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Postmedia’s Political Hack team Tasha Kheiriddin and Stuart Thomson join Brian to assess the political spin contest over the collapse of U.S.-Canada trade talks. Despite economic damage, they discuss why neither side has an incentive to make a deal. Prime Minister Mark Carney just crushed three byelections, securing his majority and grinding down the Conservatives — and there are several more coming up. And they explain how President Donald Trump’s strategy is to use the trade war as an excuse to deflect voter discontent in the upcoming congressional midterms, while continuing to divide Canadians. The only question for both is how long they can politically gain from the pain of closed businesses and job losses until voters won’t stand for it anymore. (Recorded September 4, 2026)
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Things that divide us cannot possibly unite us. That much would seem obvious, but as Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard tells Brian, society has for decades now prioritized hyper-individualism and promoted multiculturalism over communitarianism. And that has been eroding western civilization. Beauregard discusses his new book, Anti-Civilization: The Collapse of Society and the Case for the Common Good. He explains how the desocialization of younger generations and the fetishization of immigration, among other things, are leading to a backlash from people who crave a more collective meaning and identity. And surprisingly, it’s generation Z that seems most determined to rescue us from our decline. (Recorded August 19, 2026)
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Trust in legacy journalism is plummeting, and after years working inside the CBC, Tara Henley has a good idea why. The author of the new book, The Trust Spiral: Why the Media Needs Objectivity, discusses with Brian how broad-mindedness in newsrooms was ruined by the emergence of an urban and elite class of group-thinking journalists combined with a revenue crisis that discouraged the risk of nonconformist perspectives. Making things worse, Henley argues, is that government subsidies have corrupted market signals that could force badly needed discipline on media owners. But the answer isn’t internet outlets that are even more one-sided, she explains: media need to relearn the tools they once used to keep themselves more honest. (Recorded July 10, 2026)
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Detractors like to say that House of Commons decorum has never been worse than it is today, but don’t be so sure. Charlie Feldman is author of the new book, Unparliamentary: Tales from Canada’s Colourful Unparliamentary Past. He joins Brian to recount stories of foul-mouthed, rowdy, drunken and altogether misbehaving MPs and senators from all the way back to Confederation right up to Justin Trudeau’s “elbowgate” that make today’s cohort seem tame by comparison. Along the way, Feldman explodes some fabled stories as myth, surveys a surprising scarcity of sex scandals, and uncovers some things we might have preferred not to know, from the story of the salmon hidden inside an MP’s pants and why feces were once thrown in the House. (Recorded July 14, 2026)
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Civilizations die from suicide, not murder, as a famous historian once said. And Canada’s in the process of administering MAID on itself, says author and professor Gad Saad. He discusses his new bestselling book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, with Brian. And he explains the fatal flaw of excessive empathy — and how Canada is rapidly succumbing to it. Radical values imposed by our institutions, embodied in the extreme by the last prime minister, frame our history as shameful. They have led us to embrace immigrants who reject us. And they have made us tolerate the intolerant. It’s why Saad says he’s moving out of Canada, although he explains how our government isn’t making it easy for him to leave. (Originally recorded for a Toronto Sun video, June 26, 2026)
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