4 JUL 2024 · This week on Now and Next: Lindsay Broadhead, Brad Ross, Anne Marie Aikins and Bob Reid join the roundtable. Calls for US President Joe Biden haven't slowed down. In fact, they're heating up a week after his disastrous debate performance. Justin Trudeau says he's "listening" to Canadians after his party's devastating defeat in the Toronto-St. Paul's by-election. But is he listening to his MPs? So, far, the PM is dismissing calls for an emergency caucus meeting. And new polling suggests Bonnie Crombie's provinicial Liberals would run away with seats in Toronto if Ontario Premier Doug Ford decides to pull the chute and call an early election in the Spring of 2025. Also, what's going on at Metrolinx and Infrastructure Ontario? The latest numbers for the Ontario Line suggest the budgets have more than doubled since the project was announced.  Anne Marie and Brad know a thing or two about the money messaging at the TTC and Metrolinx!

27 JUN 2024 · This week on Now and Next: David Coletto, CEO and Founder of Abacus Data, joins the podcast to analyze the results from the By-election in the federal riding of St. Paul's. He says there's no way to consider this outcome as anything other than a crushing, if not shocking result from the Trudeau government. The Conservatives won the mid-town Toronto seat by 600 votes this week. And St. Paul's might be considered one of THE safest Liberal seats in the country. They've held it for more than thirty years. The St. Paul's loss amounts to a referndum on Prime Minister Trudeau's plunging popularity. It puncuates perceptions that his government is rudderless, with little or no understanding of what  Canadians need or want. That's going to create some serious challenges for the Liberal party as it prepares for the next election, set for the fall of 2025. "The Prime Minister has never been as unpopular as he is today", says Coletto. "There are some (Candians) who are tired of him. They don't dislike him. They just are tired of him. They don't think he's relevant for the times, that he's got the energy left. And then there's a lot of Canadians who just really don't like him."

20 JUN 2024 · This week on Now and Next - Story Studio Network's flagship podcast Our comms crew assembles! Lindsay Broadhead, Brad Ross, Anne Marie Aikins and Bob Reid join Dave Trafford at the Now and Next table to go hard and deep on stories that need more than just headlines. - Calgary's water main break was predictable and preventable. But city council's wilfful ignorance created an H2O OMG crisis on the eve of the Calgary Stampede. - Meanwhile, Toronto City Council wastes hard to come by tax dollars to change the name of Yonge-Dundas Square to disassociate it with Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville PC and Baron Dunira. Dundas is accused of single-handedly delaying the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. - New research from Food Banks Canada suggests one in four Canadians live in poverty. - Who's spying and who's lying. Accusations by Canada's intelligence overseers suggest some of our MPs cooperated with foreign agents to influence political outcomes. But it's all HUSH HUSH. - Who should get fired for writing Deputry PM Chrystia Freeland's dystopia dissertation on the need for a new Capital Gains Tax. Freeland says failing to tweek the tax will lead to untold, unwanted pregnancies across the country!! - BUT WAIT...there's good news. - - Bob just came off a grand trans Canada tour! - Lindsay's looking forward to taking in a Sarah McLachlan concert - Brad survived an encounter with his Auto Insurance company. - AMA is flitting through Wedding Season - AND DT got to be a Tourist in His Own Town with his Grand Daughter Piper!

13 JUN 2024 · This week on Now and Next: The Russian Navy is parked mere miles off the coast of Florida. A frigate, a nuclear-powered submarine, an oil tanker and a rescue tug arrived in Havana harbour on June 12.  RCAF veteran, retired Major General https://www.linkedin.com/feed/ has a unique perspective on this. He served as Director of Operations for NORAD. He says the frigate "Gorshkov" is armed with cruise missiles - all conventional weapons. Russia's cruise missiles have a range of approximately 3,000 kilometers. (NOTE: Toronto is just under 2,500 from Cuba. Just saying.) General Clancy says, "a wave of cruise missiles could come at North America, all conventional, taking out a significant amount of targets - crippling American and Canadian economic and electrical infrastructure elements. That's the real threat here." That threat is amplified because there is no North American military mechanism that could effectively defend against cruise missiles launched off the coast of Cuba.  But wait! No need to locate the nearest bomb shelter! (Yet). Clancy's quick to point out the Russian exercises are meant as a message from Moscow to Washington. "We're coming straight at your (North American) homeland." All of this happens as the G7 gathers in Italy. Among other things, the leaders will consider the need to financially support for Ukraine and ponder what the world will look like if Donald Trump ascends to the presidency for a second term in 2025. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/, professor of politcal science and a US constitutional authority at https://www.linkedin.com/feed/, says the closer we get to the November election day, the more likely is appears the United States and the world will have to brace for Trump 2.0. Either way, a Trump win or a Trump loss, Professor Schultz expects domestic turmoil, (if not political chaos), leading up to and following Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025.

7 JUN 2024 · This week on Now and Next: Our Comms Crew is assembled.  Brad Ross spent a good portion of his comms career working for the TTC. Anne Marie Aikins has just recently retired from the provincial transit overlord - Metrolinx. And Lindsay Broadhead is the former Comms Chief at the City of Toronto. They all agree, a TTC strike would be sheer chaos for commuters but, longer term, it would be a  reputational disaster for a transit service that's already struggling to maintain any level of respect or trust in the eyes of its customers.

30 MAY 2024 · This week on Now and Next: We explore Music, Recovery, and Community with musician, singer, songwriter https://www.qwproductions.com/talent/quisha-wint/. Quisha is "one of Toronto’s sought-after session vocalists, currently living in the GTA, Quisha is a rising star in the tight-knit music industry thanks to her bright personality and strong emotive vocal abilities." But she's also a live organ donor. https://www.instagram.com/p/C7Y0mslufXW/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== - how she ended up donating part of her liver to save the life of a 16 year old girl. Quisha's a board member at the https://torontobluessociety.com/ and https://hughsroomlive.com/.

23 MAY 2024 · This week on Now and Next: Our veteran comms crew is back at the table! Lindsay Broadhead, Bob Reid, Anne Marie Aikins and Brad Ross join SSN Chief Executive Producer Dave Trafford. The series finale of The Good Doctor sparked a spirited conversation about the commoditization of cancer by big network, prime time television dramas. We've culturally normalized cancer as a means of growing audiences. But how do you do medical drama without addressing cancer? Also: - Pierre Poilievre's call for a summer gas tax hoilday is a masterful bit of messaging but there's still 18 months or so before the next federal election. Is it too much too soon? - the crew weighs in on corporate apologies and getting "out in front" of issues. RBC did it right with the announcement of the bank's CFO termination. - And US VP Kamala Harris drops the F-bomb to punctuate her talk on breaking down barriers.

16 MAY 2024 · This week on Now and Next: Rocco Rossi is the inaugural President and CEO of https://shift25.ca/ - a new movement "cultivate a BOLD and thriving Canada - teaching our kids "every failure is just feedback on the way to success." And Keith Currie, President of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture joins us to talk about the challenge of balancig the need for farmland, housing, and food production in Canada. AND.. The chorus and calls to fast track a three year road maintenance and construction project on the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto are hitting a cresendo! The road work is causing extraordinary chaos for commuters, (including some local polticians). It's just hell trying to get around downtown. Now, what's getting glossed over is the story that transit workers in Toronto could go on strike in a month or so. And, remember, we haven't had a strike in Toronto at the TTC since it was declared an essential service in 2011. Now, I like to think I'm paying attention, but a court quietly overturned that Essential Service Order about a year ago. Transit workers can now go on strike. And if they do, we'll be entering a whole new circle of Hell! You think commuting is screwed up now because of the Gardiner construction? Wait until there's no subway. Wait until there are no buses. Wait until there are no streetcars. And then tell me that Doug shouldn't be using the notwithstanding clause and declare the TTC an essential service.

9 MAY 2024 · This week on NOW and NEXT: We're excited to introduce an All-Star Roundtable including https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsay-broadhead-39285b13/, https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-ross-a207258/, https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-marie-aikins-07809218/, and https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobreidtoronto/. They're all veteran Comms pros and they bring their considerable collective experience in war rooms, boardrooms, behind private and public sector podiums. In our inaugural sitdown: - The Toronto Police Service is in a rolling boil integrity crisis. Supt. Stacey Clarke has helped officers cheat on promotional exams. And the OPP has been called in to investigate the Under Cover unit after Justice Anne Molloy raised a concern that Toronto police officers "colluded" when offering eye witness testimony during the trial of Umar Zameer - accused of murdering Det. Const. Jeffery Northrup. The jury found Zameer not guilty on all counts. - Did Story Daniels say "too much"? Does her testimony at Donald Trump's criminal trial in New York actually help the former President? - Pierre Polilievre has weaponized "disrepect" and "outrage" in his campaign against the Trudeau government since taking on the job as leader of the federal Conservative Party. But he took it to a whole new level when he launched his "Wacko" campaign in the Commons. - And, WTF is going on with Robert F. Kennedy Junior?

3 MAY 2024 · This week on NOW and NEXT: We're joined by Sheila Regehr, Chair of Basic Income Network Canada and Jessie Golem, who is part of a class action lawsuit seeking $200 million in damages from the Ontario government. The lawsuit claims the government breached terms and conditions of a contract it entered with 4,000 low income Ontarians who qualified for a basic income pilot project. The program was cancelled after the Progressive Conservatives defeated the Liberal government in 2018.