By the time you’re listening to this you know how it all turned out: Carney’s the PM, a plurality of voters went Conservative though not enough in Carleton to send the leader back to the House. The NDP are decimated, the Greens are down to one seat again, and the Bloc have called a truce in the name of “national unity”(?). What an election! Let’s live through it all again!! Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #468 – The Slow March to 169 (feat. The CFRU News Team)”
If you listen to this show promptly on Wednesday then it’s just five more sleeps till Election Day! About a quarter of us have been so excited that we just couldn’t wait to vote; 7.3 million Canadians made voting part of their Easter weekend festivities, a new record. What’s been driving all this excitement? What about the party platforms? The manoeuvres of the national party leaders? And what the hell happened at those post-debate scrums? Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #467 – The Two Guelphs Election (feat. Scotty Hertz)”
We’re at the end of another school year, and while some students are looking forward to summer, they’re also looking forward to next fall. Or perhaps even stressing over it. Housing is a big issue in Guelph, and it’s somehow even bigger when it comes to student housing. Last summer, the largest first-year student enrolment ever weighed on students and the greater Guelph community, but relief may be coming if city council doesn’t get in the way(?). Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #466 – Remember The Alma? Oh.”
These are busy days at Politico HQ. There’s a federal election on right now, and Guelph has become so big that it’s spread over two ridings with so far a dozen candidates vying to be the next Members of Parliament. If one candidate in particular is successful then that means there will be a vacancy on Guelph city council. What happens then? Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #465 – How Do You Fill a Council Vacancy?”
These are some heady political times. We’ve already made it through one election this year, and we’re now in the midst of another. As we’re going to air, the consumer carbon tax is gone, the major parties are duelling to see who can be the most moderate, and it appears that things like environmental stewardship and compassion are just not affordable. Maybe it’s time to re-calibrate. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #464 – Guelph Politi-Chat (feat. Morgan Dandie)”
In six days, the doors of Guelph’s Consumption and Treatment site will close for the last time. Unless a Charter challenge in an Ontario court succeeds, the Ontario government’s mandate to close a dozen different CTSes and replacement them with new Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment, or HART, Hubs. Or at least that was the plan. Either way, what happens on April 1? Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #463 – The End of the CTS, aka: Have a HART (feat. Melissa Kwiatkowski & Jean Hopkins)”
Maybe you don’t remember, or want to remember, but it was this time five years ago that the world closed down as COVID-19 became so virulent that it required us to be sequestered for months or else keep six feet apart while wearing a mask or other PPE. Many of us have memory-holed those events, some have re-written it as an overreaction or, even worse than that, a conspiracy, but perhaps the time has come to face our trauma about the pandemic. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #462 – Has It Really Been Five Years? (feat. Dr. Nicola Mercer)”
When we talk about the affordability crisis, you sometimes hear the term “legislated poverty”, meaning the state of social assistance rates like Ontario Works and ODSP that assure people can never get ahead because the amounts paid never cover all the real costs of daily life. That’s why Mike Morrice decided to act when he was elected to the House of Commons in 2021, but like all great quests, it hasn’t ended up the way he envisioned. Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #461 – Dispatches From a Quixotic Legislative Quest (feat. Mike Morrice)”
Although housing and homelessness has been THE issue for the last few years, it feels like they didn’t make a dent in the recently completed provincial election. As the news obsessively tracks the tariff war and Doug Ford’s response to Donald Trump’s latest drama, the struggles of growing unaffordability and homelessness seems to have taken a back seat., So now that the election is over, does anyone in authority still care about these issues? Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #460 – Now What? (feat. Diana Chan McNally)”
It’s been four weeks since Doug Ford asked the Lieutenant-Governor to dissolve the legislature and it really hasn’t felt like anything has changed. Now, we will go to the polls on Thursday to decide who will form the provincial government for the next four years and despite all the issues, it feels like it’s still going to be the people who’ve run it for the last seven years. So what have we missed this election? Continue reading “GUELPH POLITICAST #459 – This Slushy Election (feat. Scotty Hertz)”
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