Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday February 2, 2017

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we will have to once again confront tragedy, albeit closer to home. What’s been described by many as a terrorist attack has cast into sharp relief many of the political discussions happening around coffee shops and computers right now as people look to what’s happening south of the border and wonder if it shares some of the blame. We’ll dedicate the first half of the show to terrible news from Quebec, and then we’ll look at the (lack of) electoral reform here at home, and how events in Washington might now be having a negative impact on the Canadian economy. Continue reading “Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday February 2, 2017” →

The Weekender: Let’s Talk About Let’s Talk

Motives are rarely unselfish, so when a massive media conglomerate dedicates an entire day to raising money to deal with mental health issues in Canada, we should have in the back of our heads that Bell Media is not a humanitarian organization. Obviously, they’re getting a tonne of press, and not just from themselves, for the fact that they’re giving a nickel for every tweet, share and the like for a whole 24-hour period to battle the stigma of mental health and combat its causes. Meanwhile, hidden beneath the self-congratulation, is a company that doesn’t care about its own people when they suffer from mental health concerns. Continue reading “The Weekender: Let’s Talk About Let’s Talk” →

Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday January 26, 2017

So some staff happened this week. Too much stuff for a single episode of Open Sources Guelph, but since we only do one episode a week, that’s all you’ll get. So here’s what’s going down: a week full of American zaniness, the Canadian reaction on two key fronts, and some very serious talk about a year in First Nations affairs. We’ll try and decode all the official and unofficial things coming out of the White House, the fallout of how Donald Trump’s new direction affects Canada, and we’ll wrap up with an update about Aboriginal matters with our resident expert on Aboriginal issues. Continue reading “Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday January 26, 2017” →

The Weekender: You Finally Did It….

It didn’t even take until lunch time for the latest entrant in the Conservative Party leadership race to embarrass himself. The definition of embarrassment is entirely my own because, as we’ve learned from the Trump experiment south of the border, sometimes a gross lack of political savvy and poise is a selling point, and worse still, some people are all too willing to buy it. Considering all that, Kevin O’Leary, the cartoonishly super villain like “entrepreneur”, “business expert” and reality show TV star, began his political career by saying the following on CP24: “[Justin Trudeau]’s lucky he is going to meet me and I’ll tell you why. I am going to help him find his ultimate destiny because it is not running this country, that’s for sure.” Continue reading “The Weekender: You Finally Did It….” →

A Dark Night Rises for President Trump

Well, it’s almost eight hours into the Trump presidency and we’re not dead yet. Encouraging sign. Perhaps less encouraging was some of the rhetoric now President Donald Trump started his tenure with, which was basically a remix of his Republican National Convention speech about how everything is terrible and America is going to hell in a nuclear powered hand cart. Still, it seemed as if there was something familiar about some of the things Trump was saying… Continue reading “A Dark Night Rises for President Trump” →

Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday January 19, 2017

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we enjoy the last few hours of the Obama era, which we may recognize in the years to come as the Age of Reason. Well, we have reason to be concerned, as do the thousands of people making their way to Washington this weekend to protest the incoming president and we’ve got one of them on the show. We’ll also talk about the problems with our own country’s leader, the problems with trying to lead another country out of a lucrative alliance, and we’ll mark the end of one of the worst abuses of judiciary power of the last 10 years. Continue reading “Open Sources Show Notes for Thursday January 19, 2017” →

The Weekender: In Trump’s America, the Press Must Stand Together, or Fall Alone

It took literally no time for the first presidential press conference with Donald Trump to get hostile. The damn thing opened with incoming press secretary Sean Spicer attacking CNN and Buzzfeed for telling two different stories about the very same concerning topic: the possibility that Russia has compromising information about the President-Elect. Somewhere between Trump’s non-announcement about not-divesting himself from his businesses and presenting a big pile of folders filled with nothing, the 45th President of the United States took things a bit further by calling a major media outlet “fake news” for reporting a story about him he didn’t like. But then something more remarkable happened, a roomful of that reporter’s colleagues did nothing. Continue reading “The Weekender: In Trump’s America, the Press Must Stand Together, or Fall Alone” →