Show Notes
What happens when politicians and their staff decide the questions are the problem?
This week on Balance of Power, Leah Ward and Shannon Phillips break down two spectacular examples of how not to handle the media, and what competent political communication is supposed to look like when the stakes are high.
First: Ontario’s wildfire response. After a ministerial staffer interrupted a live CBC interview to declare that there would be no more questions, Leah and Shannon explain why crisis communication requires more information, more availability, and fewer fights with reporters.
Then: Devin Dreeshen’s continuing inability to answer a very simple question. Is Alberta’s transportation minister a separatist, and will he vote to keep Alberta in Canada? If he knows the question is coming, why can’t he answer it?
Plus, for Patreon subscribers: what would a genuinely progressive response to tariffs, artificial intelligence and data centres look like? Leah and Shannon talk worker protections, digital sovereignty, public investment, Wab Kinew’s rejection of a proposed hyperscale data centre, and the case for a national electricity grid.
Wildfires, media training, separatism, political staffing, worker power, artificial intelligence, and the revolutionary idea that ministers should just answer the Fing questions.
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