The Herle Burly

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and the Canadian Climate Institute. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Alberta voted to stay in Canada on Monday by a roughly 75/25 margin. But the real story is what the referendum did to Alberta politics. David is joined by Zain Velji, campaign strategist, co-director of Naheed Nenshi’s Alberta NDP leadership run, and partner at Northweather, and Dan Arno...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and the Canadian Climate Institute. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! The Chiefs are back. This franchise has spawned more sequels than The Fast and the Furious, but unlike Vin Diesel, these three bring something new every time. David is joined by Brian Topp, Ian Brodie and Tim Murphy for a wide-ranging hour on a country being tested from three directions ...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and the Canadian Climate Institute. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! When Ukrainian drones hit the Russian internet giant Yandex this week, bot traffic and propaganda posts reportedly fell off a cliff. That tells you something about how manufactured and polluted our information space has become. Andrew MacDougall, five-time Herle Burly guest, former Direc...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and the Canadian Climate Institute. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! David sits down with his old friend who's now at the centre of the federal government’s policy agenda: The Honourable Steven MacKinnon, Canada’s Minister of Transport and Government House Leader. Minister MacKinnon lays out why Ottawa the agenda is necessary as he pushes back on privatiz...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and the Canadian Climate Institute. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! This week David sits down with Anthony Scaramucci. The man immortalized in the dictionary as a unit of time. From Wall Street to the White House to fellow podcaster on The Rest Is Politics: US, Anthony is out with his new book, All the Wrong Moves. He argues that three catastrophic deci...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, OECTA, and the Canadian Climate Institute. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Three years ago, David convened our second Ontario Liberal leadership debate in studio, no podiums, no clock, just candidates talking. Now, with the party searching again for its way back from third place, we’re doing it a third time. All five contenders for the Ontario Liberal le...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and the Canadian Climate Institute. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! This week, we indulge in a little podcast inbreeding here at Air Quotes Media with our colleagues Mike McDonald and Geoff Meggs – hosts of Hotel Pacifico and two of the sharpest political strategists in the country – to dig into the extraordinary unraveling happening on the right in Brit...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Back in July, the Wall Street Journal ran a striking series on how Europe is quietly rethinking its arrangements with the world to counter a changing, increasingly predatory United States. And surprisingly, named Mark Carney as one of the leaders pushing Europe in that direction, pointing back to his Davos speech and his i...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! This one's for anyone tired of the heat-with-no-light that passes for policy debate on Twitter. David brings together three super smart policy minds who understand government — spanning different ideologies and varying degrees of partisanship. It’s a rare, respectful, rational, 90-minute conversation about the predicament ...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! David spent the weekend, like a lot of Canadians, trying to process the breakdown in Canada-US trade talks and the unusually sharp statement Mark Carney delivered to the country the day before. So he called in The Chiefs: three former chiefs of staff to some of Canada's most prominent political leaders. It gets pointed ...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Back on the show for a third time... Trevor Tombe: a truth-telling economist who's never afraid to take a view that's five or six canoe lengths out of the mainstream. Trevor's a professor of economics at the University of Calgary and director of Fiscal and Economic Policy at its School of Public Policy, and he's spent the ...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! David's old friend Frank Graves, founder and president of EKOS Research and known online as the unmistakable "Voice of Franky" on Twitter, is never shy about speaking his mind. But unlike most loud voices online, Frank brings the data to back it up. He was the first pollster to flag a Liberal resurgence back in earl...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Today's episode takes on one big, hairy question: what's actually happening to the Canadian standard of living? To help sort it out, we have one of our all-time favourite economists – or as Maclean's calls her – "the caring person's economist." Armine Yalnizyan is here! She's a brilliant policy thinker, one of the le...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! There's drama afoot within the conservative movement in Canada. Fights about what the party stands for and where it's going. It's all over Twitter and it's openly spilling into the pod-verse, national media airwaves, opinions in print, and into the hallways of Parliament. If you're a friend of Air Quotes Media, you know it...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Greetings you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Last week The Wall Street Journal published a backstory on what Mark Carney's been doing in Europe. Building alliances, stiffening spines against Trump, searching for sovereignty out of rupture, calls from one of his personal cell phones. It didn't contain exclusively new information, but it was fascinating detail in an Ame...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Greetings you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Today on the show, somebody who bears the proud designation of most appearances on the pod. We call her the economist explainer-in-chief, but more officially, she's the senior vice president and chief economist at the Royal Bank of Canada: Frances Donald! This one's got range. Frances walks us through the contradiction of r...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Greetings you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Artificial intelligence (AI) is here, and it is integrating itself in society in rapid ways. Some boast AI has the power to transform our economy and produce growth rates we once knew in Canada. Others hype soon-to-come breakthroughs in science and medicine as a result of AI. These are exciting advancements … should potenti...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Greetings you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! It’s been a little over a year since the last federal election in Canada and this past week the House of Commons rose for the summer. It’s hard to argue it’s been anything but a good year for Carney Liberals. But that was last year. So, what does the Carney government need to do differently in year two? On Alberta sep...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and Anthropic. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! 20-some years ago, the PC Party of Canada disappeared federally, and over time was replaced by the modern Conservative Party of Canada. This episode is about exploring Canadian conservative political thought, the state of conservatism and the state of the Conservative parties in Canada today, and wheth...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and Anthropic. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! It’s been a year of economic anxiety and trade upheaval in Canada with our largest trading partner applying tariffs, making threats, and taking a far more adversarial stance, in advance of the upcoming CUSMA negotiation. We’re experiencing an economy with a very low growth rate, an affordability crisis, and ...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and Anthropic. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! There was a resignation in Ottawa last week that struck a louder chord than most. High profile Liberal caucus member, and former Cabinet Minister, Steven Guilbeault announced will be leaving politics over the summer. Best known for his time as Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Mr. Guilbeault has be...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and Anthropic. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Here’s a question for you: Can anything pierce the political armour of Ontario Premier Doug Ford? Recently, pollsters have showed tightening numbers in the wake of Ford controversies like buying and then selling a private jet over the course of 72 hours. Selling off Ontario Place so it could be clear cut and...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! We’re over a year into a new government and nobody could possibly argue there hasn’t been a significant recalibration in the way Canada thinks about climate policy and environmental regulation. The public policy balance between the environment, pipelines, and project-building has ...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Saab Canada, and the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Greetings you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! If you’re any kind of regular listener to the Air Quotes Media Pod universe, you know a powerful political eruption is happening in B.C., as a result of a ruling of the B.C. Supreme Court. The Cowichan Decision, in combination with the existing DRIPA legislation, has b...

Recorded live at the Empire Club on May 6, 2026. The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Saab Canada, and the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Greetings you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! It’s been about a week and a half since the federal government tabled their Spring Economic Statement, “Canada Strong for All: United in a Time of Uncertainty.” Today we sit in discussion with Canada's Minister of ...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Saab Canada, and the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Greetings you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! So, there is little doubt we are living in a time of massive change. A dislocation – perhaps temporary, perhaps not – between long time trading partners.New stressors on our economy forcing new economic alliances.A voting public with very real pocketbook issues l...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Saab Canada, and the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! The way we’re thinking about defence in Canada is not the same as it was 5 years ago. 1 year ago. Or even 6 months ago. The wars in Ukraine and Iran have dramatically demonstrated the impact of new technologies. And in February, the Carney government committed m...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and Fidelity Investments Canada. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! With me today is Carla Beck, leader of the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party, the official opposition in the Saskatchewan Legislature ... and a heartland NDPer. As you know I’m from Saskatchewan. My political roots are in Saskatchewan. I just love Saskatchewan politics. This is my opportun...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and Fidelity Investments Canada. Alright, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! We’ve got a special show lined up for you today. A little different in format. Much longer in running time. But a subject matter that merits both of those adjustments. This is our “What’s actually going on in the Canadian Economy?” mega pod. As you know, there is so much change afoot and so m...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and Fidelity Investments Canada. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! It’s not often on the pod we have a diplomat … a Statesman … an Ambassador … a Premier … a leader of 2 Parties … an 11-time electoral winner … an academic … and a pretty fine piano player all in the form of a single guest. Bob Rae, a true political polymath, joins us for the next ho...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, and Fidelity Investments Canada. Alright, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites, we’re sinking deep into the Washington swamp today. Our guest is Brody Mullins, co-author of: “The Wolves of K Street”. If you’ve ever wondered about the cigar chomping, big-time lobbying industry in Washington, located on K street just a few blocks from the White House, its rise, its non-exi...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, and Fidelity Investments Canada. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites. A hard turn to the Left on this episode of the pod, because I want to examine the past, present and future of the New Democratic Party, and ask if the party is over for Canada’s NDP. To do that, a wide-ranging discussion. We’ll cover the federal leadership race. An assessment ...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, and Fidelity Investments Canada. Alright, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites, The Chiefs join us today. They’re a regular feature on the pod now, showing up every couple of months to bestow a little governance wisdom upon us … 3 former Chiefs of Staff to some of Canada’s most accomplished heads of government: Brian Topp, Tim Murphy, and Ian Brodie. Alright...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, and Fidelity Investments Canada. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites. We are on the clock today, with someone whose agenda is more crammed than most, so we’ll keep this brief. Our guest is Canada's Minister of Industry, the Honourable Mélanie Joly. We’re going to cover a number of issues: Canada’s auto industry, industrial strategy in an emerging...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, and Fidelity Investments Canada. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites. A fellow podcaster on the show today. But leaving his credentials there would be selling our guest very short indeed. Michael Liebreich is here! He’s an acclaimed thought leader on clean energy, mobility, technology, climate, sustainability and finance. The CEO of Liebrei...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, and Fidelity Investments Canada. Alright, greetings you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites. A special show today. If you’re any kind of regular listener to either this podcast or Curse of Politics, you know my brilliant friend and mentor Elly Alboim passed away almost 2 weeks ago. To précis a remarkably accomplished professional life, Elly was a journalist for...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, AltaGas, and Fidelity Investments Canada. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Fred DeLorey is here! For those who may not know, Fred was the National Campaign Manager for Erin O’Toole in 2021. Before that the Director of Field Operations for Ontario Premier Doug Ford. And he’s a former Director of Political Operations for Stephen Harper. As well...

Originally aired May 25, 2023, this episode is rebroadcast in memory of Elly Alboim: an uncommon mind and a rare presence. Elly was brilliant, incisive, and deeply generous as a mentor and with his counsel. For anyone lucky enough to work with him, Elly was the person who could see the whole board at once. He was the person you wanted to speak last in a meeting because his opinion simply mattered most. This episode captures that gift in full for our audience. Elly died at the age of 78. ...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, and AltaGas. Greetings you curious, you courageous Herle Burly-ites! Courage – real courage – is a pretty valuable commodity in the current geo-political climate. Speaking out, truth telling as the situation warrants it, and according to one’s own principles, is a manifestation of that. Our guest today is Jason Kenney, the 18th Premier of Alberta, and a multi...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, and AltaGas. Alright, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Sound the horns, because we have a 3-time guest on the show today. Pollster, campaign guru, and political strategist Nick Kouvalis is here. If you follow Nick on Twitter, you’ll know him as candid. At times, shockingly so. And perhaps never more so than this week in politics. Which is to say, Nick h...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, Bruce Power, and AltaGas. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! It occurs to us here at Air Quotes Media, that when the Prime Minister goes to China ... makes an historic trade deal ... and then invokes the term “New World Order” in his statement to the press – Carney said it slowly, dramatically, deliberately – you gather the most expert people you can think ...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Greetings and a happy 2026, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! What better way to kick off our podcast year than by convening the most popular panel we run at Air Quotes Media. So demanded by this listenership, we’ve welcomed back The Chiefs to give us their governance wisdom! These are 3 former Chiefs of Staff to some of Canada’s most accomplished heads of government...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail. Alright, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites. We’ll get right into it, because we have a Cabinet Minister on the Christmas pod today. And not just any Cabinet Minister ... The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s Minister of Finance and National Revenue! Today marks his 2nd appearance on The Herle Burly and you all know he delivered Budget 2025 in the House,...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, CPA Ontario, and the Port of Vancouver. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites. I’m looking for the most accurate adjective to sum up the year in Canadian politics. Watershed ... Pivotal ... Seismic. They all fit to some extent. But they don’t really capture the whole of it, eh? So, the pod today is a Journalists Panel to do a fulsome Year in Review on all that ...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, PSAC, and the Port of Vancouver. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! We’ve got a special 2-part episode lined up for you today… a Canada-Alberta Pipeline MOU Double-Pod Double-Panel Policy & Politics Extravaganza! Unwieldy name, I know. But it’s apt because we’re going to look at the thing through the lens of both policy and politics with 2 different pan...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, PSAC, and the Port of Vancouver. Alright, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites. The Honourable Susan Holt, Premier of New Brunswick, the one and only remaining Liberal Premier in Canada, has graciously made time for us today. I don’t want to give too much of this away because I want to talk more about her life and why she got into politics, but Premier Holt became the 3...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, PSAC, and the Canadian Nuclear Isotope Council. Alright, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! So, about 8 weeks ago I started in on a book, and I could NOT put it down. What makes “The Coutts Diaries: Power, Politics and Pierre Trudeau” so compelling, is that it is what it says it is ... a written diary of exactly what when on in the backrooms of power during most of Pi...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, PSAC, and the Canadian Nuclear Isotope Council. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! This week – making their now regular quarterly appearance on the pod – I give you The Chiefs: Ian Brodie, Tim Murphy, and Brian Topp! Ottawa is pretty much laser-focused on the budget these days – the substance and the politics surrounding it – and that’s what we’re primaril...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, PSAC, and the Canadian Nuclear Isotope Council. Alright, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites, there’ll be no intro grasping at humour today. I can’t compete. Too intimidated. Because our guest on the pod is genuine Canadian comedy royalty: Mark Critch! The co-creator, star and co-writer of the hit CBC series “Son of a Critch” based on his best-selling memoir. For 22 sea...

The Herle Burly was created by Air Quotes Media with support from our presenting sponsor TELUS, as well as CN Rail, PSAC, and the Canadian Nuclear Isotope Council. Greetings, you curiouser and curiouser Herle Burly-ites! Tuesday this week was budget day, the Carney government’s long-awaited, first. And as we typically do when there’s a fresh budget to pick apart – we’ve assembled the policy panel for our very own Herle Burly Budget Lock-up. Dr. Jennifer Robson, Tyler Meredith and Ben Wo...