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.
Latest episodes
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58 min
What authors of the Alberta ‘firewall’ letter think of Smith’s referendum
Twenty-five years ago they rewired the province’s political thinking with their landmark “Alberta Agenda,” aka the “firewall” letter: a manifesto for the premier to assert sovereig…
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54 min
Will Canada sacrifice democratic Taiwan to China’s communists?
Even as our prime minister seeks favour and greater bonds with Beijing, the communist regime continues to threaten to invade the free, democratic and economically vital republic of…
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60 min
The ‘disruptive’ professor who refuses to be censored
Frances Widdowson was fired from her tenured professorship at a Calgary university after criticizing Black Lives Matter. She has been arrested on other campuses when she tried to e…
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49 min
Don’t wait up for history’s costliest hypothetical pipeline
It’s another announcement from Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. And it’s about the same West Coast pipeline they’ve announced before. This time it’s b…
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1 h 01
What was B.C.’s David Eby thinking by calling the maddest Canadian election ever?
If you’ve got a majority government with two years left and an unpopular record to defend, calling a snap election might not seem like a great idea. But it did to B.C. Premier Davi…
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50 min
It’s showy, it’s insubstantial, but Carney’s EU scheme is slick politics
There’s no such thing as “associate membership” in the European Union and nobody knows what it means, but Prime Minister Mark Carney’s proposal for it has proven to be a dazzling d…
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1 h 01
How Conservatives can get their groove back
It’s a tough time to be a federal Tory. The polls are demoralizing. Some MPs are quitting and some are going rogue. And the worse things get for Canada, the more voters seem to sup…
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54 min
If Carney and Trump are at war, why are they enjoying it?
Postmedia’s Political Hack team Tasha Kheiriddin and Stuart Thomson join Brian to assess the political spin contest over the collapse of U.S.-Canada trade talks. Despite economic d…
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46 min
Diversity is not our strength
Things that divide us cannot possibly unite us. That much would seem obvious, but as Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard tells Brian, society has for decades now prioritized hyper-individ…
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47 min
Inside the mainstream media meltdown
Trust in legacy journalism is plummeting, and after years working inside the CBC, Tara Henley has a good idea why. The author of the new book, The Trust Spiral: Why the Media Needs…
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52 min
A Canadian history of drinking, fighting and puking in Parliament
Detractors like to say that House of Commons decorum has never been worse than it is today, but don’t be so sure. Charlie Feldman is author of the new book, Unparliamentary: Tales…
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43 min
Canada’s ‘suicidal empathy’ hits its terminal stage
Civilizations die from suicide, not murder, as a famous historian once said. And Canada’s in the process of administering MAID on itself, says author and professor Gad Saad. He dis…
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51 min
Why U.K. conservatives need to imitate Canada
British politics has become a farce, with Andy Burnham now the United Kingdom’s seventh prime minister in a decade. And no one knows what he really stands for or if he’ll even outl…
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55 min
A veteran cop explains what’s really happening inside Canadian policing
As unit commander in the largest homicide squad in the country, Hank Idsinga has seen more than most people would ever want to. He discusses with Brian what it’s really like in blu…
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48 min
Hate has corrupted the world’s biggest charities
The Red Cross, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, UNICEF and more — they’re treated by governments and the media as neutral humanitarians working f…
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48 min
Look what happens in Alberta when we let it do stuff
Two new pipeline plans and an enormous $13-billion Meta data centre have been announced for Alberta in just the last few days. Brett Wilson, the veteran Calgary-based investor, joi…
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57 min
Canada waited too long to rein in dangerous Big Tech platforms
Balancing protection for kids online while ensuring free speech and privacy for everyone else isn’t easy, which is why Ottawa has muffed it so many times, leaving Canada decades be…
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1 h 00
Is Mark Carney bringing ‘mean’ back?
As Liberal MPs moan anonymously that Prime Minister Mark Carney is a mean boss, his defenders say it’s just high performance expectations (unlike the last leader’s). But, as our Po…
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49 min
Here comes the big U.S.-Israel split
President Donald Trump’s deal with Iran is seen as a total capitulation to the Islamic Republic, and most of all in Israel, which fought alongside the Americans. Brian speaks with…
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53 min
Ottawa’s building a backdoor to slide into our personal online data
Tech firms and civil libertarians are sounding the alarm about “lawful access” legislation the Liberals seem hellbent on passing before summer. They warn that the backdoor it would…