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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.
247 Episodes
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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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Canada’s reputation for politically driven flip-flopping over important military purchases is getting bad, especially given Ottawa’s plans to dramatically beef up our forces. But here we go again: the Liberals, after cancelling the purchase of the F-35 next-generation fighter jet, then reversing years later, are considering cancelling again to spite a U.S. president who will be gone in 2028. Brian talks with David Bercuson, director of the University of Calgary’s Centre for Military and Strategic Studies and Alan Williams, former assistant deputy minister of materiel at the Department of National Defence. They discuss why the F-35 was picked in the first place (and then picked again) and how short-term politics is corrupting a momentous decision that could have grave consequences in a more dangerous world. (Recorded November 21, 2025)
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The federal Conservatives were still licking their wounds from the Liberals’ recent minority election victory when they were rocked by a stunning and dispiriting floor-crossing. And they failed to stop the government from passing its budget by a razor-thin margin. That was 20 years ago, as Ian Brodie, former chief of staff to prime minister Stephen Harper, reflects on with Brian. And it looked a lot like what Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are going through today. Back then, it took less than a year before the government fell and Harper’s Conservatives won their first of three election victories. Brodie explains what lessons Poilievre and his team can learn from that time, and why Conservatives shouldn’t be too shaken by their recent troubles. (Recorded November 14, 2025)
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1He promised a historic budget. He warned of big sacrifices. He said he had a vision. But what Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered was not much more than a big-spending, big-government Trudeau-style plan, with a bit less hostility to business and some long-overdue military funding, as Tasha Kheiriddin and Stuart Thomson, curators of Postmedia’s Political Hack politics newsletter, discuss with Brian. They look at some of the odder budget choices and at the rough reception the plan has gotten from some corners. They also consider Carney’s lack of progress on other promises. And they discuss the floor-crossing frenzy that (so far) seems to have fizzled out with a single defector from the Conservatives — and why it played out the way it did. (Recorded November 7, 2025)
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From Elizabeth May’s permanent iron grip on the Green party; to Jagmeet Singh’s self-destructive Liberal alliance; and the sabotaging of NDP campaigns by Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein’s “leap manifesto”: Mark Leiren-Young, a committed environmentalist, saw all of it from a front-row seat. He had worked to help elect the politicians he thought were committed to fighting for his cause. But, as he tells Brian — and describes in his new book Greener Than Thou: Surviving the Toxic Sludge of Canadian Ecopolitics — he discovered they turned out to be more committed to fighting with each other, while being lousy at politics. For people truly interested in his kind of change, Leiren-Young explains why these parties might be better to disappear entirely. (Recorded October 31, 2025)
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Did Republican icon Ronald Reagan detest tariffs or love them? For President Donald Trump and his fiercely loyal army of acolytes, the answer is whatever the president says. As Brian discusses with Postmedia political columnists Lorne Gunter and Chris Selley, there’s no reason to be surprised that Trump blew up trade talks over an ad being run by Ontario that quotes Reagan denouncing tariffs, saying it was “fake” (it wasn’t). The lies, absurdism and overbearing demands of a president who insists his word is law have become a familiar pattern. But Canadian politicians like Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Prime Minister Mark Carney who think they can appeal to America’s logic are acting just as irrationally. (Recorded October 24, 2025)
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The elbows are down, the prime minister is backslapping President Donald Trump, but America’s tariffs just keep coming, and hurting Canada more. The ugly truth is that Ottawa’s been foundering in trade talks with the White House, as former diplomat to the U.S., Louise Blaise, and former trade minister Ed Fast discuss with Brian this week from the Banff Forum in Quebec City. They explain how Mark Carney’s government missed important opportunities, failed to maximize its leverage, and unnecessarily antagonized Trump with anti-American rhetoric, needless irritants and, most recently, a gratuitous Palestinian declaration. As we near negotiations for the crucial Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement, they explain how Ottawa can alter course to improve things — before they get far worse. (Recorded October 17, 2025)
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It’s a major backer of Hamas. It’s an ally of the United States. It has alienated Arab neighbours and spreads toxic propaganda through Al Jazeera but maintains relations with Israel. Since Oct. 7, 2023, the enigmatic Qatar has been a linchpin in negotiations over the war in Gaza. Brian talks to two guests about how this tiny, gas-rich emirate has taken an outsized role in the Middle East. Alon Ben-Meir, retired New York University professor and author, explains how Qatar became central to a Hamas-Israel peace deal. And Haras Rafiq, who tracks Islamism and terrorism, discusses how Qatar nonetheless continues to promote radical Islamism in the region and in the West, especially in Canada. (Recorded October 10, 2025)
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The public safety minister admitted his government’s sweeping plan to confiscate thousands of previously legal gun models with a “buyback” is badly flawed. But as Ian Runkle, a lawyer specializing in firearms law, tells Brian, it’s far more troubling than that. Ottawa plans to recreate a form of the hated gun registry that it abandoned long ago. And gun owners won’t necessarily be compensated for turning in their weapons, but will risk violent police raids if they don’t. Tens of thousands of resisters, including no small number of Indigenous Canadians, could face arrest and jail time. And, says Runkle, it all seems for the sake of placating one small Quebec anti-gun group and punishing non-Liberal voters. (Recorded October 3, 2025)
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No military in history has been as careful as Israel to minimize civilian casualties in war. And no country has been criticized for it like Israel has — including by Canada. That’s the assessment of guests Richard Kemp and John Spencer, former military men and two of the highest authorities on urban warfare. They explain to Brian the groundbreaking lengths the IDF goes to in Gaza to mitigate harm, and wholeheartedly reject claims against Israel by Prime Minister Mark Carney and his confederates in the U.K., France and Australia who last week recognized a Palestinian state. The antagonism of Canada and co. suggests they don’t really want Israel to succeed, helping Hamas to prolong the war. The West, they say, has “blood on its hands.” (Recorded September 26, 2025)
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When he was elected, Prime Minister Mark Carney promised a trade deal with President Donald Trump, a blaze of new major infrastructure projects and a return to affordable middle-class home ownership. Today, Canadian and American trade negotiating teams are barely speaking, the only prioritized projects recently announced were already in the works, and the housing plan looks like a monumental boondoggle with hazy deliverables, as Brian discusses this week with Stuart Thomson and Tasha Kheiriddin, the team behind Postmedia’s Political Hack insider newsletter. As Stuart and Tasha describe, Carney enjoyed a good first week in the House with civility from returning Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. But that can’t last as so many of the high expectations Carney has set collide with governing reality. (Recorded September 18, 2025)
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The Liberals claim they’ve stopped the flood of temporary workers, foreign students and other immigrants that blew up our housing crisis and devastated the youth job market. Michelle Rempel Garner, the Conservatives’ immigration critic, tells Brian that the reality is nothing close to what they say. Five-million people remain here on temporary visas. Hundreds of thousands of more people are still being allowed in. And the asylum system is being exploited as a backdoor by thousands more making dubious refugee claims. Rempel Garner explains why we need drastic solutions to close temporary residency programs, weed out unfounded asylum claimants and start sending non-permanent workers home. (Recorded September 12, 2025)
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What can you do when someone attacks you or your family? After recent high-profile, violent home invasions, police have made it seem like you need to give up and not fight back. That’s wrong, as criminal lawyer Solomon Friedman tells Brian. Friedman explains how the power to defend yourself, your home and others, including killing an assailant if it’s justified, is consistently endorsed by court rulings from long before it was codified in Canadian legislation. But police don’t seem to like it. He and Brian discuss why the message cops are sending is so dangerous, making innocent people into defenceless targets while encouraging criminals to become fearless. (Recorded September 5, 2025)
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The U.S. Republican party today isn’t what it used to be. But the evolution toward President Donald Trump’s MAGA-ism began decades ago when William F. Buckley launched a revolution on the American right. As Buckley’s official biographer Sam Tanenhaus tells Brian, the late conservative icon was a lot like Trump: a media-savvy wealthy elite who rebelled against the very establishment he came from. In his new book, Buckley: The Life and Revolution That Changed America, Tanenhaus lays out the improbable, fascinating story of the arch-Catholic New Englander who chummed around with hardcore leftists but transformed the GOP into a political powerhouse. In no small part by engaging Republicans in the culture war that eventually put Trump in the White House. (Recorded July 24, 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.