Episode notes
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…
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Full Comment
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.
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14 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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27 Jul 2026 · 55 min
A veteran cop explains what’s really happening inside Canadian policing
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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…
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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…
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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…
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