Full Comment

There’s plenty of awful things to say about Canada’s abusive residential school system. But last summer, the nation was gripped by reports that “mass graves” of children were discovered at some school sites. What you can’t say, apparently, is that those reports were mistaken and that nothing new was really discovered last year, as veteran journalist and author Terry Glavin established with his met...

Canada recently ranked in the world for air travel delays. Flights are being cancelled by the thousands, flyers face hours-long lineups and planes sit stranded on the tarmac. Duncan Dee, former chief operating officer of Air Canada, saw this disaster coming months ago and sounded the alarm to anyone who would listen. But, as he tells Anthony in this week’s episode, federal politicians and bureaucr...

People are angry. Justin Trudeau has betrayed the middle class in particular, and made us all poorer for it. How Conservatives respond to this populist moment can elevate them to Canada’s party of choice or it could kill them, says Tasha Kheiriddin, author of the new book The Right Path: How Conservatives can unite, inspire and take Canada forward. The good news? Tories don’t need to become Libera...

When infections inevitably start rising soon, expect pressure on provinces to start locking down again. But Danielle Smith tells Anthony there will be no such thing ever again in Alberta if she’s in charge. Smith, the former Wildrose party leader now running for leader of Alberta’s United Conservative Party and premier, explains why her first order of business will be breaking the province’s toxic...

One of the many bewildering things about the recent Freedom Convoy is how little agreement exists about the basic facts of what actually happened. Andrew Lawton was embedded inside the convoy and spent many hours interviewing its organizers. He joins Anthony to talk about his new book, The Freedom Convoy: The Inside Story of Three Weeks That Shook the World (Sutherland House press, available every...

There’s a ‘cynical trick’ being played with gun politics in Canada, says Gary Mauser, one of Canada’s foremost authorities on gun control. By exploiting American shootings to layer on yet more regulations for Canadian hunters, farmers and sport shooters, the prime minister is taking advantage of the ignorance of his supporters, Mauser tells Anthony in this week’s episode. And while more Canadians...

For someone who’s spent his career in politics, Conservative MP and leadership candidate Scott Aitchison doesn’t have a lot of good things to say about politicians. He thinks elected leaders today are all about stoking division to bump their popularity with their base, as he tells Anthony in this latest instalment of Full Comment’s discussions with federal Conservative leadership candidates. The r...

Ontario endured strict and lengthy pandemic lockdowns, especially compared to Alberta’s much lighter touch. But conservative voters seem ready to reward Doug Ford’s Ontario PCs with re-election while, out west, angry conservatives in Alberta have driven their premier from office. Hamish Marshall, a former national Conservative campaign manager, joins Anthony this week to discuss how Ontario’s poli...

Dr. Sonu Gaind is a supporter of “medical assistance in dying” (MAID) for those suffering profoundly with terminal illnesses. He’s even the physician chair of the MAID team at Toronto’s Humber River Hospital, where he’s chief of psychiatry. But he’s grown alarmed since Canada stopped requiring a reasonably foreseeable death for euthanasia, as he tells Anthony in this week’s episode. People who are...

No one wants to take the blame for Canada's soaring inflation rate. Not the Bank of Canada. And not the government. But the problem was clearly exacerbated by policy-makers in Ottawa who kept pumping gargantuan inflationary stimulus into the economy well after the pandemic recovery had begun, as Ian Lee discusses with Anthony on this week's episode. Canadians will pay a steep price in unintended c...

Voters around the world are saying they’re angry. They’re unhappy that the promise of upward mobility is over and they’re frustrated that government policies animated by elitist values keep making life harder for the middle and working classes, as Joel Kotkin tells Anthony this week. Younger voters around the world are already flocking to more extremist solutions after feeling abandoned by the est...

The federal Liberals probably never predicted that their efforts at internet regulation would see Silicon Valley comparing them to regimes in Iran, China and North Korea, but here we are. Website blocking, government-ordered takedowns and regulating YouTubers are just some of the alarming ideas coming out of Ottawa recently. Michael Geist, professor of internet law at the University of Ottawa, joi...

After fleeing the Soviet Union and building a life in Canada, Roman Baber believes deeply in upholding democracy and freedom, as he tells Anthony in this latest instalment of Full Comment’s discussions with federal Conservative leadership candidates. In fact, Baber’s opposition to Ontario’s drastic government lockdown restrictions got him kicked out of Doug Ford’s PC caucus. Baber explains why he...

Votes are now being cast to decide the fate of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. A rebellion largely over COVID policies has triggered a review of his leadership and his rivals are openly gunning for him. It’s a reckoning that other provinces aren’t having — but maybe they should. Alberta political strategist Evan Menzies joins Anthony to break down all the drama. Menzies, who has worked with both Ken...

Movie stars used to seem so cool. But when Will Smith hit Chris Rock at the Academy Awards over a joke, and then later got a standing ovation for his Oscar win, people in the real world were appalled. Somehow today’s cossetted movie millionaires seem much more cringe than classy, as celebrity watcher, talk-show host and media personality Shaun Proulx discusses with Anthony in this week’s episode....

Things in Russia have usually gone Vladimir Putin’s way. He has consolidated power, eliminated rivals, stamped out independent media and remains popular despite immense corruption and an economy in shambles. Marcus Kolga — who was recently ordered banned from Russia over his connections to Putin’s democratic opponents — joins Anthony this week to explain how things have suddenly gone seriously awr...

The Liberal-NDP "supply and confidence" agreement will have longstanding ramifications for Canada beyond just the policies these two parties plan to enact. Yes, we may get free dental care -- but it could also come with the effective end of what's known as responsible government, as Howard Anglin explains to the Anthony Furey in this week's episode. Anglin, a lawyer who worked in the offices of Pr...

A few things have changed since Leslyn Lewis ran for federal Conservative leader in 2020 with an unexpectedly strong campaign. While government spending, debt and hostility to the West and Canada’s resources have only gotten worse she says, the Liberal government’s questionable use of the Emergencies Act, the undermining of democratic institutions, and the threat to freedoms have since become key...

After 20 years of housing bubble-blowing, the thought of ever owning a home now seems virtually impossible for legions of younger Canadians. But there are reasons to take heart, as Garry Marr tells Anthony in this week’s episode. Marr, a journalist who has covered Canadian real estate for decades, details how government policies have continued to inflate housing prices in Canada’s biggest cities,...

Canadian journalist Neil Hauer is on the ground in Ukraine living through a Russian invasion. He was in Kyiv as cruise missiles rained down and heard the gunfire as special forces advanced on the city. He joins Anthony from Lviv, Ukraine to describe what it’s really like on the ground in a country in the midst of an invasion, how Ukrainians have been trying to fight back, and some of the unexpecte...

Canada’s former chief of the defence staff Tom Lawson joins Anthony this week to discuss why NATO countries are watching Russia’s ruthless invasion of Ukraine with caution, and why a confrontation between western troops and Russian forces is a serious escalation that neither side should want. Lawson, who was also formerly deputy commander of the North American Aerospace Defence Command, also talks...

The Emergencies Act invoked by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has never been used before — and for good reason. The law that replaced the War Measures Act is so powerful, it was essentially designed to be unusable, as constitutional lawyer Ryan Alford discusses with Anthony in this week’s episode. Alford, author of the book Permanent State of Emergency, details the alarming breadth of the act’s pow...

As other federal Conservatives distance themselves from the Freedom Convoy they once backed, Pierre Poilievre joins Anthony to declare his continued support for the movement. The first declared candidate for the federal Conservative leadership race explains why he thinks government overreach during the pandemic, and too much government meddling everywhere else, has made life harder, less affordabl...

First they were portrayed as a small, ignorable fringe. Then they were portrayed as dangerous hooligans with “unacceptable” views. But once the trucker convoy rolled into Ottawa it defied expectations about the size and scope of Canadians fed up with government pandemic overreach. Rupa Subramanya, a columnist for the National Post, lives in downtown Ottawa and has been walking the city’s streets a...

Olympic medallist and world champion figure skater Elvis Stojko joins Anthony this week to talk about what the last two years have been like for elite athletes as they’ve been restricted from their normal training routines, missed out on competitions, and had to struggle with the possible impacts on their performance from either getting COVID or getting vaccinated. All of this has happened, meanwh...