CANADALAND

How Pierre Poilievre cultivated his attack-dog charm. And should we care about what the new CEO of the Toronto Star tweets?  Jen Gerson  co-hosts.  Links: Pierre Poilievre's promo video Toronto Star CEO tweets CANADALAND piece re: Toronto Star owners Sponsors:   PolicyMe ,  Squarespace , Freshbooks Support CANADALAND: https://canadaland.com/join See omnystudio.com/lis...

Is it Indigenous stewardship ownership or is it becoming just another holographic bumper sticker? What does Landback mean to you, and to your nations and homelands? And is there room for settlers in this movement? This is the first episode of a new 6-episode podcast called CANADALANDBACK!  In it, we talk about what Landback means, we host our first round table discussion and take you inside a...

Welcome to AlbertaLand, where it's cold and greasy. And how the media is bored with the sixth wave. Dani Paradis co-hosts.  Links: Canadian Press article re: Jonathan Denis CBC article re: Jason Kenney CANADALAND article re: Diana Davison Robson Fletcher tweet re: National Post NFTs - see the NFTs for yourself! CANADALANDBACK Toronto Star article re: Paxlovid rollout Sponsors: Rotman , Policy...

Canada is two years into a news media bailout that was lobbied hard for by the country's newspapers. As it turns out the money that's flowed has had uneven impacts on the industry. And last week the Online News Act was tabled that will mandate tech companies - like Google and Facebook - to pay news companies compensation for posting their content on their sites. Will this expansion of government n...

Fact-checking the war in Ukraine. And the ‘Pay Me for Clickbait Act' - sorry, the ‘Online News Act.' Olena Goncharova co-hosts.  Links: Front Burner episode re: war crimes in Bucha Radio-Canada piece re: long-term care homes in Quebec CBC Power and Politics interview with Pablo Rodriguez CTV Power Play interview with Pablo Rodriguez Sponsors: Rotman , Squarespace , Freshbooks , Sk...

Canada is two years into a news media bailout that Trudeau cabinet ministers promised would be conducted with the utmost transparency. Instead, the process and which outlets are getting funding (and how much) is information that has been veiled in secrecy.  What's more is that in order to apply for these government bailout programs, one must first pass the (also secretive) litmus test fo...

The public inquest into the Portapique massacre is far from revealing. Will we ever get the answers to the many, many questions still remaining? And journalists are being blocked from covering events at the Indigenous delegations' visit to the Vatican.  Paul Palango co-hosts.  Links: Paul Palango's book : 22 Murders Investigating the Massacres, Cover-Up and Obstacles to Justice in Nova S...

In 2015, award-winning author and (former) UBC professor Steven Galloway became the target of a social media storm after an allegation was leveled that he had sexually assaulted a student. An allegation, Galloway has denied ever since. But at the time, a number of both staff and students at UBC came out publicly in support of the accuser. In turn, Galloway sued them for defamation. Defendants...

Short Cuts is off this week, so instead we bring you our latest episode of the best politics show in Canada, The Backbench. As nations around the world cut off business with Russia, can Canada help fill the international demand for oil and gas? More importantly, should we? And the pandemic caused unprecedented government spending, as well as shifting priorities on everything from work to heal...

So many journalists would look down their noses and sneer at the likes of BlogTO, Narcity, MTL Blog or any of the similar media companies that have populated the Canadian landscape over the last decade. But while companies that pride themselves on hard news are struggling to find a funding model that works, BlogTO just sold for $15 million.   Featured in this episode: Tim Shore...

Canadian MPs wax poetic about how President Zelensky inspires them… but is that really going to change anything? And how defamation lawsuits help cover up the truth and keep journalists silent. Jan Wong co-hosts.    Links: CBC Reporter Travis Dhanraj's video asking a question to Chrystia Freeland and Melanie Joly President Zelensky's address to Canadian Parliament Prime Minister T...

Sarah Polley has come forward with memories of a violent sexual encounter with Jian Ghomeshi when she was 16. But why is the press tongue-tied about describing the alleged violence? Sarah sits down with Jesse to discuss how to safely run towards danger, and whether it's even possible to ethically use child labour in the production of TV and film. Further reading: Run Towards the Danger , Sarah Pol...

Patrick Brown has had his name cleared - according to an anonymous source. And the media loves a good war story.  Karen Geier co-hosts.  Links: CTV News piece re: Patrick Brown with update National Post piec e re: Patrick Brown National Post piece re: GiveSendGo and Freedom Convoy fundraising Haaretz piece re: Stephen Bandera CBC piece re: Chrystia Freeland holding black-and-red scarf Le...

Canadaland doesn't have a foreign bureau, so we can't bring you the latest on the ground conflict in Ukraine. What we can do is show you another side of the conflict that has deeply influenced this ground invasion: the information war.  This week, we take a deep-dive into the inner workings of Russia's information chaos machine and how its use in Ukraine laid the groundwork for...

Why do stories coming out of Ukraine feel different from other wartime coverage? And we look at the uneven media treatment of those who are impacted by war. Our French-language correspondent Emilie Nicolas and senior producer Sarah Lawrynuik  co-host in Jesse's absence. Links:  Sarah's recent  piece  in the Winnipeg Free Press Emilie's recent  piece  in Le Devoir Davi...

Long before Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly stepped down amidst criticism that the force had failed to stop the convoy occupation, there was trouble brewing within the Ottawa Police Service. Officer misconduct, sexual harassment, abuse, and violent behaviour, has been a pattern within the OPS for years.  Dan Donovan, publisher of Ottawa Life magazine, knows these cases well, and he's currentl...

Overcorrecting an overstatement creates confusion; how nice were the police in Ottawa really? And the emergency is over! Though the media seemed to suggest there wasn't really one anyways. Managing Editor at Ottawa Lookout Robert Hiltz co-hosts. Links: NYT's generalizations about Canada can be found here   Robert duly noted this piece in Passage  Sponsors: PolicyMe , Squarespace , Dispat...

There's a lot of chaos and division in Canada right now. Beyond the people who got arrested in Ottawa over the past few days, there are thousands more Canadians who have financially supported the Freedom Convoy or been rooting for them from afar. In this episode, the CANADALAND team reaches out to regular everyday people who support the Convoy to ask about who they are, how they ended up supp...

The kinder, gentler Emergencies Act should not be underestimated. And framing the convoy as foreign-funded and US-inspired does more harm than good. Writer Nora Loreto co-hosts. UPDATE: An earlier version of this episode included a partial comment without proper context. The comment has been removed. Links: Nora's piece in Passage that she took heat for Jimmy Thomson's tweets Sponsors: PolicyMe ,...

This week's episode is bursting your love bubble by digging into the dark side of love. You'll hear four personal stories that show, with increasing intensity, just how broken Canada's divorce system is. People who were held hostage for years by a slow-moving process that sent them hurdling into debt.  And beyond that, we rarely talk about divorce as a life or death situation, but it cer...

Angry, bias-confirming echo chambers seem evident this week when it comes to the Freedom Convoy. And "a Toronto star at the Toronto Star" dies this week and Jesse dares to speak ill—or at least some truth—of the dead. Maclean's senior writer Paul Wells co-hosts.  Links: Richard Martineau's  piece  in Le Journal de Montréal News editor Jonathan Goldsbie's tweet &nb...

CANADALAND has spent a lot of time in Thunder Bay exploring the deep-rooted racism in the city and the stories of Indigenous people who live there, not to mention the stories of the Indigenous people who have died there.  In 2018, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director released the Broken Trust  report, concluding that Thunder Bay's police service was a home for system...

The media may have missed the Freedom Convoy plot yet again. And as several Canadian artists pull their music from the platform, Spotify wades into publisher territory as they work towards content advisories for select podcasts. National Observer columnist Sandy Garossino co-hosts. UPDATE: This episode says there's been a vacuum of information on Canadian truckers stuck at the Alberta-Montana bord...

It's a story about deception, coverups, and some say, about murder. This is a story about Groundhog Day. The true story of Wiarton Willie. CANADALAND Editor Jonathan Goldsbie digs into the shell game of dead groundhogs that spans decades.  Featured in this episode: Liam Casey, a reporter/editor in the Ontario bureau for the Canadian Press; Frank Gunn, a national photographer for the Canadian...

How many anti-vax trucker convoys were there?! And people are making the case to break up the CBC again. Canadaland contributing editor Danielle Paradis cohosts.  Further reading & links: GoFundMe actually  froze money for the convoy's campaign Tom Hooper's investigation into Pride Toronto and the misuse of money from the federal government The Narwhal's story on the maple syrup melt...