Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday April 13, 2017

This week on Open Sources Guelph we talk to the man who’s the next leader of the Conservative Party of Canada! You know, if those other 13 people in the race get out of his way. We are happy on this week’s show to be able to talk to Rick Peterson, the bilingual maverick businessman that’s making a serious play to be the head of Canada’s blue team. Before that though, we’ll address the maverick foreign policy of “45” and the maverick action of Guelph’s city council to put the kibosh on online voting.

This Thursday, April 13, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

1) Regime of Consciousness. Despite his stance of “America First” and his vehement Twitter tirades against getting involved, President Donald Trump launched a cruise missile attack on Syria following a poison gas attack on civilians perpetrated by the government of Bashar al-Asaad. So what happened? What happened to make Trump do a total 180 on his foreign policy (such as it is)? Good question, but so is the question of why all of Trump’s top foreign policy advisors are giving a different message on the matter? And if the missile attack is part of a new policy, where’s the rest of the policy?

2) Hope Votes. In a surprise move at last week’s Committee-of-the-Whole, Guelph’s city council decided to put the kibosh on internet voting for the 2018 due to concerns about the integrity of the voters’ list. Administered by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) there’s evidently a lot of people that are on the list that shouldn’t be, an opportunity that’s easy to exploit for unscrupulous people looking to throw an election. At the same time, there’s an accessibility argument for online voting, and the fact that nearly one-third of the ballots cast in the last election were done so online. So what is the City going to do? Can we balance security and accessibility?

3) Rick Rolled. There are two people in the Conservative Leadership race with a business background and no previous federal political experience. One is an accomplished Canadian businessman, a venture capitalist that has helped small and medium sized businesses grow and develop, and has some crazy business-minded ideas about how to shake up the country and its right leaning party. And the other is Kevin O’Leary. Yes, Peterson is only businessman in this race that actually seems serious about the race, and we’ll talk to him about his ideas to spur economic growth in Canada, how he plans to make the Conservative Party more appealing to women and urban dwellers, and why he’s Maxime Bernier’s second choice for the leadership.