The Bill Kelly Show Podcast:

Erin O’Toole told the Conservative caucus Monday night that there were two paths before them.

On Wednesday, they chose one that didn’t include him in the lead.

Conservative MPs voted decisively Feb. 2 to plunge the party into its third leadership contest since Stephen Harper stepped down in 2015. In the end, it wasn’t close – with 73 MPs voting to remove O’Toole, and just 45 lining up to support him.

What happened, where does the party go from here, who is running and who will win the next CPC leadership?

GUEST: Muhammad Ali, Senior Consultant for Crestview Strategies

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Much of the current debate about inflation focuses on how Canada is doing relative to other countries, especially the U.S. Unfortunately, many people, including economists, are quick to simply compare the consumer price index (CPI) in the two countries. The latest readings were 7.0 per cent in the U.S. versus 4.8 per cent here, which suggests inflation is less of a problem for us. But this ignores how the CPI (and many other statistics) differ among national statistical agencies.

GUEST: Philip Cross, Munk Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Former chief economic analyst at Statistics Canada

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New Ontario Chamber report highlights sectors dampened by labour shortages, supply chain issues 

GUEST: Claudia Dessanti, Senior Manager of Policy with the Ontario Chamber of Commerce

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The U.S. South is becoming an increasingly important lumber supplier in North America, bolstered by Canadian companies gaining easy access to forests and the side benefit of escaping U.S. tariffs on softwood.

The U.S. Lumber Coalition says punitive tariffs against lumber producers in Canada since 2017 are the reason production has ramped up in the United States. But industry experts in Canada say higher output south of the border has much more to do with the availability of timber supplies than duty rates against Canadian producers.

GUEST: Liz Kovach, President of the Western Retail Lumber Association