Guelph Politicast

GUELPH POLITICAST #495 – Civic Advocacy Still Works! (feat. Ken Thompson & Susan Watson)

If there’s a reason that Guelph City Council opted to proceed with a vacant home tax a few weeks ago, at least some of that credits goes to Get Involved Guelph who have been raising concerns for years about the number of houses in the Royal City staying empty, especially in the midst of a housing crisis.  Well, the City of Guelph finally agreed that it's time to act, so what does Get Involved Guelph do for an encore?
A few weeks ago, council not only opted to proceed with two new affordable housing projects on City-owned lands, but more notable than that, they approved two new measures to preserve affordable housing that already exists: a renoviction bylaw that will stop predatory landlords from forcing people out of rent controlled units in the name of renovation, and a four per cent vacant home tax on units that stay empty for extended periods of time
This last one was a huge pivot because there have been calls for years for just such a tax, and City of Guelph staff have always hesitated saying that there weren’t enough vacant homes in town to make such a policy worthwhile. With another election beckoning next fall, and a housing crisis that’s every bit as potent now as it was three years ago, if not more so, let us consider how a civic group can still have an impact with two people dedicated enough to change the conversation.
Two members of Get Involved Guelph, Ken Thompson and Susan Watson, will join us on this week’s podcast to talk about the long road to get city hall to act on the need of a vacant home tax. We also talk about courting engagement on Reddit, why the vacant home tax is so important even if it can’t solve the problem of available housing, the next big issue they want to tackle, and how they will attract more new blood to help them achieve their goals, especially with an election next year.
So let's Get Involved, Guelph on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!
You can learn more about Get Involved Guelph, sign up for their newsletter, or even nominate a vacant home on their website. The council decisions about proceed with a renoviction bylaw and the vacant home tax will be ratified at the city council meeting next week on Tuesday November 25, and you have until this Friday at 10 am to either send a correspondence or sign up to delegate, and to learn how to do that go to the City of Guelph website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn 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.

Open Sources Guelph #543 - November 13, 2025

This week on Open Sources Guelph, the thirteenth is unlucky for some, even though it's a Thursday. Luck is definitely not on the side of the leader of the federal opposition, unless we're talking about bad luck of course, and coming off Remembrance Day there was some rare controversy that might have been blown out of proportion. For the interview, we've got someone looking for some luck as he tries to convince members of his party that he's got what it take to lead.
This Thursday, November 13, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Battleship Poilievre. Before the federal budget was released last week there were a lot of questions about whether or not Mark Carney and his government would survive. Now, over a week later, the question is whether or not Pierre Poilievre's leadership of the Conservative Party will survive. We will look at the party infighting in the opposition bench as the leader looks at what was always going to be a contentious leadership review in the new year that's gotten much more complicated.
Poppy Goes the World. In Nova Scotia, Premier Tim Houston started a silly culture war over the poppy, the symbol of honouring Canada's war dead every 11th of November. The controversy involves the long-standing court tradition of dissuading court works from wearing the poppy in order to maintain impartiality, and the blowback Houston created forced Nova Scotia's top judges make a rare political statement. Are we mistaking virtue signalling for actual remembrance?
All About Yves. The NDP leadership race is more or less a five person race, and if that holds up, might Yves Engler be considered the odd man out? In more ways that one because Engler is not a politician, he's an author and activist, and his platform calls for a working class revolution, the end of capitalism, and an end to NDP efforts to appeal to moderates from the centre right and left. Engler joins us this week from his leadership tour to talk about why an outsider is the best choice to rebuild the federal NDP and make it a movement.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #415 - November 12, 2025 (Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere)

This week on End Credits we're feeling the music! Our focus on this episode is musicians and movies about musicians with two very specific examples. First up, we will revisit a biographical movie from 2005 about a man with a trouble past and even more troubled present as he struggles with stardom, and a new movie from here in 2025 that covers... much of the same ground.
This Wednesday, November 12, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss:
Walk The Line at 20! In November 2005, James Mangold's Walk The Line opened in theatres everywhere and it was an instant success. Later, it resulted in a Oscar-nomination for Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash, and an Oscar win for Reese Witherspoon as June Carter, but in the decades tine the film's release it's become kind of a short-hand for the traps and cliches of the musical bio pic subgenre. So 20 years later, does Walk The Line still hold up?
REVIEW: Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (2025). In 1981, Bruce Springsteen came off a sold-out tour, retired to his New Jersey hometown and end up writing two albums, one a deeply personal artistic statement and another that would make him a global superstar. Jeremy Allan White plays The Boss, while Jeremy Strong plays his supportive agent and friend Jon Landau, and while these are two accomplished actors doing notable work, is there any way that this Springsteen can break free of the well worn path of previous musical bio pics like you-know-what?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #494 – Electoral Reform? It Could Still Happen (feat. Kevin Bowman)

It was about 10 years ago this time that Justin Trudeau strode up to Rideau Hall and made history being sworn in as Canada’s 23rd prime minister. There was a lot of hope about what the future of Trudeau’s premiership held, but perhaps no other constituency were hit harder by the political realities of the Trudeau-mania hangover than electoral reform activists. Can changing our voting system still possibly get a fair hearing?
What does Mark Carney think about electoral reform? Believe it or not the topic came up in the federal election campaign earlier this year at an event in Sault Ste. Marie. It was clear that Carney was not going to be making an promises about ending our First Past the Post electoral system, but it was also clear that it was not going to be a priority until all the other problems are solved, and as you may have noticed, we’re still waiting for that deal with Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, the Ontario government announced last month that they were scrapping fixed election dates, raising the donation cap to $5,000 and eliminating pre-election spending limits for third parties. These are probably not the kinds of electoral changes that people like Fair Vote Canada are seeking. They are on the leading edge of proponents wanting to change the way we elect the people that govern us, and this week, we will talk to one of them about where we presently sit in the process of reforming our elections.
Kevin Bowman joins on this edition of the pod to dive deep into the current state of electoral reform activism, why people are more open to the issue than we might conventionally think, and whether any meaningful progress can be made while the federal NDP and Greens are in the political wilderness. Also, how can the issue be promoted back to prominence again, and what will members of Fair Vote be saying to delegates at this weekend’s Liberal convention in Hamilton
So let's re-embrace electoral reform on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast! 
You can learn more about Fair Vote Guelph at their website, and you can access the nation-wide Fair Vote Canada at their website. If you’re interested in getting involved with the cause of electoral reform you can access Democracy Watch and the National Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform. If you like, you can revisit the federal government’s 2016 report, “Strengthening Democracy in Canada: Principles, Process and Public Engagement for Electoral Reform” on the Government of Canada website.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn 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.

Open Sources Guelph #542 - November 6, 2025

This week on Open Sources Guelph we witness history. The good kind. Before heading south of the border to talk about some rare encouraging news (we won't call it good), we will talk about the latest test for the new Prime Minister and Government of Canada with their first budget. In other news, we will look at a possible schism here in Ontario between two different groups of conservatives who have some very different ideas about what that means.
This Thursday, November 6, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Champagne Wishes and Carney Dreams. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne delivered their first budget. The concern was that they would deliver big austerity, but there's actually a lot of spending in the plan, and an even bigger deficit. Will any of it help the cause of affordability? Unlikely. Will any of this lead us into another federal election? We will ask, and answer, all the questions you have about the new financial plan for Canada.
Blue is the Warmest Colour. For the first time in a year, Democrats had a good night. It was a smaller than usual election night in the United States, but overwhelming victories in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and California could mean serious trouble for U.S. President Donald Trump in next year's midterms. And what do we make of Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old Democratic Socialist who's now the head of America's biggest city? We'll talk about another wild election night.
Room for Improvement. Three majority governments in a row should be a cause for celebration among Ontario PC voters, but now there's a new group emerging that has some doubts. There are some conservatives who don't like the high deficits of the Ford government, it's focus on pet projects like getting rid of bike lanes, or it's lack of progress on solving the housing crisis. Doug Ford calls Project Ontario a bunch of yahoos, but Matt Spoke will join us this week and explain why they're not, and why Ford needs to start taking them seriously.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #414 - November 4, 2025 (Hedda)

This week on End Credits, we work smarter and party harder. Since this episode intersects with the start of our local documentary film festival we will talk about documentaries you can watch that don't require a festival pass, but they do maybe require a streaming subscription. Speaking of streaming, there's a party on Amazon Prime and we're inviting ourselves to check it out.
This Wednesday, November 4, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and, Candice Lepage will discuss:
Doc Plan. This week, the latest edition of the Guelph Film Festival begins, and it will bring some cool new documentaries from across Canada and around the world that you will be able to see with a crowd. And yet, in this steaming era, there are a great many documentaries that you can see this very minute on one of the numerous available apps, free or otherwise. In honour of GFF, we will look at some of our favourite docs on our favourite (?) steamers.
Hedda (2025). Hedda is one of the great roles in theatre, but it's safe to say that you've never seen a Hedda quite like this. Director Nia DaCosta has reteamed with the star of her breakthrough film - Tessa Thompson - to reimagine Henrik Ibsen's classic play about a party with a lot of drama and the hostess with the mostess churning it all up. DiCosta is a filmmaker with a lot of promise, and Thompson is an engaging star, so can the two of them together cook up something new, strange and interesting with a theatrical classic?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #493 - They're Coming for the Conservation Authorities... Again (feat. Phil Pothen)

Since they resumed sitting the week after Thanksgiving, the Government of Ontario has been throwing a lot at us, and then on Halloween they proposed sweeping changes to conservation authorities in Ontario. If it feels like we’ve been here before we kind of have, and while conservation authorities have weathered provincial meddling before, can they survive it again?
According to Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks Todd McCarthy, the new Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency will provide centralized leadership, efficient governance, strategic direction and oversight of all conservation authorities to - you guessed it! - reduce delays and get shovels in the ground faster! Solving the housing crisis, it seems, passes through barriers being held up by conservation authorities, at least that’s what the government wants us to think.
But no legislation has been tabled, it was just announced in a press release on a busy Friday proposing a massive change to an important sectors whose primary function isn’t actually planning, but flood control. If all this sounds confusing to you, it’s actually just as confusing to the people that live and breathe provincial planning. Why is the provincial government going after conservation authorities again after already committing them to massive changes at least once already.
Phil Pothen, who is Counsel and Ontario Environment Program Manager at the advocacy group Environmental Defence, joins us to talk about his thoughts on these new changes, or at least what we know about these changes so far. He will discuss whether or not there’s room for improvement with the way authorities do planning, if a conservation authority has ever actually scuttled a planning proposal, and what these moves tell us about the Ontario government’s climate change priorities (or lack there of).
So let's talk about what's next for conservation authorities on this week's Guelph Politicast! 
You can learn more about Environmental Defence all its advocacy work on numerous issues, including conservation authorities at their website, or you can follow them on social media on Facebook, Blue Sky, Instagram and YouTube. As of this recording, there’s no announcement about when the Ontario government will table this legislation, but you can read the full press release on the Government of Ontario’s media page 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 Apple, TuneIn 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.

Open Sources Guelph #541 - October 30, 2025

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're getting more literate. While we go to air on the eve of All Hallow's Eve, the only think that's really haunting is the growing threat of misinformation so good it's hard to tell the difference between what's fake and what's real. We will talk to someone who has some ideas about how to fight it, but before that we will hear from a member of city council who himself is being haunted... By the numbers in the budget.
This Thursday, October 30, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Phil Pickles. This week, Guelph City Council sat around and chewed on the 2026 budget update for the first time, and among them was Ward 3 Councillor Phil Allt. Now Councillor Allt has seen a few budgets since he joined city council in 2014, so he's just the person to ask: Is all of this getting harder, or is council losing an unending battle to do more with less? Allt will join us this week to talk about the budget pressures facing the City of Guelph, and whether there's any relief.
Fake News, Real Strategies. This is Media Literacy Week in Canada, and what a time for such an occasion! Forget ghouls and goblins, the scariest things to think about this week is fake news and A.I. slop, and there's a very real concern that it's getting increasingly harder for people to know what's real. But there's still a way, and Matthew Johnson, the Director of Education for MediaSmarts, has some advice about how you trust a source and how you can trust your instincts online.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #413 - October 29, 2025 (Hellbound: Halloween Movie Draft Part II)

This week on End Credits, it's time again to gather our friends for an annual festival marking the return of the ones who've passed before. Of course, we're talking about the Halloween Horror Movie Draft! Once again, we will be lining up our players in a contest of wits as we pit our favourite ghost stories, remakes, and based on a true spooky tale selections against each other!
This Wednesday, October 29, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson, Tim Phillips, Peter Salmon, Candice Lepage, and special guest Mike Ashkewe will discuss:
Hellbound: Halloween Movie Draft Part II! It's once again time to embrace the spooky and the macabre. Now granted, horror movies have been doing very well all-year long, and more than a few have been featured on this show in 2025, but this is Halloween, and that means it's time for a venerable horror franchise to get a sequel. The whole gang is back again for the second installment of the Halloween Horror Movie Draft and we have such sights to show you!
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #492 - A Broken Political Scene (feat. Doug Craig)

It was about this time two years ago that former Guelph CAO Scott Stewart told city council in an open meeting that there needed to be a new deal for Ontario municipalities; that they were trying to solve 21st century problems with 19th century rules. As Guelph tackles another difficult budget season, one regional councillor is putting this issue in stark terms: Ontario’s councils are “on the verge of life support”!
In a recent letter to the editor in Cambridge Today, Doug Craig raised the alarm. He was Mayor of Cambridge for 18 years and then joined Waterloo Regional Council in 2022, so if there’s someone that might understand the challenge of cities in this day and age, it’s probably Craig. He notes that provincial tampering and voter apathy are the reasons why municipalities are caught between this rock and a hard place.
To those of us that observe municipal politics carefully, this encapsulates the struggle we know too well. The provincial government has forced reductions and discounts onto municipalities and reduced the amount of fees collected while offering additional funding in the form of a contest for meeting housing targets from a pledge they strong-armed cities into adopting and now seem to be abandoning. Is it time to finally talk about that new deal?  
Doug Craig will answer those and other questions on this edition of the podcast including why it’s tricky to get these concerns heard even when your local MPP sits in the government bench, what would happen in the unlikely event that the provincial government were to be open to changes, and the role of municipal councillors in educating the public about what their limitations are. Plus, is there a role for the business community in promoting improved local government?
So let's talk about how to save our local government on this week's Guelph Politicast! 
You can reach out to him through the Region of Waterloo’s website, and to read his latest letter, “Local councils are on the verge of life support”, at the Cambridge Today website. Here in Guelph, the first budget meeting is today, Wednesday, at 9 am and public delegation night will be on Tuesday November 18 at 6 pm.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, TuneIn 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.