In the latest episode of The Line Podcast, recorded on July 3rd, 2026, Matt Gurney and Jen Gerson begin with the biggest political news of the week: a pipeline deal. Prime Minister Mark Carney has struck agreements with both Alberta and British Columbia to move another pipeline project forward. Your hosts discuss the proposed route, which closely follows the existing Trans Mountain corridor, the political wheeling and dealing that made the agreement possible, and what it could mean for Alberta’s upcoming referendum. Matt also can’t help asking an obvious question: since this was always the logical outcome, why did it take so long? Was there a genuine engineering obstacle behind the scenes, or are Canadian governments simply incapable of moving quickly?
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Next, they turn to another round of comments from U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra. After a brief discussion of CUSMA, the conversation shifts to Hoekstra’s remarks about the Gordie Howe International Bridge. Your hosts aren’t especially worried. In fact, they think they have the perfect strategy: troll the White House until it becomes so embarrassed that it can’t wait to open the bridge just to make the pain stop. Their suggestions include live episodes of The View from the bridge deck, Bruce Springsteen concerts, and, naturally, renaming it the Barack Hussein Obama Nobel Peace Prize Bridge of Friendship.
This episode is also brought to you by BioCanRx, a federally-funded Canadian not-for-profit research network focused on cutting-edge immunotherapy research that they’re helping Canadian researchers bring from labs to patients in clinical trials –– all in Canada.
Clinical trials are the way new drugs, including immunotherapies, are tested in patients around the world. Health Canada, our national regulator, reviews and approves all Clinical Trial Applications, or CTAs, returning a decision within 30 days –– a similar turnaround time as the US FDA and other major jurisdictions. To submit a complete CTA, applicants need to provide hundreds –– sometimes thousands –– of pages of data showing that a drug has a compelling chance of providing benefit, that it can be manufactured consistently, and that it’s safe to administer to trial participants.
This is especially hard for Canadian researchers because scientific studies that generate the necessary data aren’t supported by many federal grants, which usually prioritize originality over real world impact. BioCanRx helps Canadian researchers succeed in the CTA process, and so far they’ve gotten 16 therapies to trial.
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Finally, Matt attempts to diagnose what has gone wrong with Canada’s civic culture and even ventures a possible cure. Toronto, he argues, needs its own version of the Calgary Stampede, and Canada more broadly needs something capable of genuinely uniting the country. The trouble is that neither host can think of an obvious candidate. They conclude that Canada — and Toronto in particular — has become too self-conscious and too embarrassed by its own past to celebrate it with much enthusiasm.
All that and more in the latest episode of The Line Podcast.
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Thanks, all. Talk to you soon.
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