The Breakdown With Nate Pike

With Jason Kenney waging an ideological war on addiction and addiction treatment methodologies as well as shutting down a supervised consumption site in one of the areas of Alberta that needs it most, we wanted to have a conversation on what addiction is and how it can potentially be managed, including the role that harm reduction services like Supervised Consumption Sites should play. Fortunately...

With in person protests not really an option because of COVID 19, we teamed up with The Community YYC, albertaprotests.ca and Inclusive Canada to create a virtual protest! With speakers covering topics including EMS Red Alerts, AISH, Harm Reduction, Municipal Elections, submissions from Albertans from across the province and special remarks from CUPE President Rory Gill as well as remarks from MLA...

What’s going on inside the UCP government? The issues managers and press secretaries for the current government of Alberta have been the source of some pretty significant frustration and offense for a lot of Albertans, particularly for those who spend time on Twitter. With issues managers like Matt Wolf and Brian Bateson engaging in what many are calling trolling and the apparently deliberate twee...

Emma Deady (pronounced Deedee) is a Calgarian who found herself facing significant boredom when the first “lockdown” occurred in Alberta. To help fill the time she started spending more time with the app TokTok. It wasn’t long until Emma began to produce satirical videos heavily focused on Alberta Politics and particularly targeting the UCP government. But her short viral videos have done much mor...

Kathleen Smith has been a part of Alberta’s online community since pretty much the start of online in Alberta. She’s provided thoughtful and insightful online commentary in Alberta for more than 25 years and in conjunction with the “Political RND” platform is now co-hosting a podcast with the intent of reaching and engaging women in Alberta on political issues and happenings. On this episode, we g...

Kevin Smith is a physical fitness trainer and independent gym operator. With mental health at the forefront of many Albertans as the battle against COVID is coming up to almost a year. Kevin is in the progress of organizing a fundraiser he’s calling “Train the Trainer” to raise fund to support people who are struggling with mental health. We caught up with Kevin to get the specifics of what his fu...

We’re back with another round up episode and a very special interview! There’s been a lot going on, so in this episode we catch up on a few important stories... UCP MLA’s run amuck! Hail damage! Health Care cuts! A milestone for the show! Masks and more! And our guest this episode is none other than Rachel Notley! As always, if you appreciate the kind of content that we’re trying to produce here a...

Emergency podcast for (sorta) emergency powers! With confusion running rampant in Alberta politics as to what powers the Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Deena Hinshaw possesses and how she can use them, we decided to get a legal opinion from a legal expert. Dr. Ubaka Ogbogu is an Associate Professor in the Faculties of Law and Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, and the Katz Research Fellow in...

Scott Harold Payne is a writer and politcal organizer who recently wrong a series of articles called “The Bully Pulpit”. One of the most bizarre elements to come out of the Jason Kenney administration has been the advent of taxpayer funded “issues managers” whose duties apparently include, among other things, aggressively demeaning and harassing private citizens. Scott Harold Payne (@scotthpayne)...

This episode is all about rural Alberta! We sat down with Kevin Van Lagen who is a principal, educator and who also lives and works in rural Alberta. So in this episode, we talk rural education, the importance of public education in rural Alberta, what the recent changes to municipal revenue structures have done to erode UCP support in rural Alberta and how Kevin sees the future of rural Alberta a...

For Episode 23 we sat down with Shifrah Gadamsetti from Ask Her YYC to learn a little bit more about what Ask Her YYC is and what they’re up to, including the launch of their Parity Cup initiative with Parity YEG! From there, we got into a variety of topics that are going to effect the upcoming municipal elections, including the introduction of PAC’s, the referendums that many are concerned will o...

The Alberta curriculum update has been a roller coaster ride for the last few months, and not in a fun way. First, Albertans heard that Chris Champion, a historian with no background in early childhood development or curriculum design and who had a history of profoundly racist writings had been tasked with “re-designing” the previously completed curriculum update. Then, his updated design was leak...

The landscape of media and journalism is changing. To try and better understand some of these changes as well as to try and get a sense of what the future of media and journalism might look like, we sat down with someone who has extensive history in both. Joe McFarland has been both a journalist as well as a talk radio host in Alberta and we caught up with him to get his thoughts on what has been...

Marie Renaud is the MLA for city of St. Albert, and also the NDP Caucus critic for the ministry of Community and Social Services, and is the first sitting MLA to appear on The Breakdown! We caught up with Marie via Zoom to get her take on the current status of not only what the UCP Is doing with AISH and her current campaign to bring awareness to how difficult it is to make ends meet on AISH, but...

Jennifer Sanford (@thejennsanford on Twitter) is a professional communicator, an advocate, a politico, and the host of the podcast “Conservative like me”, which explores what the future of Conservatism could look like at a provincial level as well as at the federal level. We caught up with Jennifer to get her take on the current status of Conservative politics, where she sees successes with the cu...

With municipal elections coming up across the province, we’re trying to connect with candidates to give Calgarians a bit of an in-depth look into who is vying for positions on City Council. We are thrilled that our first candidate interview for the 2021 municipal election in Calgary is declared Ward 8 Candidate, Anna Murphy! In this sit down, we get into property taxes, EMS dispatch and what Alber...

We’ve got some real treats for this episode! To start with, we untangle the bizarre decision by the UCP to cut AISH, not cut AISH and then yeah, cut AISH. We also go through the recent closure of the Supervised Consumption Site in Lethbridge, the continued signs from global markets that a major shift in energy production and usage is coming, we unpack Jason Kenney’s bizarre response to the federal...

On this episode we sit down with activist, social worker and therapist Lana Bentley to continue our ongoing discussion on racism and systemic racism in Canada. Leave us a comment and let us know what you think! 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...

Welcome to episode 2.15! In this episode, we take a look at the recent accreditation of 2 rebel media personalities as journalists, we examine the recent news that more investors are stepping back from Oil and Gas, we talk about the recent embarrassing behavior from UCP “Issues Managers”, we talk chalk protests and we have a very special interview with The Right Honorable Not Premier of Alberta, N...

Is the UCP above the law, or are they just really good at manipulating it? Back in July, we did a segment on how we stumbled across the fact that the taxpayer founded war room also known as the Canadian Energy Centre is using taxpayer money to advertise PACs that are known to try and influence the outcome of elections through at the very least, the Canadian Energy Centre Facebook page. We sent tha...

In this jumbo sized pop-up podcast, we catch up with Dr. Carla Peck (on Twitter as @cpeck3), award winning Professor with the Faculty of Education who specializes in Social Studies Education for kids. This episode is an absolute barn burner as we work our way through the history of the curriculum review panel, the deeply concerning elements of the current curriculum revision that the UCP has initi...

On June 13th, the NE end of the city of Calgary was hit by a hail storm that was the 4th largest natural disaster in Canadian history. Damages are estimated at around 1.2 Billion dollars, and that figure only represents the current costs. North East Calgary is an incredibly diverse area of the city, with many new Canadians making their homes there. Many of these new Canadians face not only languag...

Even during the restrictions that COVID-19 has presented for public gatherings, there have been protests around the world centered around the movement and organization Black Lives Matter. In order to better understand Black Lives Matter we sat down with both the president and the Vice President of the Calgary Chapter of Black Lives Matter. It’s makes for a longer episode than normal, and we defini...

In this pop up podcast, we catch up with Adam Quraishi, an educator and teacher with the Calgary and Rockyview School Boards to discuss (among other things), the return to school plan (?) from the provincial government, his concerns with the risks that exist in a classroom that as of yet have going unaddressed, the Sword of Damocles that Education Minister Adriana Lagrange has hung over the Calgar...

Jason Kenney and the UCP have announced that they will be holding a referendum on equalization next year. In this episode we sit down with renowned economist Dr Trevor Tombe to not only take a look at what sort of power this referendum will have to affect change to the current equalization formula and debunk some common myths in regards to equalization. We also discuss a few of the other reasons t...