Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday November 16, 2017

This week on Open Sources Guelph it’s a Canadian affair. We sometimes get so enraptured in the pinball machine south of the border, and the sometimes devastating state of things overseas, that we don’t look as closely at our country, but that’s why this week’s show is different. First, we’ll talk about someone’s talking, and then we’ll talk about the latest in trade talks. And then, we’ll have another one of our regular discussions with a member of city council and get an update on how things are going at city hall.

This Thursday, November 16, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

1) Peterson Doesn’t Help. Once, University of Toronto psychiatry professor Jordan Peterson was just a guy that didn’t want to use gender neutral pronouns, but in today’s modern backlash against political correctness, he’s become a folk hero. More than that, a rich folk hero. His crowd-funding campaign to make video lectures where Peterson espouses on free speech have been extraordinarily lucrative, but he may have gone too far this time when he announced his intention to expose certain courses at U of T as “indoctrination cults.” Should some professors at the U of T be concerned that their academic work is under attack, or has Peterson finally gone too far (or just far enough)?

2) TPP 2.0. Sometimes you have to go it alone, or rather go with the 10 other guys. The United States’ withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, as it turns out, wasn’t the end of TPP after all, as the proposed partners gathered in Asia to discuss the resurrection of the massive international trade agreement. Trudeau missed one of the major ministerial meetings, which is either an epic blunder or a masterstroke depending on who you ask, but the message was loud and clear as Canada secured a number of concessions on environment and labour issues. Still, this is going to be an uphill climb in order to rally support for TPP 2.0, so how does this deal shape up as compared to the last, and will we regret that Justin Trudeau didn’t go “full Trump” on the deal?

3) Radio Piper. This week, we welcome back to the show Ward 5 Councillor Leanne Piper. It’s been a while since we’ve had a guest from council on Open Sources, so there’s an awful lot to catch up on. Obviously, there’s all the latest developments from the budget to discuss, and there’s the pending merger approval of Guelph Hydro and Alectra Utilities to talk about. On top of that, there are still the lingering issues concerning the fallout of all the Homecoming drama, which is centralized in Ward 5 because of the University of Guelph. There’s a town hall coming up next Thursday on that very subject, and we’ll talk to Piper about what the current score in town versus gown really is.