Guelph Politicast

End Credits #246 - May 4, 2022 (The Adam Project)

This week on End Credits, we're watching the clock. Just in time for the start of the summer movie season, we're staying at home to watch the new Netflix time travel adventure The Adam Project. And time travel sounds like magic, right? Well, speaking of magic, we will spend the first part of the show talking about our favourite wizards another other magic-users.
This Wednesday, May 4, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Candice Lepage will discuss:
The Wizards and Us. This week, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness opens in theatres everywhere, which got us thinking about all our favourite movie wizards. It turns out that the term "wizard" is tough to define, are witches wizards? Are magicians? Are Jedis? For our purposes today, let's say "yes" and as we recount our favourite wizards, we will look to the realms of fantasy, animation, superheroes, and evil stepmothers.
REVIEW: The Adam Project (2022). You may have heard that Netflix has been having a hard time of it lately. The streamer might have 99 problems right now, but The Adam Project ain't one. The latest film from Shawn Levy and starring Ryan Reynolds (the team behind Free Guy), tells the story of a time traveller who runs into his younger self while on a rescue mission to save his wife whose stuck in the past. The film looks slick and fun, but it's also got the immeasurable appeal of Reynolds, Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo, so it's a winner, right?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #322 - Education is an Issue

Covering education issues has been weird the last couple of years during the pandemic; while keeping schools open for in-person learning was a priority, teachers felt that their concerns weren't being heard. Now, education is struggling to be made an election priority, and education workers have been trying to put their concerns back on the frontburner since March 2020, so this seems like an interesting place to begin a provincial campaign.
Ironically, education issues were very front of mind on the provincial agenda just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. All of Ontario’s education unions were undertaking job action with rotating strikes, but then COVID-19 arrived on our shores and schools were shut down, along with the job action. Questions about schools moved away from resources and jobs to making schools safe for in-person learning.
Oddly enough, the concerns about keeping schools safe from COVID, and just making our education system better, are not mutually exclusive goals. What is the effort to improve ventilation and air quality in school buildings but an admission that those facilities need billions of dollars in infrastructure improvements? Going into an election season, teachers are concerned that they're long-standing issues won't get air time, so we're going to give them some. 
This week we're joined by Karen Littlewood, the president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Association (OSSTF) to talk about what might have happened with the teachers’ strike if there was no COVID-19 pandemic, and how education is in danger of not being treated as a priority in this election. She will also talk about the rural/urban divide in education issues, the infrastructure backlog for schools that has nothing to do with COVID, and what education workers are looking for in a candidate and a party.
So let's do some online learning about education issues on this week's Guelph Politicast!
You can see the OSSTF’s 2022 education platform, “Strengthen Public Education - Rebuild Ontario" at their website. If you’re interested in hearing from the candidates themselves, we will be hosting all of the Guelph candidates over on Open Sources Guelph in the weeks to come, and we will also be marking the return of the Wellington-Halton Hills Politicast starting this Saturday.
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, Stitcher, Google, 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 #375 - April 28, 2022

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're anxious. It's like, when are we going to get to the fireworks factory Ontario Election?! That's going to be one of our topics this week, and we will also talk about the "OK Groomer" push on the far-right, and we'll have the latest from Ukraine. Interview? We've got one of those too, and this week we sit down with a Federal cabinet minister.
This Thursday, April 28, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
All the Money in the World. By the time the show airs this week, you will know what's in 2022 Ontario Budget, but we will not. Of course, the budget specifics are secondary to the fact that all the major provincial parties spent the week making big campaign-style announcements in a dress rehearsal for the official start of the election sometime next week. So how are the leaders lining things up for the voters?
Groom Raider. You may have heard about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' war on Disney, an overreaction to a tepid negative response by the media conglomerate to the Florida government's "Don't Say Gay" bill. Well, Canada is not immune to this right-wing laundering of inclusivity as a gateway to grooming kids for pedophiles, a trope that's as old as any anti-gay, anti-trans rhetoric. How can we stop it?
Innovate and See. As we continue through this post-COVID economic recovery, people are looking for great new innovations like green tech opportunities, or Guelph and Wellington's push to create a circular food economy. Generating support for these innovations is the portfolio of Helena Jaczek, the minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario, and she joins us this week.
United We Fail. In a strong show of support, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken went to Ukraine and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in-person. Austin later met with over 40 U.S. allies at the American base in Ramstein, Germany where the leaders, including non-NATO countries like Japan and Israel, all pledged ongoing support for Ukraine. So can Russia be dissuaded?
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #245 - April 27, 2022 (The Bubble)

This week on End Credits, we would really like to know what exactly a cliff beast is? If you're already laughing, then you know that we're reviewing the new Netflix comedy The Bubble on this week's show. And since The Bubble is (in-part) a movie about Hollywood franchises, we will also look ahead to all the franchise movies coming out this summer.
This Wednesday, April 27, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss:
Box Office Mucho. For the first time in two years, we're going to get a real summer box office season. The theatres are open and ready to receive all the hits from superhero tales about wizards and gods, to fighter jocks and spacemen, dinosaurs, and little yellow pill-shaped creatures with googly eyes. This week, we will look at the players, and predict which ones will be the winners of the Summer of 2022!
REVIEW: The Bubble (2022). The sixth chapter of a big Hollywood franchise is put in danger as its egocentric cast of Hollywood all-stars must face their greatest challenge: Surviving COVID-19 quarantine. Legendary comedy director Judd Apatow assembles and all-star cast, (and a first-rate list of cameos) to send up the pandemic, Hollywood franchise filmmaking, social media celebrity, and the slings and arrows of fame and fortune, but is The Bubble too absorbed in its own world to be inviting to the casual viewer?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #321 – The Eviction Notice is Just the Beginning of Your Troubles

If there’s one thing we can agree on, it’s that people shouldn’t be forced out of their home after a minor dispute with their landlord. Yes, that happens, and it happens often, but it’s been happening a lot more since the Landlord and Tenant Board went virtual, and that made access to the internet another barrier to housing. This seems like something worth talking about.
Just last week, there was an item from Global News noting that the five-month freeze in evictions from March to July 2020 is still having an impact on the caseload of the LTB. While there was a significant drop in the number of new cases last year, half of the 48,000 applications sent to the board were eviction requests based on non-payment of rent, and that doesn’t necessarily mean several months of back-rent either. Often, someone misses one payment and they find themselves faced with eviction.
The other part of this is logistical. In the pandemic, meetings of the LTB have been held virtually and that’s come with a variety of problems, some of which were laid out in an Ottawa Citizen article last summer. Yes, there are people who don’t have physical access to technology, but as we’re all aware, connections on virtual presence apps are not infallible. and it’s making the job of advocates like Britney Rodgers even more difficult.
This week on the podcast, we're joined by Rodgers, who is a paralegal at the Legal Clinic of Guelph & Wellington County, will tell us about what life was like at the Landlord and Tenant Board in the days before COVID-19, and how the pandemic has changed the course of normal business. She will also talk about the technological barriers doing virtual board hearings, the barriers to proper legal representation, and whether most tenants are even aware of their rights as renters.
Let's talk about the challenges at the Landlord and Tenant Board on this week's Guelph Politicast!
To get in touch with the Legal Clinic of Guelph & Wellington County you can visit their website, or you can send them an email at gwlegalclinic [at] lao.on.ca. There’s a list of resources for tenants on the Legal Clinic’s housing webpage, so if you think you might be having an issue with your landlord that you might need legal services to resolve, don’t hesitate to reach out.
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, Stitcher, Google, 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 #374 - April 21, 2022

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we've got rights! In the second half of the show we will celebrate 40 years of having rights thanks to Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and we'll talk about that guy picture above who thinks he's the Free Speech man with a plan. For the first half though, we've still got a war in Ukraine to talk about, and there are still questions about a massacre closer to home.
This Thursday, April 21, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Eastern Promises. After the Ukrainians apparently sunk the Russian flag ship in the Black Sea last week, the Russians started turning up the pressure on the Donbas, the eastern most area of the country that's been in dispute for nine years now. Meanwhile, Austria's PM reports that Vladimir Putin is convinced he's winning, while Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues to say that survival is his only goal. We'll discuss the latest.
Commission: Impossible. Almost exactly two years after the mass casualty event in the area of Portapique, Nova Scotia, the commission investigating the incident is facing repeated critiques about its administration, the reliance on reports and the limited witness participation in the hearings. On top that, there are still a lot of unanswered questions about the RCMP response that night, so might we still get those answers?
From Musk Till Dawn. Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk is making a play to buy Twitter. Why? Musk says he's a "free speech absolutist" looking to create an open platform free of the scourge of "cancel culture." Twitter, of course, is anxious to avoid letting the firebrand Musk from taking over the platform, especially since free speech warrior Musk has a long history of silencing people he doesn't like. We'll tweet about it.
This is 40. This week, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms hits midlife. The document is now 40 years old, so what better time to look back and re-examine the intent and the effectiveness of the Charter, especially when you have people like the organizers of the Freedom Convoy saying that the Charter gives them the right to shut down the capital. So on this occasion, do we really know and appreciate the Charter like we should?
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #244 - April 20, 2022 (Flee)

This week on End Credits, we're running. Our movie of the week almost literally has "run" in the title as it tells the story of man who spent almost the entirety of his youth trying to escape. For the review this week, we're watching the three-time Academy Award-nominated movie Flee, and before that we're going to run through some other movies about escape.
This Wednesday, April 20, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss:
Escape Fan. This week's movie is about one man's struggle to escape, which made us think about other movies where someone or some people are trying to escape, whether that's a physical escape or a mental one. So to kick off the show, we're going to talk about some of the best escape movies, including flights from prison, captivity in a small enclosed space, and getting off the post-apocalyptic penal colony that's the island of Los Angeles.
REVIEW: Flee (2021). Never before has there been one movie nominated as the Best Documentary Feature, Best Animated Feature, and Best International Film, but Flee did it. The hat trick was received for a film that tells the story of a man named Amin Nawabi, who, as a kid, escapes the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and then has to escape Russia in the last, corruption-filled days of Communism. Can you tell the deeply personal true story of escape and solitude using animation? It turns out you can, but is Flee as good as its three big Oscar noms?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #320 - The Queen of Craft

Historically, women played a pretty big role in the brewing of beer. Starting in ancient times, brewing was fairly female-dominated, but that changed in western culture around the same time the brewing process became industrialized 150 years ago. In 2022, women are trying to reclaim their place atop the brewing world thanks to the proliferation of craft breweries, and one local woman is helping to lead the way.
If you’ve ever seen a beer commercial, they make it pretty obvious that women are not the intended audience for the product. It’s silly because obviously women like beer, and it doesn’t make much sense to cut off half the prospective audience for your product. Of course, making room for women in brewing is one thing, making them feel comfortable in a predominately male atmosphere is another.
Nine years ago, Karyn Boscariol launched the first ever Queen of Craft, and its purpose was twofold: To acquaint beer-curious women with the art and craft of making and tasting beer, and to raise money for charity, specifically Guelph Wellington Women in Crisis who've received over $50,000 from the event. So, on the brink of the returning to a face-to-face Queen of Craft, we’re going to ask the Queen herself to tell us all about the secret to her success.
On this week's podcast, Boscariol will tell us about the origins of Queen of Craft, and how she got interested in beer. She will also talk about how the Queen of Craft events change every year (at least with one exception), and how it’s changed forever now that Queen of Craft is going back to in-person events. And finally, she discuss the importance of the fundraising Queen of Craft does, and whether or not there’s such a thing as too much craft beer.
So let's talk about creating more Queens of the Craft on this week's Guelph Politicast!
The first Queen of Craft event for 2022 is this coming Saturday at 10C Shared Space, and it will continue for the next four Saturdays. You can see the schedule and find links to tickets at the Wellington Brewery website. You can also follow Queen of Craft on Facebook.
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, Stitcher, Google, 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.
Image courtesy of Queen of Craft.

Open Sources Guelph #373 - April 14, 2022

This week on Open Sources Guelph, the Easter Bunny's bringing a basket full of issues. Before taking a nice, leisurely long weekend off, we're diving again into the Ukrainian War (now in it's eighth great week), and the latest in terms of Ontario's sixth wave (non) response. In the back half of the show, we're talking to our local Federal representative about that big to-do pictured above, last week's Federal budget.
This Thursday, April 14, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Back to Donbas. This week in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has installed the man called "the Butcher of Syria" to lead his war effort, which now seems concentrated on seizing the Donbas and securing a land bridge from Crimea. Meanwhile, the call for war crimes charges is growing louder with more and more reporting about Russian soldiers using sexual violence against civilians. We'll cover the latest developments.
The Moore You Know. Since everyone's now calling it a sixth wave, Dr. Kieran Moore finally emerged from his office a personal trip to address a province full of people concerned about the rising number of COVID-19 cases. Mask mandates? Nope, not going to do that. The provincial policy of white knuckling through the sixth wave is firmly in place, so what is left for the people still worried about the pandemic to do?
Mo' Money Talk. Last week around this time, the Federal government delivered the budget for the next fiscal year, and there was a lot of new spending. From defense, to home-buying, to expanded dental care, to the fight against climate change, there was a lot of money on the table, and to help us sort that out is Guelph MP Lloyd Longfield. Longfield will talk about that and other recent developments on Parliament Hill.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #243 - April 13, 2022 (Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood)

This week on End Credits, we look to the sky! Ever notice how the Moon's just hanging up their daring us to visit? Well, there was a time humans went to the moon, and this week's featured movie is a loving remembrance of that particular era. We're reviewing the latest Netflix hit, Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood and we're talking about other trips to the Moon.
This Wednesday, April 13, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss:
To the Moon! Taking a jaunty trip to the Moon is literally the plot of one of the oldest surviving movies, which also makes it one of the most influential in the history of cinema. Before getting into this week's movie, which has its own trip to the Moon, we will talk about some of our favourite previous trips out in space, from spy adventures, to documentaries, to found footage movies about lost Moon missions, it's a moon-a-palooza!
REVIEW: Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood (2022). In July 1969, men from the Earth first set foot upon the Moon, but before that NASA sent a kid because they built the cabin of the lunar lander too small. This is the idea behind Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood, the new film from Richard Linklater that's part nostalgia trip, part sci-fi fantasy, and part coming-of-age story. Watch as a young man named Stan watches the Moon landing on TV, and experiences it for himself, but what about the experience of watching this film?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.