Open Sources Guelph - August 20, 2020

This week there's a surprising amount of news for the middle of August on Open Sources Guelph. There's election news out of the United States, but more surprisingly, there's election news out of Canada as one of the Atlantic provinces is going to polls. Will there be a Federal election in Canada? Not for a month thanks to some shadiness by Justin Trudeau, which might be the name of a book published by Rebel Media, which we will also talk about.

This Thursday, August 20, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

Going Prorogue. The heat finally got too much for Justin Trudeau this week as we reached into Stephen Harper's old playbook and prorogued Parliament for a month, at which point we will hopefully have forgotten about the ethical lapses that lead to the PM's third ethics investigation in five years. In the meantime, Chrystia Freeland has been made the new Finance Minister, which makes us wonder if a) Is there anything Freeland can't solve? and b) Does Trudeau really think this is old news now?

Run DNC. In a first, the Democratic National Convention has been happening this week remotely, with the entire affair taking place via Zoom from locations across the United States. Along with formally nominating Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as candidates for President and Vice-President, the goal of the DNC is to make the case against Donald Trump, while rallying the Democrats' bigger than ever tent. So how are they doing, and what does Biden have to do now to win?

A Blaine on Resources. The United States is not the only place in North America looking to hold a fall election. New Brunswickers will be going to the polls on September 14 as Premier Blaine Higgs formally had the writ drawn up this week, but what does a pandemic election look like in Canada? How will New Brunswick overcome many of the same challenges as the U.S? And will this election set the tone for future elections across Canada going forward?

Rebel Alliance. When the Alberta Legislature decided to bar Rebel Media from the press gallery, Postmedia, of their own volition, announced that they would boycott the press gallery in solidarity with Rebel Media. Apparently, the reporters in Edmonton were not pleased about the move, especially since Alberta's four biggest papers are all Postmedia papers, but the order came down from HQ in Toronto, which begs the question, is this an important hill that Postmedia wants to die on?

Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.