Canada's budget passed recently, and at a much later time in the year than normal. Join us as we converse the main points of the budget.

As with everything, there was a lot of politics involved in passing the budget. We explore the floor crossing and resignation announcement and some of the other ins and outs of what happened leading up to the budget.

We received a number of questions over the past while, and we spend this whole episode going through them and answering them one by one.

Some of the question topics include:

- clarification on public sector vs. private sector wages

- Alberta MLA salaries increasing in 2012

- several clarifying questions around the teachers being legislated back to work

- the purpose of Question Period in the Legislature/House of Commons

Thank you everyone for listening and especially those that take time to send in questions and trust us to answer them openly and honestly. We appreciate you all.

As with all things, we look to take a balanced and fair look at any issue in exploring both sides. This episode is no different as we take on the heavy task of analyzing the public sector unrest here in Alberta. Many of the issues in Alberta are also being seen across Canada. We explore also the big issue here in Alberta as just this past week, teachers were ordered back to work after 3 weeks of striking by the Government of Alberta with the use of the Notwithstanding Clause within the constitution.

It was only right that we start with looking at inflation and what causes it, as that is a major factor into why unions are fighting so hard for, among other things, higher wages. We move into the public sector union unrest and then of course discuss in particular the interaction between the Alberta Teachers Association and the Government of Alberta. As part of this we explore a bit about what the Notwithstanding Clause is and what its consequences are in this instance.

We hope you find this informative and enlightening as we dive into this hot topic.

With our first run on Municipal Elections quickly jumping to our 2nd most listened to episode, we decided to add some further discussion to the mix.

In this episode we discuss some of the logistics around running an election as workers and challenges in counting that will be faced this time around in the absence of electronic voting tabulators.

We also look at additional municipal areas of responsibility so you can better understand what you can and cannot expect from not only your local councilor, but also the local school board trustees as well.

In this episode we discuss the upcoming municipal elections here in Alberta and some of the major hot button issues. We also touch on some of the topics that you should discuss with the candidates when they come to your door. We hope you'll join us as we have some spirited debate around bike lanes and discuss what municipal officials have control over.

John and I discuss the Prime Minister's first four months in office as we head into the fall sitting of parliament. There have certainly been some highlights both good and bad.

UPDATE: We recorded this just days before the official announcement on the major nation building projects was officially released. We acknowledge here that a major LNG project was on the list. However, much of our discussion on energy projects and what needs to happen to move more of them forward is still relevant.

Do you know how much Canada spent on climate change initiatives? What did we achieve with it? It could have been so much more.

Join us as we revisit a couple forms of energy that deserve a little more attention - hydrogen and coal, and then we have a more broad look at politics and policy changes that affect the effectiveness of climate policy.

We start a two part discussion around different forms of energy and the slow conversion to greener forms of energy. Why does green energy cost more? What is the hold-up if there is such urgency? As with most things, it's very political.

Join us as we start discussing the several forms of energy that we use here in Canada and the energy options moving forward. We will follow up next week with a more focused discussion around the politics of climate change and the greener energy sources of the future.