Podcasts about politicast

On Friday, Guelph Politico received a video of someone accessing the website "michellebowman.ca". Michelle Bowman is a candidate running in Ward 2 in this fall's municipal election, so one would think that if you typed in her name with the domain extension ".ca" that it would lead to her website. It doesn't. Barely three weeks into this election, do we already need to have a conservation about the rules and ethics of running for local office? A second source on the weekend then provided Politico with a link to a website set up by someone who was declaring themselves as a council candidate, although they had not yet filed their nominations papers. Concerning here was the inclusion of a donate button when the election rules state that you cannot collect donations, or spend donations on campaigning, until you're a registered candidate in the mayor, council, or school board trustee elections.  So how concerned should we be about these recent develops? Is there already election skullduggery afoot less than a month into this municipal election? That's tough to say. In so much as people are invested in knowing who wants to form the next city council and what they intend to do with that position, people are also invested in making sure they do it the proper way. Should we be guarded for more people testing the system over the next couple of months? To learn more about where the lines are this election, we will seek out the advice of Dylan McMahon, Guelph's city clerk and essentially the chief electoral officer for municipal elections. We turn to him with these two situations that arose over the weekend: Is it improper for someone else to own the domain of a candidate, can you raise money and campaign before you are officially a candidate, and what can you do if you have a cause for concern in the way some candidates are running? So let's talk about election concerns on this week's Guelph Politicast!  If you have questions or concerns about the election or the election rules, you can go to the City of Guelph's website or can call the clerk's office at 519-837-5625 or send an email to guelphvotes@guelph.ca. If you want to learn more about available domain names, or learn what legal recourse you have if someone's using your name as a domain name, you can go to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority website. In one last note, Guelph Politico reached out to Thai Mac, the owner of Caught in Guelph, to get comment about whether or not he owns the domain "michellebowman.ca", but he did not respond before press time. 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.

Centre Wellington is the largest municipality inside the county, and it includes Elora and Fergus. In the literal and figurative middle of Wellington, representing it around the council table, unsurprisingly, is a two-person job. From this vantage point, they must have a unique view of relations between the city and county, and one of those councillors has an even bigger vantage point then that? Diane Ballantyne represents the southern side of Centre Wellington, which is also known as Ward 6. Listeners of this show may be familiar with her previous attempts to become the MPP of Wellington-Halton Hills, but since 2018 she's been the Ward 6 county councillor, and has put some impressive points on the board in the process taking part in several key committees and sitting on the board of Groves Memorial Community Hospital.  More than that, Ballantyne is one of the directors on the county caucus of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) and was named an honourable mention in Municipal World's 2024 Women of Influence honours. Can Ballantyne's high profile be attributed to the fact that she's got one? She's one of the only people on county council with a social media footprint, so why aren't more of her colleagues talking about county politics on the socials? That's one of the things we'll talk about with Diane Ballantyne on this edition of the podcast as we get into her background before politics, dividing the civic responsibility for Centre Wellington, and whether or not it's Fergusite or Fergusonian. We will also discuss her role representing Wellington at AMO, her view on the Guelph/Wellington relationship, and why differences don't need to divide us across jurisdictions. Also, we will talk about running for re-election and why social media doesn't have to divide us. So let's head to the middle, or the south part of the middle, on this month's Wellington County Politicast! You can learn more about Diane Ballantyne and the work she does at her website. You can also follow her on social media on Facebook and Instagram. Although there wasn't any time to get into it, you can also check out one of Ballantyne's side projects, Centre Wellington Pride, of which she was a co-founder, and you can find information about that group and its events at their website.  The Wellington County Politicast will return next month!! 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.

Adalet Bakanlığı kaynaklı belge sızıntıları ve ana muhalefete yönelik yargı operasyonları, mutlak butlan tatışmaları, CHP'ye yönelik baskılar, yargı ve medya ilişkisi, erken seçim kulisleri... Kemal Göktaş ve Sedat Bozkurt Politicast'te değerlendiriyor. 00:00 Giriş01:05 Adalet Bakanlığı üzerinden belge servis edildiği iddiası05:20 “İktidar yargısı” ve itibarsızlaştırma tartışması11:40 CHP'ye yönelik operasyonlar ve itirafçı ifadeleri18:15 Mutlak butlan ve kurultay tartışmaları24:10 CHP içindeki kopuşlar ve belediye başkanları31:20 NATO zirvesi sonrası erken seçim iddiaları38:05 Erdoğan'ın anayasa ve sistem hesabı45:10 Halk TV krizi ve medya düzeni53:40 Türkiye'de haberciliğin dönüşümü58:30 Kapanış ve değerlendirme

Is there a bigger political lightning rod when it comes to the City of Guelph budget than the police budget? For some people, we spend too much on the police and at the expense of expanded funding for social services, and for others we don't spend nearly enough on the police. As we look to the next term at city hall, what challenges around policing will be presented to the new council? In their 2024-2027 Strategic Plan, the Guelph Police Service outlined six priority areas: community policing, investigative excellence, community wellness, organizational health and service effectiveness, road safety, and policing downtown. To help achieve those ends, GPS committed to a Staffing & Service Delivery study performed by KPMG, which said the service needed more investment to bring it up to par with similarly sized cities.  It was hardly the best time for such big budget increases based on the fallout of Black Lives Matter and the affordability crisis, but the budget increases over the last few years have produced results. The challenges though keep multiplying, and so do the funds needed, and while the police are not political, the funding of police is. As we start debating the issues in this election, what are the police leaders thinking about before the next term of council in terms of their priorities?  To that end, we have on this edition both Guelph Police Services Chief Gord Cobey and chair of the Guelph Police Services Board Peter McSherry. Together, they will will discuss the inner workings of the Police Board, balancing affordability and growth over the last couple of budgets and whether the Guelph Police has achieved or exceeded their expectations. We will also talk about the police's role in educating the public about the budget and whether there's an education role for the police in this election.  So let's talk about the future of police and this election on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can learn more about the Guelph Police Service, and find all its published reports on their website. The next meeting of the Guelph Police Services Board is on Thursday May 21, and you will be able to watch it on the Guelph Police YouTube channel. The agenda for that meeting will be available on Friday on the GPS website. Stay tuned for more reporting and insight about the election on Guelph Politico and the Guelph Politico Tip Sheet newsletter.  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.

Sure, it's an election year, but that doesn't mean that the current city council is coasting in their last year in office. The council calendar has been pretty busy these first four months of 2026, and some of the things that have kept them busy might surprise you. This week, if you don't follow the news, or subscribe to this website, or have heard about it somewhere else, you will get your chance to catch-up on all the latest council business here. In January, the council year got started early with an emergency meeting to respond to the sudden cancellation of a daytime shelter program. No one saw it coming, but that was the case with a lot of the most difficult issues at the council table. From the plan to speed up development downtown, to the crunch over ice time at rec facilities, to the options for traffic calming around town, council had some tough debates and made some tougher decisions.  So let's recap the events at council so far this year on this edition of the Guelph Politicast! Stay on top of council coverage every week by following @adamadonaldson on Blue Sky and by subscribing to the Guelph Politico Tip Sheet newsletter. The Thursday edition is the recap of that week's council meeting.  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.

Politi-Cast yayında. Kemal Göktaş ve Sedat Bozkurt, seçim tartışmalarını, çözüm sürecini ve Erdoğanı'ın seçim hesaplarını anlattı. Politicast programında gazeteci Kemal Göktaş ve Sedat Bozkurt, haftanın öne çıkan gelişmelerini değerlendirdi. Erdoğan'ın erkem seçim hesapları ne? Muhalefetin baskıları sonuç verecek mi? Çözüm sürecindeki karşılıklı açıklamalar ne anlama geliyor? Çözüm süreci seçime mi takvimledi?

Politicast yayında. Kemal Göktaş ve Sedat Bozkurt gündemdeki gelişmeleri değerlendiriyor. Neler konuştuk? Gülistan Doku Soruşturması: 6 yıldır süren sessizlik ve Adalet Bakanı Akın Gürlek'in açıklamaları ne anlama geliyor? Hukuk ve Siyaset: Adli bir vaka nasıl politik bir kriz haline gelir? Dersim ve Tunceli isimleri üzerinden kurulan ideolojik bariyerler adaleti nasıl etkiliyor? Gazetecinin Sorumluluğu: Devletin kutsallığı mı, yoksa vatandaşın can güvenliği mi? Medyanın denetim görevi neden her zamankinden daha kritik? Ara Seçim ve Anayasa: Özgür Özel'in seçim resti ve Anayasa'nın "yüzde 5" kuralı hakkındaki tartışmaların hukuki boyutu. Ekonomik Bağımlılık: Yoksulluğun yönetilmesi ve 4.3 milyon haneye ulaşan yardımların seçmen tercihlerindeki rolü. İlk yayın tarihi: 23.04.2026

Near the end of every council term, we invite the rookies who were elected in the previous election onto this podcast to talk about their experience. This time it's different because one, there were so many new councillors in 2022, and two, in this case, we have two people who've decided that one term is enough. How can just four years on Guelph city council possibly be enough? The day after Municipal Election Day in 2022, the Ontario government announced Bill 23, the More Homes Built Faster Act, and its sweeping changes. It was an early, practical lesson that cities are creatures of the province, and the province was going to reshape them as they saw fit. Over the last four years, Queen's Park has been freely changing the rules and it seems without a lot of consultation with the local political leaders. This was the atmosphere that both Erin Caton and Michele Richardson walked into when they took office in November 2022. Both these councillors have a lot in common: Being a Guelph city councillor was their first gig in politics, they both became wardmates to long serving councillors and succeeded other long serving councillors, and they've both decided that they do not want to run for re-election. Why have they decided to walk away now, and what lessons will they take with them? Ward 1 City Councillor Erin Caton and Ward 3 City Councillor Michele Richardson will share their thinking on this edition of the pod. They will talk about what factors went into their decision to retire, what they wish they had known about the job in advance, and the ways it was tough to adapt to all those changes as a first-timer. They will also talk about advice for their successors, the things they want to finish before October, what they plan on doing next, and whether they might ever run for office again. So let's talk about the city council experience on this week's Guelph Politicast!  The nominations for mayor, city councillor, and school trustee opens this Friday, May 1 and will continue to be open until late August. You can learn more about how to run, who's running and other important information here. Council business continues for the next few months, and the next meeting is on Tuesday May 5 at 2 pm, which is the Committee of the Whole meeting. Get all the council agendas here, and you can get all coverage here on Guelph Politico! 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.

Today is Earth Day if you're listening to this promptly on Wednesday, but it's hard to think of a time in the last 30 years where it seems like the environment has been less of an issue. Despite the increasing frequency of dangerous weather events, the rapid loss of farmland, and concerns about ground water, environmental issues seem less and less to be a priority, and few people know that better than the Green Party of Ontario leader. This interview was recorded on Friday, which was coincidentally the same day it was reported that the Ontario government had bought a private plan for the premier's use. It seems unlikely that that Doug Ford was going to be hoping on that private plan to fly to the next COP conference, but if you want to criticize the Ontario government for its environmental record, or lack thereof, there's an embarrassment of riches. According to Mark Winfield, co-chair of the Sustainable Energy Initiative at York University, Doug Ford has “the worst environmental record of any Ontario government of the modern (post Second World War) era," and there's no shortage of evidence to back that up (listen to the episode to hear the list). Good thing there's a Green Party leader in the House, but he rarely gets a chance to opine about the environment. Today though... he gets that that chance Mike Schreiner, MPP for Guelph and the leader of the Green Party of Ontario, is the guest on this week's podcast and he will spend a whole interview talking about the environment! He will discuss what it takes to make environmental issues a priority, and what the people in the government tell him about environmental issues off the record. He will also talk about what we can learn from the pandemic response about solving big issues, and why we need to remain optimistic.  So let's get into Earth Day politics on this edition of the Guelph Politicast!  If you're looking for some Earth Day-slash-Month things to do, you can sign up to join the Guelph Team for the Earth Month Ecochallenge 2026, or you can can go to the City of Guelph website to find some personal environmental challenges you can do at home. The Rotary Club of Guelph and Trees for Guelph will host a tree planting on Laird Road this coming Saturday at 9 am. Seniors for Climate Action are also hosting a number of events around town over the next week. 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.

Okullarda şiddet Türkiye'nin temel gündemi. Sorunun asıl kaynağı ne? Çözüm süreci akamete mi uğradı? Erdoğan'ın yantısız bıraktığı sorunun asıl cevabı ne? Kemal Göktaş ve Sedat Bozkurt, Politicast'te değerlendiriyor.

It's an interesting time for someone new to take on the reins of this organization, and not just because of the housing crisis. This is the 25th birthday of Habitat for Humanity in Guelph and Wellington, so it's a time of celebration, along with a time of tremendous challenge. In the overwhelming crunch of the crisis, how does the brand name in affordable housing celebrate its silver anniversary? You can't say that when Habitat for Humanity became an officially registered charity in 2001 that Guelph didn't have any housing issues but that started changing in the last 25 years, slowly at first and then super accelerated though the pandemic and the immediate aftermath of it. With not just a lack of housing, but a lack of affordable and deeply affordable housing, the community was left scrambling, and that's put a lot of pressure on established non-profits, like Habitat for Humanity. Habitat has been busy for these last few years of the housing crisis with a stacked townhome development on Guelph's eastside on Cityview Drive, a 32-unit project called Garafraxa Village in Fergus and next a new 30-home community on Speedvale Avenue East. At this pivotal moment, Habitat now has a new CEO, and as you'll hear, she brings with her the experience of a business person and someone who's been a part of the fabric of Habitat as its been navigating these difficult times. So what comes next for the new CEO?  On this episode, we're joined by that new CEO, Sarah Spry, who will discuss her background and experience, how Habitat works and how they've been impacted by the housing crisis and the growing need. She will then talk about how the challenges of building non-profit housing are not that different from the for-profit ones, why the Habitat model works, and her vision for the organization. Also, you will learn how you can get involved, and what the next 25 years of Habitat will look like.  So let's celebrate affordable housing builders on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can learn more about Habitat for Humanity Guelph Wellington, and all the ways you can take part in their efforts at their website, and you can follow them on Facebook and Instagram. You can also visit the two ReStore locations in the region, the one in Guelph is in the north end on Dawson Road and the other is in Fergus on Tower Street South. 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.

Wellington County's Ward 9 is the Town of Erin, the eastern most end of the county and it faces a number of issues that might sound kind of familiar to politically tuned in Guelphites. How much do we have in common with our friends from Erin? That is a one of the questions that will guide this first entry in a brand new side story of the Guelph Politicast adventure as we start digging into the politics our our next door neighbours... Erin is caught in the middle in a very real way. It's a rural cushion between the encroaching urbanity of Peel and Halton Regions and it represents the halfway point between Guelph and Orangeville. Like all the municipalities that make up Wellington County, Erin has its own mayor and town council, and it sends a separate councillor to represent them on county council along with the mayor, and since 2018 that person has been Jeff Duncan. In addition to his seat on council, Duncan also takes part in the Information, Heritage and Seniors Committee and the Economic Development Committee, which puts him in a pretty good position on a couple of key issues, like, for instance, the long shadow of water taking for botting purposes. Duncan has also been on top of a radical issue, at least radical so far as the county's concerned: live streaming of council meetings, which sounds easy but comes with a number of challenges that he'll get into.  On this inaugural edition Duncan will describe for us the unique political structure of the county, his own political background and navigating the intricacies of a two-tiered government system. He will also discuss protecting Erin's water from growth and profit, how Erin is sitting at a literal and figurative crossroads, what it's like dealing with Guelph from the county point of view, and trying to play catch-up on live streaming. So let's head out to the east side of the county on this first edition of the Wellington County Politicast!  You can learn about all things Wellington County on the their website, and you can send Councillor Duncan an email at jeffd [at] wellington.ca. Unfortunately you missed the Information, Heritage and Seniors Committee for this month, but the Economic Development Committee is on Tuesday April 21 at 10 am at the County administration building and County Council will hold its monthly meeting on Thursday April 30 at 10 am. The Wellington County Politicast will return next month!!  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.

Campus and community radio stations are under pressure from all sides: provincial governments, student governments, activists, advertisers and big tech. There's a growing spectre of doom for campus media, and the people charged with supporting radio stations across Canada are looking to bolster themselves with help from a newly fiscally prudent federal government. So has time run out for your campus radio station? The pressure is real. Last week, the student union of Memorial University in Newfoundland voted to end funding to CHMR, the campus radio station. Why? They determined after one poll that the station is “underutilized” by undergraduates. Last December at the University of Ottawa, the campus radio station CHUO finally stopped producing live broadcasts two years after students voted to cease the special levy through which the station got the lion's share of its funding. Stations at Fanshawe and Algonquin College have become casualties to the loss of funding to Ontario's colleges due the deep cuts in international student enrollment, which was doubly insulting since both radio stations were used as a training ground for students studying journalism and broadcasting. This fall, campus radio stations in Ontario that survived the Student Choice Initiative will face similar changes that were approved in Bill 33 last November. Can campus media survive these pressures?  Barry Rooke, executive director of the National Campus and Community Radio Association, believe it can with help, and he's going to talk about that on this week's show. He will discuss how the NCRA is trying to answer all the various challenges facing campus radio, how some stations are trying to pivot and why it's so hard for some stations to make a change in order to survive. He will also look at the importance of campus media, the plan to protect the stations still standing and his beginnings at CFRU. So let's save campus and community radio on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can learn more about the National Campus and Community Radio Association at their website. The NCRC 44 RadioDays North America event, which is the annual conference hosted by the NCRA, runs from May 4 till 9 in Toronto, and you can also find information about that on their website. You can also find a link to the Canadian Press story here, and, of course, you can learn more about Guelph's campus and community radio station 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.

There's no escaping just how crushing the increasing cost of groceries is, and it's even been affecting the people we might consider affluent, so how tough is it for the organizations we depend on who are trying to level the playing field, and can they overcome those same economic pressures themselves? On this holiday week, we tackle the essential questions on local food security with two people who know about it. More people are feeling food insecure, and Feed Ontario's last Hunger Report said that over a million people in the province are now using food banks, with over one-third of them accessing those services for the first time. Some municipalities are declaring emergencies in food security, and the City of Toronto recently approved a pilot to open government-owned grocery stores, but how do we address the problem right here and right now in our own community? Such a big problem requires the assistance of two guests starting with Guelph Food Bank CEO Carolyn McLeod-McCarthy. She's going to talk about the logistics of their spring donation drive, the things that they need now and always need, and the ways they're struggling to keep up with demand in areas like distribution and access. We will also talk about how current economic conditions are impacting the amount of donations they're receiving. After that, we will talk to Dawn Wheeler, a support worker for the West Village Co-op neighbourhood group. She will discuss the unique challenges in the west end, the number of people they're helping out, and the ways they have to be creative to help as many people as possible. She will also talk about filling people's needs beyond food, and the ways they specifically need assistance when it comes to donations, and volunteer opportunities. So let's talk about local food insecurity on this week's Guelph Politicast!  The Guelph Food Bank's Spring Food Drive runs through April 22, and donating is as easy as dropping food off in the marked bins at your neighbourhood grocery store. You can also learn about other ways to give or give back at their website. You can also learn more about all the programs at the West Village Co-op on their website. For more discussion on food security, tune into Open Sources Guelph on Friday for an interview with Feed Ontario CEO Carolyn Stewart. 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.

Last Saturday, the group Resistance and Resilience Guelph gathered over 50 people on the fourth floor of 10C to cook up possible directions for a union to represent renters in the city. Over one-third of Guelph residents rent the place they live, and those residents are under incredible pressure with some of them under a very real threat of losing their homes. Is unionizing Guelph's renters the best way to fight back outside of government action? The stories in Guelph have become quite familiar. From Brant Avenue to Cedar Street, there have been numerous high-profile renovictions that have made the news, and many, many more that have not. The Guelph-Wellington Legal Clinic has report that there's been a 245 per cent increase in the use of N13s since 2020, translating into 500 people losing their housing in a combined 280 units, and that's just this one very specific type of landlord/tenant interaction. City of Guelph staff are now in the process of working on a renovicton bylaw, over their own objections, and are aiming to get it done by sometime later this year. There's also still a desire to press on the provincial government to take action, as it would be so much easier for them to make those changes. But in the wake of governments unwilling to act quickly, or just unwilling to act, a Guelph group is trying to build a new movement, and this week, we will check in on their progress. Janice Folk-Dawson, a long-time labour activist, former federal candidate and now one of the main orgainzers of Guelph's new, under construction tenant union joins us this week to share those details. She will tell us what a tenant union is, what it will do for renters in the city, and what their immediate priorities are. She will also talk about what came out of Saturday's meeting, what comes next, and the role of a tenant union in the political system and a coming municipal election.  So let's talk about building a tenant union on this edition of the Guelph Politicast!  You can find Resistance and Resilience Guelph on Facebook and Instagram, and you can send them an email at rrg [at] gmail.com. Save the date of Saturday May 2 for the next public portion of the tenant union's development, and you will find those details when they're released on RRG's social media feeds. In the meantime, if you need legal advise about your rental situation, you can reach out to the Legal Clinic of Guelph and Wellington County at clinic [at] gw.clcj.ca or by calling 1-800-628-9205. 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.

It was something of a surprise last week when Niagara Region chair Bob Gale announced his sudden resignation less than four months after being appointed by the Ontario government, but it was even more surprising when we found out why: He purchased a signed original copy of Adolf Hitler's memoir and manifesto, Mein Kampf. Gale said he was a history buff, but anti-racism activists saw an entirely different explanation amidst the growing boldness of white supremacy in the region. From a fight at the Stampede Ranch last weekend where racial slurs were allegedly uttered to an Aggie pub night at the University of Guelph in January where some students were allegedly wearing t-shirts with hate symbols and discriminatory slurs, and from a demonstration by white nationalists on a London overpass last fall to a similar gathering outside Hamilton city hall last month, there's a startling trend of racist groups in Ontario feeling increasingly emboldened. Niagara Region seems particularly susceptible to these groups and this year alone there have been a pair of incidents in Grimsby, including one outside a Tim Hortons, and also last Labour Day when there was a gathering of Second Sons at Brock's Monument in Queenston Heights. Given what's going on in communities around Niagara Region, is it easier to understand why people were concerned that the regional chair was the proud owner of a signed copy of Hitler's book? To talk about it, we're joined by Saleh Wazirudden from the Niagara Region Anti-Racism Association who will talk about the state of fighting white supremacy in Niagara Region, why these groups are feeling so emboldened and why so many of them seem to be operating in the area. We will also talk about why Gale can't hide behind his excuse of history enthusiasm, connecting the dots across Ontario, and what you should be on the look out for when it comes to white nationalist activity in your community. So let's get back into fighting white supremacy on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can learn more about the Niagara Region Anti-Racism Association at their website, or you can follow them on social media @TheNRARA on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. For other groups trying to raise awareness about white supremacy locally and in the rest of Canada you can check out No Hate in the Hammer out of Hamilton, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and, of course, the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. 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.

Silivri'de başlayan Ekrem İmamoğlu davası, sadece hukuki değil, siyasi sonuçları bakımından da tartışılıyor. Cumhurbaşkanı Recep Tayyip Erdoğan'ın duruşmaların başladığı gece yaptığı ve pek konuşulmayan Twitter paylaşımı ne anlama geliyor? Mahkeme salonunda neler yaşandı? Bu süreç iktidar ile muhalefet arasındaki siyasal dengeleri nasıl etkileyebilir? Politicast'te Sedat Bozkurt ve Kemal Göktaş, davanın hukuki görünümünü, siyasi arka planını ve olası sonuçlarını konuşuyor.

On Open Sources Guelph, we try our best to condense a week's worth of news into a couple of topics to allow for some in-depth discussion, but when it comes to the work of covering the provincial government, sometimes that almost needs its own weekly show. As we gear up for the return of Ontario's MPPs to Queen's Park in a couple of weeks for the spring sitting, we will tee up the issues that await Premier Doug Ford, his cabinet, caucus and opposition. In the last week, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has made news about wanting to build new artificial islands along the Toronto waterfront on which a new convention centre will be built, and he's floated the idea of taking over the Billy Bishop Airport, a move that would be pretty unusual because the province plays no role in airports. In both cases, Ford has not kept the City of Toronto looped in on these initiatives. It's been observed before that Ford is acting like the Mayor of Toronto, but he's actually been elected three times to be the premier for the entire province of Ontario, and at the Ontario PC convention last month, he announced his intention to serve as premier into a fourth term and beyond. Right now though, he's facing an exhaustive list or issues, and it has some people wondering if maybe he's losing sight of the forest for the trees, including the ones he's planting? Scotty Hertz, co-host of Open Sources Guelph, will join us this week to offer his take on the Top 10 issues we think are facing the Ford government. From maximizing Toronto's waterfront, to the further crushing of our conservation authorities, and from the still unknown fate of school boards and to the use of private devices and accounts for government business, let's dig into all the things that should be keeping Doug Ford up at night during the last few weeks of his winter break. So let's countdown Doug Ford's problems on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can listen to Open Sources Guelph every Thursday at 5 pm on CFRU 93.3 fm or cfru.ca, and on this feed every Monday. This week, we will have an interview with Guelph MPP and Green Party of Ontario leader Mike Schreiner. The Ontario legislature will return for its spring sitting on Monday March 23, and on Tuesday it was announced that they will release the budget on Thursday March 26. 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

The State of the City is a key event on the annual political calendar as it gives some insight into the mind of the mayor; what do they value, what do they consider accomplishments, and what do they see as the biggest challenges? It's also a look inside the mind of the mayor and how they see the big picture outside the day-to-day issues and crises that come up. So let's look inside the mayor's head from one year ago. In his speech, Mayor Cam Guthrie called Guelph a “city of resilience”; our challenges are many but the will of people to overcome and their willingness to embrace innovation is strong. The housing picture is rough, but Guelph is not unique in that issue, and there's also a lot going in the city that is worth noting beyond those tough conditions. Yes, there are some good news stories in Guelph!   In the end, the mayor said that the city is strong, and united, and was sitting on a solid foundation at the beginning of 2025 to deliver more great things in the 12 months that would follow, so let us remind ourselves where we once sat. For this week's podcast, Cam Guthrie will take the microphone to talk about the State of the City, as he saw it, around this time in 2025.  In this flashback, you will hear Guthrie discuss Guelph's economic big picture, the accomplishments achieved in 2024, the new positive directions he foresaw, and the opportunities and warning signs that he believed were coming for the city in 2025. As we approach the State of the City for 2026 in a couple of weeks, we pause today, as we do at this time every year, to look back at the mayor's agenda for the year that just ended.  So let's revisit the 2025 State of the City on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can revisit coverage of the State of the City last year and every year in the archives of Guelph Politico. Or, if you would rather look forward, the next State of the City event will be on Thursday February 12 at 7 am at the Delta Guelph Hotel and Conference Centre. You can get more information and buy tickets at the Guelph Chamber of Commerce's 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.

Guelph City Council is taking an extended holiday (but not as extended at the Ontario government), so as we wait for their inevitable return, it seems fitting to pause here at the start of the year and to look back at all the action last fall in the council chambers. Before we unlock the future we must first find the keys to the past so join us in this search for the keys... It was a busy fall at city council on the planning side. There was a major proposal to redevelop a plaza at the corner of Gordon and Clair, and there was the rollout of the block plan for the first two phases of the Guelph Innovation District lands. The consequences of those decisions may take decades to unfold, certainly beyond the time and space of this current council (who term out this November). In terms of policy, council looked at making it easier to build more accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, and considered five or more units as-of-right on certain low residential properties. They also strongly endorsed the creation of a renoviction bylaw and a vacant home tax in order to stop the loss of affordable housing before it happened. There was also some weird thing with parking restrictions in one section of the Ward that caused some controversy. There were also some city building projects on the agendas. Redeveloping the area around the Macdonell Bridge took up a lot of bandwidth, especially when it comes to keeping portions of the Allan Dam, or not keeping them as the case may be. Council also looked at the final design of St. George's Square after advising staff to ratchet up that "wow factor", and as they do almost every fall, there was the passage of the budget and all the drama there. So let's get into events at city council last fall in this week's Guelph Politicast! The next council meeting is the January planning meeting on Tuesday January 20 at 4 pm in the council chambers at city hall. The agenda will be posted on the City of Guelph website sometime this coming Thursday. As usual, stay tuned to Guelph Politico for all the latest developments before, during and after every city council meeting! 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.

Thirty years. That's how long it's taken to get the new main library this far, and it still won't open for several more months. The ambitions of multiple library boards, library CEOs, city councils, and patrons will finally be realized this year after three decades of debate, negotiation and preparation, but at the end of this long road, can the new main library deliver on the hype and will it be the good news story downtown Guelph needs exactly when it needs it the most? Back at the turn of the century,  the plan was to buy the old post office on upper Wyndham and renovate that. The whole project was going to cost $10.5 million for a 80,000 square foot building, and it was well on it's way to becoming reality when a more conservative mayor and council put the kibosh on all that progress and it was back to the drawing board. (If you're interested in the full timeline, it's an 88-page document on the Library's website.) More recently, the $67.1 million library project was approved in 2019 for the Baker District Redevelopment, but there was some further fiddling in the fall of 2020 that solidified the project as it exists now. Despite all the wonderful aspects of the project though there's still questions about whether it will meet all the expectations put upon it. So as we enter this pivotal year, is the library staff ready to meet the challenges that come after the building is open?  For this first pod of the year, we're joined by two of those staff members, CEO Dan Atkins and manager of public services Meg Forestell-Page. They will talk about the progress on the new building's construction, and the progress on planning for all the new programs that will take place there. They will also talk about the impact on the other library branches, the fate of the current main library, and how the new building will continue to serve as a community hub for the people most in need.  So let's look forward again to the new library on this additional episode of the Guelph Politicast!   The new main library is scheduled to open sometime later this year in the fall. To learn more about what to expect and review the progress so far, you can go to the library's website. and you can learn more about the entire Baker District Redevelopment at the City of Guelph's website. If you missed it yesterday, you can still listen to the first What's Next ‘26 podcast about the South End Community Centre.  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.

 It's the start of a new year, but more than that it's the start of a big year for Guelph, and not just because there's a municipal election in October. To end 2025, and to start 2026, this podcast will be airing back-to-back episodes that will mark the pending completion of two major construction projects by this time next year: Today we're talking all about the South End Community Centre! Drive down Clair Road West and you can see it peaking over the hills on the left hand side: The South End Community Centre. Construction began in 2023, but like most massive construction projects in Guelph it's a story that goes back decades. A June 2014 report recommended that a nearly $60 million facility be built on lands south of Bishop MacDonell Secondary School, but it took three years to get to detailed design and it took another three years to get it ready to start construction.  The SECC will feature twin ice pads, an aquatic centre with a lap and teaching pool, a double gymnasium, walking track and multi-purpose rooms, all connected by a central lobby covering a total of 160,000 square feet. But then there are the expectations. Guelph is presently underserviced by rec facilities, the pool at Centennial had to close early, and there's a whole Parks and Rec Master Plan approved a few years ago banking on new opportunities at the new centre. So is city staff ready to deliver? The people who can answer that are today's guests, the City of Guelph's general manager of culture and recreation Danna Evans, and the general manager of facilities and energy management Ian Scott. They will talk about the current state of construction, what work is left to be done and if there are any issues that might prevent it from opening on time. Plus, they will talk about staffing the centre, planning for the programming, and whether or not the South End Community Centre will have a proper name!  So let's look forward to the South End Community Centre on this week's Guelph Politicast!  The South End Community Centre is currently scheduled to open sometime in the fall of 2026. You can follow the progress on construction on the City of Guelph's website here, and you learn more about the facility itself here. Come back to this feed tomorrow for a podcast about the other big construction project that will be opening in the fall of 2026, the new main library downtown. 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.

Christmas is a time to get together with old friends and for this podcast, there's been no older friend in Guelph than the gang at Ed Video! Ed Video is one of the longest running arts centres in Canada, and has attracted a wide variety of artists over the years, but in the year 2025, we know that the arts are having trouble bouncing back from COVID. So why has this maybe been a good year for Ed Video despite it all? Now, the year started off pretty tough for Ed Video. They moved out of their old space at 404 York Road and took up residence at Silence on Essex Street. At nearly the same time, staff were laid off for several weeks as a cost saving measure, and then the executive director moved on to new opportunities. John F. Kennedy once noted somewhat erroneously that the Chinese word for crisis comes from the words “danger” and “opportunity” but even if that's not true, might it be true this time for Ed Video? The answer is maybe. Ed Video has faced moments of danger and opportunity before, so this is nothing new to the centre, and hoping to lead them out of it again is Julie René de Cotret. Originally from Montreal, Julie is an independent programmer who curated exhibitions in Canada and around the world, co-founded the artist residency program at the School of Environmental Science at the University of Guelph and is artistic director of The Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film. On this holiday episode of the podcast, Julie will talk about the state of Ed Video right now, and the state of the arts sector locally and across Canada. She will also talk about the ongoing challenges at the centre, the opportunity in creating more co-ordination with other local arts groups, the ways that local government can support the arts, and what Ed Video might deliver during its golden anniversary next year. Yes, next year Ed Video turns 50!  So let's check in with Ed Video on this Christmas edition of the Guelph Politicast!!  You can learn more about Ed Video by following them on social media @edvideoguelph on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. You can also visit their website where you can learn more information about volunteer opportunities, workshops, equipment rentals and shows. You can learn more about Julie René de Cotret's personal art projects at their own website. Also, Merry Christmas and stay tuned for back-to-back episodes next week!  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.

It's been over 10 years since Karen Farbridge left office, technically defeated in the 2014 election by then one-term City Councillor Cam Guthrie. It ended up being an end to her days in elected office, but Farbridge isn't gone, and she certainly isn't forgotten, and in the last few weeks she's been the one doing the remembering with a new series of Substack newsletters about lessons she learned from her career in politics. But what more can she tell us? Karen Farbridge's tenure as Guelph's mayor was marked by a number of changes, some of which were successful like the preservation of the Loretto Convent which became home to the Guelph Civic Museum, and some of them were unsuccessful like the Community Energy Project that's since been dismantled. Like many politicians, time got away from her and there was an appetite for change, and her last re-election bid ended in defeat in October 2014.  Since she left office, some remember Farbridge fondly for thinking and acting boldly for Guelph's future while others have labelled her as a tax-and-spend liberal whose legacy is sullied in once tidy word, "Urbacon", the firm that was hired, and fired, from building the new city hall at 1 Carden Street. For her part, Farbridge has been willing to stay out of the local political games but then she started a Substack newsletter that chronicled some of the lessons she learned from 20 years as a woman in politics. So for this, the 500th episode of the Politicast, it seemed right to talk to former Mayor Farbridge about her legacy, and all those lessons learned. She will talk about how she got into politics back in the 90s, the unexpected ways that sexism got in the way, and why political memories in Guelph are so long. Also, we will discuss her thoughts on her own political legacy, whether she's ever thought about getting back into electoral politics, and whether her newsletter is the beginning of something, or the end So let's catch up with a former mayor on this 500th edition of the Guelph Politicast!  You can follow and subscribe to Karen Farbridge's Substack newsletter "Unfinished Agendas” here. You can also follow her on social media @karenfarbridge on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. If you would like to check her work as a consultant you can go to the website for Karen Farbridge and Associates 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.

For years now, we've seen the pressures of housing and affordability explode into a crisis, and the answers to that crisis never seem to make themselves known. Maybe things are changing. In November, the City of Guelph and Wyndham House announced that by this time next year, they will have effectively ended youth homelessness in Guelph. What makes them so confident? The media release said, “Guelph is on track to become the first mid-sized city in Canada to end chronic youth homelessness.” The project in question is at 107 and 109 Waterloo Avenue; 109 will have 24/7 wraparound care and on-site health services while 107 will have three apartments for youth preparing to move into permanent housing. With this impressive progress, Wyndham House boldly stated that Guelph will have functionally zero youth homelessness in this city by the end of 2026. So how did they do it? According to Wyndham House, youth homelessness has dropped by 76 per cent over the last three years, which they credit to early interventions that stop youth from ending up homeless in the first place. Forty-four per cent of homeless adults are unhoused for the first time before they turn 25, so if you can stop any young people from ending up homeless in the first place, that can have a big impact on stopping homelessness in the future. But is it really that simple? Kristen Cairney, who is the executive director of Wyndham House, is going to tell us why they're so confident in this bonus edition of the podcast. We will talk about the Waterloo Avenue project, how it will allow Guelph to get to "functional zero” on youth homelessness, and what that means practically for the community. Also, we will talk about the things that  Guelph is doing to make this possible, how they're reaching out to young people everyday, and what Wyndham House is working on next.  So let's find the good news on this week's episode of the Guelph Politicast!  If you would like to learn more about Wyndham House, access their services, or are interested in volunteering, you can go to their website, and you can follow them on special media on Facebook and on Instagram. You can also learn more about the City of Guelph Housing Affordability Strategy at the City's website.  Programming Note: The 500th episode of the show will air in the usual timeslot this Wednesday.  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.

Since the Ontario provincial election in February, we've spent a lot of time on this podcast trying to shine a light on some of the under-reported issues that the provincial government is ignoring, or actively making worse. Law and order though? That's supposed to be under the Ford government's bailiwick as they sell us a story of rampant criminality set loose on Ontario, but what if the real crime is happening inside Ontario's jails? A CBC investigation published this week had some startling insight into who makes up the population of provincial jails. In the first six months of 2025, the jail population averaged 10,800 prisoners. And why are these people in jail? Well, the figures obtained in a Freedom of Information request shows that nearly 82 per cent of all prisoners detained last year were on remand, meaning that most of them are awaiting trial and are legally innocent. So with our jails overflowing, why is the Ontario government demanding “Jail, Not Bail”? Well, they are pushing for more jail construction across the province, but many of those spaces are months and years away, some of them won't be ready until well into the next decade. Also, that means there will be even less money for the things that would help keep people out of prison, like supportive housing, drug treatment programs, or job training assistance.  Justin Piché, who is a criminology professor at the University of Ottawa and a member of the advocacy group Coalition Against Proposed Prisons, or CAPP, joins us this week to tell us why building more prisons doesn't necessarily build safer communities. We will talk about the incredible amounts of money that the Ontario government has proposed to spend on prisons, how that money can be better spent to spare people from doing things that lead to jail sentences, and why creating more jails isn't a partisan issue. So let's pass go and head straight to jail and the issues there on this week's Guelph Politicast!   You can learn more about The Coalition Against Proposed Prisons at their website, and you can also find them on Instagram and YouTube. It's also worth check out the CBC investigation, “Ontario jails set to hit overcrowding record as bail reform looms, data shows,” and you can find the direct link to that article here. Programming Note: A new episode of the Politicast will be posted this weekend, and then we will post the 500th episode of the show next week 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.

We often hear how a budget tells us what a city values, and one of the things that residents clearly valued in the City of Guelph budget was funding for the park stewards program. We often talk about environmentalism and civic pride as big reasons to live in Guelph, so is the park steward program the ultimate expression of that, and if it is, why didn't we talk about it before we almost lost it? According to the City of Guelph's website, the steward program is a series of community-led projects where groups come together to ‘adopt' and help care for parks city-wide, which can mean just about anything from planting native plant species, cleaning up litter, or helping to protect habitats. Several stewards came out on the budget delegation night to speak in defense of their program, which was among the initial round of proposed cuts before the funding was restored. To learn more about the stewards, what they do, and why they're so dedicated, we'll talk to Margaret Middleton, a steward for Rickson Park who delegated at the aforementioned council meeting. Rickson Park is situated along the Royal City Trail, and between two schools; there's a lot of greenspace, and it services all kinds of people in the area from families, young kids, university students, and dog walkers. So what kind of person takes on the responsibility for making their local park better? Middleton will join us to tell us about the Rickson Park she knows, how she found about the park steward program, and what the relatively small amount of money they receive from the City of Guelph pays for. She will also talk about how the program is rooted in sustainability, and working with other stewards and groups across the city. And finally, she will discuss organizing for the budget fight and how you can get involved either in Rickson Park or your own area park. So let's head down to the park - in spirit - on this week's Guelph Politicast! To learn more about the park stewards program you can visit the City of Guelph's website, and you can also find a link to the list of parks that are presently taking part in the program. You can also send an email to stewardship [at] guelph.ca get in touch with the steward at your local park or perhaps to volunteer as the steward of your local park. 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.

There was a lot of celebrating this time last year when it was announced that Blue Triton was closing their water bottling operations across Ontario, including the one down the road in Puslinch. Current events have conspired to put water taking issues back on the frontburner but between concerns about the impact on renters in Bill 60 and the undermining of local oversight of school boards in Bill 33, is there any room on the agenda for protecting our water? In the background of all the activity at Queen's Park this fall, there have been efforts in the Environment, Conservation and Parks Ministry to streamline permit renewals for water taking, and to make it easier to take over existing permits at the same location instead of forcing them to file a new application. This is no small thing because water resources are already being stretched in communities that are dependent on ground water, like Guelph, where rapid growth and pressure to grow even faster is raising the alarm.  But that's not all! Recently, the Government of Ontario announced changes to conservation authorities that will take the province's 32 agencies and amalgamate them into seven! And just when you thought local drinking water was safe, news came earlier this month that White Wolf Property Management Inc. had purchased wells in Hillsburgh and Aberfoyle for “water taking for the purposes of water bottling.”   This week we're joined by Theresa McClenaghan, who is the executive director and counsel at the Canadian Environmental Law Association. She will tell us about the extent of the changes we're talking about with water taking permits, what source water protection means legally speaking, and why the provincial Environmental Bill of Rights still has some teeth. Also, what are we learning about the Ontario government's environmental agenda, and why the long-term consequences need to be better thought out.   So let's dive into changes to water taking on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can learn more about the Canadian Environmental Law Association at their website. The last day to provide comment to changes to the Clean Water Act, aka: “Regulatory changes for accelerating and improving protections for Ontario's drinking water sources” is Thursday December 4, and you can find a direct link here. If you're interested in getting involved in local activism about water taking, you can always get in touch with Water Watchers. 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.

If there's a reason that Guelph City Council opted to proceed with a vacant home tax a few weeks ago, at least some of that credits goes to Get Involved Guelph who have been raising concerns for years about the number of houses in the Royal City staying empty, especially in the midst of a housing crisis.  Well, the City of Guelph finally agreed that it's time to act, so what does Get Involved Guelph do for an encore? A few weeks ago, council not only opted to proceed with two new affordable housing projects on City-owned lands, but more notable than that, they approved two new measures to preserve affordable housing that already exists: a renoviction bylaw that will stop predatory landlords from forcing people out of rent controlled units in the name of renovation, and a four per cent vacant home tax on units that stay empty for extended periods of time This last one was a huge pivot because there have been calls for years for just such a tax, and City of Guelph staff have always hesitated saying that there weren't enough vacant homes in town to make such a policy worthwhile. With another election beckoning next fall, and a housing crisis that's every bit as potent now as it was three years ago, if not more so, let us consider how a civic group can still have an impact with two people dedicated enough to change the conversation. Two members of Get Involved Guelph, Ken Thompson and Susan Watson, will join us on this week's podcast to talk about the long road to get city hall to act on the need of a vacant home tax. We also talk about courting engagement on Reddit, why the vacant home tax is so important even if it can't solve the problem of available housing, the next big issue they want to tackle, and how they will attract more new blood to help them achieve their goals, especially with an election next year. So let's Get Involved, Guelph on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast! You can learn more about Get Involved Guelph, sign up for their newsletter, or even nominate a vacant home on their website. The council decisions about proceed with a renoviction bylaw and the vacant home tax will be ratified at the city council meeting next week on Tuesday November 25, and you have until this Friday at 10 am to either send a correspondence or sign up to delegate, and to learn how to do that go to the City of Guelph 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.

It was about 10 years ago this time that Justin Trudeau strode up to Rideau Hall and made history being sworn in as Canada's 23rd prime minister. There was a lot of hope about what the future of Trudeau's premiership held, but perhaps no other constituency were hit harder by the political realities of the Trudeau-mania hangover than electoral reform activists. Can changing our voting system still possibly get a fair hearing? What does Mark Carney think about electoral reform? Believe it or not the topic came up in the federal election campaign earlier this year at an event in Sault Ste. Marie. It was clear that Carney was not going to be making an promises about ending our First Past the Post electoral system, but it was also clear that it was not going to be a priority until all the other problems are solved, and as you may have noticed, we're still waiting for that deal with Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the Ontario government announced last month that they were scrapping fixed election dates, raising the donation cap to $5,000 and eliminating pre-election spending limits for third parties. These are probably not the kinds of electoral changes that people like Fair Vote Canada are seeking. They are on the leading edge of proponents wanting to change the way we elect the people that govern us, and this week, we will talk to one of them about where we presently sit in the process of reforming our elections. Kevin Bowman joins on this edition of the pod to dive deep into the current state of electoral reform activism, why people are more open to the issue than we might conventionally think, and whether any meaningful progress can be made while the federal NDP and Greens are in the political wilderness. Also, how can the issue be promoted back to prominence again, and what will members of Fair Vote be saying to delegates at this weekend's Liberal convention in Hamilton So let's re-embrace electoral reform on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!  You can learn more about Fair Vote Guelph at their website, and you can access the nation-wide Fair Vote Canada at their website. If you're interested in getting involved with the cause of electoral reform you can access Democracy Watch and the National Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform. If you like, you can revisit the federal government's 2016 report, “Strengthening Democracy in Canada: Principles, Process and Public Engagement for Electoral Reform” on the Government of Canada 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.

Since they resumed sitting the week after Thanksgiving, the Government of Ontario has been throwing a lot at us, and then on Halloween they proposed sweeping changes to conservation authorities in Ontario. If it feels like we've been here before we kind of have, and while conservation authorities have weathered provincial meddling before, can they survive it again? According to Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks Todd McCarthy, the new Ontario Provincial Conservation Agency will provide centralized leadership, efficient governance, strategic direction and oversight of all conservation authorities to - you guessed it! - reduce delays and get shovels in the ground faster! Solving the housing crisis, it seems, passes through barriers being held up by conservation authorities, at least that's what the government wants us to think. But no legislation has been tabled, it was just announced in a press release on a busy Friday proposing a massive change to an important sectors whose primary function isn't actually planning, but flood control. If all this sounds confusing to you, it's actually just as confusing to the people that live and breathe provincial planning. Why is the provincial government going after conservation authorities again after already committing them to massive changes at least once already. Phil Pothen, who is Counsel and Ontario Environment Program Manager at the advocacy group Environmental Defence, joins us to talk about his thoughts on these new changes, or at least what we know about these changes so far. He will discuss whether or not there's room for improvement with the way authorities do planning, if a conservation authority has ever actually scuttled a planning proposal, and what these moves tell us about the Ontario government's climate change priorities (or lack there of). So let's talk about what's next for conservation authorities on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can learn more about Environmental Defence all its advocacy work on numerous issues, including conservation authorities at their website, or you can follow them on social media on Facebook, Blue Sky, Instagram and YouTube. As of this recording, there's no announcement about when the Ontario government will table this legislation, but you can read the full press release on the Government of Ontario's media page 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.

It was about this time two years ago that former Guelph CAO Scott Stewart told city council in an open meeting that there needed to be a new deal for Ontario municipalities; that they were trying to solve 21st century problems with 19th century rules. As Guelph tackles another difficult budget season, one regional councillor is putting this issue in stark terms: Ontario's councils are “on the verge of life support”! In a recent letter to the editor in Cambridge Today, Doug Craig raised the alarm. He was Mayor of Cambridge for 18 years and then joined Waterloo Regional Council in 2022, so if there's someone that might understand the challenge of cities in this day and age, it's probably Craig. He notes that provincial tampering and voter apathy are the reasons why municipalities are caught between this rock and a hard place. To those of us that observe municipal politics carefully, this encapsulates the struggle we know too well. The provincial government has forced reductions and discounts onto municipalities and reduced the amount of fees collected while offering additional funding in the form of a contest for meeting housing targets from a pledge they strong-armed cities into adopting and now seem to be abandoning. Is it time to finally talk about that new deal?   Doug Craig will answer those and other questions on this edition of the podcast including why it's tricky to get these concerns heard even when your local MPP sits in the government bench, what would happen in the unlikely event that the provincial government were to be open to changes, and the role of municipal councillors in educating the public about what their limitations are. Plus, is there a role for the business community in promoting improved local government? So let's talk about how to save our local government on this week's Guelph Politicast!  You can reach out to him through the Region of Waterloo's website, and to read his latest letter, “Local councils are on the verge of life support”, at the Cambridge Today website. Here in Guelph, the first budget meeting is today, Wednesday, at 9 am and public delegation night will be on Tuesday November 18 at 6 pm. 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.

Gazeteciler Savaş Kerimoğlu ve Seat Bozkurt, İsrail ve İran arasındaki savaşta Türkiye'nin rolünü konuşuyor: Türkiye ne yaptı, ne yapmalı? İki usta gazeteci aynı zamanda suların durulmadığı CHP'ye de merceklerini tutuyor ve Kılıçdaroğlu'nun İmamoğlu ziyaretinin şifrelerini açıklıyor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gazeteciler Savaş Kerimoğlu ve Sedat Bozkurt, Gezi eylemlerinin iktidar ve toplum için anlamını, CHP'de neler olduğunu, kongre tartışmalarını ve sonu gelmeyen operasyonları konuşuyor.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Usta gazeteciler Savaş Kerimoğlu ve Sedat Bozkurt, süreçte gelinen aşamayı, Lozan tartışmasını ve Erdoğan'ın tarihi çarpıtmasını konuşuyor. Ekonomideki gelişmeler de ikilinin gündeminde... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

MHP Genel Başkanı Devlet Bahçeli'nin açıklamaları ile başlayan süreç, baş döndürücü bir hızla sürüyor. PKK kongre sonuçlarını açıkladı. PKK, "fesih" ve "silahlı mücadeleye son verme" konusunda Abdullah Öcalan'ın çağrısına uyacağını açıkladı. Peki bundan sonra ne olacak? Bu kararın sonuçları ne olacak? Politicast'te deneyimli gazeteciler Sedat Bozkurt ve Savaş Kerimoğlu anlatıyor... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sırrı Süreyya Önder'in vefatı 'Terörsüz Türkiye' çalışmasını nasıl etkiler? Önder yerine heyete yeni bir isim girer mi? Özgür Özel'e saldırı ve siyasetin dili İktidar her ne olursa olsun ekonomi konuşulmasın istiyor! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gazeteciler Savaş Kerimoğlu ve Sedat Bozkurt, Politicast'te İBB'ye yapılan ikinci dalga operasyonun yaratacağı sonuçları, Erdoğan'ın planını ve CHP'nin tutumunu ele alıyor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kısa Dalga PolitiCast'te bu hafta gazeteciler Berna Can ve Sedat Bozkurt haftanın öne çıkan başlıklarını ele aldı. Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi'nin açılış günü itibariyle MHP lideri Devlet Bahçeli'nin gazetecileri ve CHP Genel Başkanı Özgür Özel'i hedef alan açıklamaları Politi-Cast'in öne çıkan başlıkları arasında... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Its the OG 4 comin in hot to get lightly political amidst dick jokes

Politi-Cast'te bu hafta CHP Tüzük Kurultayı, Özgür Özel ve Ekrem İmamoğlu'nun açıklamaları ana gündem konusu oldu. Politi-Cast'te gazeteci Sedat Bozkurt ve Berna Can Türkiye'nin gündemini ele aldı. Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP) Genel Başkanı Özgür Özel ve Ekrem İmamoğlu'nun açıklamaları gündeme damgasını vurdu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Politicast'te Sedat Bozkurt ve Berna Can, Türkiye'nin öne çıkan gündem başlıklarını ele alıyor. Hazine ve Mali İşlerden Sorumlu Bakan Mehmet Şimşek'in ekonomi yönetimini masaya yatırıyoruz. Bozkurt, Şimşek'in ekonomi yönetiminde yetersiz olduğunu belirterek, "Ekonomi yönetiminde 50. sırada yer alır ancak ekonomi direksiyonunda o var" diyor. Ayrıca, vergi artışlarının vatandaş üzerindeki etkileri, bakanların görevden affı, sığınmacı meselesi ve uluslararası ilişkilerde Türkiye'nin rolü gibi konular da detaylı bir şekilde tartışılıyor. Türkiye'nin gündemini merak ediyorsanız, Kısa Dalga Politicast'i kaçırmayın!

Ankara, yoğun ve hareketli bir siyasi gündemle haftayı geride bıraktı. Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP), haftanın en çok konuşulan partisi oldu. Bayramdan sonra Meclis'e gelmesi beklenen vergi paketiyle ilgili tartışmalar Hazine ve Maliye Bakanı Mehmet Şimşek'i eleştiri oklarının hedefi haline getirdi. İYİ Parti'de ise yeni ayrılıkların gündemde olduğu konuşulurken, partinin akıbeti merak konusu.  Gazeteciler Sedat Bozkurt ve Berna Can, Politicast'te siyasetin gündemini, kulisleri konuştu.