The Breach Show

After a historic loss in this year’s federal election, the NDP faces a pivotal leadership race—and a crossroads in its identity.Historian Ian McKay joins Martin Lukacs to discuss the party’s challenge in confronting Canadian liberalism and its own centrist slide, and what it could do to seize its transformative potential.

Mark Carney is embarking on the largest military spending hike in Canada since World War 2. Policy analyst and peace activist Steve Staples joins Desmond Cole to explain why the biggest winner is the weapons lobby—at the expense of Canadians‘ social programs and standard of life.

As it becomes harder to ignore Israel’s genocide, the political and media class is changing their tune. But El Jones and Desmond Cole discuss how Mark Carney and the establishment media’s complicity continues unabated.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has introduced legislation that would let police run programs in public schools—even over the objections of local school boards.On this week’s Breach Show, we’re airing a conversation hosted by Desmond Cole with organizers in Ontario and across Canada about their fights to get cops out of schools—and the alternatives to policing they’re working to put in place.

Canada’s establishment media hasn’t covered the genocide in Gaza—they’ve covered it up.A new book published by The Breach, When Genocide Wasn’t News, lays bare the media’s complicity.At the Toronto launch, Desmond Cole spoke to two of the book’s editors, lawyer Dania Majid and Breach managing editor Martin Lukacs. Buy the book: https://breachmedia.ca/when-genocide-wasnt-news/

What can water and the natural world teach us about power, resistance, and survival? Leanne Betasamosake Simpson joins Desmond Cole to discuss her new book “Theory of Water” and explores how Indigenous knowledge can guide us through the political and ecological crises we face today.

As anti-trans laws pass in the U.S. and around the world, Canada is often cast as a safe haven for queer and trans people. But the reality is more complicated, says activist Celeste Trianon, in conversation with Katia Lo Innes on this week’s Breach Show podcast.Trianon unpacks how well-funded right-wing groups and some Canadian politicians are fueling a creeping backlash, how strict immigration policies under Carney are making it harder for trans refugees to find protection here, and what it will take to protect trans lives.

Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani defeated former governor Andrew Cuomo to clinch New York City’s mayoral primary. Desmond Cole and Martin Lukacs break down why Mamdani’s campaign won, and what Canadian progressives can learn from it.

Since last week, Israeli missiles have flattened homes and killed hundreds of civilians in Iran, and there are fears the United States could soon join the attacks.On this week’s Breach Show Podcast, Donya Ziaee and Desmond Cole discuss why the bombs won’t bring liberation for the Iranian people—and why Canada must stop backing Israeli aggression in the name of the ‘right to self-defence.’

From coast to coast, Indigenous peoples in Canada are seeing governments bulldoze their rights and sovereignty to speed up resource extraction projects—all in the name of fighting Trump’s trade war. Lawyer Pam Palmater joins Desmond Cole on the Breach Show podcast to discuss the current resource push, Canada’s legal obligations to Indigenous peoples under domestic and international law, and the new wave of resistance brewing across the country.