The Herle Burly

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and the Canadian Climate Institute.
Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Alberta voted to stay in Canada on Monday by a roughly 75/25 margin. But the real story is what the referendum did to Alberta politics. David is joined by Zain Velji, campaign strategist, co-director of Naheed Nenshi’s Alberta NDP leadership run, and partner at Northweather, and Dan Arnold, who lived most of his youth in Alberta and was former lead research strategist for the Trudeau Liberals, and is now chief strategy officer at Pollara.

They dig into why separatist support barely budged, how Trump and Musk ended up motivating federalist turnout, and why Danielle Smith lost four of the nine questions she wrote herself despite outspending her opponents ten to one. Can a premier most Albertans suspect is a separatist purge the separatists from her own party? Is the Calgary-rural coalition coming apart, and is Nenshi’s NDP building something more durable? Plus: how Pierre Poilievre navigated a split base, whether Mark Carney now has permission to engage in Alberta, and whether Ottawa should draw a line on two-tier healthcare.
Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, or your favourite podcast app.

Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.
The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and the Canadian Climate Institute.
Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! The Chiefs are back. This franchise has spawned more sequels than The Fast and the Furious, but unlike Vin Diesel, these three bring something new every time. David is joined by Brian Topp, Ian Brodie and Tim Murphy for a wide-ranging hour on a country being tested from three directions at once:

Quebec. The Parti Québécois has won a weak minority. They discuss whether the new government will use every tool it has to build “winning conditions” for a referendum, and whether Ottawa should confront it the way Trudeau and Dion did or quietly take its issues away one by one.

Alberta. With the referendum entering its final week, they look at what Prime Minister Carney should say when he lands in the province. They also ask whether the vote could be the beginning of the end for the UCP. And one of the things they discussed with an emerging throughline in both of those votes: the potential of immigration becoming a real wedge issue in Canada again. 

Canada–U.S. There’s no deal in sight. Can Canadians hold together as the economic pain mounts, and what would it take to keep that solidarity intact?

Plus, the ever important role of the Opposition. Carney’s consensus is unusually strong. Should the Conservatives and NDP keep chipping away at it, or concede the moment and position themselves for the fight that comes after Trump?

Brian Topp was the former chief of staff to Rachel Notley and deputy chief of staff to Roy Romanow, and is now a founding partner at GT & Company. Ian Brodie was Stephen Harper’s first chief of staff and helped found the CPC; he is now a political science professor at the University of Calgary and senior advisor at New West Public Affairs. And Tim Murphy, former chief of staff to Paul Martin and now executive vice president and chief strategic affairs officer at Aecon.

Settle in for an hour of the kind of conversation you only get from people who’ve actually run government at the highest levels of Canadian government..
Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, or your favourite podcast app.

Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.
The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and the Canadian Climate Institute.
Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! When Ukrainian drones hit the Russian internet giant Yandex this week, bot traffic and propaganda posts reportedly fell off a cliff. That tells you something about how manufactured and polluted our information space has become. Andrew MacDougall, five-time Herle Burly guest, former Director of Communications for Prime Minister Harper, now partner at Trafalgar Strategy in London, and senior policy fellow at the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, joins David to explain the attention economy. Are we paying big tech with our time and our brains instead of our money? And is it taking a wrecking our mental health and our democracy?
Andrew argues that regulators have spent years trying to clean up the mess instead of shutting off the machine that makes it. He wants to go after the business model itself: make people pay for social media, end anonymous accounts, and use competition and product liability law against addictive design. David offers a few counterpoints. He points out that Canada has managed a genuine national consensus in the face of Trump 2.0, and the two dig into why Mark Carney's steady, analogue style is landing with anxious voters. Then they tackle the AI wave about to supercharge all of it, and why governments are doing nothing about it while 75% of Canadians want it regulated.
Is democracy about to fall into the gap between our Paleolithic brains and godlike technology? Have a listen.
Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, or your favourite podcast app.

Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.
The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and the Canadian Climate Institute.
Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! David sits down with his old friend who's now at the centre of the federal government’s policy agenda: The Honourable Steven MacKinnon, Canada’s Minister of Transport and Government House Leader.
Minister MacKinnon lays out why Ottawa the agenda is necessary as he pushes back on privatization claims and comparisons to Ontario premier Mike Harris’ sale of the 407. He explains how Bill C-39, the Building Canada Strong Act, changes federal labour disputes, and David presses him on whether it amounts to the end of the right to strike. They also discuss how the government plans to meet its duty to consult First Nations while approving projects within a year.
MacKinnon offers a candid admission that, with a crowded agenda and the previous NDP deal, the Trudeau government didn't spend enough time on the economy. The conversation wraps with his case for why the Liberal brand still owns the political centre to this day.
It's an insider's view of what the government is actually doing and why. Join us.

Order a copy of Anthony's new book here: https://www.indigo.ca/products/untitled-77?variant=46685129572562. 
Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, or your favourite podcast app.

Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.
The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and the Canadian Climate Institute.
Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! This week David sits down with Anthony Scaramucci. The man immortalized in the dictionary as a unit of time.

From Wall Street to the White House to fellow podcaster on The Rest Is Politics: US, Anthony is out with his new book, All the Wrong Moves. He argues that three catastrophic decisions — China's admission to the WTO, the bailout of Wall Street after 2008, and the deficit-financed invasion of Iraq — set the stage for Donald Trump.

Scaramucci knows Prime Minister Carney personally, going back three decades to their Goldman Sachs days, and he doesn't hold back: calling Carney the best of any Western leader at managing Trump, "not even close." And he even brings us the receipts, literally revealing a photo of the pair at his annual Davos wine party. 

He also gets candid about his own reasons for joining the Trump administration in the first place, what it cost him personally and professionally, and why, despite still calling himself a Republican, he's actively working to see MAGA politically destroyed.

The conversation ranges from the unraveling of the post-2008 financial system and the strange marriage of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party that produced MAGA, to what a post-Trump America might actually look like, and whether the damage done to allies like Canada and the UK can ever really be undone.

Join us for a sharp, funny, and brutally honest conversation.

Order a copy of Anthony's new book here: https://www.indigo.ca/products/untitled-77?variant=46685129572562. 
Thank you for joining us on #TheHerleBurly podcast. Please take a moment to give us a rating and review on iTunes, Spotify, or your favourite podcast app.

Watch episodes of The Herle Burly via Air Quotes Media on YouTube.
The sponsored ads contained in the podcast are the expressed views of the sponsor and not those of the publisher.