The Breakdown With Nate Pike

In the run up to the provincial election, there were a lot of straw man arguments that were deployed by a lot of political parties to keep people from talking about the actual issues that the province of Alberta was facing. One of the most contentious though, has to be the debate that occurred around GSA’s. Today, we want to revisit that debate a little. For those of you that are unfamiliar with w...

Consultation (or not)! Ideology! (Dr. Carla Peck and the Curriculum - Part 3)

Since the provincial government release their new “curriculum”, there’s been no shortage of outcry, frustration and condemnation, particularly in regards to the social studies “curriculum”.

One of the UCP’s campaign promises was to “throw the NDP curriculum in the shredder” and come up with their own, but what they hav...

Plagiarism! Editing on the fly! All this and so much more!

Since the provincial government release their new “curriculum”, there’s been no shortage of outcry, frustration and condemnation, particularly in regards to the social studies “curriculum”.

One of the UCP’s campaign promises was to “throw the NDP curriculum in the shredder” and come up with their own, but what they have produced, particu...

School is in! (Part 1)

Since the provincial government released their new “curriculum”, there’s been no shortage of outcry, frustration and condemnation, particularly in regards to the social studies “curriculum”.

One of the UCP’s campaign promises was to “throw the NDP curriculum in the shredder” and come up with their own, but what they have produced, particularly the Social Studies “curriculu...

Jennifer Sanford is back with a whole new season of “Conservative Like Me” dropping on April 9th!

So we decided to sit down with her to discuss the new season, the many flavours of conservatism, the state of conservatism federally and provincially and so much more that we needed to split the episode up into 2!

We hope you enjoy Part 2, where we really begin to drill down into the state of Conser...

Jennifer Sanford is back with a whole new season of “Conservative Like Me” dropping on April 9th!

So we decided to sit down with her to discuss the new season, the many flavours of conservatism, the state of conservatism federally and provincially and so much more that we needed to split the episode up into 2!

We hope you enjoy Part 1! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re...

Alia is back! In a return to our original format we break down the latest happenings in Alberta Politics!

Physicians pay! Jobs! Recall Legislation! Internet blackmail! Bigfoot! Plus a revealing interview with NotJason Kenney! 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...

Deirdre Mitchell-Maclean is the host of one of a very particular podcast on Alberta politics, but the current format is the result of an evolution over several years. As well, with Deirdre’s experience covering politics as both a journalist and a pundit, as well as someone who not only identified as a centrist but also actively volunteered for the only political party in Alberta that openly descri...

Deirdre Mitchell-Maclean is the host of one of a very particular podcast on Alberta politics, but the current format is the result of an evolution over several years. As well, with Deirdre’s experience covering politics as both a journalist and a pundit, as well as someone who not only identified as a centrist but also actively volunteered for the only political party in Alberta that openly descri...

There was quite a media storm a few weeks back when footage surfaced of the Edmonton Police Service kicking a group of homeless Albertans into blistering cold temperatures. That storm prompted yet another conversation about homelessness in Alberta, but no major changes have been announced. To get a better grasp on the homeless situation in Alberta as well as get some ideas as to what may need to b...

As a follow up to our last episode, which was our controversial interview with President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom John Carpay, Constitutional Lawyer David Khan was generous enough to to agree to sit down with us to provide his perspective and interpretation of our interview. In addition to his work as a lawyer, David has worked passionately as an advocate for a number of is...

John Carpay is probably one of the more polarizing figures in Alberta politics. As president of the JCCF, he leads an origination that proclaims to be champions of the Constitution and Charter, but that often finds themselves in the media spotlight for the types of issues they champion. And of course there’s the matter of the comment on the symbolism of the rainbow flag. We sat down with John to t...

Troy Wason has been a fixture in Alberta politics for decades, and was a previous director for the Progressive Conservatives. Recently, he took on the role as Executive Director of the Alberta Party. We sat down with Troy to learn more about how he views the current state of Conservatism in Alberta, to get caught up on what’s going on with the Alberta Party, particularly with the news that having...

Alberta winters can be cold, but who would have ever thought that penguins would be at the forefront of Alberta political conversation?

You may have heard about the penguin protest that occurred earlier this week at the legislature where 800 protesting snow penguins were destroyed... We managed to catch up with one of the organizers of the protest, Rowan Ley to get the scoop on what the protest w...

Episode 3.06 Alberta politics has often been referred to as divisive, but recently a conversation has started in Alberta that has united Albertans in way that we haven’t seen in a long time. With land designation changes and the fate of large areas of the Rockies as well as water quality being threatened, we sat down with Katie Morrison, Conservation Director for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness...

With the UCP stumbling from one scandal to the next, the only thing that they seem to be able to do reliably is make matters worse with they way that they manage their communications and the way that they communicate to Albertans. In order to try and gain some more insight what might be driving the communications decisions being made by the UCP, we sat down with a professional communicator @brritt...

In the last days of 2020 we recorded an interview with Dr. Joe Vipond and Robert Tremblay from the Calgary Climate Hub to discuss their campaign to work with Enmax to get them to commit to becoming a Net zero company. Little did we know at the time that we were only a few days away from Alohagate and the Adriana Lagrange mask scandal... So while it’s a little bit later to be presented than we inte...

Back when we went back to school in September, there was a lot of controversy over the awarding of a contract to a company whose owner had donated to UCP Minister of Education Adrianna Lagrange’s election campaign. Lagrange and the UCP dismissed those concerns, saying that Alberta Education played no role whatsoever in awarding that contract. It seemed a little off to us, so months ago we filed a...

Kim Siever has built himself a reputation as an independent news man over a variety of formats over the last several years. His focus on deep dives into empirical evidence has garnered a strong following in Alberta that reaches outside of the province across Canada. With Kim Siever News, be built a significant loyal following, with a particularly strong presence on Twitter where he served up daily...

The world of Alberta politics started 2021 with a bang that was louder than any fireworks set off the night before! When news started to break that multiple UCP staffers and MLA’s had been travelling inter-provincially and internationally in open defiance of travel advisories issued by their own government, things started moving fast! So what happened? And what does it mean? In our first episode o...

It’s our year end panel discussion blow out that’s so big, we had to break it up into parts! (PART 3!) We wanted to do a bit of a follow up on the research that the Common Ground Initiative has been producing, so we assembled an expert panel to discuss some of the research, what it means for the future of political parties in Alberta, and a whole lot more!

With an panel made up of... -One of the...

It’s our year end panel discussion blow out that’s so big, we had to break it up into parts! (PART 2!) We wanted to do a bit of a follow up on the research that the Common Ground Initiative has been producing, so we assembled an expert panel to discuss some of the research, what it means for the future of political parties in Alberta, and a whole lot more!

With an panel made up of... -One of the...

It’s our year end panel discussion blow out that’s so big, we had to break it up into parts! We wanted to do a bit of a follow up on the research that the Common Ground Initiative has been producing, so we assembled an expert panel to discuss some of the research, what it means for the future of political parties in Alberta, and a whole lot more!

Our Panel... -Dr. Feodor Snagovsky is one of the p...

Dr. Jared Wesley is a political scientist and an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta. He’s also the lead on the Common Ground Initiative, which aims to identify and define the values that drive politics in Alberta. Dr. Wesley has done extensive work to explore what Conservatism means in Alberta, and the Common Ground Initiative has done extensive work to determine how Albertans relate...

Zoe Lambert delivered a powerful speech on addiction and harm reduction as part of our International Human Rights Day Special. By popular demand, we’ve added it as a special episode!