“Think of it in four steps….wellhead, hub, rack, retail. Every person there has to make a margin.”
Robert Johnston of Eurasia Group joins host Aaron Reynolds to explain what determines the price of oil, who sets the price, and what factors influence prices at the pumps.
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“The ultimate is goal is equality but we have a long way to go before both languages are equal.”
Commissioner of Official Languages, Raymond Théberge, joins host Aaron Reynolds to discuss how and why Canada became a bilingual country, what it means to our national identity, and why it’s important to preserve those laws both federally and provincially.
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“It’s not like a museum where things are on display and visitors come and look, this is a collection in use.”
On this special episode of Explain Like I’m Five, host Aaron Reynolds visits Parliament Hill to speak with the Curator of the House of Commons Johanna Mizgala about the history and significance of the Centre Block building, shortly before it closes for a decade-long renovation.
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“Morgentaler took one of his prosecutions up to the Supreme Court of Canada on the grounds that this procedure in the criminal code violated a woman’s charter rights and that was R v. Morgentaler case of 1988.”
Daphne Gilbert, law professor at the University of Ottawa, joins host Aaron Reynolds to explain the genesis of Canada’s abortion law, how it’s changed over time, and its parallels to Roe vs. Wade in the United States.
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“In some countries, if the minister of the interior or the president doesn’t like you, they can ask the secret service to just go out and investigate you and make a nuisance. In this country, that’s absolutely forbidden. You need a threat to national security.”
Dick Fadden, former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and national security advisor to the prime minister, joins host Aaron Reynolds to explain what CSIS is, how it operates, what it’s comparable to internationally, and why security threats look a lot different today.
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“We always understood that it was about integration, it was about reserving a space for peoples’ identities, but again always within that Canadian construct of laws and values.”
Andrew Griffith, former director general of citizenship and multiculturalism at Citizenship and Immigration Canada, joins host Aaron Reynolds to talk about how the Canadian immigration system works, the pressures it faces, and the philosophies that shaped it.
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“Success and failure in any kind of large scale complex envirotechnical system – they’re not always opposite from one another. In some cases failure is a symptom of success.”
“The theory of the framers of the constitution was that they wanted members of the House of Representatives to be elected every two years so that they were directly and closely responsible to the people.”
Bill Owens, former U.S. congressman and now senior advisor in the public policy and regulation practice at Dentons, joins host Aaron Reynolds to explain the United States’ midterm elections while providing a crash course on the structure of the American government.
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“There can be a carrot and a stick. The stick is you put a price on carbon use particularly in the ways you can get at it pretty easily, like burning fossil fuels, but if you raise money using that process you can then use that money to create carrots.”
Mark Cameron, executive director of Canadians for Clean Prosperity, joins host Aaron Reynolds to demystify carbon pricing, including the origins of carbon tax and cap-and-trade, how C02 emissions are measured, how these mechanisms are enforced, and where the money ends up.
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