sensibility/9781549148682-item.html?ikwid=george+will&ikwsec=Home&ikwidx=0 

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Herle Burly-ites, our guest today can accurately be described as a political renaissance man. His name is David Pepper. David Pepper is a Yale educated lawyer.  He’s a former politician, serving on city council in Cincinnati, and as a member of Hamilton County, Ohio, Board of Commissioners. He’s the former Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, stepping down after the 2020 elections. And, get this, he’s also an author, hailed as “one of the best political-thriller writers on the scene” for his fiction. Bill Clinton … yes, Bill Clinton … gushed about his latest novel, “The Voter File”. We’ll explore a little about David’s backstory. But, all of that is not really why we wanted to talk to him here today. His latest book is a work of non-fiction called, “Laboratories of Autocracy”. In it, David argues that the greatest threat to American democracy is not the “Big Lie”, or January 6th and the limo-lunging behaviours of Donald Trump. It’s not the antics of federal politicians like Marjorie Taylor Green and Jim Jordan. Rather, his thesis is that it’s the anonymous, often corrupt politicians operating in statehouse after statehouse across the country, who pose the greatest dangers to democracy. Politicians who hack away daily at the core principles and place American democracy at its greatest peril since the Jim Crow era. We’ll talk about all of that and David’s thoughts in the book about how America can fight back.Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.Watch conversations from The Herle Burly on YouTube. 

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Herle Burly-ites, Francois-Phillipe Champagne, Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry is with us today. Minister Minister Champagne was first elected as a Member of Parliament for Saint-Maurice—Champlain in 2015. He previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, and Minister of International Trade. He is a businessman, lawyer, and international trade specialist with a special focus on the fields of energy, engineering, and innovation. Minister Champagne holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Montréal and a Master of Laws in American law from Case Western Reserve University. He also studied public and private international law at The Hague Academy in the Netherlands. But today we’re going to talk about growth and jobs on the program. The future of auto manufacturing in this country. Energy transition. The impact of AI. And the importance, and the future, of broadband technology.Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts or your favourite podcast app.Watch conversations from The Herle Burly on YouTube.