Podcast · News

Full Comment

by Postmedia · English · News

Full Comment is Canada’s podcast for compelling interviews, controversial opinions and fascinating discussions. Hosted by Brian Lilley. Published by Postmedia, new episodes are released each Monday.

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 54 min
Latest: 12 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

12 Oct 2026 · 1 hrNew

The ‘disruptive’ professor who refuses to be censored

Frances Widdowson was fired from her tenured professorship at a Calgary university after criticizing Black Lives Matter. She has been arrested on other campuses when she tried to engage students in debates about residential schools. Now she’s suing one university for $3 million, alleging it defamed her by accusing her of spreading hate and disinformation. She tells Brian she won’t be stopped because she believes she’s doing what academics are supposed to do: research, question and argue to get at the truth. And she explains why she believes so many professors and universities have betrayed…

Play episodeWhatsApp Download

Earlier episodes 29 most recent

5 Oct 2026 · 49 min
Don’t wait up for history’s costliest hypothetical pipeline
It’s another announcement from Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. And it’s about the same West Coast pipeline they’ve announced before. This time it’s been designated a project of “national interest.” Still undetermined is whether it’s of interest to investors and shippers. Joining Brian are Chris Varcoe, Postmedia’s western business columnist, and Lorne Gunter, political columnist. They discuss the likelihood of this pipeline ever happening, the battles yet to fight, the eye-watering costs, and the dismaying timeline before it gets done. They discuss Smith’s…
28 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
What was B.C.’s David Eby thinking by calling the maddest Canadian election ever?
If you’ve got a majority government with two years left and an unpopular record to defend, calling a snap election might not seem like a great idea. But it did to B.C. Premier David Eby. Brian is joined by B.C. politics columnists Vaughn Palmer (Vancouver Sun) and Les Leyne (Victoria Times-Colonist) to try to find method in Eby’s seeming madness. They consider his scheme to pounce on his rivals’ disarray, with the Conservatives at war over a divisive leader. But they seem to be quickly reconstituting themselves under a new, more popular captain, even as some star NDP candidates step aside.…
21 Sep 2026 · 50 min
It’s showy, it’s insubstantial, but Carney’s EU scheme is slick politics
There’s no such thing as “associate membership” in the European Union and nobody knows what it means, but Prime Minister Mark Carney’s proposal for it has proven to be a dazzling distraction as he flounders in a trade war with the U.S. Brian talks this week with Anand Menon, an EU studies specialist based in England, and Carlo Dade, international policy director at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. Menon details the formidable challenges and hazards of Canada trying to displace North American trade with Europe, and why it probably won’t happen, although he says there is…
14 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
How Conservatives can get their groove back
It’s a tough time to be a federal Tory. The polls are demoralizing. Some MPs are quitting and some are going rogue. And the worse things get for Canada, the more voters seem to support the Liberals. As Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre prepares for a caucus retreat this week, Brian spoke with Ian Brodie, former chief of staff to Stephen Harper, and Ginny Roth, who helped run Poilievre’s leadership campaign. They offer their ideas on how Poilievre can reposition himself in this weird, new era of jingoistic anti-American nationalism that Prime Minister Mark Carney has boosted into a winning…
7 Sep 2026 · 54 min
If Carney and Trump are at war, why are they enjoying it?
Postmedia’s Political Hack team Tasha Kheiriddin and Stuart Thomson join Brian to assess the political spin contest over the collapse of U.S.-Canada trade talks. Despite economic damage, they discuss why neither side has an incentive to make a deal. Prime Minister Mark Carney just crushed three byelections, securing his majority and grinding down the Conservatives — and there are several more coming up. And they explain how President Donald Trump’s strategy is to use the trade war as an excuse to deflect voter discontent in the upcoming congressional midterms, while continuing to divide…
31 Aug 2026 · 46 min
Diversity is not our strength
Things that divide us cannot possibly unite us. That much would seem obvious, but as Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard tells Brian, society has for decades now prioritized hyper-individualism and promoted multiculturalism over communitarianism. And that has been eroding western civilization. Beauregard discusses his new book, Anti-Civilization: The Collapse of Society and the Case for the Common Good. He explains how the desocialization of younger generations and the fetishization of immigration, among other things, are leading to a backlash from people who crave a more collective meaning and…
24 Aug 2026 · 47 min
Inside the mainstream media meltdown
Trust in legacy journalism is plummeting, and after years working inside the CBC, Tara Henley has a good idea why. The author of the new book, The Trust Spiral: Why the Media Needs Objectivity, discusses with Brian how broad-mindedness in newsrooms was ruined by the emergence of an urban and elite class of group-thinking journalists combined with a revenue crisis that discouraged the risk of nonconformist perspectives. Making things worse, Henley argues, is that government subsidies have corrupted market signals that could force badly needed discipline on media owners. But the answer isn’t…
17 Aug 2026 · 52 min
A Canadian history of drinking, fighting and puking in Parliament
Detractors like to say that House of Commons decorum has never been worse than it is today, but don’t be so sure. Charlie Feldman is author of the new book, Unparliamentary: Tales from Canada’s Colourful Unparliamentary Past. He joins Brian to recount stories of foul-mouthed, rowdy, drunken and altogether misbehaving MPs and senators from all the way back to Confederation right up to Justin Trudeau’s “elbowgate” that make today’s cohort seem tame by comparison. Along the way, Feldman explodes some fabled stories as myth, surveys a surprising scarcity of sex scandals, and uncovers some things…
10 Aug 2026 · 43 min
Canada’s ‘suicidal empathy’ hits its terminal stage
Civilizations die from suicide, not murder, as a famous historian once said. And Canada’s in the process of administering MAID on itself, says author and professor Gad Saad. He discusses his new bestselling book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, with Brian. And he explains the fatal flaw of excessive empathy — and how Canada is rapidly succumbing to it. Radical values imposed by our institutions, embodied in the extreme by the last prime minister, frame our history as shameful. They have led us to embrace immigrants who reject us. And they have made us tolerate the intolerant. It’s why…
3 Aug 2026 · 51 min
Why U.K. conservatives need to imitate Canada
British politics has become a farce, with Andy Burnham now the United Kingdom’s seventh prime minister in a decade. And no one knows what he really stands for or if he’ll even outlast the last six, as Daniel Hannan, head of the Institute of Economic Affairs and independent member of the House of Lords, tells Brian. They discuss the reason why so many prime ministers keep falling, and what the new Labour leader’s chances look like. They also get into the fates of Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, and why Hannan thinks they both need to take an important lesson…
27 Jul 2026 · 55 min
A veteran cop explains what’s really happening inside Canadian policing
As unit commander in the largest homicide squad in the country, Hank Idsinga has seen more than most people would ever want to. He discusses with Brian what it’s really like in blue, the many things that are done right, and the many things done wrong, including the recent exposé of corruption by some Toronto officers. The author of the new book The High Road: Confessions of a Homicide Cop, Idsinga reveals the vitriolic antisemitism he saw on the force, and discusses the “abysmal” handling of anti-Israel demonstrators in Toronto. He also busts myths about purported low crime rates and…
20 Jul 2026 · 48 min
Hate has corrupted the world’s biggest charities
The Red Cross, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, UNICEF and more — they’re treated by governments and the media as neutral humanitarians working for everyone’s rights and welfare. But as Danielle Haas tells Brian, a new investigation by her organization EiGHT found them rife with bias, particularly against Jews and Israel. It uncovered charities refusing to acknowledge atrocities committed by Hamas, while ostracizing and even dismissing workers who dared speak up about human rights violations and blatant antisemitism, including within the organizations…
13 Jul 2026 · 48 min
Look what happens in Alberta when we let it do stuff
Two new pipeline plans and an enormous $13-billion Meta data centre have been announced for Alberta in just the last few days. Brett Wilson, the veteran Calgary-based investor, joins Brian to explain the potential of the province to boom after just a slight loosening of the anti-development chokehold Ottawa had Alberta in for a decade with Justin Trudeau and Steven Guilbeault running the Liberals. Several other major projects are coming, too, Wilson says, and the customary controversies, protests and complaints just aren’t happening like they used to. But he says there are too many…
6 Jul 2026 · 57 min
Canada waited too long to rein in dangerous Big Tech platforms
Balancing protection for kids online while ensuring free speech and privacy for everyone else isn’t easy, which is why Ottawa has muffed it so many times, leaving Canada decades behind other countries in monitoring the harmful excesses of social media algorithms. With Bill C-34, the new Safe Social Media Act, the government just maybe has something workable, as Emily Laidlaw, Canada Research Chair in cybersecurity law at the University of Calgary, tells Brian. She explains the strengths and potential weaknesses of the legislation, how far it will go in protecting people from harm, concerns…
29 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
Is Mark Carney bringing ‘mean’ back?
As Liberal MPs moan anonymously that Prime Minister Mark Carney is a mean boss, his defenders say it’s just high performance expectations (unlike the last leader’s). But, as our Political Hack panel looks back on the parliamentary sitting just ended, they question Carney’s own performance: his damage to Canada-U.S. trade negotiations; broken promises on affordability; and a disgraceful bailout for B.C. condo speculators. Meanwhile, his fundraiser for 24 Sussex risks turning into another sleazy Liberal donation grift. Yet Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre seems unable to dent lofty Liberal…
22 Jun 2026 · 49 min
Here comes the big U.S.-Israel split
President Donald Trump’s deal with Iran is seen as a total capitulation to the Islamic Republic, and most of all in Israel, which fought alongside the Americans. Brian speaks with Eylon Levy, former Israeli government spokesman, and Danny Citrinowicz, a former Israeli intelligence officer now with the Atlantic Council. Levy explains how the deal allows Tehran to drive a wedge between Washington and Jerusalem, just as America’s historic support for the Jewish state wanes — perhaps permanently. Citrinowicz analyzes why the joint U.S.-Israeli operation was ill-conceived from the start and why…
15 Jun 2026 · 53 min
Ottawa’s building a backdoor to slide into our personal online data
Tech firms and civil libertarians are sounding the alarm about “lawful access” legislation the Liberals seem hellbent on passing before summer. They warn that the backdoor it would create to access people’s encrypted internet communications puts us all at risk and makes it impossible for secure platforms to operate in Canada. Security officials say it’s necessary to keep up with the online criminals they lack modern tools to catch. Former national security adviser to the prime minister, Richard Fadden, tells Brian why Bill C-22 strikes a reasonable balance and the fears of serious privacy…
8 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 2 min
Carney officially gives up on Canadian values for fear of losing the bigoted vote
A prime minister walks into a synagogue for an antisemitism speech and makes things worse. It’s not a joke, as our three guests all agree. Because Mark Carney and his government fear landing on the wrong side of Muslim leaders and their voting blocs, they say, his lecture on preserving Canadian tolerance refused to acknowledge why it’s so endangered: radicals who so rabidly hate Israel that they’re destroying Canadian values with their violent attacks against Jews. Brian is joined by Talia Klein Leighton, of Canadian Women Against Antisemitism, Amir Epstein, of the Jewish activist group…
1 Jun 2026 · 1 hr 2 min
Face it, some migrants are totally abusing our immigration system
What happens when you invite the migrants of the world, as former prime minister Justin Trudeau did, to flood into Canada? You end up with an avalanche of false refugee claims, bad actors gaming the system to stall deportations, and Ottawa spending nearly $1 billion a year to provide gold-plated health plans for tens of thousands of people who shouldn’t even be here. Immigration lawyer and policy specialist Richard Kurland details for Brian the unmistakable abuse that some people are using to stay in Canada, despite not being eligible to settle here. And he explains how Trudeau’s wholesale…
25 May 2026 · 51 min
Investor interest in Alberta going ‘nuclear’ over Carney’s messaging
After a brutal decade under Justin Trudeau’s draconian anti-development policies, there’s real optimism in the western oilpatch again. Paul Colborne, CEO of Calgary-based Surge Energy, tells Brian why he’s convinced Prime Minister Mark Carney is serious about boosting oil production, including with more pipelines, and why investors are clamouring to get in on it. He explains why he even sees benefit to the carbon-tax and emissions-sequestering conditions in Carney’s memorandum of understanding with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. And why he doesn’t believe B.C., First Nations or some…
18 May 2026 · 43 min
Canada’s too late now to save CUSMA from a Trump rewrite...or worse
The growing sense about Mark Carney in Washington is that maybe he doesn’t actually want trade peace, as Tracy Moran, National Post correspondent in the U.S. capital, tells Brian. The prime minister’s “waiting game” tactic is out of runway: Talks have dried up and there’s not enough time now to head off the July 1 deadline when President Donald Trump gets to revise, or worse, declare an end to the Canada-U.S.-Mexico agreement. Troublingly, Carney has managed to aggravate the Trump camp with continuous provocations, and the American public is souring on Canada. Meanwhile, she says, the White…
11 May 2026 · 57 min
This is why so many Albertans want to separate
If you haven’t been paying attention to the Alberta separatism movement, you really should. It’s been making huge and rapid strides, with significant support and evidently enough momentum to trigger an independence referendum this year. To find out what’s driving the movement, Brian talks to Keith Wilson, an Alberta constitutional lawyer and leading voice for secession. Wilson explains why he thinks there is no future for the province as part of Canada — regardless of who’s in charge in Ottawa — because Confederation will always be a bad deal for Albertans compared to what they could achieve…
4 May 2026 · 1 hr
Carney looks more like Trudeau with every update
They’re blowing windfalls. They’re setting up government agencies to subsidize favoured schemes. They’re dithering on infrastructure. And they shrug at Canada’s uncompetitive tax regime. The policies of Mark Carney’s Liberals, confirmed in last week’s economic update, are increasingly giving off strong Justin Trudeau vibes, as Brian discusses with Ian Lee, professor at Carleton’s Sprott School of Business, and Carlo Dade, at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. They consider how, a year after getting re-elected on promises to undo the damage of Trudeau’s devastating decade…
27 Apr 2026 · 51 min
Liberals are ‘hijacking’ the Charter, says Canada’s last living framer of the Constitution
Former Newfoundland premier Brian Peckford is the one man still alive who was personally in the room with then prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau when provinces and the federal government agreed, together, to a new Constitution Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He talks to Brian about the real basis for Section 33 — the notwithstanding clause — and how it came into being. He explains why the story that the federal government is telling about the clause’s alleged misuse is false, why Ottawa’s attempts to override it are unconstitutional, and why the Supreme Court has no authority…
20 Apr 2026 · 59 min
Trump’s plan for Cuba isn’t what you’ve been told
It’s running short of oil, electricity, food, medicine and currency, but Cuba’s communist regime is digging in as the Trump administration demands economic and democratic reforms. Brian discusses the situation with his guests, former State Department insider Mike Gonzalez, now with the Heritage Foundation, and author and longtime regime critic Humberto Fontova. They explain Washington’s imperative to finally curb Cuba’s malign global influence, including inside the U.S.; the motivations for the Castro family and its cronies in defying the pressure; and the challenge of total regime change.…
13 Apr 2026 · 54 min
Canada’s defence is still a mess despite Ottawa’s NATO-spending claims
It’s not actually official that Canada’s defence budget meets NATO’s two per cent of GDP target, despite the press releases claiming so. Yes, spending has been going up, but what is it really meant for? This is Brian’s discussion this week with David Perry, president of the Global Affairs Institute, and Christian Leuprecht from the Royal Military College of Canada. They explain how the government still can’t figure out if it wants to project power or sit on the sidelines and criticize those who do, and whether it wants excellent equipment or just the grandest job-creation promises. We might…
6 Apr 2026 · 1 hr
Mark Carney is about to get hammered left and right by populism
Canada’s two national opposition parties, the Conservatives and NDP — now under Avi Lewis — are relentlessly focused on affordability and dismantling a system they say screws non-elites. As this week’s panel discusses, both Lewis and Tory Leader Pierre Poilievre clearly stand for something, which raises questions about what Prime Minister Mark Carney stands for … besides fighting President Donald Trump. Brian is joined by former Conservative campaign director Jenni Byrne, longtime NDP strategist Kim Wright, and former Liberal adviser Warren Kinsella. They break down how the new NDP leader,…
30 Mar 2026 · 50 min
The Supreme Court will just make stuff up to subvert the notwithstanding clause
If you think the Supreme Court will be reluctant to rewrite the Constitution, as Ottawa wants it to by handcuffing Section 33, then you haven’t been paying attention, as Bruce Pardy tells Brian. It doesn’t matter that the notwithstanding clause explicitly gives parliaments the right to override certain court rulings, or that it was key to the Charter of Rights being passed in the first place, says Pardy, a constitutional scholar at Queen’s University. The rule of Canadian constitutional decisions is that there are no rules. For decades, justices have simply invented interpretations and…
23 Mar 2026 · 56 min
What happened to the Mark Carney who promised to make things better?
When he first became prime minister a year ago this month, Mark Carney vowed to improve affordability, build badly needed projects quickly and make Canada more resilient and competitive in the face of President Donald Trump’s trade antagonism. As William Robson, president emeritus of the C.D. Howe Institute, discusses with Brian, the situation on all those fronts isn’t much better and, in several respects, worse than before. Canada keeps getting poorer, our fiscal situation is worse, the investment climate remains uncompetitive, projects we need aren’t happening, and Carney’s fiscal moves,…

About Full Comment

Full Comment is a English news podcast from Postmedia. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Postmedia
Language: English
Category: News
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 54 min
Latest episode: 12 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1561204292

RSS feed Apple Podcasts

More English news

Take it with you

The Melo app keeps playing with the screen off, works in the car and on your watch, wakes you to your station, and browses the whole catalogue offline. Free, no ads, no account.