Guelph Politicast

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're going down the rabbit hole. In Canada, and down into the United States, it seems like a lot of people are losing their minds and some of that might be dangerous. We will looking at a quartet arrested in Canada for terrorist activity, and the clash over conspiracies in the MAGAverse, plus, for something a little more normal, we will talk to a city councillor about Guelph stuff (no lie). This Thursday, July 17, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: G.I. Jerks. Last week, the RCMP arrested four people in Quebec on the pretty serious sounding charges around a plot to commit an act of "ideologically motivated violent extremism," and, as an unexpected bonus, three of them are presently active duty members of the Canadian Forces. It's been a concern for a while that the ranks of our military include members with extremist sympathies, but this is the first time anyone's been taken into custody for them. How concerned should we be? Working the Jeff. In 2019,

This week on End Credits, we reach another milestone! We've been coming to you every week on CFRU for the better part of a decade, we've have a laughs and we've seen a lot of movies (at least 400), and every now and then we play a game. To mark our fourth centenary, we will put our collective heads together to consider the century, or a least the first quarter of it. This Wednesday, July 16, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson Tim Phillips, Peter Salmon and Candice Lepage will discuss: The 21st Century Movie Draft. Leave your stupid comments in your pocket, it's time for the event you've been waiting eight years for, End Credits 400th episode! There have been a great many movie bangers in the last 25 years and this week we will remember approximately 24 of them. From hobbits to serial killers, and from dog shows to Martin Scorsese's Oscar, we will talk about why the movies of the 21st century have been tearing us apart, in draft form! End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

As we all now ease into summer vacation mode - even if we’re still working at our many labours - we’re taking stock of this busy year so far. We’ve made it though two elections and some long nights at council with at least a couple of more long nights to come before city council takes August off. (Or will they, given that there’s been a special August meeting the last few years?) So where do we currently stand with the first six months of 2025 behind us? To help us, we're talking this week with Mike Ashkewe, who wears far too many hats in our community to be listed briefly here. Now Mike doesn’t just comment on the news, he sometimes makes the news. Back in April, Mike was one of several members of the former Accessibility Advisory Committee who walked away in the middle of their last meeting due to the unwillingness of city council and staff to give the AAC members the autonomy they were seeking.  The sudden departure of the AAC has cast a big shadow on the way that the City of Guelph handles accessibility i

This week on Open Sources Guelph we're doing a Law & Order riff. With political barbecue season underway, we look to the police beat by talking about potential civil rights violations in a major Ontario prison and the province-wide chain of stores that apparently can sell an illegal product with (near) impunity. Don't worry, we've still got some political chat for you... local politics! This Thursday, July 10, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Prison Dilemma. A class action lawsuit brought on behalf of prisoners inside Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton has raised questions about the abuse, specifically a December 2023 incident where nearly 200 inmates in an entire unit were stripped, searched and forced to sit with their hands zip tied behind their back in the hallway for hours. With four-out-of-five inmates being people awaiting trail, and not yet convicted of a crime, are we ignoring civil rights violations because of a presumption of guilt? 'Shroom Boom! Have you seen t

This week on End Credits, we're off to the races! Get on your mark, get set and get ready to watch a movie about guys driving cars in a circle dozens of times, which is actually much more exciting than it sounds when you're watching the new film F1 in a theatre near you. We will talk about that, and we will also talk about Oscar winners from the last 25 years! This Wednesday, July 9, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: 21st Century Oscars (Not a) Draft. For our last warm up before episode #400, we're going to tackle Oscar winners in the 21st century. As the famous golden statue approaches it's own century mark in a couple of years we've seen a lot of changes and milestones, like the first Black woman to win Best Actress, or the first woman to win Best Director, or all the provocative snubs that still sting. This week we draft (not draft), our favourite Oscar winners. REVIEW: F1 (2025). Professional car racing has never really yielded a great movie - think about Rocky and boxing, or Field

The grocery industry in Canada is the epitome of monopoly; the Competition Bureau in 2023 reported that 75 per cent of all grocery purchases are made at one of the five major chains in Canada. In the wake of high grocery prices, which has been one of the pinchiest of pinch points in the post-COVID economy, people have wanted to see changes in the industry, so does that start with a more level playing field? There’s been a lot of calls for action when it comes to grocery prices, but the issues actually go deeper. A 2021 report from the federal government found a lack of consistency and formality in the way that retailers were dealing with suppliers in Canada’s grocery chain. Mike Von Massow, a food economist at the University of Guelph told the CBC last year that this is due to the concentration of power in the five major retailers in Canada: Loblaw, Metro, Empire, Walmart and Costco. That’s why the Grocery Sector Code of Conduct was created. It’s meant as a conflict resolution device that will create more tra

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're hung over. Not from imbibing too much over the Canada Day long weekend, but from all the news we had to process in the first six months of 2025. We survived two elections, the creation and implosion of DOGE, a million different micro-scandals both stupid and corrupt, and, yes, some good news. How are we supposed to make sense of any of this? How about an awards show? This Thursday, July 3, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: The Mid-Year Awards Show. A new tradition? Maybe. As many of us relax and recreate this Canada Day week, we will sorta join them with this effort to put the first half of 2025 in some kind of context. If you've listened to the show over these last 10 years, then you know about our annual awards show on or around New Year's Day and it's been very successful. So when something's a success, you spin it off, and this week we will bring our first summer awards segments with new categories, but the same cynicism and wit! Open Source

This week on End Credits, we're going back to the end of the world. It's been a long time since we tackled a zombie movie, whether the heightened or regular horror variety, but today we're going top shelf with the latest entry in Danny Boyle's series, 28 Years Later. Fitting since the topic this week has to due with the F-word, "franchises."  This Wednesday, July 2, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: 21st Century Franchise (Not a) Draft. We will continue our countdown to the 400th episode this week by talking about the movie trend that has affected movie making in the 21st century the most: Franchises. This week we will look at some of the various franchises that proved so popular (and lucrative) in the last 25 years, from action hits to series based on young adult books, animated flicks, and, naturally, superheroes! REVIEW: 28 Years Later (2025). In 2002, Danny Boyle brought back the zombie subgenre with a story about a man who wakes up from a coma and walks out into the apocalypse. Th

There’s no rest for the weary on this Canada Day week, especially if you’re engaged on housing and transit, and there has been some interesting news on those fronts in the last couple of weeks. No matter your holiday status this week, we’re not going to load you down with a policy deep dive, but we’re going to stop with two special guests to re-calibrate ourselves and remember: Progress is slow, but we need to be in this for the long haul! A couple of weeks ago staff unveiled their plan to proceed with the electrification of transit at a special workshop meeting of council, which was well received but without much interest on the part of council. One of the people that noticed council’s seeming lack of engagement on transit matters is a member of a local transit advocacy group who has some ideas that he wants to share some on the matter. On the housing file, some good news broke a few weeks ago when Michael Klein, pejoratively referred to as Ontario’s “King of Renovictions”, withdrew the N13s issued to reside

This week on Open Sources Guelph, our hats are on our heads, not in our hands! Our glorious premier stuck his foot in his mouth again, just in time for National Indigenous Heritage Month, and speaking of foot in mouth we'll talk about the ongoing and confusing state of developments in our newest Mideast quagmire, and in the interview we will talk to an old guest about her new job! This Thursday, June 26, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: The 12-Day War (Trademark). Last Saturday night, U.S. President Donald Trump moved up his timetable by a week and launched an attack on three Iranian nuclear sites. Now, depending on who you believe, those attacks were either a massive success, or they barely did any damage to the regime's nuclear program, but afterwards Trump was calling for a new era of peace, which, as always with things in the Middle East, is easier said than done. So what comes next? Five Protests Alive. In the last couple of weeks, both the federal and Ontario governments passed

This week on End Credits we're once again celebrating #PedroSummer! (Patent pending.) The movie this time is a supposed romantic story that a lot of people are watching and having big discussions about. We're going to check out Materialists, and we're also going to start counting down to an other milestone episode with our favourite gimmick! This Wednesday, June 25, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Candice Lepage will discuss: 21st Century Horror (Not a) Draft. This week we start the countdown to the 400th episode, which will be our 21st century movie draft, and to kick things off, we're talking about horror movies. (Why not? Candice is here!) So the first in a series of three drafts/not-drafts - meaning similar rules but no stakes - we will talk about some of the great horror movies of the century so far from new and old franchises to elevated horror. REVIEW: Materialists (2025). Celine Song's first movie, Past Lives, was universally beloved (including by the people on this show), but her follow-up film, Mate

There's an interesting process underway in Guelph's south end. One of the two Ward 6 city councillors, Dominique O'Rourke, has moved on to a new job in Ottawa as you might have heard, which leaves her old seat at city council vacant. Nature, and local politics, abhor a vacuum, so next month O'Rourke's former colleagues will choose her successor. At least until next year's municipal election... Last month council approved the process to appoint a new Ward 6 councillor. It was the best of a lot of different options; a byelection now, one year before a general election and in the same calendar year as two other elections, had a lot of drawbacks, and there was no successor willing to step up among the other candidates from the last election. That left appointment, and that process is presently underway. For anyone thinking about taking up the role of city councillor, learning what the job entails, and knowing what powers you'll have, a special open house was held last week in the council chambers with staff from

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're trying to keep all our paper's straight. Once again, it was a busy news week as the world came to Canada, or at least the heads of the biggest and most powerful countries did. Also, we get to talk about a new war, apparently because we've run out of things to say about the old wars while closer to home, we'll go back to the Quatro and talk to a member of city council from the west end of the city. This Thursday, June 19, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Nothing But a G7 Thing. This week, the leaders of the Group of 7 nations came to town in Kananaskis, Alberta and there were many different topics on the table, but for Prime Minister Mark Carney this was another big test for him as host. So what happened? Well, Donald Trump came and grumbled and then left early, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni got memed and special guests Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Narendra Modi stopped by. Despite all that though is the G7 even a thing anymore? Back to Bomb Iran. With G

This week on End Credits, we flirt with danger. We've never had to survive a plane crash - or six - but we have survived nearly that many Wes Anderson movies together, and on this episode we will survive another. Probably. Tune in today as we decode The Phoenician Scheme and as we talk about a slightly older, and slightly more controversial movie from the past.  This Wednesday, June 18, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: The Passion of Dogma. A lot of great movies came out in 1999, and one of them is Kevin Smith's Dogma! The film has been somewhat lost due to the complex tangle of rights issues, and the fact that Harvey Weinstein is a professional @$$hole, but now Dogma is back in theatres for what's essentially its 25th anniversary engagement. So this week we will revisit the near-blasphemous pleasures of what may be Smith's best film! REVIEW: The Phoenician Scheme (2025). Wes Anderson is back with another tale about a dysfunctional family with a dangerously eccentric patriarch. Benici

The City of Guelph is a system, a system that's built on rules. Or policies, procedures and protocol to be more precise. Some of those systems dictate how city council functions, some of them lay out how local government should engage with the community, and some of them tell you what flags you can fly and when they should be lowered to half-mast. It's time again to play roulette with the policy wheel and get smarter in the process. First up, we will talk about the Access and Privacy Policy. You've probably heard about Freedom of Information requests? Well this outlines how and why you're able to make them, but more than that it outlines how and why staff are able to access confidential information, how and why the City can collect that information, and the ways that all information at the City of Guelph is managed, stored, and, if necessary, destroyed.  Somewhat less well-known is the City Flag Policy. Mayor Cam Guthrie was inundated with hate for a social media post celebrated the raising of the Eritrean F

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we've got fighting words. People are riled up here in Ontario about some more bad bills, and people in the U.S. are riled up about another week of living in Trumpland including his most dangerous moves against civil liberties yet. If you're a Canadian concerned about these things, you might want to listen to this week's guest because he has some ideas on how to fight back! This Thursday, June 12, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Six Weeks, 17 Fights. The Ontario Legislature rose last week after only sitting for a total of six weeks. And yet, in that small space of time, Doug Ford and his government managed to upset just about everyone from municipal leaders, to environmentalists, to Indigenous communities thank to the passage of the highly controversial Bills 5 and 17. These measures, which are supposed to create more housing, come at a time when housing starts are at their slowest level since 2009, so what is all this for? Battle Los Angeles. Last F

This week on End Credits, we're thinking about our elders. This is a multi-generational show today as we mark the special occasion this weekend and then get an early jump on an October holiday with a new movie. What holiday? Why Grandmother's Day, of course! We're reviewing Nonnas on Netflix and talking about movies focused on fatherhood!! This Wednesday, June 11, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss: Father's Day Movies. This weekend is the annual celebration of fathers everywhere, and much fishing equipment, car accessories and neck ties will be spread in their name. But what about the movies? Yes, there have been many movies that celebrate fathers and fatherhood, and so we will use the occasion of Father's Day to celebrate those movies whether that's an adoptive father to a demon or the World's Greatest Dad! REVIEW: Nonnas (2025). We've talked about fathers, now let's talk about grandmothers! Or rather, Nonnas. It's based on the true story of a Staten Island restaurateur who used his in

When Doug Ford and the Ontario government announced that they were expanding alcohol sales to grocery and convenience stores it was seen as a positive move to break up a government monopoly, but The Beer Store still has one important piece of that monopoly: returns. It was an effective example of what we now call the circular economy, but in making alcohol more available, has it cost us the most successful recycling program we’ve ever had? Next time you buy beer or wine at the grocery store or the quick stop, look at your receipt: You’re still paying the 10 or 20 cent deposit on every can and bottle. If you take your empties back to The Beer Store, you can get that money back, but it’s becoming more convenient to get rid of your empties by dumping them out in the recycling. That undermines what’s been an incredibly successful recycling program through The Beer Store, which, at its peak saw an 80 per cent return rate.  Large grocery stores that sell alcohol and are more than five kilometres from a Beer Store a

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're going dull. You can't make friends with salad? We disagree! And to help prove that we're going to get out the scorecards for the first two weeks of business with the new Canadian government and the first year of business for the U.K.'s government. In other news, we'll go super local looking at one neighbourhood with that area's council representative! This Thursday, June 5, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Carney's Version. It's week two for the new Canadian government under Prime Minister Mark Carney and while he's definitely made the case to the electorate that he's not Trump, he still seems kind of concerned as Bill C-2 enters the picture. The second major piece of legislation from Carney seems to accept some of Trump's bonafides that Canada is an epicentre for fentanyl and our border security needs reform, and civil liberty groups have notes. Has Carney already gone too far just over a month since Election Day? Going Kier. It's been almost a

This week on End Credits, we fear the reaper. Well, sort of. You don't go into a movie where the literal personification of Death is the main character if you're afraid of the reaper. So we will show no fear and dive into Final Destination Bloodlines, and assuming we survive we will also talk about the sixth entries in long-running series, the good ones! This Wednesday, June 4, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Candice Lepage will discuss: The 6ixes. This week's movie is the sixth entry in its series, and this week's new release, Karate Kid: Legends, is also a sixth entry. Not many movie franchises make it to the sixth picture, and many of the ones that make it that far aren't exactly exemplars of film excellence. Still, in honour of these movies, and all the other sixes in cinema history, we will pay tribute to our favourite hexalogies, which is a real world. (Look it up.) REVIEW: Final Destination Bloodlines (2025). Twenty-five years ago, a new horror franchise made audiences afraid of Death. As an entity. Aft