This week on Open Sources Guelph, we’re going to really get into the election issues, and for a change it’s not going to involve punditry. This week, we’re going to start our candidate interviews with two back-to-back contenders in the form of Communist Party candidate Juanita Burnett, and then we're going to talk about other controversies with the election.

This Thursday, September 19, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

A Matter of Work. The first candidate we’re interviewing in this election needs no introduction because this is not her first time as a candidate, or as a candidate being interview on Open Sources. Juanita Burnett is running for the Communist Party for the third time, but in her first time as a Federal candidate, and we’ll talk to her campaign and making workers and labour a priority in 2019.

What a Week. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau really stepped in it this week, or we should say, he stepped in it 20 or 30 years ago. The brown face, and then black face, controversy hit the stolid campaign trail like a tonne of bricks, and made international news in the progress. So can Trudeau mount a comeback and save his re-election hopes, and what about the deeper racial implications at the hear of the controversy? 

Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, we’re going to talk about how we survived TIFF even though we didn’t actually attend this year. Still, that film festival has heavily influenced our slate this week, with a review of Hustlers, and some discussion about the movies with the buzz post-festival. Also, we’re going to talk about the new terms in the streaming wars, Jim Cameron’s kingly ambitions.

This Wednesday, September 18, at 2 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss:

Lucky ‘Rabbit’. Taika Waititi won the Toronto International Film Festival, but taking the coveted People’s Choice Award, an early predictor of the Oscar Best Picture race. So is Jojo Rabbit the one to beat in awards’ season? Also, what happened to all the talk about female directors and people of colour? Did TIFF get too distracted by all the famous people again?

Joker’s Wild. One of the most talked about movies to come out of TIFF was Todd Phillips’ Joker, the ultra-violent, realistic exploration of the famous Batman villain. Unlike the Venice Festival though, not all the buzz about Joker at TIFF was over-the-top praise. We’ll look at all the Joker related news that came out of the Toronto Film Festival.

Plus Doesn’t Mean More. Disney’s new streaming service Disney+ may be changing the way we watch TV even before it launches. New shows on Disney+ will not be bingeable, so you’ll have to watch them week-to-week, instead one after the other, and Netflix has noticed, making the same move for a couple of its upcoming shows. Is this the end of binging as we know it?

King James’ Version. Director James Cameron used to have number one and two of the biggest box office earners of all-time, domestically and internationally, but now he has none. We’ll talk about Cameron’s somewhat sedate new interview on the subject, and whether he’s plotting to reclaim his crown with four Avatar sequels.

REVIEW: Hustlers (2019). There wasn’t a single business or group that wasn’t effected by the economic downturn of the Great Recession, and that includes exotic dancers. Based on a true story, Constance Wu and Jennifer Lopez lead a crew of ladies to get payback against the guys that tanked their careers and the world economy, but that’s only part of the story. We’ll review this funny, touching and daring new movie that’s more than a tease.

End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 2 pm.

Five hours after the council meeting began, the main library project was back on track. After a couple of months of mixed messages and confusion, the library advocates were pleased with the definitive 9-4 decision to proceed with a new main library and the hard cap price tag of $67.1 million. But not all voices were heard.

In the ever expansive quest to maximize our local democracy, many us wonder if all those correspondences at the back of the agenda are given due consideration. A lot of the people who appear at council can be classified as "frequent flyers," people who know how to delegate, and do it often. But they're not the only ones that speak on an issue.

For people unable to come to council because of work or family reasons, or for people who might have a bit of stage freight or another sort of social anxiety, being able to write your thoughts down and send them to the clerk is a good second (or even first) option. Still, it feels like we weigh these two types of engagement differently. The live delegates get reported on, but do the equally engaged and enlightened writers?

That changes this week. On this edition of the podcast, you will hear a reading of some of the numerous, and occasionally lengthy, written submissions for Monday's council meetings. Some of them are a short couple of sentences, others are highly detailed, but you'll notice that they're all in favour. We're always making a case the there needs to be more listening in modern political discourse, so let's do just that.

So let's here from you, the people, on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!

Do you want to know how it all turned out? Recap the city council meeting here, or subscribe to the Guelph Politico Tip Sheet every Tuesday and Friday here.

The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify.

Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're just really eager to get this election started, Justin! (He might be listening.) So we'll kick off this week's episode with an election preview, and then we'll get into the week's news, which is also, for the most part, about elections. We'll discuss the increased security for a Federal cabinet minister because of online threats, the results of the Manitoba election, and some more of the U.S. President's patented Kool-Aid Man diplomacy. 

This Thursday, September 11, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

Super Karate Monkey Death Car Election Preview. It's almost here! And it may be here by the time you're reading this. Yes, this is the final countdown to the 2019 Federal Election (or the official launch depending on how all the timing works out), so we'll look at where the parties stand as the writ is drawn up. Who has the biggest advantage? Who has the biggest challenges? Is this Justin Trudeau's election to lose, or Andrew Scheer's election to win? Let's get election ready!

Troll Through the Park. In another kind of preview of Election 2019, it was reported that Catherine McKenna, the Minister of the Environment, has been given added security because of online threats. It's no secret that McKenna triggers a certain kind of troll, pejoratives like "Climate Barbie" have been all the rage since she was appoint to cabinet in 2015, but how has this gone as far as death threats? Also, and we really should be asking this more often, what's wrong with people?

More Life for Brian? The Manitoba Provincial Election was this past Tuesday, and if the advanced polls are to be believed, then Progressive Conservative Premier Brian Pallister walked to another victory in the Keystone province. So what did any of this prove? Did this cold, cynical polliticking of calling an election midsummer, and a year early, work, and what effect will this have on Manitoba voters as they face back-to-back elections?

The Negotiate Story. In a surprise Twitter announcement (as if there's any other) U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he was cancelling a meeting with the President of Afghanistan and the leaders of the Taliban at Camp David to discuss a peace treaty. It was bad optics that they were meeting on the 18th anniversary of 9/11, but there are worse optics like the rare split between Trump and V.P. Mike Pence on the whole idea of the meeting. We'll discuss the latest example of Trump's so-called "diplomacy."

Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits is back! Did you miss us? Of course, you did, so let's talk about what we're going to talk about. We're reviewing the horror sequel IT, so hopefully that coulrophobia stuff is under control. We're also going to discuss the summer that was at the movies, the year that was for women and people of colour, a couple of new trailers, and what's new with some of your favourite stars.

This Wednesday, September 11, at 2 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss:

Summer Lovin'. It was a tough summer at the box office unless your name was Walt Disney Studios, which had the Top 4 money-makers with a billion dollars each to their name. For everyone else - from Godzilla, to the Men in Black, to the animated Pets - things did not go the way they wanted. So who won the box office, and who had a cruel summer?

The Colour of Money. The year 2018 was a good year for blockbusters, but it was also a pretty good year to star in them if you were a woman or a member of an underrepresented minority. The number of movies with those people in leading or co-leading roles went up in a big way last year, but the question remains, was this a fluke, or the start of a trend?

Profiles in Flourish. It's film festival and award season, so the magazines and papers are packed with profiles of some of the biggest players of the day. The New York Times had Brad Pitt, THR had Scarlett Johansson, and Variety had Robert Pattinson. We'll talk about what insights were gleamed from these most high-profile actors.

Two of a Kind. Getting into fall, there's going to be a lot of speculation about the best movies of the year. These will not be two of them. The Bad Boys are back 25 years after they first shot up Miami, and a Killer Sofa is going to kill all those wanting a good sit. You've heard the expression "read 'em and weep," well this is the watching version.

REVIEW: IT Chapter 2 (2019). Two years ago (27 in movie time), the first chapter of IT became one of the highest grossing horror movies ever! Was it the kids? Was it the clown? Was the time finally right for a Stephen King renaissance with a deep appreciation for the master's words? With an easy sequel ready to assemble, it seems right to think that this IT is going to go all the way to the bank again. So did this sequel deliver, or did it disappoint?

End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 2 pm.

It takes literally thousands of people to make a movie or TV show, including that one person who finds the places where each scene in the production is shot, the location manager. It's a big job, you have to know where all the cool places to shoot are, and would it surprise you to learn that one of the most in-demand locations in show biz right now is just a 20-minute drive down the road?

If you're a location manager it wouldn't surprise you because your union, the Location Managers Guild, has nominated the City of Cambridge for Outstanding Film Commission at the annual LMGI Awards. Believe it or, despite all the production that takes places in Toronto, Vancouver, and even parts of Alberta, this is the first time that a Canadian film office has been nominated.

Why Cambridge? It's because of the city's role doubling for the tyrannical Republic of Gilead, the setting of the Emmy Award-winning drama The Handmaid's Tale. Interiors and exteriors in the City of Cambridge have appeared in all three seasons (so far) of the series, and it's one of the primary drivers of a remarkable 42-day stretch of filming in Cambridge in the first eight months of this year.

So what's driving that success? Why are camera rolling so often in Cambridge, and is it a matter of giving productions what they want, or giving them what they need? These are a couple of the questions we're going to put to our special guests this week.

First, we’ll hear from Anne Richardson, who’s been one of the location managers for The Handmaid’s Tale since season two, and ask her about working with Cambridge, and what she expects from her position when it comes to working with municipal partners. After that, we’ll hear from Devon Hogue, the Business Information Officer of the City of Cambridge, and she'll discuss the intricacies of her job, and how she put together an award-nominated film office.

So let's go behind the scenes of turning your town into a movie set on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!

The sixth annual LMGI awards will be held in Santa Monica, California on Saturday September 21. To learn more about filming in Cambridge, and when something's filming in Cambridge, you can visit the City of Cambridge website here.

The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify.

Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're all like "When are you going to call an election, Justin!" But seriously, folks, there's lots of serious stuff to discuss. The battle between the NDP and Green Party for the hearts and minds of Canadian progressives just got hotter, the legal battle over the carbon tax marches on in spite of common sense, everything about Donald Trump battles for our attention, and the Brexit situation in the U.K. has somehow managed to become a bigger battle. Put your serious faces on, this is going to be a rough one.

This Thursday, September 5, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

A Green Rebellion. In New Brunswick on Tuesday, 14 former and current NDP candidates threw their support behind the provincial and federal Green Parties. Why? They're feeling a bit ignored by the Federal NDP leader. In fact, an NDP organizer who also left the party said that there is no path to victory for the NDP in Atlantic Canada, which is not the message you want to be sending days ahead of an election campaign. What's behind this Green insurgency, and why is the NDP struggling so hard right now?

Carbon Freeze II. Despite two loses in two different courts, legal attacks on the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act (GGPPA) continue as the Government of Ontario has announced that they will proceed with a Supreme Court challenge. So is this going to play well for the Liberals in the Federal Election campaign? Will the challenges to the GGPPA only end with a change in government? And what happens to all these legal challenges should the Liberal government get re-elected?

Fatigue State. Is following American politics tiring you out? What might have once been a fun distraction now almost feels like a full-time job in the "Age of Trump" (copyright likely pending from the Trump Org). Pundits have recently started to wonder if this fatigued state might have a negative effect on never-Trumpers and Trump supporters alike because the non-stop drumbeat of scandals, controversies and tweets is just turning people off the process. Is "Trump Fatigue" a real threat to American democracy?

"Not a Good Start, Boris." U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who, again, was chosen by less than 100,000 Conservative Party members to lead the tens of millions of people in his country, decided that one of his first moves as PM should be another undemocratic measure. Johnson told the Queen that he intends to prorogue Parliament, but Parliament isn't letting that happen without a fight, and it's a fight that already lost Johnson his majority in the House. Having said that, is their any room for Brexit to get crazier?

Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

It's a strange sight every year; one day campus is all but empty, and the next day it's bursting with life. Saturday was Move-In Day at the University of Guelph as thousands of first year students moved in to their dorms, made new friends, and got their first taste of adulting as they began their academic pursuits (whatever they may be).

As per usual, CFRU spent the day broadcasting live to air from Branion Plaza, which is the open area just behind the University Centre's north entrance. It's a great perch to watch people as they head to the U.C. for a snack or coffee, or head to Rozanski Hall for some opening day festivities, or head to the University Bookstore for school supplies or a souvenir.

In lieu of the usual Guelph Politicast this week, we'll replay my hour-long set on CFRU last Saturday, live from Branion Plaza, and live-to-air on CFRU. Abdul-Rahim Abdulai from the CFRU show FoodFarm Talk co-hosts as we share O-Week remembrances, changes to campus, and the importance of getting involved on campus and taking care of yourself physically *and* mentally. 

Along with the on-air stuff, which you might have heard already, there's some special edition material that you may like to hear as well. After the CFRU shift, I took a microphone around campus to talk to some of the people milling about including O-Week volunteers, first-year students, and at least one parent with bittersweet feelings about leaving her child at the U of G.

So let's go live-ish to Move-In Day at the University of Guelph on this week's Guelph Politicast!

We’ll be back to a regular episode of the Guelph Politicast next week. Thanks to everyone that gave a couple of minutes of their time on Saturday, and to those who stopped by the CFRU tent in Branion Plaza to say "Hi" or to learn about volunteering with the station.

The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify.

Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we wind down the summer with a relaxing look at the schizophrenic diplomatic situation around the world. Seriously, the global political order is not coming apart at the seams, it just feels like it. Anyway, we'll talk about that ball of zany that sums up the lost weekend at the France hosted G7, and we'll look at the seriously explosive situation in Kashmir. Closer to home, we'll look at the past politics of the Federal Conservative leader, and whether there's a possibility that a more rational Republican might unseat the standard-bearer in 2020.

This Thursday, August 29, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

G7-Whiz! What a whirlwind weekend in France! The politics! The pageantry! The pettiness and self-aggrandizing of the President of the United States! After last year's much more tense meeting where Donald Trump walked away with insults and complaints about host Justin Trudeau, this year's G7  was almost stolid by comparison. Trump did skip out on the meeting about the burning rain forests of the Amazon, and lied about, but it literally could have been worse, like how Trump is thinking about hosting next year's G7 at one his tacky Florida resorts and is thinking about inviting Vladimir Putin. We'll talk about all the news that came out of the G7.

The Blast is Prologue? The Liberal campaign dug up a 2005 video of then-Conservative MP Andrew Scheer speechifying in the House of Commons about how same sex marriages can't work because, you know, they can't have babies the old-fashioned way. Now Scheer has said repeatedly that it's not his intention to chase a socially conservative policy agenda, but he doesn't exactly make regular appearances at Pride events either. The real question is whether revisiting the spectres of House speeches past are going to have any effect on the electorate. Are Scheer's past comments fair game, or is this an example of Liberal desperation?

Quibbling Rivalry. Although President Donald Trump enjoys the near universal endorsement of the Republican Party, he is now facing some challengers from the right. Former Congressman Joe Walsh, who once said, "If Trump loses, I'm grabbing my musket. You in?", has now declared his intent to supplant Trump as the GOP nominee in 2020, joining Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld in an attempt to restore sanity to the American political right. The question: Is this a suicide mission for Weld, Walsh, and possibly former South Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows? Do they have a constituency in Trump's America, and enough rebel Republicans willing to side with them to make a difference?

Kashmir. If it's not *the* most volatile region on Earth, it's pretty darn close. Kashmir, administered by India, but made up of a majority Muslim population, is sandwiched between two nuclear super-powers that are not only international rivals, they basically hate each other's guts. That's why it was probably a bad idea when earlier this month India Prime Minister Narendra Modi pulled Kashmir's semi-autonomous status and put an unprecedented security lockdown on the territory, which prompted Pakistan to come to its defence most vigorously. We'll catch up on the current state of affairs in Kashmir, and see if there's anyway out of the diplomatic void.

Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

Monday is Labour Day, which most people mark as the unofficial end of summer, but Labour Day has, and should, stand for something more. In this era where labour is struggling so hard, doing more work for the same pay, and in a perpetual state of stress, should we not take some to make sure we keep the "labour" in Labour Day?

Of course, the answer is "yes!" and on this week's podcast, we're going to focus on a specific area of labour rights that does not get nearly enough coverage, the plight of injured workers. Joining us to discuss this is Paul Taylor, who ran as a candidate for the None of the Above Party last year, and is the founder of Injured Workers of Wellington & Dufferin Counties. 

Even among workers' rights issues, it's hard to get a lot of press for matters involving injured workers even as the Association of Workers' Compensation Boards of Canada says that in 2017, there were 951 workplace fatalities in Canada, which was an increase of 46 over 2016. On top of that, there were 251,508 accepted claims for lost time due to a work-related injury or disease, which increased by 10,000 cases in one year.

It seems pretty serious, but for every claim that's approved, there are dozens whose claims are not-approved, and others who only get approval after sometimes struggling for years to get their benefits. Paul Taylor knows this struggle all too well as he's tried for over 20 years to get the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, or WSIB, to recognize his back injuries from a workplace accident while he was a delivery driver.

On this edition of the podcast, Taylor join us to talk about 20-year plus journey with the WSIB, the Ontario Court Systems and preparing a challenge to the Supreme Court. He also talks about the struggles of workers like him, and the way that businesses and the government make it harder for injured workers to claim their benefits. Plus, Taylor discusses why Ontario's cuts to legal aid are hurting workers too, and stay tuned till the end of the show for a political announcement!

So let's talk about the need of injured workers, and how we can best help them out on this special Labour Day edition of the Guelph Politicast!

You can learn more about the Injured Workers of Wellington and Dufferin at their website. The next meeting of the IWWD is Thursday September 12th from 4 to 6 pm at the UNIFOR Hall at 611 Silvercreek Pkwy north of Woodlawn.

Reminder: if you want to celebrate local labour, there's the Labour Day Picnic hosted by the Guelph & District Labour Council at Riverside Park from 12 to 3 pm on Monday September 2.

The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify.

Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.