Open Sources Guelph #495 - November 28, 2024

Guelph Politicast

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we wish we could shake it off. It would be our wildest dream to come on the radio one week and have something normal to talk about, but we knew this was trouble when we saw it cross our newsfeeds this week. We're going to discuss what happened in Montreal last weekend, an arrest warrant for a controversial world leader, and final thoughts about the 2025 Guelph budget with one of our councillors. Hopefully, no bad blood there.

This Thursday, November 28, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

Gone in Swiftie Seconds. While Justin Trudeau was dancing to Taylor Swift in Toronto, Montreal was burning down... That was the message on social media Friday night, painting the PM as out of touch, hanging out a concert as a Canadian city was under siege. Except that's not what happened. We will talk about what really happened on the streets of Montreal on Friday, how it got so overblown so fast, how Trudeau has become a useful boogeyman on the right, and how we need to start understanding why.

The Warrant Trap. The International Criminal Court last week announced that they had issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes in Gaza. Many western governments have said that they won't be enforcing that warrant, but Canada is not one of them. Still, it seems pretty unlikely that Netanyahu will stand before The Hague any time soon, so what do these warrants do and can they inflict any leverage on Israel even as a ceasefire with Lebanon's been secured?

The Six Per Cent. Guelph City Council added amendments to the 2025 budget on Wednesday and thus closed the annual process. The increase for next year is just over six per cent, which isn't the four per cent Mayor Cam Guthrie wanted, but it isn't the 10 per cent he didn't want either. We talked to Ward 3 Councillor Michele Richardson just before the budget vote to get insights into the 2025 numbers, and what she thought about this complicated process going into the last meeting.

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