Guelph Politicast

The CAO position is the highest ranking official in local government that doesn’t have the job title of either mayor or city councillor, and it’s the only staff position at city hall that’s hired by a committee made up of the mayor and councillors. So yes, it’s a pretty important job, and it’s not like there’s any shortage of issues or needs for the new woman in charge as she enters her first full year in charge. It was about this time last year that Scott Stewart announced that he would be retiring by the summer. Stewart had been the CAO for five years, and they were probably the most challenging five years any CAO has experienced in the history of Guelph. (Well, so far.) He got a lot done, but there also ended up being a lot of work for Tara Baker to do once she picked up the baton in mid-September. Fortunately, she had something of a head start.  Before becoming the CAO, Baker had spent 13 years at Guelph city hall, including the last eight as the City Treasurer and the General Manager of Finance. If the

This week on Open Sources Guelph we're going to party with our friends. While the party doesn't stop at Mar-a-Lago, it's a very different story here in Canada and everywhere else as people await the return of You-Know-Who with something resembling dread, and all while online folks are feigning surprise again that tech billionaires are putting themselves first. Back here at home, we've got south end business to discuss with a city councillor! This Thursday, January 16, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: It: Part Two. There's still a couple of days before Donald Trump assumes the Office of the U.S. President, and he's already become everyone's obsession. Here in Canada, premiers have been trying different tactics to get Trump to take back tariff threats and they don't seem to be working, and no one is 100 per cent sure how seriously to take all those "51st state" threats. Meanwhile, Trump's murderer's row of clowns and sycophants have begun their confirmation hearings, so are we ready fo

This week on End Credits, we're getting excited about awards season! For the movie this week we've got a sure to be Oscar contender in the form of a musical bio-pic about one of the titans of popular music. Will it win? We don't know, obviously, but we're going to talk about the odds as the movie industry gets ready for its fanciest night of the year! This Wednesday, January 15, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss: On Golden Idols. This weekend, the nominations for the 97th Academy Awards will be announced it what might be one of the wildest and surprising Oscar races in years. To get a sense of who might be in and who might be out, we will analyse the winners and losers of the Golden Globes last week. Is The Brutalist the greatest movie you haven't see yet? Is Adrian the new Timmy, or is Timmy the new Adrian? We'll cover all that and more! REVIEW: A Complete Unknown (2024). Bob Dylan. Have you heard of him? It's nearly impossible to think of someone from popular music in the last 60 yea

The 2025 State of the City is coming up soon - Thursday February 6 to be precise - and as we always do at this time of year, we’re going to roll the audio from the previous year’s State of the City as a refresher course. The goal is to remember where we were at the time, where the mayor wanted to take us, and where we ended up now before Mayor Cam Guthrie starts looking to the future again! Do you really need to listen to this to be reminded of the most salient point of last year’s State of the City address? Here’s the most relevant quote: “When cities are faced with strong issues, it requires a strong team to tackle them. However, to set the tone and the pace, you need a strong mayor. Therefore, effective today, I am announcing that I will use the Strong Mayor powers throughout the rest of this term.” That was the moment Guthrie changed the game, and it came as a really big surprise to his council colleagues, many of whom were sitting front row or centre at the speech. Beforehand, the mayor gave away no hint

This week on Open Sources Guelph we violate our New Year's Resolution to have less drama! Canada's prime minister apparently had other ideas though by kicking off the week, and the year, with a big announcement that we have to cover. In other news, Pickering city council is making news in all the ways you never do, and for our interview this week, we'll return focus to Ottawa by talking to someone who works there. This Thursday, January 9, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Tru-Done. It wasn't surprising, but it was still kind of a shock. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came back from Christmas vacation and announced that he's finally read the writing on the wall. He's done. He won't be Liberal leader or PM once the party holds a leadership race. Parliament is prorogued until March 24. Critics were less than magnanimous in the aftermath, but it seems like everyone's got what they've wanted: Trudeau is gone! So what happens next? Nit-Pickering. Unless you're super keyed into local Pickerin

This week on End Credits, we're back! Technically, we didn't go anywhere because we kept cranking out new episodes over the Christmas break, but now we're really back, and we're ready to tackle the latest movies of 2025... with one of the leftovers from last year. Get ready to be afraid of the dark with Nosferatu, and we will also tackle other films with bite!  This Wednesday, January 8, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Candice Lepage will discuss: Films that Suck! Vampires: you know them, you love them! Vampires have a long cinematic history, and the granddaddy of all vampires, Count Dracula, has been one of the most adapted characters in the history of cinema and literature. So before diving into the latest vampire flick to grace the silver screen (not to mention Dracula rip-off), we will talk about some of our favourite vampire movies that suck... your blood. REVIEW: Nosferatu (2024). In 1922, a German director ripped off a popular English novel by the author Bram Stoker and made one of the most influential

Last year was very busy for Guelph City Council, and the last four months of the year were perhaps the busiest. In fact, the business of council has gotten so busy to properly cover it all this "Year in Review" podcast now has to be done in three parts, splitting the year into three near equal sections for over two hours of combined content. So now, at the end, the final part of this trilogy. The big thing from the back third of 2024 was the confirmation vote for the 2025 budget. Earlier in the year, Mayor Cam Guthrie used Strong Mayor Powers to direct staff to get the budget down to an overall four per cent increase, and there was a great deal of consternation about what that would mean. Council didn't get all the way to that four per cent mark, but it was a heck of a ride getting there! And speaking of rides, there was a lot of drama over, of all things, fireworks. Guelph tried to rework its fireworks bylaw only to get burned when many people felt that it went too far. There were also metaphorical fireworks

This week on Open Sources Guelph there's cause for celebration! Not only is this our annual year-end (or year-beginning in this case) awards show, but it's also our 500th episode and the start of year 11 for OSG! It's a good thing we have all that to look forward to because this revisiting of 2024 had us bummed in a major way. Enjoy the fun gang, because it might be the last we'll have for a while! This Thursday, January 2, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Worst Politician of 2024. Well this one's going to be a lay up, right? In a year this bad though, the real competition is going to be which of the worst is really the worst? And in a year where it seemed like everyone had an incentive to embrace their worst selves, we will look to the halls of our provincial and federal legislatures to find the people who ended up on the proverbial naughty list in 2024! Good News Story of the Year. Yes, there was some good news this year. Difficult as it was to find under mountains of black tar and

This week on End Credits, it's the first day of a new year! Let us celebrate in the time honoured tradition (of the last seven years) of marking the best movies of previous year! Yes, it is time again to take a year-full of cinema and whittle it down to the five best films from the last 12 month. You know it, you love it, and now we talk about the Best of 2024! This Wednesday, January 1, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson, Tim Phillips, Peter Salmon, and Candice Lepage will discuss: The Best of 2024! It was looking a little rough there at the beginning of the year... There was a movie about a killer swimming pool, and wasn't there a movie about a psychic leading a group of Spider-Women? So it's safe to say that neither of those movies will make our Top 5 of 2024 lists, but that doesn't mean that there won't be any shortage of surprises as we count down the best movies of the year. On this first day of 2025, we will send off 2024 by talking about it's greatest hits with red rooms, old asses, sand, self-reliance and m

If you’re listening to this on New Year’s Day then you might be welcoming 2025 with relief, or maybe even trepidation. If you thought last year was a rough ride it may be an hors d'oeuvres compared to what comes next, but before we get into all that, we’re going to formally say goodbye to 2024 by talking about the year that was, and the year we wanted it to be! There was a lot going on in Guelph in 2024, did you hear that we’re having a housing crisis? There was the use of Strong Mayor Powers, the push to make the OR Lands a national urban park, and the closure of the old Nestle bottling plant in Aberfoyle. There was also almost a transit strike, not to mention a weeks-long strike out on Dunlop Road at the Cargill Plant. A lot can happen in 12 months, and it did. But what was 2024 really about? That is a difficult question, but Mike Ashkewe was a pretty good person to ask. He’s a member of the Accessibility Advisory Committee and an Indigenous activist, and he’s a regular at the weekly Breezy Breakfast gathe

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we box! It is Boxing Day, isn't it? So we're going to be boxing up all kinds of things, but the one thing we will be unboxing is our annual political movies show! For the tenth annual edition, we will look at four important films that cover a lot of political ground, from a documentary about a famous writer to the nightlife of Berlin just as things started getting Nazi, and from the end of the world in 2027 to a David Vs. Goliath courtroom fight! This Thursday, December 26, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Scotty's Pick #1: I Am Not Your Negro (2016). "In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, Remember This House. The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and assassinations of three of his close friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin's death in 1987, he left behind only 30 completed pages of this manuscript. Filmmaker Raoul Peck envisio

This week on End Credits, we wish you a Merry Christmas! To celebrate this annual occasion, we will do things Jigsaw-style by playing a little game. No one's going to die - hopefully - but there will be lots of bragging rights up for grabs as your four favourite cinephiles, and a special guest, hang their holiday favourites with care as we undertake another movie draft. This Wednesday, December 25, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson, Tim Phillips, Peter Salmon, Candice Lepage, and special guest Jen Barson will discuss: The Christmas Movie Draft! What day is it? Why it's Christmas Day! And we decided to wrap up something special for that difficult time between opening presents and waiting for the turkey to be served: The original End Credits Christmas Movie Draft! The entire gang is here, plus Jen Barson from Guelph Fringe Festival, to discuss their favourite holiday movies from six carefully selected categories. From the classics you love to some surprising revelations from the bowels of Tubi, we will stuff your sto

It makes sense spending Christmas with a Kevin. The Kevin we're talking to this Christmas though sits at the intersection of fighting poverty practically and fighting a growing spiritual malaise. In fact, he was the first and most obvious choice for this year’s holiday chat by the fireside, and he joins us this week to not only talk about the crisis around homelessness, but also the accompanying crisis of compassion. Yes, the special Christmas guest this year is  executive director and pastor of Royal City Mission, Kevin Coghill. Homelessness is a city-wide issue, but the focus was downtown this year. Not even 50 yards from St. George’s Square are the front doors of the Royal City Mission, which offers services to people who are homeless and living in poverty, which also made it a source of contention for downtown business owners and residents. The RCM was often cited as doing good work for the community while being tagged as the cause for the growing encampments in the square due to its proximity. It’s the e

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we were all but ready to take off for the holidays but they had to squeeze just a little bit more breaking new out of us. From Ottawa, there may be a change in government, or a change in prime minister, or a change in something, we don't know! We also don't know what happened with the Canada Post strike that was suddenly over this week, but we're going to find out about that too!! This Thursday, December 19, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Chrystia-Mas Comes Early. Just a normal Monday on Parliament Hill, it was the second last day of the fall sitting and the release of the Fall Economic Statement was all that was on the agenda. And then Chystia Freeland quit as finance minister and all hell broke loose! Almost everything else Monday, including a First Ministers' Meeting in Toronto, was blown off the front-page with the possibility that this was the end for Justin Trudeau, and as we go to air we can only imagine what's going down next. Is Trudeau get

This week on End Credits, we're hunting for content. In this last regular edition of the show for 2024, we're going to put on our favourite animal skins and run wild on what might be the biggest bomb of the year, and that's really saying something. We're reviewing Kraven The Hunter, and we're also going to look ahead to greener cinematic pastures in 2025!  This Wednesday, December 18, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss: The Best of 2025? So 2024 isn't even over yet, and we're already talking about the Best of 2025?! Not quite. There will be a whole year of movies in the next 12 months, and we probably won't be able to see them all, so we're going to get some of the organising done early by talking about some of the movies we're looking forward to seeing in the next 12 months. From a return to a zombie apocalypse, to what may be the last Mission, we'll check in with 2025! REVIEW: Kraven The Hunter (2024). It's been a dry year for superhero movies, but there's one last stop at the oasis be

What do you think this year will be remembered for in the annals of Guelph history? Will it be the debate over the Public Space Use Bylaw? Was it the announced closure of the consumption and treatment site downtown? Was it when the mayor re-opened the 2025 budget to try and shave off two-thirds of the proposed levy increase? In any event, all roads lead back to one place, or rather, one person. In a sense, the first day of the political year was February 8. That was the date of the State of the City speech at the Delta Hotel and Conference Centre where Mayor Cam Guthrie said that he was going to use Strong Mayor Powers in three specific ways: To find a place for a tiny home encampment, leverage City-owner property for affordable housing and to cut the Guelph 2025 budget down to something more affordable. It was a surprise move by Guthrie, but it would not be his last this year. The Strong Mayor Powers were the first of a couple of different pivots: He joined the Government of Ontario demanding that CTSes no l

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're not done with 2024 yet, and it seems like the year is not done with us! Out of the Middle East this week some good news for a change, or at least some less bad news depending on what's next. We will also talk about the reaction to a very specific crime on the streets of Manhattan, and closer to home, we'll have a city councillor do a little year-end recap with us! This Thursday, December 12, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Bashir Bashed. If 2024 hadn't run out of surprises yet, there was one more and it came from a part of the world that has been longing for some good news. After decades of brutal dictatorship, the regime of Bashir al-Assad fell after an 11 day uprising that saw Assad flee to Russia for sanctuary while rebels released long-time political prisoners and looted the presidential palace. But in the midst of all the celebrating there's still a fundamental question that needs answered: What's next for Syria? Begun this Class War Has?

This week on End Credits, we're getting in shape! As we approach the end of the year, and the usual discussion about what movies are best, we're going to take a deep dive on one of the films that may end up making the cut! We're going to inject ourselves with The Substance, and we're going to look at lessons learned by the movie business itself this year. This Wednesday, December 11, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss: The Trends of 2024! It's been another interesting year in the movie business, some big hits and sometimes some bigger misses. Coming off of massive upheavals caused by pandemic viewing habits and two major labour disruptions, this year was always going to be a rough one for Hollywood as they strived to survive till 2025. So to start this week's show, in advance of the Best Movies of the Year, we will talk about the movie trends of '24. REVIEW: The Substance (2024). It's one of the most talked about films of the year, praised as a prime example of body horror from the fema

There has been a lot of heritage news this year, and especially in the last couple of weeks. This should not be surprising because heritage staff in all municipalities have been in a mad scramble these last few years to designate as much heritage as possible before the end of this year due to Bill 23. That changed back in the spring, so it's probably a good time now to catch our breathe and look at the work done so far, and all the work that is to come. You may recall that November’s planning meeting was super-sized over two different days, and that was largely due to two heritage matters: The proposed designation for the old conservatory on the University of Guelph campus, and the draft policy for the Heritage Conservation District at the Ontario Reformatory lands. That’s a lot of pressure to put on the heritage planning staff, but the pressure was being felt before last month’s meetings. Back in 2022, the Ontario government passed Bill 23, which made a great many changes to municipal planning policies, inc

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're reminded that the history of this show is haunted by an orange-coloured goon in a Florida beach club. Yes, we're heading back to Mar-a-Lago this week, and we're also heading back to Queen's Park to talk about accountability, our favourite topic! For the interview, we're talking to a friend of the show about how we can help people not go hungry this Christmas and beyond. This Thursday, December 5, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss: Mar-a-Largesse. Last week, President-elect Donald Trump announced his intention to apply 25 per cent tariffs on Canada and Mexico as a means of stopping the flow of unauthorized border crossings and the trafficking of fentanyl, an early sign that we're going back to the unfettered chaos of 2017-2021. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a surprise visit to Mar-a-Logo to try and nip this in the bud, but apparently Trump joked about making Canada the 51st state. Do we really have to deal with this again? Shelley Shocked. On