Open Sources Guelph - March 14, 2019

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we play catch-up, and man, there is a lot of news out there, so we have to take our hour this week and cover all points. We're going to start in Ottawa where the SNC Lavalin affair has gone on simmer, but there are other controversies. Then it's off to Ontario and Alberta to look at the provincial political situation. And the last stop, of course, is Washington D.C. where things got very litigious for the President's former friends.

This Thursday, March 14 at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

Pizza Bait. At a town hall in Kitchener last week, Conservative leader Andrew Schreer answered a question about foreign spending, but he "didn't hear" the preamble about Pizzagate, the completely false conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton ran a child sex trafficking ring out of the non-existent basement of a pizzeria. Meanwhile, Trudeau can't escape SNC Lavalin questions, even while apologizing for acts of colonialism. Even the ethics commissioner needs a break, and we'll try and talk about it all.

The Phone Wars. Meanwhile, things have gotten interesting at Queen's Park. While many of the same fights are being fought (autism funding, Student Choice Initiative), the Ford government decided that the time was nigh to ban cell phones from the classrooms, and explore whether banning single use plastics is a good idea. While that might sound vaguely environmental, don't worry, the Ford government is still all-in against the carbon tax. We'll catch up with the doings of the Ontario Legislature this week.

Jason Specs. It seems like it's all but a done deal that Alberta's brief flirtation with New Democratic rule is coming to an end, but what kind of government are they going to be replaced with. UCP leader Jason Kenney has been tamping out scandals all over the place, from accusations of meddling in a nomination meeting, to accusations of stalking government employees with hidden cameras, to proposals to cut corporate taxes that have created a divide among the "United" Conservative members. We'll break it all down.

The Usual Suspects. It was another busy week for the criminal cronies of U.S. President Donald Trump. Paul Manafort went to court and received an additional three-and-a-half year sentence, but if that seems light, don't worry, the New York prosecutors have some freshly unsealed indictments. Roger Stone and Michael Flynn are back in court this week too, and everyone is still anxiously awaiting the delivery of Mueller's final report. So which hammer will be the next to fall in all this Trump crime drama?

Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.