Full Comment

Lamenting the loss of a Canada that was once more serious, more liberal and less obsessed with guilt and identity politics isn’t just for cranky old men anymore. Lydia Perovic came here in the ’90s, from a home riven by ethnic strife, enamoured with this country’s shared ideals and its agnosticism toward blood and race. But progressive media and culture mavens are dismantling so much of what attracted her, as Perovic tells Anthony in this week’s episode. The author of the new book Lost in Canada: An Immigrant’s Second Thoughts, Perovic has a warning for all Canadians, new and old. (Recorded June 9, 2022)  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The golf world is at war, the instigators are a brutal, despotic regime, and it needs to be stopped, says acclaimed sports journalist Rick Reilly. The Saudi-backed LIV pro tour has golfers squaring off over the PGA versus the allure of vast sums of easy, dirty money, all while fans get the shaft. No one needed this mess, says Reilly, the bestselling author of the new book So Help Me Golf: Why We Love the Game. He joins Anthony this week to talk about how LIV’s damage can still be contained before it’s too late, and why the sooner the Saudi regime loses interest and drops its gimmicky intrusion, the better it will be for everyone. (Recorded July 7, 2022)  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After a stellar, decades-long career at Canada’s public broadcaster, Wendy Mesley made a big mistake: she used the “n-word” with colleagues, off the air, while talking about covering the racism issue. She paid dearly for it: her reputation was ruined, she was portrayed as a bigot, and her nearly 40-year CBC career was flushed away. Mesley, now free to speak her mind as co-host of The Women of Ill Repute podcast, joins Anthony to talk about what happened, how she thinks the CBC, grappling with its own institutional racism charges, exploited her mistake, and about the bleak world that unforgiving Twitter-driven pile-ons are creating. (Recorded July 7, 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s plenty of awful things to say about Canada’s abusive residential school system. But last summer, the nation was gripped by reports that “mass graves” of children were discovered at some school sites. What you can’t say, apparently, is that those reports were mistaken and that nothing new was really discovered last year, as veteran journalist and author Terry Glavin established with his meticulously reported recent National Post feature reviewing what actually happened. Glavin joins Anthony to talk about the attacks he’s faced for reporting truths people didn’t want to hear. And about how journalistic negligence, political opportunism and white guilt-tripping hijacked what First Nations have really been saying. (Recorded June 23, 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Canada recently ranked in the world for air travel delays. Flights are being cancelled by the thousands, flyers face hours-long lineups and planes sit stranded on the tarmac. Duncan Dee, former chief operating officer of Air Canada, saw this disaster coming months ago and sounded the alarm to anyone who would listen. But, as he tells Anthony in this week’s episode, federal politicians and bureaucrats ignored obvious warning signs pointing to a summer of misery, chaos and billions of dollars in tourist losses. Now, even with airports in full meltdown mode, Dee sees Ottawa refusing to take critical steps to start fixing it. (Recorded July 7, 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People are angry. Justin Trudeau has betrayed the middle class in particular, and made us all poorer for it. How Conservatives respond to this populist moment can elevate them to Canada’s party of choice or it could kill them, says Tasha Kheiriddin, author of the new book The Right Path: How Conservatives can unite, inspire and take Canada forward. The good news? Tories don’t need to become Liberal-lite to win over young, urban or immigrant groups looking for an alternative to the Liberal-NDP duo, says Kheiriddin. In fact, after the damage of the last six years, she says, the country has never needed genuine conservatives more. (Recorded June 23, 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When infections inevitably start rising soon, expect pressure on provinces to start locking down again. But Danielle Smith tells Anthony there will be no such thing ever again in Alberta if she’s in charge. Smith, the former Wildrose party leader now running for leader of Alberta’s United Conservative Party and premier, explains why her first order of business will be breaking the province’s toxic relationship with Ottawa. And why that means no longer following national directions on pandemic policy while outright rejecting federal laws that hurt Alberta’s people and industry — even at the risk of a constitutional crisis. (Recorded June 23, 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 battles against misinformation from politicians and media that all led up to the prime minister invoking the historic Emergencies Act. (Recorded June 9, 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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, they’d be surprised to learn how little the government is doing to address the real problem of firearms smuggled in illegally from the U.S. (Recorded June 9 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 political wins, making us all a lot angrier. And, as he explains, he’s running for party leader because he’s determined to fix it. (Recorded May 26, 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices