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• No Western country seriously wants Ukraine to win

  The Trump administration has been lambasted for its proposed peace plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war given its generosity to Moscow — yet Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he’s willing to build from it. As Matthew Bondy discusses with Brian, Kyiv has few options but to encourage America to step in and end the brutal, nearly four-year war, despite the deal’s insulting terms and the White House’s apparent warmth toward Russia. That’s because Ukraine isn’t winning, and Europe, Canada and other purported supporters keep offering more lip service than meaningful help. Bondy, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, tells Brian if Western countries won’t stop a barbarous but weak Russia, it raises the question of whether they care to defend western civilization at all. (Recorded November 28, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• Liberals are playing silly games with the military again

  Canada’s reputation for politically driven flip-flopping over important military purchases is getting bad, especially given Ottawa’s plans to dramatically beef up our forces. But here we go again: the Liberals, after cancelling the purchase of the F-35 next-generation fighter jet, then reversing years later, are considering cancelling again to spite a U.S. president who will be gone in 2028. Brian talks with David Bercuson, director of the University of Calgary’s Centre for Military and Strategic Studies and Alan Williams, former assistant deputy minister of materiel at the Department of National Defence. They discuss why the F-35 was picked in the first place (and then picked again) and how short-term politics is corrupting a momentous decision that could have grave consequences in a more dangerous world. (Recorded November 21, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• Conservatives lived through this same party drama before and emerged victorious

  The federal Conservatives were still licking their wounds from the Liberals’ recent minority election victory when they were rocked by a stunning and dispiriting floor-crossing. And they failed to stop the government from passing its budget by a razor-thin margin. That was 20 years ago, as Ian Brodie, former chief of staff to prime minister Stephen Harper, reflects on with Brian. And it looked a lot like what Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are going through today. Back then, it took less than a year before the government fell and Harper’s Conservatives won their first of three election victories. Brodie explains what lessons Poilievre and his team can learn from that time, and why Conservatives shouldn’t be too shaken by their recent troubles. (Recorded November 14, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• Mark Carney shoots blanks, again

  He promised a historic budget. He warned of big sacrifices. He said he had a vision. But what Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered was not much more than a big-spending, big-government Trudeau-style plan, with a bit less hostility to business and some long-overdue military funding, as Tasha Kheiriddin and Stuart Thomson, curators of Postmedia’s Political Hack politics newsletter, discuss with Brian. They look at some of the odder budget choices and at the rough reception the plan has gotten from some corners. They also consider Carney’s lack of progress on other promises. And they discuss the floor-crossing frenzy that (so far) seems to have fizzled out with a single defector from the Conservatives — and why it played out the way it did. (Recorded November 7, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• Cautionary tales from a refugee of NDP and Green party ecopolitics

  From Elizabeth May’s permanent iron grip on the Green party; to Jagmeet Singh’s self-destructive Liberal alliance; and the sabotaging of NDP campaigns by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein’s “leap manifesto”: Mark Leiren-Young, a committed environmentalist, saw all of it from a front-row seat. He had worked to help elect the politicians he thought were committed to fighting for his cause. But, as he tells Brian — and describes in his new book Greener Than Thou: Surviving the Toxic Sludge of Canadian Ecopolitics — he discovered they turned out to be more committed to fighting with each other, while being lousy at politics. For people truly interested in his kind of change, Leiren-Young explains why these parties might be better to disappear entirely. (Recorded October 31, 2025) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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