Guelph Politicast

Open Sources Guelph #533 - September 4, 2025

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we catch up on our reading. In this all-news edition of the show, we will learn about the current condo crisis in Canada, and while we're learning about alliteration, we will talk about literature. In Alberta, they're taking more lessons from the MAGA movement by making a list of books they hate and checking it twice, and speaking of MAGA, their figurehead may or may not be dead depending on the day.
This Thursday, September 4, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
The Long Condo. The condo market in Toronto and Vancouver is crashing, new units built are empty, and units waiting to be built have no buyers. In the midst of a housing crisis, this may be the worst development of all because for years now condos in our biggest cities have been a good place to park investment money for Canadian and foreign interests, but what happens to the market when there are more condos than people who want to buy them, and what do we do now?
Book 'Em, Danielle! For the last few months, the Alberta government has been dabbling in the library sciences, or to be more precise, what books should or shouldn't be in school libraries. As usual though, the process has been confusing, haphazard, and driven by the same far-right, homophobic ideology of MAGA and groups like of Moms For Liberty, and this week Premier Danielle Smith was forced to call a time out. Why is Alberta, land of the free, embracing censorship?
The President's Health is Missing. Last weekend, Donald Trump decided to take some downtime for the Labour Day weekend, and that's where the trouble started. The U.S. President's startling silence for days led to a lot of internet speculation, which was fed by weeks of apparent health issues from cankles to bruised hands to being more misunderstood than usual. Even if he's still alive, what are we meant to do with all these unanswered questions about Trump's health?
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #405 - September 3, 2025 (Caught Stealing)

This week on End Credits, it's crime time! We will get caught in the movie theatre to see Caught Stealing, but be assured that we have paid for our tickets. It's the last official summer movie we'll review this year though because the next thing on our to do list is to check out the fall movies and on this episode we will preview some of our top picks!
This Wednesday, September 3, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillip will discuss:
Fall Movie Preview. Although it's technically still summer, in movie terms fall is here! Film festivals in Telluride, Venice and Toronto are rolling out all the flicks that are the basis for our great expectations for cinema in the months ahead, and to begin this week's show we're going to talk about some of our favourites. From the return of PTA and Shakespeare, to the greatness of Eleanor and The Boss, we will look at what's next!
REVIEW: Caught Stealing (2025). The year is 1998. Hank is a New York bartender and washed up professional baseball prospect, but when his neighbour asks him to look after his cat for a few days, his whole life comes apart as he's chased by mobsters, corrupt cops, and his own guilty conscience. It's a crime thriller, and a dark comedy, and it comes to us from the man who gave us Requiem For a Dream, The Wrestler and mother! so can Darren Aronofsky be a populist for once and make a real crowd pleaser by taking a bite out of crime?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #484 – The Devils Building a God (feat. Christopher DiCarlo)

We’ve been told that Artificial Intelligence is coming for all our jobs, that it will create fake news so real looking there will be no room for doubt, and in the worst case scenarios it will supplant human beings as the dominant lifeform on planet Earth. It’s scary stuff, and yet our fate depends on the same tech bros that have turned social media and the internet into a few concentrated monopolies. Is there still time to rein in A.I.?
In the movies, artificial intelligence is almost always bad, but here in real life, we’ve seen the best and worst of A.I. development. On the one hand, you have Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health is using A.I. to collate and organize huge data sets, and on the other you have criminals using A.I. videos of real people to rip off victims with elaborate crypto scams involving cryptocurrency, and none of this deals with any of those existential concerns we see in the movies.
But there’s at least one person who’s thinking about that future and he’s from Guelph. Christopher DiCarlo is the author of the new book Building a God: The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and the Race to Control It, which outlines a short history of A.I., the current concerns about its development, the extreme concerns about the people doing the developing, and the ways we still have time to properly regulate A.I, and use it to make the world a better place for all people and not just tech billionaires.
DiCarlo will be taking part in this weekend’s Eden Mills Writers’ Festival to talk about some of those ideas, but he’s going to make one stop before that... this podcast! He will talk about why he’s so concerned about A.I., his long quest to raise the alarm about its development, and the ways we misunderstand the dangers and opportunities of the technology. He will also talk about the difficulties trying to regulate A.I., how we overcome big tech’s resistance to regulation, and if it’s all bad news when it comes to this technology.
So let's talk about building a God on this week's Guelph Politicast! 
You can buy his book, Building a God: The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and the Race to Control It, wherever you buy fine books, and you can see him discuss his book and the issues around A.I. this Sunday at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival. You can find information about the festival or buy tickets here. You can also learn more about his advocacy and research into A.I. through Convergence Analysis at their 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 #532 - August 28, 2025

This week on Open Sources Guelph, just in time for the last weekend of summer, we're taking a trip. We join our prime minister as he's taking the world by storm, or at least parts of Europe anyway, and then we're heading to Gaza again where nobody is taking a vacation because the war continues and its costing more lives. The stakes aren't as dire closer to home, but there's controversy up the road in Wasaga Beach that we need to discuss.
This Thursday, August 28, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Mark Carney Vs. The World. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was touring though Europe this week, and he's been making some news like when he said in Ukraine that troops from Canada could be part of some future peacekeeping force there after the war. Closer to home meanwhile, government reps are trying to get that trade deal with the U.S. even if if means scaling back on retaliatory tariffs. How's the Carney government doing on the world stage?
They Bomb Journalists. Oh yes, there's still a crisis in Gaza and it only ever seems to get worse. This past week there was a two-fer when five journalists were killed along with over a dozen other people in an air strike on a hospital in Gaza; Reuters photographer Hatem Khaled was wounded. Benjamin Netanyahu called it a "tragic mishap" but it's not the first time, and it seems to be further entrenching the international community against Israel. How much worse can it get?
Son of a Beach. Wasaga Beach is one of Ontario's favourite tourist destinations, and home to a wonderful provincial park that takes up much of the beachfront on Lake Huron. And yet, the Ontario government is planning to offload much of that land to the local government for redeveloped, which has many environmental activists concerned about the fate of sensitive flora and fauna. Environmental Defence executive director Tim Gray joins us to talk about the stakes of this project and the Ontario government's overall approach to environmental protection.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #404 - August 27, 2025 (Weapons)

This week on End Credits, we're back! Summer vacation is over for us, even though there's still technically one week left, so we will say goodbye to summer by talking about the last great movie from the Summer of 2025, the new horror mystery Weapons. Also on the topic of saying goodbye to summer, we will talk about our summer movie memories.
This Wednesday, August 27, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Candice Lepage will discuss:
The Best Summer Movie Moments of 2025. It's been a long summer, at least in movie terms. We've seen a lot of different films, with varying levels of quality, but with fall almost here we have to make our choices for our favourite summer movie moments. From the lessons of Eddington to robots and super men we will mark the memories we'll take with us from the Summer of 2025, or, as it's been known, #PedroSummer!
REVIEW: Weapons (2025). It may be the biggest movie of summer in a very real sense, and it's a story about how a community comes apart when (almost) all the children from one grade 3 class disappears from one public school. The new Zach Cregger movie is part Twilight Zone and part ensemble drama in the tradition of Robert Altman and Paul Thomas Anderson, which is almost the antithesis of what makes a late summer movie a success, so what is it about Weapons that has hit so hard, and did it hit us too?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #483 – The Labour Day Special (feat. Lou Thompson & Waida Mirzada)

We return to work at the Politicast just in time to mark Labour Day next Monday, the unofficial end of summer, and the official day to mark the sacrifices and accomplishments of workers and labour leaders. We talk a lot about how work is changing with the impact of technological change and the rising cost of living, but policy has to change too, and that’s where activism comes in.
This year’s commemoration of Labour Day is especially well-timed just a few weeks after a major labour victory: Air Canada flight attendants went on strike and won despite the federal government trying to force them back to work and the efforts of management to turn the public against them. A happy ending? Maybe, but it should not come as a surprise that in the year 2025 that people are siding with the workers and not the managers.
To be clear though, one victory does not a movement make. As the trade war and other economic pressures persist, our governments are going to be tempted to start cutting back on bureaucracy, and sometimes those pressures are coming from within their own house like with Prime Minister Mark Carnery looking for a seven per cent cut to the public service. So this Labour Day, we're going to focus on labour activism, and the brand name for that work in Guelph is Justice For Workers. 
Lou Thompson and Waida Mirzada will represent Justice For Workers on this week’s podcast to talk about the group’s mission, their thoughts on the flight attendants’ strike, and what lessons they took from the union’s success that can be applied to labour organizing. We also talk about why you can’t separate social justice issues from labour issues, why we need to use political power to humanize people, and what’s driving the difficult job search in Guelph. Plus, what is Justice For Workers planning next?
So let's get into some pre-Labour Day labour chat on this week's Guelph Politicast! 
You can learn more about Justice For Workers Guelph at their website, or on social media on Facebook or Instagram. The team from Justice For Workers will also be at the Labour Day Picnic hosted by the Guelph and District Labour Council in the red pavilion of Riverside Park on Monday September 1 from 11 am to 2 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.

Open Sources Guelph #531 - August 21, 2025

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're back! After taking a midsummer break, we come back with some of your favourite characters from this past season including the buffoonish U.S. President, and our oafish Ontario Premier, and in the third topic, just in time for Labour Day, we'll have some genuine labour news to get excited about! We might have taken some time off for the last couple of weeks, but the new sure didn't!!
This Thursday, August 21, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Dark Skies. Flight attendants from Air Canada went on strike last weekend, and they looked to be on strike for the long haul until the two sides reached a deal on Tuesday. Despite pressure from the federal government and the courts, the CUPE represented workers remained defiant after spending years doing, on average, 30 hours of unpaid work every month. Meanwhile, workers and average folk are showing incredible solidarity on this issue, so is this the Labour (Day) revolution we've been waiting for?
"A Little Poke." That's what Premier Doug Ford says he wants to give the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. In Ottawa for AMO this week, Ford looked to secure his bonafides as "Captain Canada", but back at home he's still getting hit hard for school infrastructure funding, benefiting the friends with the Highway 413 route, and new concerns about the finances of Ontario Place anchor tenant Therme. Is Ford the one that needs poked?
Baked Alaska Summit. For the first since he ordered a full-scale invasion into Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin was on U.S. soil and gratefully received by President Donald Trump. Three hours later, the leaders announced that they had *not* reached a deal to end the war that Russia started, and scuttlebutt says members of Team Trump were shook by what they had seen behind closed doors. Since then, Trump met with European leaders, including Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but did any of this Nobel Peace Prize baiting get tangible results?
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #REPEAT - August 20, 2025

This week on End Credits, there is no End Credits. Well... there's going to be a show, but it's going to be an episode of End Credits that you've heard before, or probably heard before. Yes, if you've seen the calendar lately then you know it's time for our midsummer break. As usual, we're taking a couple of weeks off for August so that we can enjoy some summer sun!
See You at the Beach! It's been a busy year at the movies; we sinned with Sinners, flew with Superman, and we caught up with at least half of #PedroSummer. So we're pleased and happy to repeat the news that we have, in fact, decided to take a couple of weeks off so that we can enjoy some time away from the screen, big and small. But, as you see, it's a beautiful day, the beaches are open and people are having a wonderful time. End Credits, as you know, means "friendship". See you in a couple of weeks!
Programming Note: End Credits will return with new episodes on August 27.
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #Repeat – New-ish Year, New-ish CAO (feat. Tara Baker)

The CAO position is the highest ranking official in local government that doesn’t have the job title of either mayor or city councillor, and it’s the only staff position at city hall that’s hired by a committee made up of the mayor and councillors. So yes, it’s a pretty important job, and it’s not like there’s any shortage of issues or needs for the new woman in charge as she nears the end of her first year in charge.
In January, we got a chance to sit down with City of Guelph CAO Tara Baker. At the time, she was just coming off a difficult budget confirmation process and prepping for a year that was going to be focused on housing development. Now there have been some hiccups on that second one, despite the fact, as you'll hear, Baker has a daily reminder in her office about its importance, and Baker has the experience to know what's important to Guelph.
Before becoming the CAO, Baker had spent 13 years at Guelph city hall, including the last eight as the City Treasurer and the General Manager of Finance. If the emphasis is to be put on affordability now, as it was with the last budget she worked on as Treasurer, it puts even more pressure on Baker as she’s managing all the spinning plates in her new office. On this edition of the podcast, she told us what comes next.
Back in January, Baker joined us to talk about why she wanted to be the CAO, why she thinks she stood out from the other applicants and the changing role of the CAO position after the introduction of Strong Mayor Powers. She will also talk about the search for a new City Treasurer, and the greater emphasis on affordability when it comes to City business. Also, she will discuss the changes she’s making to the job, and what she wants her legacy to be when it becomes her turn to retire from the role.
So let’s get the 4-1-1 on the current CAO on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
You can see Baker’s plan for goals and objectives that were presented to city council earlier this year here, and you can just learn more generally about the CAO office here. And speaking of podcasts, you can check out Baker’s latest appearance on Breezy Breakfast from April and you can find that pod on whatever platform you listen to his one on.
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 #REPEAT - August 14, 2025

This week on Open Sources Guelph, you are here, but we are not. The time has come for our annual summer sabbatical. Unlike certain former prime ministers we still have work to do, so we can only afford to take a quick two-week break before coming back with what will surely be a drama-packed fall schedule of scandals, near-scandals and straight up crises. So let's take a break from the craziness before it catches up to us again.
Be Normal. Welcome to summer vacation! We've made it through a lot in 2025 so far including two month-long elections, and the daily deluge of insanity from the present occupant of White House. There's been the start and stop of the trade war, the nonstop wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and some general anxiety about global crisis coming down the pipe next. Bad news is inevitable, and there will surely be more of it, but for the next two weeks tune in, drop out, and bring on some outdoor activities. See you in a few weeks!
*Programming Note: Open Sources Guelph will return with new episodes on Thursday August 21.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.