Guelph Politicast

In this space and others, we’ve talked a lot about the effect of misinformation and conspiracy theories on our political culture, but there’s a growing and pronounced impact on our legal system as well. From local missing person’s cases to crimes so heinous that they capture the consciousness of a country, can our online culture be trusted with their role in law and order matters? Last week in Guelph, a photo of a father and his daughter at a local coffee shop was shared on social media as part of a human trafficking inquiry, and a few months ago, CTV News Kitchener reported that the search for a missing Kitchener man was being hampered by online sleuths who had some very peculiar ideas of what happened to the man. Both of these cases are local, and so are their impacts, but what happens when online detectives focus their fire on a national tragedy? This happened last month in the case of the mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C. In the immediate aftermath, people scoured the internet and social media to find information about the shooter, and as fate would have it, an Ontario woman with the same last name as the shooter’s mother was misidentified as Jesse Van Rootselaar. How does something like this happen? Are we overlooking how conspiracy theories and online detectives with an agenda are affecting crime coverage? If anyone might have some insight into this issue it's Dr. Ahmed al-Rawi, who is an associate professor of News, Social Media, and Public Communication and the director of the Disinformation Project at the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. He will talk to us about the current state of the information ecosystem when it comes to crime reporting, why context matters in any reporting, and whether our obsessions with true crime primed the pump for all these amateur detectives online. So let's talk about the dangers of crime and conspiracies on this week's Guelph Politicast! You can learn more about The Disinformation Project at the Simon Fraser University website. You can also visit Dr. al-Rawi’s personal website. You can check out the straightforward, community reporting 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.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're feasting on news as we leave much of Canada to its own devices for a week. In the United States the continued revelations of a certain dead criminal's emails are having global implications, and one of the places feeling the heat is inside Westminster, seat of power for the government of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. As for that criminal's best friend who's now President of the United States, he's got problems too. This Thursday, February 26, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Jeffed Up. Revelations from the Epstein Files continue to reverberate around the world, from former prime ministers in Norway to advisors to the current prime minister in the U.K. to one of the co-founders of the Perimeter Institute up the road in Waterloo. But you know who hasn't been feeling the burn from these revelations? This week, we will talk about the latest insights from Jeffrey Epstein's emails and whether everyone mentioned in them will face accountability. State of the Furious. U.S. President Donald Trump delivered the State of the Union on Tuesday and essentially turned it into an awards show. It was about the only highlight in a week that included bad economic numbers, a Supreme Court verdict that went against him, and a potential war against Iran to obliterate the nuclear program that had already been obliterated. We're used to the proverbial fire hose when it comes to Trump news, but is the act finally wearing thin? Keirs of a Clown. One of the big takedowns of the Epstein Files is Peter Mandelson, former ambassador to the U.S. and an advisor to several U.K. governments, including the present one under Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Labour Party. The scandal has galvanized a growing malaise in a government that's not even two years old, and there are rising challenges from both within Labour and inside the rising racist Reform Party. Is it time to get out the lettuce for Keir? Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits we go back in time, figuratively and literally! In the review, we will go back to 2008 with two Canadian boys in the sure-to-be classic Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie, and we will take one last ride through Black Heritage Month by honouring a director who is no longer with us (although his films always will be).  This Wednesday, February 25, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: Black Heritage Month Special: The Movies of John Singleton. In 1991, John Singleton released his first film Boyz in the Hood, and he became the first Black person to get nominated for the Best Director Oscar and the youngest. It was the start of a promising career, one that was cut short when Singleton passed away at the age of 51 in 2019. This week, we wrap up Black Heritage Month by paying tribute to two of Singleton's movies, Poetic Justice and Shaft. REVIEW: Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie (2026). For years, Matt and Jay have done everything possible to get a show at Toronto's legendary Rivoli venue, except for the most obvious. In Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie they hatch their most daring scheme yet as the popular webseries makes the jump to the big screen with big ambitions, and the most faithful homage to Back the Future you've even seen, but can the director of BlackBerry make his cult favourite show (band?) a CanCon blockbuster for the ages? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

Breezy Breakfast has been one of the primary venues for local political discussion and information for the last 10 years. Now, not everyone can take time out first thing in their busy day to have a sit down breakfast and chew the fat about the doings at city hall, so presented here thanks to the miracle of digital recording tech is all the hot goss and chit chat that you missed when maybe you were on your way to work, or were maybe already there... To put this succinctly, the guest of last week's Breezy Breakfast was some guy named Adam A. Donaldson. The point was to offer some thoughts on Mayor Cam Guthrie's recent State of the City speech, but that was only the beginning of the conversation. In the course of about 60 minutes, we touched on the State of the City, the state of the coming election slate, trying to go behind the curtain of closed meetings of council, the water capacity issues in Waterloo and what it means for Guelph, and the still lingering questions about what went down with the daytime shelter issue over the holidays.  So let's grab some breakfast, and politics, on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!  There will be another edition of Breezy Breakfast this Thursday at 8 am at the Uptown Grill, and the special guest will be Guelph MPP Mike Schreniner. You can learn more about Breezy Breakfast by following them on Facebook, where you can find a link to sign up for the newsletter. You can also get more information by email at breezybullhorn [at] gmail.com.  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.

This week on Open Sources Guelph there's tragedy and triumph. First we will head out to B.C. to separate fact from fiction when it comes to events in Tumbler Ridge, which is something we can do thanks to a liberal arts education that the Ontario government is now making more difficult to attain. As for triumph, that's a local matter. We will talk to the newest member of Guelph City Council about some good news stories. This Thursday, February 12, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Tumbler Ridge. There was tragedy in northern B.C. last week when 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar killed nine people and injured 25 others in the worst school shooting in Canadian history. A lot of the controversy has focused on Van Rootselaar's gender orientation, but there's been little focus on her deeply rooted mental health issues, or the limited resources to deal with such things in small communities like Tumbler Ridge. Are we missing the so-called forest for the trees here? Taking the 'Fun' Out of Funding. You can't say that the provincial government isn't working because still over a month before their inevitable return to Queen's Park, they announced changes to funding for post-secondary institutions in Ontario. Say "Hello" to more money and "Goodbye" to the tuition freeze and an OSAP formula were students get more in grants than loans. Doug Ford says you'll be fine if you don't major in "basket weaving", but will we? Waterfowl Play. Last week at Guelph City Council tackled two big deals, one was the re-designation of the old Kortright Waterfowl Park on Niska Road and the other was the final vote to designation the Ontario Reformatory Lands as a heritage district. One of the people trying to make sense of it all was Ward 6 City Councillor Katherine Hauser, and in her Open Sources Guelph debut she will talk about deliberating on these difficult files, and the questions about how much city councillors should be paid. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, we find a good Rip. In fact, it's a Rip of a Rip, one of the greatest Rips you will ever see. Boy howdy, are we using the word "Rip" a lot in the new Netflix movie The Rip, which is the title were reviewing today. In other news, we will continue with our celebration of Black Heritage Month by doing a deep dive on another great Black director.  This Wednesday, February 18, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss: Black Heritage Month Special: The Movies of Antoine Fuqua. We've done the legend, we've done the indie darling, and now we're doing the populist. Antoine Fuqua started in music videos and graduated to features with the little-seen The Replacement Killers, but his breakthrough was Training Day, which scored Denzel Washington his second Oscar. Washington, one of Fuqua's regular contributors. also led the other move we'll talk about, The Magnificent Seven. REVIEW: The Rip (2026). Based on a true store about Miami cops that found $20 million in drug money hidden in the walls of a home, The Rip takes things in a decidedly dingy direction, a morality play in the best tradition of Narc filmmaker Joe Carnahan. In this one, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon lead of a team of overworked, underpaid cops who find $20 million in a wall, and then all hell breaks loose. Who can they trust? Can they trust each other? A low stakes, high drama crime movie is the epitome of a "Dumpuary" classic, but can The Rip get us there? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

Last week’s discussion at city council about the City of Guelph buying a portion of the old Kortright Waterfowl Park lands on Niska Road captured a lot of attention from the community and community activists. No one’s going to debate the need for more parks and open space, but it's hard to get a full sense of the history of *this* because it goes back before the internet, so can we ever really have a firm sense of that background and the stakes? We're going to try harder this week with a Real Audio News segment. In this one, you will first hear delegations from the September 22, 2023 and June 28, 2024 Grand River Conservation Authority board meetings where they discussed the Niska Land Management plan. After that, you will hear the delegations from the July 16, 2025 special meeting of Guelph City Council where the land management plan was discussed in connection to the Strategic Plan. And finally, to wrap up, you will hear a portion of this week’s Open Sources Guelph interview with Ward 6 Councillor Katherine Hauser about where the work to protect the waterfowl park goes next.  For some supplementary reading, you might also want to check these links out:  Niska Land Holdings 2023 Draft Management Plan Dr. Hugh Whiteley's timeline of the site A 2016 community editorial piece by Susan Radcliffe. Let's get into the Wayback Machine on Niska on this episode of the Guelph Politicast!  You can hear the whole interview with Councillor Hauser on Open Sources Guelph on Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU. You are encouraged to check out the further reading linked to above, and a final decision about the rezoning of the property as open space/parkland should come back to council sometime in June or possibly July. You can also hear the two part Policticast pods about the Niska lands by clicking here and 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.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're walking our beat. To begin with we've got eyes on potential corruption in Toronto-area police services, and then we'll be taking a couple of our biggest political leaders aside to see how much they're colluding together to get us back to the polls. And speaking of polls, we will talk to someone presently running for office, in fact, you might say that they want to be a leader. This Thursday, February 12, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Cop Rocked. Last week, York Regional Police announced a massive bust that included charges against seven current and one retired officer in the Toronto Police Service. The alleged crimes are numerous and quite concerning in their implications, and now Ontario's new inspector general on policing is looking at every police service in the province to make sure their officers are acting above board. Will this lead to any real changes in policing? Marked for Election? A Globe & Mail article painted a picture of an interesting political alliance: Ontario Premier Doug Ford is advising Prime Minister Mark Carney to call an early election and secure the majority he needs to bring economic stability to a trouble land. The polls say that fortune may be in Carney's favour, but it does raise some questions about why Ontario's Conservative premier is making strange bedfellows with the Liberal PM. What's the political calculation? Pick Heather? While some people are getting ready for another national election, the NDP are looking to elect a new leader, and one of the candidates in that race is Edmonton Strathcona MP Heather McPherson. With less than two months to go before the membership make their final decision, McPherson will tell us how the NDP needs to rebuild for tomorrow, and the next election, and why their next leader has to lead from inside the House of Commons. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits we will hear the call... of death! What a movie choice for Valentine's Day week as we blow a whistle calling for a painful and excruciating end in the new horror movie Whistle, which you can now see in a theatre near you. Also, we will talk about our latest entry in marking great Black directors for this Black Heritage Month!  This Wednesday, February 11, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Candice Lepage will discuss: Black Heritage Month Special: The Movies of Kasi Lemmons. Black Heritage Month marches on, and this week we get to our indie pick. Kasi Lemmons started her career as an actress, usually as the white female protagonist's best friend, and then transitioned to a career behind the camera. This week, we will look at two of her films, the one that started her directorial career, Eve's Bayou, and a recent historical epic she made, Harriet. REVIEW: Whistle (2026). If you found a creepy Aztec whistle in your locker - which used to belong to a dead boy - on your first day of school, would you blow it? If you would, you might be in a horror movie! In Corin Hardy's Whistle, five photogenic high schoolers find themselves in just such a predicament, unaware that whoever hears the whistle blows will end up being hunted down and killed by their own death. Creepy? Absolutely. Whistle is the kind of 80s-style crowd-pleaser horror that they just don't make anymore. Is it good, or does it blow? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

This time last year, we were in the middle of a provincial election, and that made a lot of things complicated, not the least of which was a delay in funding for the Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment, or HART Hub. But almost one year later, and after a recent announcement about funding for expanded service, do we need to ask the question: Is the HART Hub actually working? To recap, let’s talk about what the HART Hub is. The goal is to provide care, housing, and treatment for people in the community with the most complex needs including people experiencing complex mental health and/or addiction challenges, housing instability or homelessness. For Guelph and Wellington area Community Health teamed up with CMHA Waterloo Wellington, Stonehenge, Wyndham House and Homewood and despite provincial disarray, they opened on time last April. How did they do it? As you will hear, a lot of the work at the CTS that went beyond the provision of a safe space to use substances, made it easy to convert to the HART Hub model. Then last week there was news that might definitely indicate its working when the Hub received funding to support an additional 150 people through enhanced housing stability and clinical supports. So is the HART Hub experiment a success, or is it still too soon to tell? Melissa Kwiatkowski, the CEO of Guelph Community Health Centre, will joins us to discuss the progress made in the last year, pivoting to prevention, and how the additional funding will complement the current services offered at the Hub. She will also talk about the ongoing effects from the closure of the CTS, the difficulty in measuring success of its programs, how the HART Hub will grow next, and whether they're able to do any long-term planning so far as provincial funding is concerned. So let's take the pulse of the HART Hub on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can learn more about Guelph Community Health Centre at their website, or you can follow them on Facebook and Instagram. You can learn more about the HART Hub specifically here, and if you’re looking for help for yourself, a friend, or family member you can call Here 24/7 at 1-844-HERE247 (437-3247), or call the Wyndham Street office directly at 519-821-6638, and press option #3. 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.

This week on Open Sources Guelph we have doubts. In Alberta, we're really skeptical about the ability of the ones that want to separate, and in the U.S. we're have regret about writing off some people as cranks in the wake of some very scandalous revelations. For the interview, we have doubts that anyone is thinking about the most vulnerable students in Ontario and our guest this week thinks so too. This Thursday, February 5, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: #Wexit By the Grift Shop. Since last summer, there's been a growing separation movement in Alberta, and it got mega-charged last weekend with the federal Conservative policy convention in Calgary and news that political organizers are meeting with the Trump administration for support. There are still an awful lot of hoops to jump through, including an actually referendum, so is the Wexit movement getting ahead of their skis or is it all just a show? Was QAnon Right All Along? The release of over three million emails by the U.S. Department of Justice in the case of deceased serial human trafficker and sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein show a man with all kinds of relationships and liaisons among business leaders, academics and politicians, some of which looked innocent and some of which very much not so innocent. Have we been too hard on those conspiracy theorists this whole time? Not Cool In Your School. The recent move by the Ontario government to take over schools boards is having an impact on students, but some students are feeling the impact more than others. David Lepofsky of the AODA Alliance was already in a fight about the lack of action at Queen's Park over a report to improve accessibility, but now the school board takeovers might exacerbate those problems. Lepofsky will join us to talk about why disabled students are getting left behind even more than before. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, we get a little sun and surf... At the movies of course. For the review, we're going to a not-so-tropical paradise with some old friends in the new hit Send Help, which you can now see in a theatre near you. Also on this episode, February means more than just Valentine's as we dig into some of the greatest hits from great Black filmmakers! This Wednesday, February 4, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: Black Heritage Month Special: The Movies of Spike Lee. To mark Black Heritage Month, End Credits is going to dedicate a portion of our February episodes to highlighting two movies from talented Black directors and we will begin with the legend himself, Spike Lee! For nearly 40 years, Lee has been challenging audiences across many genres and on this episode we will talk about two of his most underappreciated entries, He Got Game and Miracle at St. Anna.  REVIEW: Send Help (2026). "We're not in the office anymore, Bradley"; a statement of unambiguous fact or a tacit threat? Director Sam Raimi is back and he's talking a trip to the tropics with Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien, but don't you call it a vacation! In the new dark comedy thriller, McAdams is a woman with exceptional survival skills and O'Brien is her affluent nepo baby boss, and when the two of them end up on a deserted island in the Pacific you have no idea where it's going to go. We will try and sell you on Send Help spoiler-free. End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

Fascism, have you heard of it? It’s certainly been hard not to see it, especially over the last few weeks with images from the United States. The problem is that it’s hard to recognize fascism until it gets to this point, so as people in the U.S. try and figure out how to get out of this mess, many Canadians are trying to stop us from joining them. Where can you begin? There’s a symposium for that! In 2018, Crawford Killian posted a piece in The Tyee called “Fourteen Steps to Fascism”. Among the steps are many of them will sound familiar and while they may make you think about the fiefdom of Donald Trump and MAGA, be honest, we’ve seen a lot of that up here in Canada too. Nobody wants to call it fascism because people so closely associate that with a war that ended almost a hundred years ago, but as we’re seeing in front of our eyes, fascism is a process. Seems like a good time to try and educate yourself, so enter an annual appointment in the local activism calendar, the Rebel Knowledge Symposium hosted by the Ontario Public Interest Research Group, or OPIRG. This year marks OPIRG’s 50th birthday, and what better way to celebrate (?) than organizing people on how best to identify fascism at home and abroad and fight it. If you think “Everything sucks right now!” you might be ready for Rebel Knowledge, but how does it all come together? Illyria Volcansek, the external outreach co-ordinator of this year’s Rebel Knowledge Symposium, joins us on this edition of podcast to talk about how she ended up co-organizing this year’s symposium, and how OPIRG decided to centre the theme on fighting fascism. She will also talk about finding fascistic tendencies in our own backyard, how to push back when people think that describing things as fascist is a bridge too far, and the greatness of OPIRG as a Guelph community institution. So let's talk about fight fascism and rebel knowledge on this week's Guelph Politicast! The 2026 Rebel Knowledge Symposium, “Here We Go Again: Fighting Fascism Then & Now”, kicks off this Friday February 6 with a live taping of "Sandy and Nora Do Politics" in Peter Clark Hall. The symposium goes all weekend in the University Centre at the University of Guelph with all kinds of talks and workshops and activities - and it’s all free! You can learn more and see the full schedule here. You can also learn more about OPIRG at their main 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.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we catch up with old friends. While Mark Carney was hugging it out with a Canadian celebrity, MPs were returning to Ottawa for another session or where else detoured by bad winter weather. We will also detour, but to the United States where there's another kind of chill in the air, plus we will keep winter matters front of mind with our special guest from Guelph city council. This Thursday, January 22, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: They Killed a Nurse This Time. Last weekend, immigration and border enforcement agents upped the ante in Minneapolis by killing nurse Alex Pretti as he was coming to the aid of a woman being assaulted with pepper spray. The cold-blooded execution of Pretti in front of a dozen witnesses and their iPhones has further ratcheted up tensions on American streets as even unexpected sources like the NRA are calling out ICE's Gestapo tactics. What happens next? Bonhomme and Badness. The House of Commons returned this week... Well, some of them. Many MPs were snowed in  and unable to make it Monday, while Mark Carney met Ontario Premier Doug Ford for a slice of pizza in Toronto and to hopefully talk him off the proverbial ledge over all this China trade talk. Meanwhile Pierre Poilievre faces the music this weekend in a leadership review and Avi Lewis looks more and more like the next NDP leader. We'll catch with the latest from Ottawa. Goller Back. Guelph City Council has a busy week ahead with the budget for the seven shared services and, just in time for all the complaining, a review of winter road maintenance. But what about those lingering questions about daytime shelter arrangements, not to mention the winter response on these very cold nights?  Also, how much work does one councillor expect to get done in this election year? We will seek all these answers from Ward 2 rep Rodrigo Goller who is our returning guest this week. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, we're feeling the chill. But if the weather outside is cold, wait until you take another wild ride through the high drama of being a modern mom in the new movie If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, which you can now rent on video-on-demand. Speaking of the cold, we will salute the movies made by the coldest film festival (weather-wise) on the calendar! This Wednesday, January 28, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss: One Last Ride... In Park City. Currently underway is the Sundance Film Festival, but this year it's different because this is the last year the festival is taking place in Park City, Utah and it's the first year without prominent co-founder Robert Redford. We will do our part to mark Sundance's impact on the culture by talking about some of their biggest success stories from genre fare, to blockbusters, Oscar winners and the first timers that went on to massive success! REVIEW: If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025). Coming out of last year's Sundance is the entry in the "motherhood is hell" subgenre, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You. The film from Mary Bronstein tells the story of a woman besieged by sick child, a hole in her ceiling, a dispassionate therapist, and too many clients as dysfunctional as she is, in what may be a career best (and Oscar nominated) performance by Rose Byrne. As Oscar season begins, we will catch up with one of the race's sleeper successes because motherhood may be hell, but does it make for great cinema? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

What if I told you that for a fraction of the price of building all the highway projects currently planned by the Ontario government - Highway 413, the Brantford Bypass, and the tunnel under the 401 - you could fund all the major transit projects on the province-wide wishlist? Don’t take my word for it, this is all part of an analysis recently published by Environmental Defence. The numbers are stark. The economic impact of traffic congestion is $10 billion per year, but the estimated impact to the quality of life is about $35 billion, and according to worldwide surveys the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area has some of the worst traffic congestion. To combat this, the Ontario government has proposed $80 billion in new highway projects and all of them controversial and now all branded as projects of significant economic interest.  So is there another way? Obviously, Environmental Defence is proposing that instead of $80 billion on highways, not to mention the extra $100 billion for a tunnel under the 401, the provincial government should take $14 billion and fund all the GTA-West Rapid Transit projects, including the $1.5 billion for the work on the Kitchener Line that will make two-way, all-day GO train service possible. But is there an audience will to pursue these ideas at Queen’s Park?  Mike Marcolongo, the associate director of Environmental Defence, believes there might be, and he's going to tell us about the intentions of this report, and why transit improvement has to be a non-partisan project of multiple levels of government. He will also talk about the lack of co-ordination across transit systems in the GTHA, looking at rapid bus transit as an option, and whether the difficulties building the Finch and Eglinton LRTs dissuade people from supporting the investment in others like them. So let's talk again about building better transit on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can learn more about the group at their website, or follow them at social media at Facebook, Blue Sky, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. You can also learn more about Transport Action Ontario at their website. As for the report itself, you can find “Transit Over Traffic: Hard Truths for Addressing Gricklock in the GTA” on Environmental Defence’s website under the “reports” section. 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.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, it's Blew Thursday. You've heard of Blue Monday, the saddest day of the year, well this is the dumbest day of the year, and we're talking about the people who blew it, or are blowing it. First, the Quebec premier once thought invincible has quit, and then our PM is shaking and baking again on the world stage but not necessarily to the satisfaction of his constituents. For the interview, an old friend with housing concerns. This Thursday, January 22, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Should He Stay or Should He Legault Now. Quebec Premier and Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) leader François Legault announced suddenly last week that he was quitting. He's the second provincial leader to step down in the last couple of months, and with less than a year till the next provincial election, but Legault has long had the goal of trying to be the first Quebec premier to get more than two majority governments in a row in nearly 70 years. So what went wrong? Mark Carney Vs The World Part 3. Prime Minister Mark Carney is back collecting Air Miles and in the last week he's made stops in China and the United Arab Emirates, where he announced new trade deals, and then he pulled up to the World Economic Forum in Davos where he brought down the house with a speech declaring that "The old order is not coming back." Tough talk from Carney, and the Davos crowd ate it up, but does this do anything for Canadians? The Realtor World. So housing is expensive in Canada. This is known, but will 2026 be the year that we finally get back to something resembling affordability? Some people think so, but friend of the show David-Alexandre Brassard, chief economist of the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada, is not so sure, and he joins us this week to talk about his thoughts about Canada's housing market and to remind us why it's so much more complicated than we think it is. Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

This week on End Credits, it's back to two of our favourite topics: Awards and the undead! On this episode we're heading back to the land of fast zombies for the latest entry in the 28 Years Later saga, which is called The Bone Temple, and before that we're going to talk about something else that won't die: The desire to make Oscar predictions! This Wednesday, January 21, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: We Pick Some Oscars. This week, the nominees will be announced for the 97th annual Awards for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, or as you might otherwise know them, The Oscars. Before the Academy offers their official nominations, we will use the first part of this week's show to offer our unofficial picks for Best Picture, Director, the acting categories, and a dealer's choice option, including (perhaps) the newest category. REVIEW: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026). Picking up where last summer's 28 Years Later left off, we re-enter the zombie infested U.K. and catch up with Dr. Ian of the titular Bone Temple, who may have stumbled onto something that might change the game. Meanwhile, our young lad Spike has fallen into a rough crowd called the Jimmies, who are making the most of the post-apocalyptic landscape by being as bad as they want to be. These two stories are on a collision course in this (supposedly) middle chapter. but does this movie have - ahem - bite? End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

It's been quite a year so far, and it's only been about three weeks long. Unfortunately, there's no guest on this week's show, nobody seems to want to talk about the biggest issue in town, but that doesn't mean we can't chat about it on our own. For this peculiar episode of the podcast, we will talk about the questions left over from the daytime shelter story, how we've been trying to cover it, and what's going on at Politico HQ as we look to an even busier year ahead! So let's not beat around the bush and get down to this solo edition of the Guelph Politicast!  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.

This week on Open Sources Guelph, it's non-stop controversy only two weeks into the new year. From the United States, just when you thought there was nothing new to get angry about, more state-sponsored violence, and then the international situation is getting even more dicey with new drama in Iran. More locally, we've got drama right here in our own backyard concerning daytime shelter services that may or may not be coming. This Thursday, January 15, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Renee For Good. Last week in Minneapolis, a woman named Renee Nicole Good was killed by an agent of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Why? That depends on who you ask. The killing of Good has become a flashpoint, people who've been warning about the use of ICE as Donald Trump's personal brute squad now have someone to rally around, a dead mother of three who seemed to be killed because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Has the tide turned? Iran For Change. Over the last several weeks, small gatherings of merchants upset about the loss of value on the Rial, Iran's national currency, have became a full-blown national demonstration against the ruling regime, and they're feeling the pressure. Thousands of protestors have been maimed or killed, but as Iranians abroad now push for western intervention is there a way we can do it that doesn't repeat regime change mistakes of the past? Gimme (Daytime) Shelter. So local controversy arose to start the year in Guelph! A new daytime shelter run by Stepping Stone and Royal City Mission approved in November was supposed to be a done deal and ready to open this week, and then there was the surprise announcement last week that that there was no deal in the end. What happened? Here to help us sort that out is Ward 5 City Councillor Cathy Downer who will talk about how we got here and where we might go next? Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.