Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday August 31, 2017

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we laboured to make our pre-Labour show Trump-free, but the man can’t let a week go by without blowing the doors off another political norm, and last Friday he broke about 12 even as a hurricane was bearing down on the U.S. We’ll have to discuss Trump’s latest move to undermine common decency, but we’ll also talk about the new faces (and positions) in the federal cabinet, and the new routes and schedules for Guelph Transit with the man who runs that service.

This Thursday, August 31, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

1) Trouble Shuffle? Although it was initially billed as a huge re-organization of the government front bench fairly close to the halfway point of the federal Liberals’ mandate, the biggest news of this past Monday’s cabinet shuffle was that now there’s not just one, but two, ministries overseeing Indigenous affairs. Carolyn Bennett is now the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs, and Jane Philpott moves from Minister of Health to Minister of Indigenous Services, so clearly Justin Trudeau has heard the criticism of his government’s work on that file. Having said that, what’s the separation of powers on these new cabinet position, and will it do any good at all?

2) Joe’s Deportment. As Hurricane Harvey bore down on the Gulf states with a fury not seen since Hurricane Katrina, President Donald Trump thought it was a great time to do a couple of pretty vile things. The first was to make his transgender soldier ban in the U.S. military official, and the second was to pardon controversial Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Of course, calling Arpaio “controversial” is like calling Hurricane Harvey a “rain storm” because of his reckless, completely racist persecution of immigrants in Maricopa County, which includes the Great Phoenix area. Here’s the question: was Arpaio’s pardon a dog whistle to Trump’s racist fanbase, or was it a test run for future pardons relating to the Russia investigation?

3) Transit Spice. Guelph Transit is realigning this Sunday with new routes and new schedules, and a lot of people are very, very curious about whether or not this is the answer the City is looking for in order to a) make transit more responsive to the ones who are using it, and b) if successful, whether or not these changes might convince more people in town to take the bus. We’ll talk to Transit general manager Mike Spicer about those questions, and we’d like you to send in your questions so that we can ask those too. Worried about losing service on your street? Have an idea of what transit needs to do in order to win more riders? Have a question about how regional transit options are coming along? Let us know!