Open Sources Guelph #465 - April 4, 2024

Guelph Politicast

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're feeling hungry... Hungry for the news! To begin with we will look 75 years into the past to when the last piece of Canada fell into place, and speaking of piece, we'll talk about the people who get the bigger parts of paycheque pie. It's going be no piece of cake for the people that fight forest fires in Ontario this summer, but there could be a sour lemon in the U.S. election.

This Thursday, April 4, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

Diamond Jubi-Newfie. Exactly 75 years ago last Sunday, Newfoundland and Labrador became the 10th and (so far) final province to join the Canadian confederation. It wasn't an easy process, and the people of Newfoundland only voted to join after two referendums, and by a bare majority. We'll talk about why there still seems to be a debate about whether those voters in 1949 made the right call.

Let the Sunshine In. Last week, the Ontario government released the annual Public Salary Disclosure, aka: The Sunshine List. Introduced in 1996, it provides a list of public servants that make over $100,000, and it's a hot button topic for people that don't like how government employees make such a nice living, and that goes double in an affordability crisis. Still, do we put to much emphasis on all that "Sunshine"?

Fire Storm. It may not look or feel like it right now, but spring is here and that means firefighters in Ontario's north are getting ready for another busy fire season. At issue though is whether or not the provincial government is taking the danger seriously enough because everyone from opposition parties to the firefighters' own union says they're not. What will it take to get real government action?

Spoiler Alert? Last week, independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, the independently wealthy ex-wife of one of the Google founders who has no experience in public service. Polling suggests that RFK Jr.is getting a lot of use out of his last name and less from his status as a well-known anti-vaxxer, so will Kennedy be spoiler, and whom will he spoil more?

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