The Breakdown With Nate Pike

We're back and coming in hot! On this episode we get through the last couple of days since the election before we get into the first of several deeps dives! We start with a look at the election itself before presenting a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the NDP campaign that we've been putting together with conversations with experts for the last couple of weeks! Fr...

With affordability on the forefront of many minds, we sat down with energy economist David Gray to try and make sense of why it is that electricity prices continue to skyrocket! Not only that, but David has been active in politics for more than a few years and had a front row seat to Danielle Smith's infamous floor crossing, so we get his insight on that as well! As always, if you appreciate the k...

On the eve of the election, we sat down with 6 (then) Alberta Party candidates to have an extended discussion on Where, Who and Why is the Alberta Party. That conversation covered the candidates and their own histories, why they chose to run for the Alberta Party and a whole lot more. If you're interested in what on of the smaller option parties is all about, this episode is for you! As always, if...

We're 10 days into the Alberta Provincial Election and it's already shaping up to be one of the most controversial campaign trails in living memory! To start with, we try and break down the major events of the last week, including the ongoing UCP scandals, Danielle Smith's tattoo (does that really have to be an election issue? Really?) and a whole lot more before we get into... The videos. Multipl...

We are extremely excited to present this long form conversation with the legendary Charles Adler! We cover a lot of ground in this chat, starting with his history in media, his shock at where Alberta "conservatism" has gone, his endorsement of Rachel Notley and his historic interview with Jason Kenny during the 2019 election! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to pr...

4.56 - On our very first mid-week round-up, we’re joined by politico and strategist Sarah Biggs to try and get caught up on the events of Alberta politics since our last episode, and there’s a lot! Danielle Smith and the UCP continue to crank out scandals, we take a look at the Super PAC that has seized control of much of the UCP “Take Back Alberta”, we run down the Q3 political party fundraising...

Danielle Smith is pushing a program called R* (R- Star) to encourage resource development and well sitecleanup, but there’s no shortage of critics condemning the program. We sat down for an in-depth discussion with Mark Dorin and Regan Sawchuk to learn a little more about this program and why it’s so controversial! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here...

In a special live episode recorded on November 8th during the byelection that saw the election of Danielle Smith to the Alberta Legislature, we combined our weekly rundown of Alberta politics with a live play by play of the byelection and all of the implications with the help of political strategist Sarah Biggs and political pundit Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean! As always, if you appreciate the kind of...

On another live episode of The Breakdown, we run down the last week in Alberta politics with help from Sarah Biggs and Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean starting with the ongoing health care crisis before moving on to mandate laters, addiction myths and finally we somehow land on dinosaurs walking with humans! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdo...

Continuing with our new format of running episodes twice a week, we run down the last week in Alberta politics with help from Sarah Biggs and Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean! With education minister Adriana Lagrange making blatantly false comments about masking at a recent press conference, we start by asking where the real leadership is on in addressing the respiratory virus that’s cutting through Alber...

On another live episode of The Breakdown, we run down the big events in Alberta politics with help from Sarah Biggs and Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean! We start with the costs of the border blockades, Smiths false Cherokee claims, Indigenous condemnation for the “Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act” and we pull back the covers a bit on Danielle Smiths proposed train from Calgary to Banff and...

On this live episode of The Breakdown, we run down the big events in Alberta politics with help from Sarah Biggs and Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean with a special focus on the recent televised address from Danielle Smith and the kinda-sorta announcements she made! Before that though, we get into Smiths continued heritage scandals, more Shantrums from Justice Minister Tyler Shandro and the recent communi...

Danielle Smith worked extremely hard to change the channel on her many incendiary comments on Wednesday with her paid provincial address, but it seems like she’s already committed to changing the channel back after her stunning comments on vaccination on her weekly “You province, your premier” radio show, and with the help of Sarah Biggs and Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean, we try to make sense of that!...

On November 29th, Danielle Smith finally unveiled her Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act, and as much as people were expecting it to be be bad, it turns out it’s actually much worse and gives the UCP the power to create and change laws with no oversight whatsoever. To try and make sense of it, we held a special live episode with the help of Deirdre Mitchell-MacLean that got more than a...

Danielle Smith has finally introduced her Alberta Sovereignty Act and despite the wide expectation that it was going to be watered down, to the shock of many it is actually much, much worse! We sat down with Sarah Biggs who has been in Edmonton for the throne speech and the introduction of the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act as well as Deirdre Mitchell-Maclean to try and figure out...

The last few days have been moving at breakneck speed in Alberta politics. In under 4 days we went from having UCP MLA’s and Ministers swearing that Smiths Sovereignty Act was perfect to having Smith herself acknowledge some of the foundational flaws that exist within the act, and we try and track that all down. In addition we’re joined by advocate Don Slater to get his take on AISH being reindexe...

There’s a pediatric health crisis in Alberta and with it a major shortage of children’s tylenol (acetaminophen) and childrens ibuprofen. On Monday Danielle Smith announced that she had arranged for the purchase of 5 Million bottle of children’s acetaminophen and ibuprofen. Only problem is, the company that she bought it from doesn’t make it yet, they aren’t legally allowed to seek drugs Canada yet...

On this episode we unpack the roll out of of Bill 1 and it’s fascinating evolution from a Bill that Smith sold to an angry base as being a Bill that would redefine how Alberta relates to confederation to it’s current form which appears to be business as usual with added red tape and the flawed expectation that MLA’s can interpret the constitution better than the courts. Plus, she’s really angry ab...

The UCP is having a rather bumpy start to the week… First Danielle Smith announced that despite an ongoing health care crisis and trailers parked outside of the Children’s Hospital in Calgary that she was being told that it was unimaginable that healthcare could be doing any better. But then the real fireworks started when Smith equated the oppression and genocide of Indigenous peoples under colon...

As we head into the homestretch for the year (and maybe even a short break over the holidays), we try and get a handle on not only where Alberta Politics is heading but where we actually even are right now! To try and get a clear view of this, we sat down with provincial politics prognosticator and political scientist Dr. Lisa Young and chatted about the current state of Alberta, what’s happened t...

It’s our second last show of 2022! And while we still have one show left in the year, MLA’s and Ministers called it early this week, ending the latest legislative session early despite having limited debate and rushed through legislation! Also, Alberta has a surprise new member of cabinet with Parliamentary Secretary for Civil Liberties, Tracey Allard being appointed with literally no announcement...

We’re back from break! We start by running through the events of the last few weeks in Alberta Politics including taking a look at new UCP nominations, the importance of one vote, Danielle Smiths walking back of pretty much all of her leadership race promises before we do a deep dive on the “Take Back Alberta” Initiative that has been buying up NHL game advertising time to see who is behind them a...

On this episode, we take a look at the recent provincial political party fundraising numbers, the effective of the gas tax being cut (again), we try and fill in the blanks on on a recent story about Danielle Smith’s Chief of Staff and we take yet another look at the ongoing children’s fever medicine purchase by the UCP from a company that wasn’t allowed to seek those drugs here. As always, we’re j...

Danielle Smith and the UCP have announced to task forces to address social issues, but there are a lot of people who are raising some very serious concerns around the motivations and methods of these task forces. One of those people is Euan Thomson, founder of the harm reduction group Each & Every. We sat down with Euan to hear what his concerns are in regards to these task forces and why he’s con...

On another one of our Alberta Politics round-ups, we take a look at the embarrassing controversy surrounding UCP Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Nick “S-CLub” Milliken and his weekend of embarrassing and brutally ignorant tweets. Plus we do a bit of a deep dive on exactly what is this “Just Transition” that has the UCP all up in arms and more! As always, if you appreciate the kind of cont...