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Full Comment is Canada’s podcast for compelling interviews, controversial opinions and fascinating discussions. Hosted by Brian Lilley. Published by Postmedia, new episodes are released each Monday.
260 Episodes
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It’s not actually official that Canada’s defence budget meets NATO’s two per cent of GDP target, despite the press releases claiming so. Yes, spending has been going up, but what is it really meant for? This is Brian’s discussion this week with David Perry, president of the Global Affairs Institute, and Christian Leuprecht from the Royal Military College of Canada. They explain how the government still can’t figure out if it wants to project power or sit on the sidelines and criticize those who do, and whether it wants excellent equipment or just the grandest job-creation promises. We might suddenly think we’ve become serious about defence, but our allies and our enemies have reason to question how serious we really are. (Recorded April 2, 2026)
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Canada’s two national opposition parties, the Conservatives and NDP — now under Avi Lewis — are relentlessly focused on affordability and dismantling a system they say screws non-elites. As this week’s panel discusses, both Lewis and Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre clearly stand for something, which raises questions about what Prime Minister Mark Carney stands for … besides fighting President Donald Trump. Brian is joined by former Conservative campaign director Jenni Byrne, longtime NDP strategist Kim Wright, and former Liberal adviser Warren Kinsella. They break down how the new NDP leader, unlike the last one, will make life more difficult for the Liberals. They also consider the likelihood Carney will prorogue Parliament after securing a majority, and how much it will (or won’t) help him. (Recorded April 1, 2026)
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If you think the Supreme Court will be reluctant to rewrite the Constitution, as Ottawa wants it to by handcuffing Section 33, then you haven’t been paying attention, as Bruce Pardy tells Brian. It doesn’t matter that the notwithstanding clause explicitly gives parliaments the right to override certain court rulings, or that it was key to the Charter of Rights being passed in the first place, says Pardy, a constitutional scholar at Queen’s University. The rule of Canadian constitutional decisions is that there are no rules. For decades, justices have simply invented interpretations and dreamt up Charter “values” that align with their left-wing politics. And our constitution is conveniently designed to keep that happening — forever. (Recorded March 27, 2026)
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When he first became prime minister a year ago this month, Mark Carney vowed to improve affordability, build badly needed projects quickly and make Canada more resilient and competitive in the face of President Donald Trump’s trade antagonism. As William Robson, president emeritus of the C.D. Howe Institute, discusses with Brian, the situation on all those fronts isn’t much better and, in several respects, worse than before. Canada keeps getting poorer, our fiscal situation is worse, the investment climate remains uncompetitive, projects we need aren’t happening, and Carney’s fiscal moves, from the GST grocery refund to green subsidies, are as economically misguided as the policies from the last guy. Carney can’t just blame Trump for it all. (Recorded March 20, 2026)
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Travis Dhanraj is not who you’d expect from a CBC critic. He’s not a conservative. He supports public broadcasting. As the host of Canada Tonight, he championed diversity. But as he tells Brian, he eventually discovered how shallow the broadcaster’s commitment was to its proclaimed values and its mandate. He explains how political coverage was controlled by a handful of politically biased personalities exercising veto control over shows seeking conservative perspectives. He also tells Brian about the preposterous stunts the CBC used to pay lip service to its standards, the corporation’s degrading human resources practices, and the lack of accountability and transparency from the top that, once he dared to challenge it, had network executives trying to silence him. (Recorded March 12, 2026)
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Confusing messages are the only guarantee after the Cowichan ruling and the Musqueam deal. The August court case confirmed a First Nation band has “title” over B.C. land that belongs to private property owners, while the federal government’s deal confirms Musqueam rights and title over Vancouver. Dwight Newman, a law professor specializing in Indigenous rights, tells Brian that assurances to private property owners that they won’t lose their land only go so far. What might not be targeted today could be tomorrow, he says. They discuss how the court case and government deal, along with the growing power of UNDRIP in Canadian law, only give more power and leverage to First Nations. And not just in B.C., but across Canada. (Recorded March 5, 2026)
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Tehran’s nuclear-weapons race was a risk the U.S., Israel and others couldn’t tolerate, and its terrorism and brutality have only worsened. Its development of weapons that could reach Europe is a growing, grave threat. But as more than one of this episode’s guests says, the war with Iran involves other states, too — including China, which faces losing another supplier of the cheap oil powering its own ambitions. It’s also a message from U.S. President Donald Trump to Beijing that the U.S. won’t ignore adversarial aggression. Brian speaks with John Bolton, former presidential security advisor; Rick Hillier, Canada’s former chief of the defense staff; former U.S. intelligence officer, Jonathan Panikoff; Eylon Levy, former Israeli government spokesman; Vivian Bercovici, former ambassador to Israel; and Postmedia’s Adam Zivo, reporting from Tel Aviv. (Recorded February 27–March 1, 2026)
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A third Conservative crosses the floor. Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre runs damage control after one of his MPs goes off script on the trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump. And Ottawa wins a “psychological victory” after the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s emergency tariffs. Chris Selley and Lorne Gunter join Brian to discuss how, with all these developments and more, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s mojo seems to just get better every day. Meanwhile, Conservatives can’t seem to catch a break. With a snap election still extremely possible, and the NDP seeming only weaker and unlikelier to compete for Liberal votes, they discuss why Poilievre is facing a dangerous situation for his party, and his leadership. (Recorded February 20, 2026)
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Not many people can do what Jamil Jivani did — maybe not even the prime minister. In a whirlwind trip to Washington, D.C., the Conservative MP met Vice President JD Vance, the secretary of state, the U.S. trade representative, and even chatted with President Donald Trump. As he tells Brian, he saw his longtime friendship with Vance as helpful in ending the trade war devastating automaking jobs in his riding. You’d think everyone wants that, yet Liberals attacked and mocked him. Jivani discusses what he discovered on his trip, why he’s concerned the Liberal government doesn’t really have the auto sector’s back, and how they seem alarmingly blithe about an imminent CUSMA review that could make things here much, much worse. (Recorded February 13, 2026)
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It’s setting off alarm bells in the White House for good reason: Prime Minister Mark Carney’s new “strategic partnership” with Beijing is bigger than just the diversification and freeing up of trade in Canadian food exports and Chinese electric vehicles that he claims. As Brian discusses with longtime China-watcher Sandra Watson Parcels, there are details of the pact that haven’t been widely covered. And it risks making Canada increasingly vulnerable to Beijing’s coercive power tactics while putting us on the wrong side of the urgent effort necessary to preserve the western-backed global system from the threats of a rising revisionist power. There’s a case for trading with China, Watson Parcels says, but not on terms like this. (Recorded February 2, 2026)
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Brian Lilley was live on the floor of the Conservative convention in Calgary, where the party gave emphatic support to keeping Pierre Poilievre as leader — and expectations were high for the Liberal government to call an election this spring. While there, Brian spoke with longtime Conservative MPs Michelle Rempel-Garner and Chris Warkentin about why they think Prime Minister Mark Carney is more vulnerable at the ballot box than he might think. He talks to campaign manager Steve Outhouse about the strategy when an election comes; and Gary Keller, a veteran of the Conservative organization, about what could be giving Carney second thoughts. He also chats with Jamil Jivani about the party’s changing image among voters, especially younger ones. (Recorded January 31, 2026)
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The bromance between Donald Trump and Mark Carney is over. The president is back to jeering at the prime minister after Carney’s “hegemon” speech in Switzerland. And Liberals are back in their election comfort zone, acting as defenders of Canada against American hostility, as Brian discusses with Stuart Thomson and Tasha Kheiriddin, hosts of Postmedia’s Political Hack newsletter. It worked so well for Carney last election, they say this could be just the thing for Carney to call an election to try for a majority. But what about damage to Canada? They get into the advantages and risks, and the problem for Conservatives, who are still trying to regroup from the last time they got flattened by this drama. (Recorded January 23, 2025)
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Untold numbers of people demanding basic human rights have been killed by a corrupt, bigoted regime, but in the West there are no tent cities on campuses or raucous marches. As Iranian-Canadian human-rights lawyers Payam Akhavan and Kaveh Sharooz tell Brian, Western leaders, and even U.S. President Donald Trump, are proving largely ineffectual at helping the people of Iran. For now, the regime still seems to have the upper hand against a populace mostly abandoned by the international community. And while this is much wider and deeper than previous uprisings in Iran, it could end just as tragically — or worse. (Recorded January 15, 2025)
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Emilio Figueredo and Freddy Guevara understand better than any western analyst the Venezuelan reality, the regime of dictator Nicolas Maduro, and the aftermath of his capture by President Donald Trump. Figueredo, editor of independent Venezuelan news outlet Analitica, talks to Brian from Caracas and explains what it’s like there now, why Maduro was foiled by his reliance on Cuba, and why Trump needed to leave the Bolivarian regime in power — for now. Guevara, an exiled opposition politician once imprisoned by Maduro, tells Brian about support among Venezuelans for the military operation and why foreign complaints about Trump violating international law carry little weight there. Both describe Venezuelans’ hopes as higher than they’ve been in a long time, although freedom hasn’t come yet. (Recorded January 8, 2026)
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Canada once had a public broadcaster in the true sense of the word. Now we have a behemoth we pay nearly $1.5 billion a year for that almost nobody watches and doesn’t come close to serving its original purpose, as David Cayley tells Brian. Cayley, author of the new book, The CBC, was a producer there for decades. He says even the news division it prides itself on proved its inability to serve the public during the COVID pandemic, when it consciously chose to promote government narratives, blacklisted dissenting scientists and failed to ask basic questions. Amid stark audience polarization and an unprecedented media revolution, Cayley explains why the CBC needs a total rethink if it’s going to justify its continued existence. (Recorded November 27, 2025)
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Over the holidays we’re looking back at some of the best episodes of 2025. Self-defence laws are back in the news, with Alberta’s government recently directing Crown prosecutors to refrain from charging people for using force in “defending themselves and their loved ones.” Yet police suggest that if you face a violent home invasion, you need to give up and not fight back. That’s wrong, as criminal lawyer Solomon Friedman told Brian Lilley: The power to defend yourself, your home and others (including killing an assailant if it’s justified) is backed by the courts and the law. In this episode, Friedman and Lilley discussed why the message cops keep sending risks making innocent people into defenceless targets while encouraging criminals to become fearless. (Originally recorded September 5, 2025.)
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Over the holidays, we’re looking back at some of the best episodes of 2025. As in July, Canada’s restricted dairy market was recently raised again by U.S. officials who say it stands in the way of ending disputes and settling trade deals. This summer, Brian spoke with Martha Hall Findlay about how Ottawa’s refusal to liberate our globally detested supply-management system from trade negotiations continues to hurt our economic potential while causing endless headaches with major trading partners — all to benefit of a few thousand dairy-farmer millionaires. In this episode, Hall Findlay explains how this small cartel works, why it’s so powerful and why it hurts not just consumers, but every other trade-exposed Canadian business. (Originally recorded July 4, 2025)
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All the hostage-taking, election meddling and spy rings are being swept aside by a Liberal Prime Minister who, like the last one, seems only too eager to cozy up to China. That’s what Brian discusses with Charles Burton, former diplomat to China, who has a new book: The Beaver and the Dragon: How China Out-Manoeuvred Canada's Diplomacy, Security, and Sovereignty. Burton points out the alarming way Carney has obligingly adopted Beijing’s spin on bilateral relations, even as the communists continue to harm Canada, including with tariffs on agriculture. Xi Jinping has succeeded in “subordinating” Carney, Burton says, while the dictator revs up more subversion and undermining of what he believes is now the most Chinese-infiltrated country in the western world: ours. (Recorded December 5, 2025)
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Listen to the premier of B.C., or the CBC, or the Association of First Nations and you’d think that Indigenous groups on the West Coast are determined to stop a new oil pipeline from Alberta. As MP Ellis Ross, former chief councillor of the Haisla Nation near Kitimat, tells Brian, a lot of First Nations are open to the opportunity for resource development to help them break dependency on Ottawa and find prosperity for their people. He also talks about how U.S. anti-oil groups are exploiting First Nations by offering them much-needed funding in exchange for backing their activist campaigns — like the widely quoted “Coastal First Nations” group that doesn’t even represent the area’s First Nations. (Recorded December 5, 2025)
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The Trump administration has been lambasted for its proposed peace plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war given its generosity to Moscow — yet Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he’s willing to build from it. As Matthew Bondy discusses with Brian, Kyiv has few options but to encourage America to step in and end the brutal, nearly four-year war, despite the deal’s insulting terms and the White House’s apparent warmth toward Russia. That’s because Ukraine isn’t winning, and Europe, Canada and other purported supporters keep offering more lip service than meaningful help. Bondy, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, tells Brian if Western countries won’t stop a barbarous but weak Russia, it raises the question of whether they care to defend western civilization at all. (Recorded November 28, 2025)
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the poles are b.s.
I love how it dives https://thatsnotmyneighbor.org/ into controversial stuff you won’t find everywhere else, and the Monday drops from Postmedia keep me hooked week after week.
https://sprunkiretakemod.io/ Brian Lilley's expertise and engaging hosting style make the podcast enjoyable and informative.
two of the most respectable journalists in Canada, at a time where respect of journalism is justifiably at a record low.
really
Great interview and sensible guest, thanks. Good luck.
Great interview. I could not agree more.