The Breakdown With Nate Pike

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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 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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

4.55 - On another live episode of The Breakdown, we run down the last week in Alberta politics starting with the new UCP cabinet, Danielle Smith's war against reason, healthcare and the WEF before navigating our way through the many ongoing conflicts of interest and scandals that have showed up in the Smith byelection campaign! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to...

On another live episode of The Breakdown, we run down the last week in Alberta politics starting with the new UCP cabinet, Danielle Smiths war against reason, healthcare and the WEF before navigating our way through the many ongoing conflicts of interest and scandals that have showed up in the Smith byelection campiagn! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce...

With Danielle Smith declaring a by-election on November 8th in Brooks-Medicine hat in order to try and score herself a seat in the legislature, we sat down with one of her opponents, Leader of the Alberta Party, Barry Morishita! Not only does Barry have very deep roots in the constituency, but he has some pretty strong views on Smith and the kind of politics she’s trying to bring to Alberta! As al...

On another live episode of The Breakdown, we run down the last week in Alberta politics starting with the new UCP cabinet before navigating our way through the many ongoing scandals of Danielle Smith and the UCP. We also take a look at the recent resignation by an AHS board member because of Smith and her policies and start to take a look at the UCP’s interest in the R-Star program before we open...

The Alberta Teachers Association is holding a rally for public education on October 22 at the Legislature in Edmonton! This comes at a time where a new premier with some deeply disruptive (and not necessarily in a good way) views on the future of education in Alberta has just taken office. To learn more about the rally and why it’s both important and needed, we sat down at Alberta Teacher Associat...

On another live episode of The Breakdown, we start of by focusing on the bombshell press conference that followed Danielle Smiths swearing in as the new premier of Alberta. Her appalling comments about discrimination overshadowed other parts of the press conference, including what Smith would be focusing on and when she intends to do it, although re-indexing of AISH was notably missing. So before...

In this episode we sit down with the leader of the Green Party of Alberta, Jordan Wilke! The Green Party is stepping into election 2023 with an extremely unconventional platform built almost entirely around the idea of bringing proportional representation to Alberta, so we caught up with Jordan to get the story of what brought him into politics, the Green Party and their unusual approach to a prov...

On another live episode of The Breakdown, we round up the week in Alberta Politics by taking a look at the recent Parkland Institute report on the failures of the UCP Tax Cut that appears to have actually lost jobs, we do a mini deep dive on the recent firing and hiring of the board of directors for Athabaskan University, we take a look at the recent changes to opioid treatment, we try and keep up...

The Louise Dean Center in Calgary is a unique school that’s provides educational services for young pregnant women and young mothers, and it’s future is currently uncertain. We caught up with two graduates from the program to find out what the problems are and why the school, and it’s critical programming are at risk! Most importantly, we actually have some ways that you can try and help this crit...