Trudeau's last summer

The Line

In the latest episode of The Line Podcast, recorded on June 21st, 2024, Matt is delighted to see Jen back at home in Calgary, where she is bathed in glorious bandwidth, if not in actual running water. Jen gives us a quick update on the water situation there, including some positive signs of a fast resolution, but then your hosts launch into a chat about the end of the spring sitting of the House of Commons. Thank God. They were just embarrassing themselves and needed to get home. Matt also gets Jen caught up on the latest from the federal front, that she may have missed during her two weeks on holiday, including some polling, the latest on foreign interference (including some good news, of a kind, for Han Dong), and also the upcoming by-election. Given that Matt doesn't see any actual good-news scenario for the Liberals in St. Paul's, he wonders if he has been wrong — could this be Justin Trudeau's last summer as prime minister?
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The two then move on to chat about some federal updates that aren't specifically pegged to silly season and horserace polls. Jen talks about Bill C-59, with which she is unimpressed, noting this as a recent example of something your editors have observed before — this government is bad at governmenting. Matt then takes over to chat a bit about defence spending, and notes that Treasury Board president Anita Anand has correctly identified a problem Canada has. But her solution is very, very wrong. And it's more governmenting problems, as it turns out.
Next: an update from Alberta, an update from Ontario, a promise about more B.C. coverage being on the way, and, then, a long chat about man's self-destructive nature and the grieving process of an entire society facing the death of its hopes and dreams. Which is weird, because that last bit is nominally about a possible liquor-store strike in Ontario. Things went a bit off the range on that one.
All that, and more, on the latest episode of The Line Podcast. Please like and subscribe, share widely, and find out more about us at our website, ReadTheLine.ca.

Chapters

1. Trudeau's last summer (00:00:00)

2. Welcome home, Jen! Let's dare look at Ottawa. (00:01:11)

3. The government remains bad at governmenting (00:22:36)

4. Updates from Alberta, Ontario and the darkest depths of the human impulse to seek chaos and destruction (00:51:07)