Guelph Politicast

Open Sources Guelph - December 3, 2020

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we happily take a break from the dramedy in the United States and the insanity of Toronto barbecue joints. In this edition, we're going to talk about the politics of requisitioning the vaccine, and the politics of the appointment of Ontario's most important health official. After that, we'll talk about more local matters with one of the Ward 1 City Councillors who helped make some pretty big (local) news of his own this week.
This Thursday, December 3, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Medicine, Man! More good news this week on the vaccine front with a fourth candidate ready for emergency approval and word on Wednesday morning that the U.K. had approved one for immediate distribution. Meanwhile, here in Canada, concern over our place in the queue for getting a vaccine has become something close to a national hysteria. Are the opposition understandably concerned, or do Canadians really need to sweat about our place in line to receive a COVID vaccine?
Health Scarred. In the midst of the vaccine scramble, and the the startling increase in cases of COVID cases, the Ontario government decided to extend the tenure of Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams. Easy, right? Not so fast because there a lot of people in the medical community in Ontario that don't feel that Williams has lived up to the job, and the opposition has taken up their voice on the subject. What's behind the controversy of renewing Dr. Williams?
Gibson Tide. On Tuesday night, city council passed a budget that had one of the lowest levy increases in recent years despite the circumstances of the pandemic, and one of the people that will gladly take a victory lap on that is Ward 1 Councillor Dan Gibson. Gibson will join us this week to take that lap and answer some questions about the long-term implications, the ongoing effects of the pandemic on the City's bottom line, and the one motion of his that got away.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits - December 2 (The Outpost)

This week on End Credits, we're under siege! No, not literally, and no, we're not talking about the 1992 Steven Seagal movie. We're going to officially kick-off the holiday season by heading to the frontlines of the Afghan War with a review of The Outpost. Before that, we'll head to the trenches of Hollywood and dig up some of the week's biggest movie news.
This Wednesday, December 2, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss:
No Wonder Woman? For all those that were hoping to unwrap Wonder Woman 1984 on Crave on Christmas Day, you're about to be disappointed. That's one of the news items we will cover this week, and we will also say "goodbye" to the man that originated Darth Vader, say "hello" to new Predator and Transformers movies, and say "huh?" about another Disney controversy.
REVIEW: The Outpost (2020). Based on the book by Jake Tapper, which is based on real events in Afghanistan in 2009, The Outpost follows a standard war movie formula: a group of dedicated soldiers are outmanned, outgunned, and unsure about what exactly they're meant to achieve, but under siege, they rise to the occasion. The story is old and the setting is relatively more modern, but does director Rod Lurie use the formula to his advantage, or is The Outpost just another war movie?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #249 - Why We Need a Science Centre

When he's not setting some of the most bizarre world records, Professor Jason Thomas, or as he’s more commonly known, The Great Orbax, can be found teaching physics at the University of Guelph, or out in the community instilling a love of science in people young and old. His latest project: taking that love, and turning into support for a new Guelph destination: a bricks-and-mortar science centre.
On November 10, Orbax, his colleague Dr. Joanne  O’Meara, U of G President Charlotte Yates, and a who’s who of “sci-lebrities” all appeared in a video to launch a simple idea: let’s build a science centre in Guelph. It almost seems weird that Guelph doesn’t have a science centre doesn’t it? We're the epicentre for food and veterinary sciences in Ontario, we were one-half of the winning Smart Cities Challenge, originator of the blue box program, and home of numerous inventions and experiments.
Long story short, this is an overlooked area of our local culture, and Orbax is one of the people that would like it overlooked no longer. Royal City Science, which is a registered non-profit that promotes science and STEM education, will begin by creating online science-based courses and activities. If successful, that will hopefully lead to in-person events, which will continue to generate interest and awareness for that full science centre, but there’s still a lot of road between here and there that needs to be covered.
In this podcast, Orabax will lay out the reasons why a science centre would fit nicely with other Guelph destination spots, and what a bricks and mortar science centre might offer the city. He will also talk about the state of science education, the growing influence of science denialism, and why we might have to write off a generation of older people that have fallen down misinformation rabbit holes. And, because of the time of year, he will also talk about science-related gifts you can give the young people in your life.
So let's talk science and science centres on this week's Guelph Politicast!
To learn more about Royal City Science, its programs, and its initiative to build a new science centre in Guelph, you can visit their website. You can also follow Orbax and his adventures in science on Instagram at the handle OrbaxandPepperDoScience.
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 Podcasts, 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.

Open Sources Guelph - November 26, 2020

This week on Open Sources Guelph will formally start our transition to getting through these last few episodes before our Christmas break and the end of 2020. Still, it's been another busy seven days in the news business, and we will spend our hour catching up with the Biden transition, and the creeping of conspiracy theories in Canada. Staying in Canada, we will also talk about the back end problems with the CERB, and how housing is still an issue despite the pandemic.
This Thursday, November 26, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Ordinary People. After a needless 17-day wait, U.S. President-Elect Joe Biden was able to formally start his transition to being the 46th President of the United States; meanwhile, Donald Trump came to the White House press room to announce that he magically helped the U.S. stock market reach the "sacred" 30,000 mark. Back to Biden though, and in his first cabinet picks he didn't include a single sycophant, family member or professional Fox News contributor. Good news?
Grill to Die On. While the conspiracy theories about the U.S. Election tapper off, crackpot comments about COVID-19 are alive and well. A Toronto barbecue joint became the witting (or unwitting) host for anti-maskers this week as it defied provincial shutdown orders. Elsewhere, a high-ranking Conservative MP showed he was willing to traffic in tweets that accuse the prime minister of initiating the "new world order." Can we stop all this conspiratorial theorizing before it's too late?
CERB and Protect. The inevitable has begun, and the Federal government must now contend with the fact that some people got the CERB when they shouldn't have, and now they're going to have to try and get that money back. This news comes a week before the Federal government will provide a fiscal update, and as people are looking for even more help to make it through the winter. Did the Trudeau government screw up with the CERB, and what lessons have been learned?
Blunder the Dome. A group of housing advocates built foam domes in front of Mayor John Tory's downtown Toronto condo last weekend, as a not so subtle reminder that winter is coming, and there are a lot of people who still live on the street despite the pandemic. This has been a weird year for housing issues, with record-breaking prices in the GTA, and lower than expected rental costs in Toronto, but it's still hard for many to find a home. What will it take to change that?
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits - November 25, 2020 (On the Rocks)

This week's episode of End Credits is on the rocks, and we mean ice! This week's review is sponsored by our newly arrived winter weather, and the new film On the Rocks, which is our first pick from Apple TV+. And since we're sort of talking about the future, we will also consider what past science fiction and fantasy shows from the 80s, 90s and 2000s might be worthy of a reboot.
This Wednesday, November 25, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss:
Back to the Future. It's a great time for 90s reboots, from the new Animaniacs, to Saved by the Bell, and also sci-fi and fantasy shows like Roswell and Charmed. But there were so many hits, some that followed space adventurers, people going to alternative Earths, and even the crew of a big submarine! So let's play a game: what other genre masterpieces from the 1990s are worthy of a comeback?
REVIEW: On the Rocks (2020). Almost 20 years ago, Bill Murray teamed up with Sofia Coppola to make their first movie together. Lost in Translation was a critical and commercial hit, and the start of a beautiful friendship, so when Coppola and Murray team up again, you have to sit up and take notice. In the new film On the Rocks, Rashida Jones joins Murray to play daughter to his father, and together they go on a journey to self-discovery and whistling. Is it worth the ride?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #248 - Red Kettle Days

If the weather last weekend didn’t tip you off, Christmas is coming, and one of the most recognizable signs of the season is the legion of volunteers who stand by the red kettles of the Salvation Army collecting physical money for Christmas programs. This was hard enough in a time of “going cashless” but in the year of COVID, collecting physical money from someone in-person seems doubly unlikely.
A few weeks ago, the Salvation Army announced the start of its annual red kettle campaign, which arrived in the face of a 19 per cent increase in the number of people using Salvation Army charities in 2020. The Salvation Army has set itself the goal of raising $23 million for this year’s Christmas Red Kettle Campaign, and that money will go to help 1.9 million people in Canada by providing holiday meals, food hampers and toys, and even practical help like skills training or housing support.
But then there's the practical consideration of how that money is going to be raised. Salvation Army spokesperson Lt-Colonel John P. Murray said that the organization will “refuse to let the pandemic steal their Christmas joy,” and that they still intend to have their physical kettles in the usual spots. Having said that though, the Salvation Army is keenly aware that this is not a typical year, and some of the old ways they raise money just will not work. So what will that entail?
Dan Millar, the Area Director for Public Relations for the Great Lakes Division of the Salvation Army, will join us this week to answer that question and discuss the impacts of COVID-19 on this year’s campaign, and how the Salvation Army has to work with different health restrictions in different areas. He will also talk about the best ways people can help out this year, and how he and his colleagues stay hopeful in the face of all they deal with every day.
So let's talk about raising money during this very unique Christmas season on this week's Guelph Politicast!
There will be Red Kettles out and about in the community this year, but if you would prefer to give virtually, you have that option at FilltheKettle.com. If you’re looking for more ways to give, or for ways to give back, you can get in touch with the Guelph branch of the Salvation Army at 519-836-9360 or by email at office@guelphsa.ca.
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 Podcasts, 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.

Open Sources Guelph - November 19, 2020

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we've got the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Plague, Death, War, and Spite. One of those may not be an actual Horseman, put it is a fairly succinct description of the current occupant of the White House who is letting Plague and Death run unchecked. Things aren't much better plague-wise speaking here in Ontario, or in the rest of Canada, and that's where War comes in. He's got his own room in Alberta and everything!
This Thursday, November 19, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Doug Day Afternoon. Ontario has been hit hard with the second wave of the pandemic, and Premier Doug Ford hasn't made it easy to get a handle on things. From a colour-coded alert system that did not follow the best advice of public health, to a vague warning that school Christmas breaks might be an extra two weeks long, there are a lot of confusing messages about there about the current state of the COVID response. What happened to Doug, he was doing so well?
Second Coming. Ontario is just one place that is seeing a spike in new COVID cases. From the newly locked down streets of western Europe, to freezer trucks now sitting in the loading docks of hospitals in El Paso, it's clear the pandemic is far from over, and this with more good news on vaccines this week. We'll look at the growing concern and the rapid new spread of COVID across Canada, the United States, and around the world, and we'll let you know when to freak out.
It's Only Democracy. This week in "Will He or Won't He", outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump gave orders to draw down U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan by the thousands, he fired the DHS official who said the 2020 election was the safest ever, and two Republic election officials refused to certify Detroit's results, and all this was in the space of a few hours on Tuesday night. This week, we'll look at the latest hiccups in the road to a Biden presidency, and ask, will this madness ever end?
Harsh Pipeline. There's been a lot of talk about the post-pandemic economic recovery, and a lot of people think that a pipeline runs through it. Not so fast though because the economics of Alberta oil right now don't really make a pipeline viable, neither does Joe Biden's ascension to the White House, and then there are all those Indigenous issues, and now Michigan is saying "Not In Our Back Yard" to Enbridge. Jason Kenney says "it's war" but is the war already over for oil?
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits - November 18, 2020 (The Craft: Legacy)

This week on End Credits we've got politics and magic! As the United States recovers from their election, we will take a look at the pop culture presidents we wish we had and the ones we're glad we didn't have. For the magic, we'll be reviewing the new legacy sequel of a 90s classic about the self-described weirdos who made spells in school cool before Harry Potter.
This Wednesday, November 18, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Candice Lepage will discuss:
Fake U.S. Presidents. The election is over (for some), but U.S. politics is still big news as the transition rolls on. In the movies, there have been great presidents, there have been terrible presidents, and there have been a lot of mediocre presidents who were just pawns in their own stories, and this week, we will talk about the five best and five worst movie and TV presidents.
REVIEW: The Craft: Legacy (2020). For many people, particularly young women, The Craft was *the* movie of the 90s, a celebration of the weirdos, the outcasts, and the ones that don't fit in to the paradigms of 90210 and Clueless. Now, 25 years later, Legacy features a new generation of witches who are ready and willing to use their powers in the cause of social justice in their high school, but can director Zoe Lister-Jones capture the (ahem) magic of the original Craft?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #247 - In the Land of Truthers

If you’ve been following the current state of affairs south of the border, you know that there are a lot of people living in false reality bubbles built on a mound of conspiracy theories. Social media companies are finally taking at least tacit steps to stop the flood of misinformation, but it’s becoming clear that the real fight against clashing realities is in our hands, and we all need to know how to fight back. 
Now being the smug Canadians that we are, we look at these developments in the United States and shake our head sternly, but we know that we have our own truthers here in Canada. Consider the anti-mask group The Line who held a rally last weekend up the road in Woodstock, and another that happened a few weeks ago in Aylmer, it’s likely that every one of us knows someone in our lives, or in our social media circles, who have fallen down misinformation rabbit holes.
So what can we do? Presented here in one place are two experts on the effects of misinformation.
First we will hear from Christopher DiCarlo who is a philosopher, educator, and author who teaches at the University of Toronto, Ryerson University in Toronto, and is an Expert Advisor for the Centre for Inquiry Canada. From DiCarlo, we will hear about why people find themselves so susceptible to misinformation, and why we should thinking about the spread of misinformation like a drug addiction. 
After that, we will hear from Maya Goldenberg, who is an associate professor in the College of Arts at the University of Guelph. Among other things, she studies vaccine hesitancy, or what has become more commonly known as anti-vaxxing. Goldenberg will tell us the long, unfortunate history of vaccine hesitancy, and how it has spun off into the new area of medical skepticism we more commonly know as anti-masking. 
So let's attack this land of the truthers in this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!
For further reading on this subject there’s an article on Psychology Today from May called “How Should We Respond to People Who Spread Conspiracy Theories?” For methods on how you can identify misinformation, there’s a page on Ryerson University’s library website that gives you tips, and WNYC’s On the Media show has a Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook that can give you further suggestions, including a list of problematic sites, which, thankfully, Guelph Politico is not 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 Podcasts, 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.

Open Sources Guelph - November 12, 2020

This week on Open Sources Guelph, it's schadenfreude time! Sadly we can't dedicate the whole hour to sad orange man, but we can discuss his status as a loser for at least one segment. After that, we will talk about the "Great Whole Foods Poppy Controversy of 2020" (TM), and we will talk to our local MPP about last week's budget reveal, and the current status of fighting COVID-19 here in Ontario.
This Thursday, November 12, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Loser. At around 11 am on Saturday November 7 the Trump Age unofficially came to an end when almost every media outlet called the election for former Vice-President Joseph R. Biden. Current President Donald Trump accepted the loss with grace and dignity spent the weekend golfing, rage tweeting and refusing to accept defeat. That's not unexpected. What is unexpected is that the Republican Party is just going along with it. Are the GOP going to allow Trump to just build an alternate reality for himself?
Whole Fools. It was nightmare and a disgrace all in one package. Whole Foods, the grocery chain owned by Amazon, had apparently barred its Canadian employees from wearing a red poppy in honour of Remembrance Day, and in stark contrast to almost every other issue, the country's governments acted swiftly to condemn Whole Foods. Did the media make too much of what was likely a cultural misunderstanding, and wasn't cancel culture supposed to be bad?
Straight Outta Lockdown! The Ontario Government announced its budget last Thursday (and disappointingly they released it less than an hour before show time), and yes, there is record spending and record deficits, but what does all that extra spending buy us? This week we will be joined by Guelph MPP and Green Party of Ontario leader Mike Schreiner to talk about what he likes about the budget, what he wishes was in the budget, and his thoughts about how the Premier is handling this second wave of COVID-19.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.