The Breakdown With Nate Pike

In Part 3 of our series taking a look at the inner culture of political parties, we wanted to hear from some people who have been as inside the system as you can get, so se sat down with Ex NDP MLA’s Robyn Luff and Stephanie McLean as well as EX Wildrose/UCP MLA Derek Fildebrandt to get an inside perspective on how political parties ensure and maintain “discipline”, and it’s definitely not the vie...

In Part 2 of our look at the inner culture of the NDP, we sit down with ex-political staffer and party volunteer Sharie Valentine to hear her description of what she calls a toxic internal culture and what she believes could be done to address it. As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consider signing up as a monthly supporter a...

On our weekly live round up, we take on ⁃ the teachers contract, provincial police, Jason Nixon and performative politics, crime in Alberta and more! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consider signing up as a monthly supporter at our patreon site at www.patreon.com/thebreakdownab, and if you’re listening to the audio version...

In what is going to be part 1 of a three part series on the problems of political parties, in particular how parties approach maintaining party discipline, we sat down with Krista Li, who up until earlier this year was a Constituency Asociation president and aspiring NDP candidate. It appears though, that the NDP had very different plans for Krista’s constituency of Calgary Bow, which led to a stu...

There’s a lot of talk about carbon taxes and the transition to greener energy, but a critical missing piece of that conversation has to do with the development of new wells. We sat down with Omar Mawji of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis to learn more about how some oil companies are prioritizing making sure that shareholders are getting their money as opposed to making su...

On our regular weekly Live at the Space Bar, we take on ⁃The revalations around the decision to remove masks from schools, the current state of the UCP leadership race, BC decriminalizing personal amounts of drugs, the UCP’s tepid harassment policy and more! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consider signing up as a monthly...

Teachers in Alberta will be voting on a mediator provided contract after 3 unsuccessful negotiations with the bargaining association that represents school boards across the province and the provincial government. That vote though, forces them into what many are calling a no win scenario, not only for them but for students across the province. In this episode we try and take a look at why. As alwa...

Editors note - It has recently come to our attention that Mr Wallace has radically changed his version of events, potentially casting significant doubt on the entirety of what he presented to us here. We encourage anyone lwatchingbthis episode to bear that in mind. On this episode of The Breakdown, we sit down with self identified ex-political “fixer” David Wallace. David was identified by multipl...

On our weekly live episode, we go through our top 5 Alberta politics stories of the last week! This week it’s the early end of the legislative session, Shandro moving his war on physicians tactics to the city of Edmonton, tension in caucus, a variety of candidate announcements and more! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please cons...

On our weekly live episode, we go through our top 5 Alberta politics stories of the last week! The ever changing state of Alberta’s premier, the ongoing legal case against the provinces removal of health protections in schools, the Alberta Parents Union, the ongoing health care crisis and more! Of note… During the last segment of the show, Nate incorrectly identified two murder victims as First Na...

When is someone premier after they appear to have resigned? As always with Jason Kenney, the devil is in the details. To try and understand the confusing rapid fire turn of events that we saw with Jason Kenney’s Leadership review, we go back to where it started to try and make sense of things as well as speculate on what happens next! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re try...

On our weekly live episode, we go through our top 5 Alberta politics stories of the last week! More changes to diabetes pumps, revelations around the lengths the UCP go to in order to avoid transparency, more leadership review questions, Bill C-69 and more! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consider signing up as a monthly s...

On our weekly live episode, we go through our top 5 Alberta politics stories of the last week! Changes to diabetes pumps, the premier potentially being compelled to testify, more leadership review questions, the legal aid scandal and the worsening Health care system crisis and more! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consider...

On our weekly live episode, we go through our top 5 Alberta politics stories of the last week! Health care system in crisis, profanity in the legislature, rampant cronyism and more! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consider signing up as a monthly supporter at our patreon site at www.patreon.com/thebreakdownab, and if you’r...

On our weekly Live at The Space Bar, we go through our top 5 (totally subjective) Alberta politics stories of the week! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consider signing up as a monthly supporter at our patreon site at www.patreon.com/thebreakdownab, and if you’re listening to the audio version of our podcast, please consid...

On April 19th we made a joke some people didn’t like about a public figure… Some folks decided that they needed to tell us what we’re allowed to joke about. Nate has some words for them.

On our Easter holiday Live at the Space Bar, we take a look at what’s causing the availability shortage of COVID tests, Adriana Lagrange’s recent CRT fumble, the Pierre Poilievre tour in Alberta and a whole lot more! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here at The Breakdown, please consider signing up as a monthly supporter at our patreon site at www.patre...

Ever since the UCP were elected, it seems that politics has moved at such a fast speed it’s almost impossible to keep up with it all. But in order to understand just how much really, terrible stuff the UCP are willing to overlook in their pursuit of power, it helps to go back once in a while to recalibrate. That’s why this week, we’re taking a look at the continued rise of Tyler Shandro despite a...

On this weeks Live at The Space Bar, we recap the UCP SGM launch and PR specialist/Politico Sarah Biggs helps us make sense of the messaging that went into the event and into Jason Kenney’s deeply polarizing speech to his membership! Plus, things get extra heated towards the end as we get into some of the UCP’s more offensive messaging from the week! As always, if you appreciate the kind of conten...

With the sudden firing of AHS CEO and President Verna Yiu at a time when Alberta is heading into what many are calling a 6th wave of COVID, we sat down to try and untangle the incredible complex political factors that brought us to where we are and what this sudden move might mean for the future of Alberta in the short and long term. As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re tryi...

On this weeks extra spicy live, we have a whole lot of ground to cover! With the help of Sarah Biggs, we break down Jason Kenney’s new fascination with memes, we get into the speed bumps for both the NDP and the UCP on carbon pricing, catch up on the MANY updates on Jason Kenney’s leadership review, the worsening decorum in the legislature, rising COVID numbers and more! As always, if you apprecia...

With nominations ramping up for the next provincial election, so it seems, does the controversy and scandal that comes with them. Recently, a challenger to UCP minister Jason Nixon in the nomination race for Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre put their name forward and after a campaign that was showing significant momentum was abruptly disqualified. Tim Hoven is no stranger to politics either. Hav...

It’s a supersized weekly Live at the Space Bar! This week we have a boatload of surprise guests! The one and only Jeremy Klaszus from the Sprawl! Ex-UCP Press Secretary Payman Parseyan! And we break down the NDP and the failed confidence vote, the innumerable scandals swirling around Jason Kenney and the UCP’s leadership review, including some late breaking scandals involving “voting irregularitie...

On our regular weekly Live at the Space Bar, we take on ⁃ The Kenney Leadership Pusch, stolen polls, Brian Jean saying that he would have brought Rachel Notley into the COVID response decision making process, Kenney invoking Russia in his legal defense, the difference between Ammolite and Ammonite and the province wide “Ditch the draft” protest scheduled for April 2! As always, if you appreciate t...

With Brain Jean having handily won his byelection, we held a special byelection Live At The Space Bar to try and sort through the not only the low turnout but also the incredibly differences in votes between the parties and their candidates! As an added surprise, we also got to have a surprise chat with disqualified (under what is, at the very least hypocritical reasons given the circumstances) UC...