Redeye: Recent Episodes
Redeye Collective
A progressive take on current events. Produced by an independent media collective at Vancouver Cooperative Radio.
Rights advocates in Canada are welcoming a new review and complaints body for the Canadian Border Services and the RCMP. A network of nine civil society organizations say the new commission is long overdue, but still falls short of what is needed. We talk with Tim McSorley, National Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.
A report released last week reveals that millions of dollars in Canadian charitable donations have been funneled to organizations implicated in supporting illegal Israeli settlements, violent settler groups, and military activities in the occupied Palestinian territories. Under the Guise of Charity was produced by Just Peace Advocates, Independent Jewish Voices Canada and Miles Howe. We speak with author Miles Howe.
Today, almost one in 4 of all species are at risk of extinction, from caribou and spotted owls to sea stars and slime mould. In her new book, Sarah Cox visits the habitats where species are threatened, and the people who are trying to save them. She documents heroic efforts to prevent animal species from disappearing while, at the same time, challenging us to question the approaches we’re taking. Sarah Cox is an award-winning reporter and B.C. bureau chief for The Narwhal.
In 2016, Newfoundland filmmaker Justin Simms became the father of a son. Later that year, Donald Trump won his first term as president, fuelled by the rise of white supremacy and a particularly toxic form of masculinity. Simms was daunted by the prospect of being a father to a little white boy, born into middle-class privilege, and started to ask himself what he could do as a father to help him become a caring adult. He spent the next eight years making the documentary Sons, which premiered online in January at nfb.ca. We speak with Justin Simms from his home in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
For years, the Mitchikanibikok Inik First Nation community has fought to keep mining off of their territory. In an important ruling, the Superior Court of Québec has recognized that the Québec government failed for decades in its constitutional duty to consult the Mitchikanibikok Inik First Nation when mining claims were granted on its territory. Lawyers from Ecojustice and the Centre québécois du droit de l’environnement argued that the Quebec mining act violated the constitution, and they won. We speak with Joshua Ginsberg, the lawyer for Ecojustice who represented Mitchikanibikok Inik First Nation in this case.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the federal government introduced a special program to allow Ukrainians to temporarily work, study and stay in Canada until it was safe for them to return home. Nearly 300 thousand people have since arrived through that program. In late 2023, Canada announced a similar program to help Canadians get family members out of Gaza. 10 months later, it is unclear whether the program has facilitated the exit of any Palestinians from Gaza. We speak with immigration and refugee lawyer Randall Cohn.
Non-disclosure agreements were originally a mechanism for protecting trade secrets. But they are now increasingly used as a matter of default in settlement agreements for all kinds of civil disputes, including those related to sexual misconduct, harassment and discrimination. We speak with Julie Macfarlane of Can't Buy My Silence, a campaign to end the misuse of NDAs.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, we saw a global reckoning on anti-Black racism. In response to this uprising and demand for action, universities across North America scrambled to make public commitments to racial justice. But some Black scholars in Canada say these pledges now face a challenging landscape. We talk with Dr. Cornel Grey, assistant professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at Western University. He joins me now.
Think globally, act locally is an old adage, but one that might be relevant as Canada works to strengthen our national economy. With US economic aggression shaking the economy, everyone is searching for ways to bolster businesses and industries here. Dr. Heather Hachigian says Canada’s policy makers need a renewed approach to economic development – one that focuses on the local. Hachigian is an assistant professor in the Masters of Global Management Program at Royal Roads University.
PACE Society is a peer-driven organization located in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver that provides support, advocacy, and education for current and former sex workers. In late February, they announced they were temporarily suspending services and programming and laying off most staff. PACE’s announcement followed a string of closures and service reductions at other organizations serving sex workers and other marginalized women. Jennie Pearson joins us to talk about why these closures happened and what’s needed to support women in the Downtown Eastside. She is a PhD Candidate in the Interdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program at UBC. She is also a volunteer with PACE Society.
Canada Council director Michelle Chawla says Canadian decision-makers need to acknowledge that the arts have a vital role to play in these uncertain times. In response to the threats of annexation by the U.S. and the tariffs aimed at weakening the Canadian economy, there has been a major rise in nationalistic cultural expression. Musicologist Rosheeka Parahoo says that when it comes to radio play, funding and recognition, the promise of diverse Canadian music has seldom matched the reality. And that needs to change.
Patriotism has surged across Canada in response to Donald Trump’s attacks on our economic stability and sovereignty. In the midst of all this rallying behind the flag, Alpha Abebe says it’s a good time to consider who and what is being obscured in the current surge of Canadian patriotism. She is with the Faculty of Humanities and the Lead for Africa and Black Diaspora Studies at McMaster University.
The Nechako River was one of the main tributaries of the Fraser until the Kenney Dam was built in the 1950s. The dam diverted most of the river’s flow to power Rio Tinto Alcan’s aluminum smelter in Kitimat, severely impacting the lives of the local Stellat’en and Saik’uz Nations. Nechako is a new film that documents years of resistance by the two Nations, including a groundbreaking legal proceeding against the Canadian government and Rio Tinto Alcan that continues to this day. We speak with writer and director Lyana Patrick of the Stellat’en First Nation.
The English Language leader’s debate on April 17 ended with the abrupt cancellation of standard post-debate scrum. At the centre of the incident was the accreditation of right-wing Rebel News and tensions between them and journalists at the event. We talk with the Tyee's Jen St. Denis about what happened that evening in Montreal.
Every December, students across Canada enjoy a two-week break to celebrate Christmas. In spring, Good Friday and Easter Monday bring further celebrations and a long weekend. But for Canadian students who want to mark celebrations in their own traditions, it often means being marked “absent” from school. A research professor who worked with high school students in Alberta says Canada should recognize celebrations like Eid, Diwali and Lunar New Year as public holidays. We speak with Dr. Rahat Zaidi, research professor in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary.
Allegations of political interference involving Alberta Health Services have been swirling around the provincial government for weeks. The former CEO of Alberta Health Services. Athana Mentzelopoulos, is suing the province for wrongful dismissal, saying she was fired in January for looking into the overpays on contracts with private surgical providers. As the province continues to be hit by allegations of corruption and political interference, a new report from the Parkland Institute reveals how privatization has dramatically increased costs, undermined public hospitals, and prolonged wait times for critical surgeries. We speak with Andrew Longhurst, health policy researcher and the author of the report, Operation Profit.
The ongoing genocide in Gaza has been widely covered in the Canadian media. Yet the coverage has been shown to be unfair, misleading, and biased in favour of Israel. A 2023 analysis by The Breach of thousands of sentences in Canada’s top newspapers found that the largest Canadian newspapers have given disproportionate attention to the deaths of Israelis, portrayed Israelis in more humanized ways and more often identified who was responsible for killing them. In response to this clear bias against Palestinians, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East set up their Media Accountability Project and has played an active role in challenging media bias about the situation in Gaza since then. We speak with Lynn Naji, media analyst at CJPME.
Big news at Vancouver City Hall this week with the election of Lucy Maloney from OneCity and Sean Orr from COPE as the new city councillors. They are jumping into a busy council agenda including public hearings about the massive proposed development on the Jericho lands in Point Grey and four more Broadway plan rezoning. Redeye collective member Ian Mass joins us to give us his thoughts on next week’s goings on at Vancouver City Council.
People living in highly unequal societies experience a broad range of health and social problems which affect everyone, no matter how much money they have. That’s why we should be paying attention to the latest Statistics Canada data on rising economic inequality in Canada. The latest numbers on household finances show a near-record gap in the share of disposable income held by the top 40% of Canadian households compared to the bottom 40%. The wealth gap is even larger than the income gap. Yet even these shocking statistics don’t tell the whole story about wealth inequality in Canada. Alex Hemingway is senior economist and public finance policy analyst with BC Policy Solutions. He joins me today to talk about two facets of wealth inequality: billionaires and housing.
A healthy and robust news environment is central to any country’s democratic health. However the last sixteen years have not been kind to local news outlets in Canada. Many residents of communities, both big and small, now find themselves living in “news deserts” or “areas of news poverty.” A new report aims to better understand the decline in local news outlets across Canada and to examine what role public-service media could take to tackle local news deprivation. We speak with David Macdonald, one of the authors, and senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Mining critical minerals has been called the new gold rush. Nickel, copper and other critical minerals are highly sought after in the drive to manufacture new technologies. And some mining companies want to extract these minerals from the deep sea. The Metals Company, a Vancouver-based mining firm, has spent years promoting the idea that mining in the deep ocean has a relatively low environmental impact. Now they want to sidestep an international regulatory body called the International Seabed Authority. We’re joined by Catherine Coumins, Research Coordinator and Asia-Pacific Program Coordinator at MiningWatch Canada.
Filmmakers Nova Ami and Velcrow Ripper live in Gibsons, B.C. Like most of us here in B.C., they have experienced wildfire smoke in their community every summer for the last few years. This started them reflecting on what they could add to the conversation as documentary filmmakers who’ve covered crises throughout their work. Their new film Incandescence weaves together on-the-ground footage with first-person accounts from first responders and people who have lost their homes to wildfire. Incandescence is produced and distributed by the National Film Board. It has its Vancouver premiere on April 11.
In recent years, the narrative of immigrants being a drain on the system has been repeated constantly in some Western countries. But we should question how that narrative stacks up against the evidence. A new data set from 22 countries sheds some light on the answer. We speak with Edward Koning, associate professor in political science at the University of Guelph.
On March 22, Independent Jewish Voices Vancouver hosted two Israeli war resisters as part of a nationwide Refuseniks tour. , Einat Gerlitz and Tal Mitnick have been sharing their stories across Canada, shedding light on their public decision to refuse military service in protest of the occupation and the genocide in Gaza. They were joined by physician and author Dr. Gabor Maté. In this episode, we bring you excerpts from last Saturday night’s event at the Peretz Centre in Vancouver.
Advance voting has already begun in the by-election to replace One City councillor Christine Boyle, now an NDP MLA and retiring Green Party councillor Adrienne Carr. The full by-election is scheduled for April 5. Redeye collective member Ian Mass joins us today with his City Beat report. On the agenda, a couple of all-candidate meetings, emerging election issues, the Aquatic Centre rebuild, and lots more.
B.C. is in the midst of an ongoing public health emergency, declared in 2016 in response to significant levels of overdoses and drug poisonings. In response, BC implemented a decriminalization framework in 2023, removing criminal sanctions for possession of small amounts of certain unregulated drugs. Less than 18 months later, B.C. amended the framework, effectively re-criminalizing public drug consumption and possession in public spaces across B.C. A commentary published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health assesses this amendment through a public health lens. We speak with Kelsey Speed, one of the co-authors of the commentary.
Danielle Smith’s government in Alberta brought in legislation that restricts healthcare access for trans and gender diverse young people. Bill 26 prohibits medically-necessary care from being provided to gender diverse people under 16 years old in the province. Egale Canada, Skipping Stone, and five individual gender diverse youth, supported by their parents, have gone to court seeking an injunction against the legislation. We speak with Bennett Jensen, Director of Legal for Egale Canada.
As Canada responds to the economic uncertainty caused by U.S. tariffs, there are grave concerns that relief measures could lead to the increased destruction of Canada’s primary and old-growth forests. Fourteen leading conservation organizations have issued an open letter urging all federal parties to commit to policies that safeguard both forests and workers in the industry. We speak with Jens Wieting, senior policy and science advisor with Sierra Club BC, one of the signatories to the letter.
The Vancouver Public Library has banned staff from wearing symbols of solidarity with Palestine. Many patrons of the library see this as an assault on the VPL's core values of freedom of expression and intellectual freedom. Last week, Concerned Patrons of VPL held an event to protest the ban, and to draw attention to its hypocritical and discriminatory nature. One of the speakers at their event was Omar El Akkad, a guest VPL author who famously tweeted “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This”. We speak with Tamer Aburamadan, a Palestinian community member and part of Concerned Patrons of VPL.
Canada’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, Amira Elghawaby, just brought out a new guide to address anti-Muslim racism in our country. Among the key strategies it identifies is the need to share resources, support networks and advocacy tools. The Maru Society of BC is launching stopislamophobia.ca, an education and outreach campaign in Greater Vancouver and across British Columbia. We speak with Zool Suleman, lawyer and executive director of the Maru Society.
The oil pipeline company Energy Transfer has brought a SLAPP suit against Greenpeace over the 2016-17 protests at Standing Rock. The $300 million lawsuit threatens Greenpeace’s financial existence and has major implications for Indigenous rights and the right to free speech and protest. Thirteen environmental groups have signed a solidarity letter raising concerns. Lorraine Chisholm speaks with Paul Paz y Miño of Amazon Watch, a signatory to the solidarity letter.
A group that advocates for better transit in Greater Vancouver says that if new funding isn’t found to sustain TransLink’s operations by April, we could be facing a 30% cut in rail service and a 50% cut in bus service and leaving some neighbourhoods without a single bus route. Denis Agar is the executive director of Movement: Metro Vancouver Transit Riders. He joins Lorraine Chisholm to talk about their campaign to Save The Bus.
Both Ontario and Germany just had elections. In Germany, more than 80% of the electorate turned out to vote. In Ontario, it was less than 50%. In Germany, the number of seats in the German parliament reflected what voters said with their ballots. In the Ontario election, just 20% of the voters were able to hand Doug Ford a sizeable majority. Fair Vote Canada says the two elections pose a sharp contrast in what democracy can be. We’re joined by Ted Cragg, a long-time volunteer with Fair Vote Canada.
The oil and gas industry has a long history of attempting to shape public perceptions of fossil fuel use and sow doubt about the science of climate change. A new report by the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and For Our Kids finds that oil and gas companies have funded and supplied misleading climate education to children across Canada. We’re joined by Anne Keary, one of the co-authors of the report.
Most liars care enough about the truth to try to conceal it. But simply not caring either way is a different vice, one that American philosopher Harry Frankfurt defined as bullshitting. An example would be President Trump claiming the U.S. has a trade deficit with Canada without having any idea whether that’s true or false. Tim Kenyon examines the motivations behind Trump’s relentless bullshitting in an article published Feb 25. Tim Kenyon is a professor in the humanities department at Brock University and he joins us today on the podcast.
BC Minister of Finance Brenda Bailey tabled the province's 2025 budget on Tuesday this week, the same day that Trump brought in a 25% tariff on all Canadian imports. The tariff situation has since changed and will inevitably change again, but the fact remains that the NDP budget was tabled in a world that is dramatically different from when the government was elected just 4 months ago. Finance minister Bailey defended the projected 10.9 billion dollar operating deficit saying it is necessary to respond to U.S. tariffs and not cut essential public services. We speak with Marc Lee, senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Next week, Vancouver City Council will get its first look at the full plan for the massive redevelopment of the Jericho lands, the Park Board will try to make biking in Stanley Park safer and more accessible, the Vancouver School Trustees will consider restoring democracy at their meetings and lots more. Redeye’s Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.
On a misty morning in the fall of 1985, a small group of Haida people blockaded a muddy dirt road on Lyell Island, demanding that the government work with Indigenous people to find a way to protect the land and the future. The Stand is a riveting feature documentary drawn from more than a hundred hours of archival footage from that first blockade and the months that followed. Christopher Auchter, director of the award-winning documentary Now Is The Time, recreates the critical moment when the Haida Nation took a stand to protect their land. The Stand is showing this month in Vancouver and at other locations around BC. We spoke with Christopher Auchter in September last year.
It was a busy week in Vancouver civic politics. Lots of people spoke at City Hall as Ken Sim’s motion to ban on supportive housing came before council, plus the candidates for the April 5 by-election became clear, the design of the rebuild of the Aquatic centre was up for discussion, and lots more. Lorraine Chisholm speaks with Ian Mass in this week’s City Beat report.
This week, the BC Conservative MLA for Vancouver Quilchena reposted a National Post article about the former residential school site in Kamloops, adding a comment that the number of confirmed child burials at the site is zero. The article is about James Heller who pushed the Law Society of B.C. to change its training material to say there were "potentially" burial sites at the former residential school in Kamloops — instead of more definitive language. Brodie is only one of a number of BC Conservative candidates who has questioned the history of residential school abuse. To discuss these comments and their impact on truth and reconciliation, we speak with Sean Carleton, professor of history and Indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba.
As Donald Trump threatens Canada with an economic war, the country’s political and business class agree that we have to tear down the barriers to trade across provinces. They claim removing these barriers would reduce prices by 15 percent and add 200 billion dollars to Canada’s GDP. Stuart Trew says business lobbyists and right-wing think tanks are exploiting Trump’s threats to push their deregulation agenda. Stuart Trew is a senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives where he directs the Trade and Investment Research Project.
A new report by The Samara Centre for Democracy evaluates abusive content on Twitter during the last Alberta provincial election. The platform, owned by Elon Musk, is now known as X. The study was part of a multi-year initiative that measures abusive content received by Canadian political candidates on social media. It raises big questions about the democratic threats that Canadians face in digital environments. Lorraine Chisholm speaks with Beatrice Wayne, research director at The Samara Centre for Democracy.
Donald Trump’s tariff threats and insistence that Canada become the 51st state have put the issue of national sovereignty firmly on the agenda. It seems obvious that one of the clearest routes to protect Canada now and in the future is to reduce our economic dependence on the United States. One idea that’s been floated is a plan to build an oil pipeline from Alberta to Atlantic Canada. We speak with Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, who says what Canada needs is an east-west electricity grid.
In January, the Supreme Court of Canada announced that it would hear a challenge to Quebec’s secularism law that prohibits certain public sector workers from wearing religious symbols while performing their duties. Those challenging the law argue that the law imposes discriminatory treatment, mainly on Muslim women. They hope this case will give the Court the opportunity to set parameters around the use of the notwithstanding clause. We speak with Natasha Bakht, professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa.
The National Farmers Union says the government should use the 30-day pause on tariffs to protect Canadian farmers from the effects of U.S. tariffs on exports and retaliatory tariffs by Canada on imports. They say farmers are vulnerable because they produce for international and domestic markets - and they use imported equipment and inputs. We speak with Matthew Wiens, board member with the National Farmers Union. He farms with his family, and two other families, at Ploughshares Community Farm, near Beausejour, Manitoba.
A series of anti-trans measures and unscientific definitions of gender are amongst the flurry of executive orders issued by the U.S. president. In addition, Trump signed an executive order intended to bar transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports. Here in Canada, trans people and especially trans youth are facing mounting efforts by conservatives to dismantle the rights and progress they have achieved, and putting them at risk of harm. Travers is a professor of sociology at SFU, and the author of The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) Are Creating a Gender Revolution. They speak with Lorraine Chisholm.
Metro Vancouver has a climate goal of being carbon neutral by 2050. Now that goal is under attack from some members of the Metro Vancouver board. The Dogwood Institute says right-wing populists are trying to scrap climate action from the budget at an upcoming special meeting on February 21. We speak with Ashley Zarbatany, Fossil Gas Campaigner with the Dogwood Institute in Victoria.
The trade war between the U.S. and Canada began with steep tariffs on Canadian goods, followed by retaliatory measures from Canada, and then Trump’s decision to delay the tariffs by 30 days. The delay came after Trudeau promised a so-called Fentanyl Czar and stepped up border security. Canadian political scientists Daniel Drache and Marc Froese say Trump’s tariff threats show the brute power of an imperial presidency. We speak with Marc Froese, professor of political science, and founding director of the International Studies Program at Burman University in Alberta.
The BC Civil Liberties Association along with three individual plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit against the City of Vancouver to challenge the city’s daytime ban on outdoor sheltering. They say this ban is cruel, dehumanizing, and deadly. They will be arguing that it violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Lorraine Chisholm speaks about the case with BCCLA Executive Director Liza Hughes.
In the last election campaign, the NDP said they would ensure affordable before and after school care across BC and create a long-term capital plan to add thousands of affordable child care spaces. They didn’t commit to raising the wages of workers, or transitioning existing child care to $10 a day. We speak with Sharon Gregson of the $10aDay Child Care Campaign about why it’s essential for the provincial government to adopt these two priorities, and their campaign to raise these issues.
Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim chose a day-long summit last month organized by the pro-business coalition Save Our Streets to make a major announcement about housing. He said that he intends to reject any new supportive housing projects proposed in the city of Vancouver and pledged to address what he called the hyper concentration of services in the Downtown Eastside. Peter Waldkirch is with the organization Abundant Housing Vancouver. He joins me today to talk about Ken Sim’s recent pronouncements and what they mean for the housing crisis in Vancouver.
A new book published this month provides an in-depth look into the devastating policies of the Ford government across a wide range of public policy issues: from health care to labour and Indigenous lands. Against the People was co-authored by Brian Evans and Carlo Fanelli. Ryan Kelpin is one of more than 20 contributors to the book. He joins us to talk about Doug Ford’s radical restructuring of municipal governments.
Solidarity Is the Political Version of Love: Lessons from Jewish Anti-Zionist Organizing was published last year by Haymarket Books. The two authors, Rebecca Vilkomerson and Rabbi Alissa Wise, were both staff leaders of Jewish Voice for Peace from 2010 to 2020. In the book, they ask what the politics of solidarity look like in practice, and how left-wing organizations can grow—in numbers and power—while remaining accountable to the broader movements of which they are a part. Rebecca and Alissa were in Vancouver on January 26. We bring you excerpts from that evening.
Last week, Amazon announced that it will lay off all its workers at seven warehouses, fulfillment centres and sorting stations in Quebec. Almost 2000 workers will lose their jobs, 1,700 of which are permanent positions. After a two-year effort, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Laval had unionized with the Confédération des Syndicats Nationaux last May. Amazon claims that its decision to close the Quebec operations was not because of the worker’s successful unionization. The union disagrees. We talk with Adam Donald King, assistant professor in the Labour Studies Program at the University of Manitoba.
Next week Vancouver City Council will get updates on childcare, seniors’ services and a healthy water plan as well as some interesting potential new developments. But the big story is Mayor Ken Sim’s stunning announcements about the Downtown Eastside and they don't appear on any agenda. Redeye collective member Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report for February 1.
In a recent project based in Scarborough, Ontario, Black youth are teaching their communities about their rights, justice and the law using hip hop. The organization RISE offered a Legal Art-ivism program where participants learned about the law, and then developed musical and artistic performances that shared that knowledge using forms that were accessible and engaging to their peers. Sociologist and PhD Candidate Anna Lippman from York University spent time researching the program and its outcomes for the Black youth involved.
Vancouver currently bans apartment buildings on 75% of its residential land. The city says that its current infrastructure wouldn’t be able to accommodate high-density housing — and that upgrading the infrastructure to allow for apartment buildings would be way too expensive. But this is just another rationale for NIMBYism, according to Danny Oleksiuk of The Sightline Institute and Alex Hemingway of CCPA-BC. We speak with Danny Oleksiuk.
The Vancouver Police Department spent the last year exploring the use of body-worn cameras. In November, the VPD asked Council to approve expanding the program to all frontline members. Meanwhile, the RCMP is spending millions of dollars to bring in the use of body-worn cameras across the country. Chris Schneider says body-worn cameras are unlikely to increase public trust and police accountability. Schneider is a professor of sociology at Brandon University and the author of Policing and Social Media: Social Control in an Era of Digital Media.
A new interpretive letter on the Canada Health Act says primary health care services provided by qualified non-physican practitioners must be covered by provincial and territorial plans. However, the letter left the whole area of virtual care unresolved. Dr. Danyaal Raza is a family physician with Unity Health Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, and an Assistant Professor with the University of Toronto. He joins us to speak about the letter.
Next week, Vancouver City Council will debate whether to spend $4M for yet another plan for South False Creek, $3M to continue cutting diseased Hemlock trees in Stanley Park, a motion to install water meters on all Vancouver buildings, Green Party Councillor Adrienne Carr’s resignation and lots more. Redeye collective member, Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.
The new accord developed between the NDP and the Greens includes a special committee that will look at a proportional representation voting system for BC. The cooperation deal opens up a new opportunity for a fairer voting system in the province, according to Gisela Ruckert of Fair Vote Canada.
In 2016, Newfoundland filmmaker Justin Simms became the father of a son. Later that year, Donald Trump won his first term as president, fuelled by the rise of white supremacy and a particularly toxic form of masculinity. Simms was daunted by the prospect of being a father to a little white boy, born into middle-class privilege, and started to ask himself what he could do as a father to help him become a caring adult. He spent the next eight years making the documentary Sons, which premieres this month online at nfb.ca. We speak with Justin Simms from his home in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
After Holborn Properties bought the Dunsmuir Hotel in downtown Vancouver, it allowed the property to deteriorate for nearly 20 years, and evicted all the tenants in 2013. Since then, it has sat empty. Now water damage has caused irreversible interior and structural decay such that Vancouver City Council was called into a special meeting a week before Christmas to deal with a potential imminent collapse of the hotel. Nathan Crompton joins us to talk about the Dunsmuir Hotel and the relationship between developers and City Hall.
Ending Jan 11, Writers Talking - a series of eight conversations from our archives.
In 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to pass a comprehensive law banning metal mining nationwide. The vote was the result of a 12-year struggle by small farmers and their allies to protect the waters of the Lempa River from the impact of gold mining. Robin Broad and John Cavanagh tell this incredible story in their new book The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved A Country From Corporate Greed. We speak with John Cavanagh.
From now until January 11, Writers Talking - a series of eight conversations from our archives.
Travers spent five years talking with trans kids and their parents. Their 2018 book, The Trans Generation, offers a rare look into what it is like to grow up as a transgender child. Travers is a Professor of Sociology at Simon Fraser University.
From now until January 11, Writers Talking - a series of eight conversations from our archives.
We Interrupt This Program tells the story of how Indigenous people are using media tactics to rewrite Canada’s national narratives from an Indigenous perspective. Authors Miranda Brady and John Kelly talked with Lorraine Chisholm in 2018.
From now until January 11, Writers Talking - a series of eight conversations from our archives.
Carmen Rodriguez is an internationally acclaimed Chilean-Canadian author, educator and journalist. Her novel, Atacama, is set against the backdrop of Chile in the first half of the twentieth century and Europe during the Spanish Civil War. It is both a sweeping historical novel and gripping tale of personal drama. Carmen Rodriguez joined us in November 2021 to talk about the book.
From now until January 11, Writers Talking - a series of eight conversations from our archives.
Judging by the constant stream of news reports of standoffs and confrontations, it’s apparent that Canada’s reconciliation project has gone off the rails. In Standoff, lawyer and historian Bruce McIvor examines why reconciliation is failing and what needs to be done to fix it. McIvor is a member of the Manitoba Metis Federation and a partner at First People’s Law. We spoke in December 2021.
From now until January 11, Writers Talking - a series of eight conversations from our archives.
Diet for a Small Planet was the first major cookbook to address the environmental impact of meat production. Author Frances Moore Lappé advocated for a vegetarian lifestyle out of concerns over animal-based industries and products. She also argued that world hunger is not caused by a lack of food but by ineffective food policy. In January 2022, Frances Moore Lappé joined Lorraine Chisholm to discuss the new 50th anniversary edition of the book.
From now until January 11, Writers Talking - a series of eight conversations from our archives.
In one of our most popular podcasts recorded in August 2021, Earle Peach talks with us about writing songs and shares some of his music. Peach is the director of three Vancouver-based choral groups including the High and Lows Choir and Solidarity Notes Labour Choir. He also plays a bunch of instruments and performs with musical groups but he says he identifies most strongly as a songwriter. Questions to the Moon is published by Lazara Press.
From now until January 11, Writers Talking - a series of eight conversations from our archives.
In his first book, The Skin We’re In, journalist and activist Desmond Cole challenged the complacency of people who believe Canada is a post-racial nation. He chronicled one year in the struggle against racism in this country. In March 2020, Desmond Cole joined Lorraine Chisholm in the Coop Radio studios for a lively and engaging conversation about the realities that Black people face every day in Canada.
Bottled water is the world’s most-consumed packaged beverage, but movements to protect water quality and to ensure the right to water are fighting back hard against its commercial exploitation. Now, the water bottling giant BlueTriton has announced it will close Canada’s largest water bottling plant and its entire operations in Ontario after sustained opposition by Water Watch and its allies. We speak with professor Daniel Jaffee, of Portland State University. Jaffee is the author of Unbottled: The Fight against Plastic Water and for Water Justice.
https://theconversation.com/bluetritons-exit-from-ontario-shows-the-effectiveness-of-bottled-water-opposition-movements-243863
Environmental racism is a systemic issue in Canada. There's a long history of marginalized communities suffering at the hands of industry, all authorized by the Crown. In June this year, the Environmental Justice Act received Royal Assent and became law in Canada. But there are doubts that the meaningful consultation committed to in the Act will result in anything substantial. A new report explores why environmental racism exists, how it’s woven into the fabric of the country, and some critical points on how to meaningfully address it. We speak with the report’s author, Levin Chamberlain.
The collapse of the Mount Polley tailings dam in 2014 was one of the worst mining disasters in Canada. The dam failure sent hundreds of tonnes of toxic materials, including arsenic, lead, copper and nickel, into Quesnel Lake. More than a decade later, Imperial Metals Corp has been charged in BC Supreme Court with 15 violations of the federal Fisheries Act. We speak with Jamie Kneen, Canada program co-lead for Mining Watch Canada.
Every year in Metro Vancouver, car crashes kill 100 people and injure many more. Vision Zero Vancouver wants to see the number of deaths and life-altering injuries reduced to zero. They say the problem is not bad drivers, careless pedestrians or reckless cyclists - it’s a system problem, and the designers of our transportation system bear the biggest responsibility for safety. One of their current campaigns is to ban right turns on red. We speak with Nathan Hawkins.
Non-disclosure agreements were originally a mechanism for protecting trade secrets. But they are now increasingly used as a matter of default in settlement agreements for all kinds of civil disputes, including those related to sexual misconduct, harassment and discrimination. We speak with Julie Macfarlane of Can't Buy My Silence, a campaign to end the misuse of NDAs.
Hogan’s Alley was home to Vancouver’s largest Black and African diaspora community for many years. From 1931 to 1971, the City pressured residents to leave Hogan’s Alley. The final blow was the construction of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts in 1972. The Hogan’s Alley Society is committed to daylighting the presence of Black history in Vancouver. We speak with Djaka Blais, executive director of the Hogan’s Alley Society.
Members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers have been on strike since November 15. CUPW represents more than 60,000 Canada Post delivery workers in rural and urban areas across the country. At the heart of the strike is an effort to secure safe working conditions for all postal workers, and a wider struggle against precarious work, as companies drive workers to the gig economy. We speak with Adam D.K. King of the Labour Studies Program at the University of Manitoba.
Next week, Vancouver City Council will debate the more than $3 billion City budget, which includes yet another increase in police spending, and determine the tax increase to pay for it. They’ll also discuss the controversial Broadway plan as well as Mayor Ken Sim’s enthusiasm for cryptocurrency. Redeye collective member Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.
Environmental and health organizations are calling on Canada’s Minister of Health to intervene after a regulatory flip-flop has left an insecticide on the market. A ban proposed in 2018 concerned imidacloprid and two related pesticides used on corn, soybeans, potatoes and other crops. This pesticide has been banned in the European Union since 2018. Neonicotinoids are linked to harms to human health. They are also significant contributors to global declines in pollinator and bird populations. We speak with Dr Meg Sears, Chair of Prevent Cancer Now.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the federal government introduced a special program to allow Ukrainians to temporarily work, study and stay in Canada until it was safe for them to return home. Nearly 300 thousand people have since arrived through that program. In late 2023, Canada announced a similar program to help Canadians get family members out of Gaza. 10 months later, it is unclear whether the program has facilitated the exit of any Palestinians from Gaza. We speak with immigration and refugee lawyer Randall Cohn.
In videos in both French and English, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke directly to viewers to explain his government’s new plan to reduce immigration by roughly 20 per cent. Lisa Brunner has analyzed Trudeau’s explanation for immigration cuts. She talks with us about how it aligns with the government’s own policies and the realities on the ground for would-be immigrants. Lisa Brunner is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Migration Studies, University of British Columbia.
Between the 1870s and the late 1990s, over 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were forced to attend church-run, government-funded residential schools. As of three years ago, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation had documented more than 4,100 deaths of children at these institutions. In 2022, Kimberley Murray was appointed Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools. She released her final report, Sites of Truth, Sites of Conscience, last month. We discuss the report with Professor Frank Deer of the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba.
Next week Vancouver City Council will debate the first three redevelopment applications under the Broadway plan, at least two of which are meeting with significant neighbourhood opposition. Council will also debate the use of fracked gas in new building construction, police body cameras and more. Redeye collective member Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.
Rights advocates in Canada are welcoming a new review and complaints body for the Canadian Border Services and the RCMP. A network of nine civil society organizations say the new commission is long overdue, but still falls short of what is needed. We talk with Tim McSorley, National Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.
During the BC election campaign, both the Conservatives and NDP put significant tax cuts on the table in their policy platforms. While they were framed as a way of easing pressures on the cost of living, economist Alex Hemingway points out that tax cuts will do little to address the structural inequality underlying those cost pressures. Alex Hemingway is a Senior Economist and Public Finance Policy Analyst at the CCPA’s BC Office.
A report released last week reveals that millions of dollars in Canadian charitable donations have been funneled to organizations implicated in supporting illegal Israeli settlements, violent settler groups, and military activities in the occupied Palestinian territories. Under the Guise of Charity was produced by Just Peace Advocates, Independent Jewish Voices Canada and Miles Howe. We speak with author Miles Howe.
For years, the Mitchikanibikok Inik First Nation community has fought to keep mining off of their territory. In an important ruling, the Superior Court of Québec has recognized that the Québec government failed for decades in its constitutional duty to consult the Mitchikanibikok Inik First Nation when mining claims were granted on its territory. Lawyers from Ecojustice and the Centre québécois du droit de l’environnement argued that the Quebec mining act violated the constitution, and they won. We speak with Joshua Ginsberg, the lawyer for Ecojustice who represented Mitchikanibikok Inik First Nation in this case.
Next week Vancouver City Council will talk about the VPD and traffic cameras, earthquake-proofing rental properties, fracked gas heating in new construction and lots more. Redeye collective member Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.
On November 12 and 13, the Supreme Court of Canada will hear a case brought by two drivers of sex workers in Calgary who were charged with financially benefiting from sex work and procuring. The drivers claim the charges violate their Charter rights. We speak with Rosel Kim, a senior staff lawyer at LEAF, the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, one of the intervenors in this case.
A local peace group Vancouver Peace Poppies, together with Vancouver Unitarians, is planning to host an alternative peace-focused ceremony marking November 11 called Let Peace be Their Memorial. This will be their ninth annual wreath ceremony to commemorate all victims of war. We speak with Teresa Gagné, co-founder of Vancouver Peace Poppies.
Sky-high rents, low vacancy rates and fierce competition for scarce homes have become the grim but familiar picture of housing in the Vancouver area. But this housing crisis does not affect us all equally. A new research project by the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives will dig deep into how the crisis impacts immigrants, and racialized and Indigenous people. We speak with researcher Véronique Sioufi.
A new book examines the experiences of the women who faced the worst effects of the pandemic and the inequities it exposed. Conscripted to Care reveals how structural inequality placed women on the frontlines of the pandemic response, yet did not provide them with enough resources or a voice in decision-making. We speak with author Dr Julia Smith, assistant professor in Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University.
Lawyers with Pivot Legal Society and the BC Civil Liberties Association have filed complaints against the Vancouver Police Department for excessive use of force, and for targeting and surveilling pro-Palestinian protestors. The complaints relate to a pro-Palestine protest on May 31 at CN Rails and the VPD use of drones and cell phone cameras at other protests. We speak with Meghan McDermott, staff counsel with the BC Civil Liberties Association.
Public health care was one of the issues that was top of mind for BC voters as they went to the polls over the past month. Election officials are conducting a final count this weekend. One thing we can be sure of is that the incoming provincial government will be tasked with resolving the issue of long wait times for surgeries like knee and hip replacements. Conservative Party leader John Rustad plans to outsource many more surgeries are likely to increase wait times dramatically, according to SFU health policy researcher Andrew Longhurst. We speak with him about the experiences of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec after they embraced surgical and hospital privatization.
In October, 800 senior leaders and industry experts from the aviation and energy industries met in Houston, Texas to discuss how to decarbonize the aviation industry. The current plan is to switch the fuel supplies of the global jet fleet to agricultural feedstocks. Darrin Qualman of the National Farmers Union was at the conference to speak about the grave dangers that will pose to the planet’s farmland base. Darrin Qualman is NFU Director of Climate Crisis Policy and Action.
Cottonwood Community Garden is a volunteer-managed community garden in East Vancouver. A new self-guided audio tour of the gardens is being launched this month, bringing an intimate sense of place to a piece of urban nature brimming with life and social connection. With the tour, you can walk through the garden, and listen to stories that bring the history and use of the garden to life. We talk with film and video artist Lorna Boschman, creator of the sound walk.
Green Party councillor Adrienne Carr asks Vancouver City Council to reconsider a snap decision they made last summer to allow natural gas to be used in new building construction. Council will also be looking at giving an international developer a sweetheart deal, and finally after 5 years of waiting, the City has launched a community engagement process addressing historical discrimination against people of South Asian Canadian descent. Mass joins us with his City Beat report.
Both the BC NDP and the Conservative Party of BC have pledged to expand involuntary care under the Mental Health Act for people who use drugs. More than 17 organizations have condemned forced detention plans, including the BC Civil Liberties Association and the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. Meenakshi Mannoe is connected to anti-prison and anti-policing movements and has previously engaged in advocacy related to the expansion of involuntary care. We speak with her about this issue.
The First Call Child and Youth Advocacy Society has been producing election-focused materials for decades. With the BC provincial election just days away, First Call has created a toolkit focused on effective election advocacy for children and youth. Adrienne Montani joins us to talk about some of the issues facing children, youth and families in the province.
If you live in British Columbia, and you care about equality and social justice, you probably have many conversations in week about how unaffordable housing is becoming. Economists at the BC office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives have examined this issue and have come forward with a multi-pronged approach to tackle the problem. We speak with senior economist Marc Lee.
A recent review of forest trends shows clearcut logging of old growth forests is continuing at unsustainable levels. This is despite the rapid increase of forest area burned - and the fact that there’s a limited area of intact forests left. The review was produced by the Sierra Club BC. I speak with Senior Policy and Science Advisor Jens Wieting.
Today, Ian Mass tells us about a 10-year retrospective on reconciliation work at the municipal level in Vancouver. Plus two major non-market housing developments in the Downtown Eastside. All this and more on City Beat.
A new handbook has been launched to assist BC school trustees who are being targeted with transphobic and homophobic abuse. It outlines some of the ways that school boards are currently under attack and ways to prevent and address this violence. The handbook was written collaboratively by a committee of the group, Lawyers Against Transphobia. We speak with one of the authors, James Chamberlain.
On a misty morning in the fall of 1985, a small group of Haida people blockaded a muddy dirt road on Lyell Island, demanding that the government work with Indigenous people to find a way to protect the land and the future. The Stand is a riveting new feature documentary drawn from more than a hundred hours of archival footage from that first blockade and the months that followed. We speak with director Christopher Auchter.
The climate crisis has already unleashed disastrous consequences from forest fires to catastrophic flooding and drought. In the face of these alarming trends, it’s crucial for us to remain hopeful and continue to seek solutions. In his book, Climate Hope, David Geselbracht recounts stories of action from around the world and reveals remarkable efforts to address them. David Geselbracht is an environmental journalist and lawyer. His writing has appeared in Canadian Geographic, The Globe and Mail and Broadview Magazine, among other publications.
Today, almost one in 4 of all species are at risk of extinction, from caribou and spotted owls to sea stars and slime mould. In her new book, Sarah Cox visits the habitats where species are threatened, and the people who are trying to save them. She documents heroic efforts to prevent animal species from disappearing while, at the same time, challenging us to question the approaches we’re taking. Sarah Cox is an award-winning reporter and B.C. bureau chief for The Narwhal.
Municipal politicians across Metro Vancouver are back at work after an August break. Redeye collective member, Ian Mass is also back withhis City Beat report talking about Vancouver’s plan to fast-track social and co-operative housing development, review the Integrity Commissioner’s role and lots more.
In 2021, Vancouver City Council formally apologized for historical discrimination toward passengers travelling on board the Komagata Maru steamship from British India in 1914. Last month, the City unveiled special commemorative signs near the harbour honoring those impacted by the Komagata Maru tragedy. The street signs were designed by Jagandeep Nagra, a queer Punjabi visual artist and community advocate.
In 2004, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel called on international scholars to break ties with Israeli academic institutions. In response, Israeli academics claimed to be simply bystanders to the apartheid policies of the Israeli state. A new book reveals just how deeply Israeli universities are entangled with the Israeli state’s systems of oppression. Maya Wind is the author of Towers of Ivory and Steel. She is a scholar of military expertise and a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.
A ground-breaking new book examines and exposes the use of defamation law to silence victims of sexual violence. Author Mandi Gray draws on media reports, courtroom observations, and interviews with silence breakers, activists, and lawyers from across Canada to examine the impact of so-called liar lawsuits on those who report or are thinking of reporting sexual violence.
Jérémie Harris is a former physicist, an AI safety expert and a startup founder. He’s the author of “Quantum Physics Made Me Do It: A Simple Guide to the Fundamental Nature of Everything” and he was be a featured speaker at the 2024 Vancouver Writers Fest. We spoke with him about his new book and about the threats posed by the unregulated growth of AI.
In February, the Supreme Court dismissed a challenge by Quebec to the Canadian government’s Indigenous child welfare law, reversing a Quebec Court of Appeal decision to declare the 2019 federal law partly unconstitutional. The decision was widely celebrated by First Nations, Inuit and Métis leaders. Yet, according to lawyer Bruce McIvor, the decision has a troubling assumption at its core. Bruce McIvor is a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation and a founding partner at First People’s Law.
It seems that the more that comes out about the effects of social media on children and youth, the more concerned we should be. Now a law firm that represents victims of social media has filed cases against platforms including Meta, Snap, TikTok, and Discord, on the basis that they are harmful by design. Lorraine Chisholm speaks with Matthew Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center.
On February 1, Premier Danielle Smith announced that she plans to implement a slate of policies that target transgender and gender-diverse children and youth in Alberta. The proposed measures go far beyond what has already been brought in in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. We speak with Corinne Mason, professor in the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
More and more Canadians are unable to access public primary healthcare, according to a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal at the beginning of December, 2023. In fact, about 20% of Canadians have no family doctor at all, and many more have irregular access to clinicians. The CMAJ study compares the Canadian primary care system with New Zealand and eight countries in Europe including France, Germany, Italy and the UK. Dr Tara Kiran is the senior author of the study and a family physician and scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital and the University of Toronto.
In 2020, there were widespread calls to defund the police following the police murder of George Floyd. In Canada, a poll from that year found over 50% of Canadians wanted to see police budgets reduced. Despite this, no major Canadian city police department has had its funding reduced and in fact, budgets have gone up. We speak with Ted Rutland is associate professor in geography, planning and environment at Concordia University in Montreal.
On December 29, 2023, the BC Supreme Court granted a temporary injunction to the Harm Reduction Nurses Association, putting BC’s Bill 34 on hold for 3 months. The Bill imposes sweeping restrictions on the province’s decriminalization pilot launched a year ago. We spoke with Caitlin Shane of Pivot Legal, one of the lawyers representing the Harm Reduction Nurses Association.
The National Farmers Union’s held their annual conference in Ottawa in November, 2023. The day before the conference began, NFU members gathered on Parliament Hill to demand a ban on investor ownership of farmland. To find out more, I spoke with Rav Singh, youth advisor with the National Farmers Union – Ontario and Hannah Kaya, the NFU’s farm worker organizer.
Last fall, the BC Health Coalition was in Vancouver talking about the urgent need for reform and innovation in public health care. Meanwhile the Canadian Medical Association was sponsoring a cross-country conversation about the role of private – read for-profit – health care. We talk with Dr. Saad Ahmed of Canadian Doctors for Medicare about the truth behind the myths of privatization and what it would mean for health care in Canada.
From sexual harassment to online bullying and threats of violence, women politicians face far more challenges in public life than their male counterparts. A new research project takes a close look at what women, gender minorities and racialized politicians face when they get elected to councils in BC and Alberta. We talk with Nadine Nakagawa, city councillor in New Westminster and one of the lead researchers in the project.
A recent ruling by the Ontario Superior Court marks an important acknowledgment in the ongoing battle against systemic Islamophobia. In September 2023, Justice Markus Koehnen recognized that the Muslim Association of Canada faced differential and biased treatment faced during a Canada Revenue Agency audit. However, the judge stopped short of intervening in the federal examination. We speak with Nabil Sultan, Communications and Community Engagement Director at the Muslim Association of Canada.
Whether you’ve been in the fight against climate change for decades, or are a newcomer, the struggle can feel overwhelming in so many ways. Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua have produced a new book to support and energize us – it’s called Not Too Late. Rebecca Solnit was in Vancouver for the Writers Fest in October 2023. We spoke with her about hope, possibility and the book.
The 1 Million March 4 Children in September 2023 was part of a widespread and growing “parental rights” movement targeting inclusive public education. Calgary academics Corinne Mason and Leah Hamilton point out that this isn’t simply a group of united parents concerned about their children’s education. Mason and Hamilton offer a brief history of the origins of the parental rights movement and some of its key organizers. Corinne Mason is Associate Professor Women's and Gender Studies, Leah Hamilton is Vice Dean, Research & Community Relations in the Faculty of Business & Communication Studies, both at Mount Royal University.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Canada introduced a program to allow Ukrainians to temporarily come to Canada. Two years later, the government has introduced a new temporary residency program for people in Gaza. However, Palestinians in Canada are discovering there are major barriers to getting their family members out of the war zone. We speak with Matthew Behrens of the Rural Refugee Rights Network.
For generations, the suffering of residential school Survivors has radiated outward, impacting Indigenous families and communities. In her new documentary Waapake (Tomorrow), filmmaker Dr. Jules Arita Koostachin examines the corrosive impact of residential schools on Survivors, and their children, siblings and parents.
In 2021, Vancouver City Council formally apologized for historical discrimination toward passengers travelling on board the Komagata Maru steamship from British India in 1914. Last month, the City unveiled special commemorative signs near the harbour honoring those impacted by the Komagata Maru tragedy. The street signs were designed by Jagandeep Nagra, a queer Punjabi visual artist and community advocate.
In March, Ben Parfitt wrote an article critiquing the BC government’s direction and lack of progress on protecting old growth forests. This was centered on a confidential map of logging deferrals that was leaked from the provincial ministry of forests. Since then, new information has come out blaming the delays in protecting old growth on consultations with BC First Nations. We speak with Ben Parfitt, resource policy analyst for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC office.
In 2004, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel called on international scholars to break ties with Israeli academic institutions. In response, Israeli academics claimed to be simply bystanders to the apartheid policies of the Israeli state. A new book reveals just how deeply Israeli universities are entangled with the Israeli state’s systems of oppression. Maya Wind is the author of Towers of Ivory and Steel. She is a scholar of military expertise and a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.
Jackie Shane was one of soul and R&B's first Black trans performers. She was born in 1940 in Nashville but her incredible voice took her across North America. She found a home in Toronto in the '60s, performing sold-out shows almost every night. In 1971, Shane disappeared from the spotlight. When she eventually reemerged in the 2010s, there were still many questions surrounding her life and career. Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee’s latest documentary, Any Other Way, tells the story of Shane's life.
On April 5, the Simcoe School Board joined four of the largest Ontario school boards in suing the companies behind Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. The lawsuit claims time spent on these apps has led to “an attention, learning, and mental health crisis”. Sachin Maharaj joins us to speak about the case and the impacts of social media apps on students. Maharaj is Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, Policy and Program Evaluation in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa.
UN negotiations took place in Ottawa last week, aimed at achieving an international plastics treaty. Leading up to these historic meetings, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has just released a groundbreaking study revealing the enormous climate impact of plastic production. We’re joined by Dr. Neil Tangri, Senior Fellow at University of California’s Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, to talk about the study and what’s needed in the treaty.
It’s been four years since the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released 231 calls for justice. Call to Justice number 4.8 says there must be safe and affordable transportation services for Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people living in remote or rural communities. We speak with two co-authors of a report on improving the intercommunity mobility of First Nations people in Canada. Apooyak’ii / Dr. Tiffany Prete is a member of the Kainai (Blood Tribe) of the Siksikasitapi (Blackfoot Confederacy), located in the Treaty 7 area. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Lethbridge. Deanna Starr is from Little Pine First Nation in Treaty 6 Territory. She is the founder and lead occupational therapist of Miskihnak Occupational Therapy.
The BC social studies curriculum includes historical atrocities such the colonization of North America, the Holocaust, and the Rwandan genocide, but there is no mention of the Nakba. The Nakba was the violent dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from historic Palestine that led to the creation of the state of Israel. Now, parents and teachers in BC have launched a campaign to include the Nakba in the BC curriculum. We speak with Tamara Herman, a Vancouver parent and member of Independent Jewish Voices and KZ, a Palestinian educator involved in elementary education.
This week on City Beat, Ian Mass talks about how Vancouver City Council is planning to take advantage of provincial and federal housing initiatives. Plus the Vancouver Police Board, the oversight body for the Vancouver Police, has had its budget slashed and seen key members resign. And a new city bylaw takes what has been described as an “iron fist approach” to people living in tents in Crab Park. All this and more in our bi-weekly City Beat report.
On Mother’s Day, May 12, a caravan of anti-war activists will leave Vancouver for Ottawa, with the message Demilitarize, decarbonize, decolonize. They will be met by a sister caravan leaving from Halifax and arriving in Ottawa May 28. We speak with Ellen Woodsworth, co-chair of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, who, together with Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, are organizing the caravan.
Last week, a large memorial was installed near the entrance to Stanley Park in Vancouver. The flags planted in a large grassy area are a visual representation of the number of lives lost due to Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, and a reminder of Canada’s role in funding the slaughter. This Vancouver installation follows a number of displays across the country and internationally, including in Portland and London. Lorraine Chisholm speaks about the memorial with organizer and community advocate Tamer Abu-Ramadan.
If a recent commercial is to be believed, then FortisBC is in the business of selling outdoor gear. Nothing in the 30-second ad of a parent and child walking through a forest suggests that connecting your home to gas could lead to catastrophic global warming. Two concerned B.C. residents and the organization Stand.Earth are taking FortisBC to court for using ads like this to greenwash its products. Lawyers from Ecojustice and Slater Vecchio LLP are bringing the case against FortisBC under the Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act. We speak with Andhra Azevedo, one of the lawyers at Ecojustice.
Next week, Vancouver City Council considers tenant protection for residents of single room occupancy hotels, a 30 kph speed limit on all Vancouver streets, e bikes and scooters on the seawall and lots more. Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.
On March 6, Green Party MLA Adam Olsen retabled a bear den protection bill in the BC legislature for the third time. Olsen has been pushing for legal changes since October 2022 but has yet to have his private members bill heard. For decades, environmentalists and First Nations have been advocating for an amendment to the Wildlife Protection Act to include bear dens. We speak with Mark Worthing, Campaigns and Programs Director at the Awinakola Foundation.
Drug activist Dana Larsen appealed the loss of the business licence for his Medicinal Mushroom Dispensary in Vancouver. In response, Green Party city councillors Adrienne Carr and Pete Fry voted to re-issue the licence. Now they are going a step further by introducing a motion to create a regulatory framework for psilocybin and other psychoactive mushrooms. We speak with Pete Fry.
NDP MP Charlie Angus has introduced a private member’s bill calling for a ban on what his party calls 'misleading, deceptive' fossil fuel ads. The NDP says the bill would take the same approach Ottawa took to tobacco ads in 1990s. While there is predictable opposition to the bill from the oil and gas industry, others see the bill as a very modest step towards what is needed.For an assessment of the bill, we speak with Peter Dietsch, a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Victoria.
Drug companies often give payments to doctors and other health-care workers for consulting fees, speaking at events or funding research, as well as meals and travel expenses. But, in Canada, it’s difficult to know how much was paid to whom. Our guest, Dr. Joel Lexchin, says this information needs to be readily available to Canadians.
A report released last month by the BC Fed and CCPA-BC says British Columbia’s local transit systems could be united into a province-wide public transit network within a decade, offering safe and affordable service throughout the province. We talk with Sussanne Skidmore, president of the BC Federation of Labour, about their vision.
Unless governments act to build and save housing that low income people can afford, the number of houseless people in Vancouver is on track to increase by 50% by 2030. This is the stark prediction in the Carnegie Housing Project’s 2024 report, released last month. We speak with Devin O’Leary, one of the co-authors of the report.
A ground-breaking new book examines and exposes the use of defamation law to silence victims of sexual violence. Author Mandi Gray draws on media reports, courtroom observations, and interviews with silence breakers, activists, and lawyers from across Canada to examine the impact of so-called liar lawsuits on those who report or are thinking of reporting sexual violence.
Next week, Vancouver City Council is going to consider a massive social housing development in East Vancouver. Also, on the agenda, expanding free public Wi-Fi in the Downtown Eastside and an update on City plans to dissolve the Park Board. Redeye collective member Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.
Legislation brought in last year will require the government to examine the links between racialization, socio-economic status and environmental risk. That link is very clear in communities like the Aamjiwnaang First Nation just outside of Sarnia, Ontario, in an area known as Chemical Valley. Last year, the Ontario government released the findings of the Sarnia Area Environmental Health Project. Elaine MacDonald joins me to talk about project and the experiences of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation.
This week Pharmacare legislation was introduced on Parliament Hill. The historic program was announced after months of negotiations with the NDP, who pressed the government to launch Pharmacare as a condition of their supply-and-confidence agreement. On Wednesday, Lorraine Chisholm spoke with Nikolas Barry Shaw, a key campaigner on this issue, in advance of the legislation being tabled the following day. Nikolas Barry-Shaw is the Trade and Privatization Campaigner for the Council of Canadians and author of the book Paved with Good Intentions.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Canada introduced a program to allow Ukrainians to temporarily come to Canada. Two years later, the government has introduced a new temporary residency program for people in Gaza. However, Palestinians in Canada are discovering there are major barriers to getting their family members out of the war zone. We speak with Matthew Behrens of the Rural Refugee Rights Network.
If you live in Metro Vancouver, and get around on transit, you know that the bus network has been seeing unprecedented levels of overcrowding. Even though buses move the majority of riders, there’s no committed funding to expand the system. Dennis Agar thinks that needs to change and he has plenty of ideas about how to do that. Agar is the executive director of Movement: Metro Vancouver Transit Riders. We speak with him in this episode.
On Feb 22, the BC government brought in their 2024 budget, the last one before the October provincial election. While Kevin Falcon characterized the projected deficit as “reckless” and John Rustad says it was set to “bankrupt the people of the future”, Alex Hemingway says this budget rightfully prioritizes public investment over austerity, but it could go a lot further. Alex Hemingway is a Senior Economist and Public Finance Policy Analyst at the CCPA’s BC Office.
We speak with Marusya Bociurkiw, director and writer behind a new documentary tracing the explosion of grassroots feminist media projects from Halifax to Vancouver. She explores how women took up cutting-edge media technology to document everything from violence towards women to how to insert a diaphragm. Analogue Revolution kicks of the GEM festival in Vancouver on March 5.
Next week, Vancouver City Council will debate paying a certified living wage to everyone who works for the City, both staff and employees of a contracted service. Redeye collective member Ian Mass also discusses the city’s climate emergency action plan and a revitalized vision for West End services in his regular City Beat report.
This month, the Supreme Court dismissed a challenge by Quebec to the Canadian government’s Indigenous child welfare law, reversing a Quebec Court of Appeal decision to declare the 2019 federal law partly unconstitutional. The decision was widely celebrated by First Nations, Inuit and Métis leaders. Yet, according to lawyer Bruce McIvor, the decision has a troubling assumption at its core. Bruce McIvor is a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation and a founding partner at First People’s Law.
Since the Israeli bombardment of Gaza began, nearly 400 schools have been damaged or destroyed. Last month, Israel destroyed Gaza’s last standing university. According to Chandni Desai, Israel has a long record of targeted attacks on Palestinian academics and institutions that produce knowledge and culture. Chandni Desai is Assistant Professor in the Critical Studies of Equity and Solidarity at the University of Toronto.
A new report measures how much a family needed to earn to afford the necessities of life in Metro Vancouver in 2023. It found that the gap between the minimum wage and a living wage continues to widen, as housing and food costs spiral upwards. We speak with senior economist Iglika Ivanova, one of the co-authors of the Working for a Living Wage report.
On February 1, Premier Danielle Smith announced that she plans to implement a slate of policies that target transgender and gender-diverse children and youth in Alberta. The proposed measures go far beyond what has already been brought in in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. We speak with Corinne Mason, professor in the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
It seems that the more that comes out about the effects of social media on children and youth, the more concerned we should be. Now a law firm that represents victims of social media has filed cases against platforms including Meta, Snap, TikTok, and Discord, on the basis that they are harmful by design. Lorraine Chisholm speaks with Matthew Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center.
In January, the Federal Court agreed with Wilderness Committee and others that the federal government had failed in its duty to protect bird habitat under the Species at Risk Act. The court said Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault needs to reconsider protection measures under the legislation. We speak with Charlotte Dawe of Wilderness Committee.
Vancouver City Council meets next week to talk about those 100 mental health nurses promised in the last election campaign. It’s also going to look at a people-focused Gastown and revisit the living wage debate. Ian Mass joins us with these stories and more in his regular City Beat report.
In the early 2010s, the Harper government’s muzzling of scientists was an issue of urgent concern. Researchers at Dalhousie University have surveyed the current situation and found that, despite some improvement, environmental scientists are still reporting significant interference in their work. We speak with researchers Manjulika Robertson and Samantha Chu.
A couple of weeks ago, the federal government announced a new cap on the numbers of international students coming to Canada. They’re aiming for a 35% reduction over last year. The government and current media coverage of the cap appears to blame international students for Canada’s housing and health care woes. We speak with Leah Hamilton of Mount Royal University.
On Friday, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel has to take all measures within its power to prevent acts of genocide. In response, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly only noted that the ICJ “ delivered its response” and didn’t express support for the ruling or calling on Israel to comply with its legally binding provisions to prevent genocide against Palestinians. Canada’s complicated relationship with the crime of genocide is the subject of a recent article by law prof Heidi Matthews. We spoke with her two days before the ICJ ruling came out.
The 2022 Vancouver municipal election brought in new mayor Ken Sim and a majority of ABC councillors to push through Sim’s significant list of campaign promises. OneCity councillor Christine Boyle joins us to talk about what to expect from the ABC council in 2024.
BC’s hospitality industry got over a billion dollars in government subsidies during the pandemic. At the same time, the mostly female and racialized workforce either lost their employment or had their hours cut. A new report says fallout from the pandemic is still impacting workers’ health and livelihoods. We speak with the report’s author, Alice Mūrage.
More and more Canadians are unable to access public primary healthcare, according to a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal at the beginning of December. In fact, about 20% of Canadians have no family doctor at all, and many more have irregular access to clinicians. The CMAJ study compares the Canadian primary care system with New Zealand and eight countries in Europe including France, Germany, Italy and the UK. Dr Tara Kiran is the senior author of the study and a family physician and scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital and the University of Toronto.
Vancouver mayor Ken Sim’s specially appointed budget task force missed its deadline for the 2024 city budget but - better late than never - the report comes before council this coming week. The task force is calling for a radical rethink of what the city is prepared to fund as part of its core services. In City Beat, Ian Mass tells us all about the task force report, plus another major project in the offing – the redevelopment of the Jericho Lands.
British Columbia is preparing a strategy to supply critical used in electric vehicles, solar panels and wind turbines. The Mining Association of BC is promoting the expansion of over a dozen mines to produce the minerals, and is pushing the province for regulatory and other changes to facilitate mine expansion. Nikki Skuce is co-chair of the BC Mining Law Reform Network and author of report called Critical Minerals: A Critical Look. We speak with Nikki Skuce in this episode.
In 2020, there were widespread calls to defund the police following the police murder of George Floyd. In Canada, a poll from that year found over 50% of Canadians wanted to see police budgets reduced. Despite this, no major Canadian city police department has had its funding reduced and in fact, budgets have gone up. We speak with Ted Rutland is associate professor in geography, planning and environment at Concordia University in Montreal.
There are more than 40,000 ride-hail and food-delivery workers in BC. The province brought in new proposed labour standards in November but Véronique Sioufi says they don’t go far enough, leading to entrenched racism in the sector. Véronique Sioufi is the CCPA-BC’s researcher for racial and socio-economic equity.
Municipalities and the labour movement are among those calling for British Columbia to include caste-based discrimination in its human rights legislation. Burnaby city councillor Sav Dhaliwal took up this challenge last year. He joins us to talk about caste system discrimination and what Burnaby has done about this issue.
On December 29, the BC Supreme Court granted a temporary injunction to the Harm Reduction Nurses Association, putting BC’s Bill 34 on hold for 3 months. The Bill imposes sweeping restrictions on the province’s decriminalization pilot launched a year ago. We speak with Caitlin Shane of Pivot Legal, one of the lawyers representing the Harm Reduction Nurses Association.
On December 12, COP 28 closed with an agreement that the UN heralded as the “beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era. At the meeting in Dubai, world leaders agreed to quote “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems”. I spoke with Jens Wieting shortly after the climate conference wrapped to get his assessment of what this means for BC and for Canada.
In City Beat this week, Ian Mass tells us about the stunning move to abolish Vancouver’s Parks Board, Vancouver’s 2024 budget which includes a climate emergency budget for the first time, plans for new artist studios and much more.
Education and public schools are often a hot button issue. Parents, teachers and governments sometimes have criticisms about our schools. But most people agree that public education should be supported and preserved as an important part of a democratic society. BC's Institute for Public Education is asking British Columbians to share their hopes and dreams for public education. We speak with teacher and IPE board member Barbara Silva.
It’s gotten a lot harder to find solid, progressive journalism in the face of social media bans on Canadian news. But there is some good news! A brand-new independent media platform launched last month. Unrigged.ca is a non-profit journalistic collaboration featuring 20 publishers of online articles and op-eds, print magazines, community newspapers, and podcasts covering news and current events from across Canada. We speak with Andre Goulet, one of the people behind the project.
The independent Canadian media outlet The Breach published a story last week about the suppression of critical coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza. They report that CTV directed journalists not to use the word Palestine and has cultivated a ‘culture of fear’ at the network. We speak with Emma Paling, who investigated the story for the Breach.
The National Farmers Union’s held their annual conference in Ottawa last month. The day before the conference began, NFU members gathered on Parliament Hill to demand a ban on investor ownership of farmland. To find out more, I speak with Rav Singh, youth advisor with the National Farmers Union – Ontario and Hannah Kaya, the NFU’s farm worker organizer.
Recently, there has been a raft of affordable housing initiatives coming from all levels of government. Alex Hemingway is a senior economist from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives of BC. He joins me today to talk about how effective these policies are likely to be and what else needs to be done.
More than 30 Palestinian trade unions have issued a united call to stop arming Israel. This call comes in light of Israel’s intensified assault on Palestinians over the past weeks, and particularly the unfolding genocide in Gaza. Activists in Canada have responded by blockading weapons facilities in Ontario and Quebec and informing Canadians about the flow of weapons from Canada to Israel. We talk with Rachel Small, an organizer with World Beyond War.
As the climate emergency deepens, we hear repeatedly that the solution involves sacrifice. Fossil fuels, travel, meat - all things we need to give up to preserve the planet for human habitation. However, trio of academics say that effective climate action requires us to stop viewing our efforts as a sacrifice. We speak with Daniel Steel, associate professor in the School of Population and Public Health at University of British Columbia.
On City Beat with Ian Mass this week, a draft of Vancouver’s 2024 budget with a recommended property tax increase of 7.6%, a motion supporting the Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20, plans for Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and more.
The Gaza Strip is now a graveyard for thousands of children. UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, says that more children have now been killed in Gaza than all other conflicts since 2019. Despite the fact that the vast majority of Gaza’s population are refugees, they are not included in the United Nations international refugee protection regime. Today we speak with Dr. Maissaa Almustafa, Lecturer at the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on the forcibly displaced and the politics of marginalization that govern their lives in the Middle East and in diaspora.
Temporary Modular Housing currently provides over 750 units of shelter-rate housing across Vancouver. OneCity councillor Christine Boyle brought forward a motion in July to renew or extend the leases for all these sites. Mayor Sim and his ABC party majority unanimously voted against that motion - and the dismantling or demolition of these units is now underway. We speak with Nathan Crompton, a member of the editorial collective for the Mainlander and an organizer with Our Homes Can’t Wait.
This week, the BC Health Coalition is in Vancouver talking about the urgent need for reform and innovation in public health care. Meanwhile the Canadian Medical Association is sponsoring a cross-country conversation about the role of private – read for-profit – health care. We talk with Dr. Saad Ahmed of Canadian Doctors for Medicare about the truth behind the myths of privatization and what it would mean for health care in Canada.
Affordable housing is on the agenda this week at Vancouver City Council. Council will hear about four different initiatives designed to make housing cheaper and also more equitable, including a bold proposal to increase density in the city’s richest neighbourhood. Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.
Over a quarter of a million Canadian workers now participate to varying degrees in app-based gig work. Most of these are ride hail and food delivery workers. The BC government is planning on updating regulations that affect these workers. The Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives-BC made a submission to the government, aimed at extending protections and benefits that other workers receive. We speak with Véronique Sioufi, CCPA Researcher for Racial & Socio-economic Equity.
As the bombardment of Gaza continues, thousands of Canadians are calling for a ceasefire. These protests are being met with a concerted international effort to suppress rallies and speeches that express solidarity with Palestinians. On November 5, the co-organizer of a large rally in Calgary was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace. We speak about the case with Muhannad Ayyash, sociology professor at Mount Royal University and policy analyst at Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.
From sexual harassment to online bullying and threats of violence, women politicians face far more challenges in public life than their male counterparts. A new research project took a close look at what women, gender minorities and racialized politicians face when they get elected to councils in BC and Alberta. We talk with Nadine Nakagawa, city councillor in New Westminster and one of the lead researchers in the project.
In Vancouver, single room occupancy hotels are often a last resort before homelessness, but rising rents mean that many low-income residents lose their housing each year. City of Vancouver vacancy control bylaws designed to protect SROs were quashed by the BC Supreme Court in 2022. On Nov 7, that ruling is being challenged in the BC Court of Appeal. We speak about the case with Wendy Pedersen, director of the Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative.
In the lead-up to last year’s municipal election, Women Transforming Cities launched the Hot Pink Paper Campaign with eight policy asks based on months of community input from women and gender-diverse residents. A year later, we talk with Clara Prager about how council is doing on fulfilling their campaign commitments to create a more equitable city for all.
As attacks continue on Palestinian people in Gaza, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism is on the rise. This hatred of Muslim people is fomented by a concerted propaganda campaign and by the repetition of false news stories and misinformation. To help us understand what is happening, and the impact on Muslim people here in Canada and elsewhere, we’re joined by Dr. Jasmin Zine, professor in sociology and religion and culture at Wilfrid Laurier university.
Mayor Ken Sim has targeted OneCity councillor Christine Boyle with two code-of-conduct complaints and investigations in the last six months. Ian Mass talks about these complaints. Also in today’s City Beat report, Ian discussed the campaign to rebuild the Britannia Community Centre complex, Vancouver’s 2023 homeless count and a whole lot more.
On Oct 26, BC brought in new legislation to help municipalities regulate short-term rentals on sites like Airbnb. The mayors of cities as diverse as Victoria, Kelowna and Tofino were enthusiastic about the move. Thorben Wieditz is with the organization Fairbnb. He says this kind of regulation is an essential first step in ending ghost hotels. I spoke with him a few days before David Eby’s announcement.
Despite record high drug-poisoning deaths in Yaletown, the city of Vancouver is closing an overdose prevention site on Seymour Street. So far, there is no guarantee that another site will be opened to replace it. Vince Tao is a community organizer with VANDU, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users. He joins us to talk about what led to the decision to close the site.
Whether you’ve been in the fight against climate change for decades, or are a newcomer, the struggle can feel overwhelming in so many ways. Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua have produced a new book to support and energize us – it’s called Not Too Late. Rebecca Solnit is in Vancouver for the Writers Fest this month. We speak with her about hope, possibility and the book.
A recent ruling by the Ontario Superior Court marks an important acknowledgment in the ongoing battle against systemic Islamophobia. In September, Justice Markus Koehnen recognized that the Muslim Association of Canada faced differential and biased treatment faced during a Canada Revenue Agency audit. However the judge stopped short of intervening in the federal examination. We speak with Nabil Sultan, Communications and Community Engagement Director at the Muslim Association of Canada.
Jérémie Harris is a former physicist, an AI safety expert and a startup founder. He’s the author of “Quantum Physics Made Me Do It: A Simple Guide to the Fundamental Nature of Everything” and he will be a featured speaker at the Vancouver Writers Fest this year. We spoke with him about his new book and about the threats posed by the unregulated growth of AI.
Following a brutal attack on Israeli citizens by Hamas for forces, Israel has retaliated with a total siege of Gaza and a bombing campaign of Gaza and the occupied West Bank, targeting both civilians and militant actors, and killing and wounding thousands of Palestinians. Leaders in the Trudeau government have expressed full support for Israel and remained silent on the devastating airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, which make no distinction between civilians and combatants. We spoke on October 11 with Thomas Woodley, President of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has just released its 24th alternative federal budget. The CCPA describe their budget as an exercise in expanding our collective imagination of what is possible, to instill hope in hard times, and to make crystal clear alternatives to the status quo. We talk with David Macdonald, senior economist for the CCPA.
This past spring, wildfires burned over 13 million hectares in Quebec. A new study by World Weather Attribution confirms that climate change and fossil fuel use contributed significantly to these wildfires. Lawyers at West Coast Environmental Law, representing the Sue Big Oil campaign, say the WWA study bolsters the case for a class action lawsuit against global fossil fuel companies by BC communities for their fair share of climate damages. We’re joined by Andrew Gage, staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law.
The 1 Million March 4 Children on September 20 is part of a widespread and growing “parental rights” movement targeting inclusive public education. Calgary academics Corinne Mason and Leah Hamilton point out that this isn’t simply a group of united parents concerned about their children’s education. Mason and Hamilton offer a brief history of the origins of the parental rights movement and some of its key organizers. Corinne Mason is Associate Professor Women's and Gender Studies, Leah Hamilton is Vice Dean, Research & Community Relations in the Faculty of Business & Communication Studies, both at Mount Royal University.
For generations, the suffering of residential school Survivors has radiated outward, impacting Indigenous families and communities. In her new documentary Waapake (Tomorrow), filmmaker Dr. Jules Arita Koostachin examines the corrosive impact of residential schools on Survivors, and their children, siblings and parents.
Ian Mass joins us to talk about several housing-related motions before Council next week, including a proposal for high-end apartment and office buildings in Vancouver’s long-protected view corridors. Plus a return of the cops in schools program and a thumbs-down to the revitalization of Britannia Community Centre in East Vancouver.
Indigenous people represent only 5% of the population in Canada, but they make up a third of the prison population. Jennifer Duncan is a Dene lawyer and she was in Geneva last month spearheading efforts to bring international awareness to Canada’s ongoing mass incarceration of Indigenous people.
The UN special rapporteur on slavery paid an official visit to Canada in late August to assess the government’s efforts to prevent and address contemporary forms of slavery. After spending two weeks in Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver and two other Canadian cities, Tomoya Obokata identified a number of groups in Canada as vulnerable to slavery, including migrant workers brought in through the Temporary Foreign Workers Programme. We talk with Syed Hussan of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.
This is a critical moment for forests in British Columbia. Three years have passed since the B.C. government promised to work with First Nations to implement a paradigm-shift in forest stewardship, as laid out in the Old Growth Strategic Review. Yet the B.C. government has made little progress on their promises. On September 28, communities across the province are coming together in a day of action to protect the last remaining old growth in BC. I talk with Jens Wieting, Senior Forest and Climate Campaigner with Sierra Club BC.
This season, retired teacher and former MLA David Chudnovsky joins our regular City Beat reporter Ian Mass. Today they talk about the 2024 Vancouver budget, Vancouver School Board’s sale of school properties and other major issues that Vancouver Council will face this fall and winter.
There has been a rapid increase in Canadian university tuition fees, creating a barrier for low-income students and widening the gap between privileged students and those who struggle to pay for their studies. Grace Barakat is a sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto. She talked with us in January about how changes in the cost of tuition are having an impact on Canadian students and their futures.
In February this year, the estimated cost of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project jumped by more than 70%. When the Trans Mountain Corporation announced the increase back in February, we were told that the government would spend no additional public money on the project. A new report by independent economist Robyn Allan says this is not the case, and that the federal government is hiding the real situation from Canadians. We spoke with Eugene Kung, staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law who commissioned the report.
The BC government under Premier David Eby has signaled new directions on protecting BC lands. They have committed to protect 30 percent of the province’s land by 2030. This includes a mandate to work with Indigenous communities to create Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas. We talk about the new commitment with Torrance Coste, National Campaign Director for the Wilderness Committee.
Of all of the processes that are reshaping cities today, gentrification is probably one of the most misunderstood. In her new book, Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies, Leslie Kern addresses seven of the myths about gentrification and exposes the ideologies that make it seem like a natural and desirable process. Leslie Kern is associate professor of geography and environment and women's and gender studies at Mount Allison University, in Sackville, New Brunswick. She joined us last October to talk about how and why gentrification happens and how to resist it.
In December last year, Canadian Blood Services signed a 15-year deal with a for-profit plasma corporation to privatize plasma collection in Canada. BloodWatch says the paid plasma scheme goes against recommendations from the Krever Commission and would negatively affect voluntary collection efforts. We speak with Dr. Michèle Brill-Edwards, a former senior Health Canada regulator and whistle-blower on drug and blood safety. Dr. Brill-Edwards is a long-time board member of the Canadian Health Coalition.
The pandemic brought into focus the urgent need for a public health that serves everyone in the community, including those who have traditionally been marginalized. A book by Zena Sharman asks what health care could look like if queer folks had access to safe, appropriate and compassionate medical care. Zena Sharman is a writer, speaker, strategist and LGBTQ+ health advocate. Her book, The Care We Dream Of, was published in December 2021.
In November last year, the Superior Court of Quebec issued a landmark decision, finding that police roadside interceptions are often based on skin colour rather than on road safety objectives. Judge Michel Yergeau ruled that the law allowing for such arbitrary detention can no longer stand. The case was brought by Joseph-Christopher Luamba, a 22 year old black Montrealer, who told the court he prepares to pull over whenever he sees a police cruiser. We spoke last fall with Laura Berger, staff lawyer with the Canadian Civil Liberties association, an intervenor in the case.
Canada’s drug prices are the fourth highest in the developed world. New guidelines aimed at lowering prescription drug prices have been in process for more than 2 years, and have met with intense pressure by the industry lobby group, Innovative Medicines Canada. Dr. Joel Lexchin examines the lies and half-truths put out by IMC. Lexchin is Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Management at York University.
Millions of Canadians do not have dental coverage, with 1 in 5 children and over half of seniors without access to regular dental care. A forthcoming book by Nova Scotia dentist Brandon Doucet highlights how Canada’s current dental care system is inconsistent with the primary purpose of the Canada Health Act. Doucet is founder of Coalition for Dentalcare. He joined us in January to talk about the urgent need for full universal dental care.
In 2001, Dr. Norma Dunning applied to the Nunavut Beneficiary program, seeking legal recognition of her status as an Inuk woman. In the application process, she was faced with a question she could not answer, "What was your disc number?” Her new book Kinuavit: What’s Your Name is the result of two decades of research into the Eskimo Identification System and its impact on Inuit lives. It’s also a personal account of her search for her grandmother. We speak with Dr. Norma Dunning.
On October 4 last year, a parliamentary committee released a new report on facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence. The committee stopped short of recommending a ban on the use of facial recognition technology by police, a move that the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group says is critical to prevent mass surveillance of Canadians. We spoke last fall with Tim McSorley, national coordinator for ICLMG.
On November 1st last year, a provincial committee released their report on the toxic drug supply and overdose crisis. The report contains 37 recommendations looking at everything from BC's proposed decriminalization to treatment beds. In response, nearly 60 organizations and individuals released an open letter saying the report obscures the issue of a poisoned drug supply, and recommends nothing outside of the status quo. We speak with Caitlin Shane of Pivot Legal.
A massive electricity plant in Northeast England that has transitioned from coal to wood pellets claims it is creating green energy. But a protest movement in the UK, and environmentalists in BC say this is greenwashing. Now an investigation team has revealed that DRAX intends to supplement its use of wood waste and sawdust with whole trees, logged in primary forests. Last October, we spoke with Ben Parfitt of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
People with Indian Status cards face stigma and discrimination on a daily basis when they show their cards at stores or to officials, according to a landmark study commissioned by the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. The report is titled They Sigh or They Give You the Look: Discrimination and Status Card Usage. Last December, we spoke with Harmony Johnson, sɛƛakəs, from the Tla’amin Nation, who is the lead author of the report.
Tsqelmucwilc is the story of the children who survived the Kamloops Indian Residential School. It is based on the 1988 book Resistance and Renewal, a groundbreaking history of the school - and the first book on residential schools ever published in Canada. The new book has contributions by Garry Gottfriedson, Randy Fred and the KIRS Survivors. We spoke with author Celia Haig-Brown last fall.
Flawed ideas about heroin and people who use it have shaped drug law and policy in Canada for decades. An illustrated book by Susan Boyd traces the history of Canadian heroin regulation over two centuries. Susan Boyd is a scholar/activist and distinguished professor at the University of Victoria. She joined us in May 2022 to talk about her book Heroin: An Illustrated History.
A report by Independent Jewish Voices documents in detail the reprisals, harassment and intimidation faced by Canadians who engage in scholarship and activism in the area of Palestinian human rights. The report discusses how this chilling effect blunts and shapes the discourse around Palestinian rights and criticism of Israeli policy. We spoke last fall with report co-author, Sheryl Nestel.
Judging by the constant stream of news reports of standoffs and confrontations, it’s apparent that Canada’s reconciliation project has gone off the rails. Standoff is the title of a book of essays by lawyer and historian Bruce McIvor. In it, he examines why reconciliation is failing and what needs to be done to fix it. Bruce McIvor is a member of the Manitoba Metis Federation and a partner at First People’s Law. He represents First Nations across Canada from Wet’suwet’en opposing the Coastal Gas Link pipeline to Mi’kmaw exercising their fishing rights in Nova Scotia. We spoke with him in December 2021.
A new report published last month by the office of the Representative for Children and Youth seeks to understand why hundreds of children are disappearing from the child welfare system in BC. It was written in response to the hundreds of reports coming into the Office of children missing from care, many of whom go on to experience critical injury or die. We speak with Dr. Jennifer Charlesworth is Representative for Children and Youth.
A new research review examines how people with long Covid have struggled to get information about their condition. It says patients’ experiences seeking information about their symptoms can be described as frustrating, uncertain, and complex. We speak with the lead researcher of the study, Simran Purewal, who is at the Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics, and Society at Simon Fraser University and senior scientist Kaylee Byers, also from PIPPs.
The rise of the gig economy using platforms like Uber and Skip the Dishes has led to a steep rise in the prevalence of precarious work. Precarious work is not new but we don’t know just how widespread a problem it has become because Stats Canada does not collect data on it. The pilot BC Precarity survey conducted by Iglika Ivanova and Kendra Strauss aims to fill that gap. We speak with Iglika Ivanova to find out what the survey revealed.
360 Riot Walk is an immersive, self-guided 360 ° video walking tour of the 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver. Now, a book based on the walk adds new dimensions to our understanding of those events. The book will be launched June 30 at the Sun Yat Sen Gardens in Chinatown. We’re joined by Henry Tsang, artistic director of the tour and author of the book.
Academics from universities across Canada have issued an open letter calling for an end to the eviction of encampments in Vancouver. The letter is in response to the wholesale removal of tents along Hastings Street that took place in the first week of April. It’s addressed to the mayor and council, union and health officials plus members of the provincial government. We talk with Jeff Masuda, Professor in the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria.
Hassan Diab has been entangled in a 15-year legal battle against claims he is a terrorist. Last week, the Assize Court in Paris found Dr. Diab guilty of perpetrating a 1980 bomb attack outside a synagogue in Paris. In a new trial, the French court sentenced the Ottawa academic to life in prison, despite the fact that both the Canadian and French justice systems have already found a lack of credible evidence. We speak with Alex Neve, senior fellow in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.
The last Vancouver City Council approved a plan to make Vancouver the most accessible city in the world. The new ABC majority had “best in the world” as one of their campaign promises too and wanted a quick update on the planning early on in their term. That update report was before Council this week. Redeye collective member, Ian Mass joins Lorraine Chisholm with his City Beat report to talk about the accessibility plan, along with safety for pedestrians, taxes, ongoing conflict at the School Board and another setback for the Salish Sea.
Eight years ago multidisciplinary artist Mark Timmings and digital media artist Brady Marks joined forces to create the Wetland Project, a soundscape focusing on a marsh beside Mark Timmings’ home on Saturna Island. Since then, Brady and Mark have produced an award-winning book about the project, and, on Earth Day this year, the sounds of the ṮEḴTEḴSEN marsh will be heard as far away as Paris. Brady Marks and Mark Timmings join us today to talk about the project and its ongoing development.
C-IRG is a specially trained section of the RCMP, established in 2017, who are responsible for intervening in conflicts between local communities and industry in British Columbia. By 2022, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP had received over 500 complaints in areas where C-IRG is active. Now the CRCC has announced a systemic review of the force, but a new group says C-IRG is not reformable and should be abolished. We speak with front-line activist Molly Murphy and law prof Irina Ceric of the Abolish C-IRG coalition.
The Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement came into effect in 2004. Under the agreement, those applying for refugee status in either country at an official border crossing are turned back. On March 24, Justin Trudeau announced that the Safe Third Country Agreement was being expanded to apply to the entire Canada-US border, including unofficial crossings. Immigration lawyer Zool Suleman joins us to talk about the impact of this expansion.
Vancouver City Council met this week to consider the recent clearing of the Downtown Eastside tent city on Hastings Street, the sale of wine in grocery stores, a new climate change initiative and the possible sale of an elementary school on the West Side. Redeye Collective member Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.
Leading privacy, technology and civil liberties experts are urging Canadian Members of Parliament to vote against the federal government’s proposed Artificial Intelligence and Data Act which would regulate AI. Signatories to an open letter say the proposed legislation is flawed beyond repair. We speak with Tim McSorley, national coordinator of International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.
Involuntary treatment is currently allowed under B.C.'s Mental Health if a doctor deems it necessary for a person’s health and safety, as well as the safety of others. However, Premier David Eby is proposing to expand the system to cover people who overdose. Last week, Pivot Legal Society released a position paper responding to this move and calling for the elimination of involuntary treatment. Tyson Singh Kelsall is a social worker in the Downtown Eastside and PhD Student at SFU's Faculty of Health Sciences.
Special rapporteur David Johnston has been tasked with assessing the extent and impact of foreign interference in Canada’s electoral processes. On March 21, academics and activists across Canada penned an open letter of caution to Johnson, warning that discussions of foreign interference and national security can quickly become toxic. We speak with John Price, professor emeritus of the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria and member of the Canada-China Focus Advisory Group.
In the early days of the pandemic, feminist organizations around the world called for a recovery that would respond to immediate needs and advance structural reform, ensuring a gender-just recovery for everyone. A new report takes stock of Canada’s response to the pandemic using a gender lens. A new report compares the response of the federal government with similar governments internationally, and looks at how different provinces addressed the crisis. We speak with author Katherine Scott, senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report for March 25 to talk about bear spray, ornamental water fountains, parks and farm land becoming industrial lands, the 2022 Vancouver municipal election and the Broadway plan.
For most Canadians, information about the world events comes via the corporate media. And while reporters may strive to be objective, the corporations who employ them often have a different agenda. This fact has a huge impact on the news we get about Israel and Palestine. A new initiative by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East aims to hold the media accountable for bias and inaccuracies in reporting on the region. We speak with Thomas Woodley, president of CJPME.
Two media professionals filed a class action lawsuit against the RCMP this month for allegedly breaching their Charter rights, and the constitutional rights of hundreds of other individuals at Fairy Creek. Lawyers for the suit say it’s believed that most of the almost 1200 people arrested at Fairy Creek were released without charge. We speak with lawyer David Wu and film producer Kristy Morgan, one of the plaintiffs.
In March, police announced the bust of a major international labour trafficking ring in Ontario. Earlier this year, some of the workers had contacted the Toronto-based Workers’ Action Centre for help. The organization has been providing support since, alongside the Migrant Workers’ Alliance for Change. Some of the workers had been sent to work on farms, something that concerns the National Farmers Union. The NFU passed a resolution at their convention in November 2022, pledging to support migrant-led movements to win full and permanent immigration status for all migrants, including undocumented people. I speak with Jenn Pfenning, president of the NFU.
At the beginning of March, the annual wild salmon juvenile out-migration begins. At this moment in Clayoquot Sound, as the young fish head out to sea, they are under threat from a fish farm operated in their waters by the global corporation, Cermaq. There has been a long fight to close down offshore fish farms in BC, and recently there has been some success in closing them down. But the fight is not over, and the continued existence of wild salmon is at stake. We speak with Dan Lewis of Clayoquot Action.
Niall McNeil is an accomplished artist, a lifelong performer and a person with Down syndrome. Marie Clements is a renowned Canadian writer, director and producer. Niall and Marie collaborated on the new NFB documentary Lay Down Your Heart. The film is about Niall McNeil and his family and friends. Lay Down Your Heart airs at the inaugural Down Syndrome Film Festival on March 18 in Burnaby, BC. We spoke with Niall and Marie in early March.
The polluters must pay. That’s the message of a new campaign to hold the fossil fuel industry to account for the mounting costs of the climate crisis. Sue Big Oil was started by West Coast Environmental Law last year, and has since been taken up by a broad coalition of advocacy groups and British Columbians. We speak with David Ravensbergen of the Council of Canadians.
As B.C. continues to ramp up fracking for natural gas, we are seeing an increasing number of studies describing human health harms to those living close to this industry. Dr. Margaret McGregor is a family physician, health policy researcher and clinical associate professor with the Department of Family Practice at the University of British Columbia. She joins us today to talk about fracking and health.
BC’s first budget under Premier David Eby was released on Tuesday. It includes funding increases in housing, health care, income supports and cost of living tax credits, and allocates a record level of investment towards capital infrastructure. To discuss both the new spending and what’s missing from the budget, I’m joined by Alex Hemingway, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC Office.
BC’s first budget under Premier David Eby included substantial funding increases in a number of areas that will benefit British Columbians. But following a series of announcements on biodiversity, old growth, and the environment in Eby’s first months, all eyes were on the budget to match talk with money. The result was mixed, but fell short in many areas for changing course on fossil fuels and the environment, and in protecting lands, waters, and species. We speak with Torrance Coste, national campaign director with the Wilderness Committee.
Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report to talk about Vancouver city council debating a staff report proposing a 9.7% tax increase, an announcement that Vancouver is selling non-market housing sites back to a developer and how Burnaby wants to convert part of a park for industrial use.
Most people have the sense that health care in Canada is in crisis. Health care funding and responsibility is kicked around like a political football. Most recently, the federal-provincial health care deal put 48 billion dollars worth of new money on the table over the next 10 years. Yet the deal requires provinces to spend just 58 cents out of every new dollar on actual new health care programs while leaving the rest with no strings attached. We speak about the new deal and the crisis in health care with activist and health policy researcher Colleen Fuller.
An art exhibition in Grand Forks last summer showed gallery visitors images of Mexican temporary farm workers that don’t fit the stereotype. The men were in blue jeans, with bare torsos and holding and wearing objects that can best be described as regalia. The objects are the work of Rocio Graham, a Mexican-Canadian multidisciplinary artist based in Sinixt and Syilx territory, also known as Christina Lake, BC. Rocio Graham joins me to talk about how the exhibition came about and what she hoped to communicate with her images.
Vancouver City planners see their missing middle housing proposals as an important opportunity to fulfil ABC Vancouver’s housing promises. Abundant Housing Vancouver calls the proposals “an extraordinary disappointment … the smallest possible increment of change…”. We speak with Peter Waldkirch of Abundant Housing Vancouver, a non-partisan group of housing advocates.
Nicole Chan was a police officer employed by the Vancouver Police Department. She was 30 years old when she died by suicide in 2019. At the time of her death she had been on leave, awaiting the conclusion of an investigation into her complaint about fellow officers. Meenakshi Mannoe of Pivot Legal Society says the coroner’s inquest into Chan’s death puts a spotlight on the VPD, emergency psychiatric services in the city and the inadequate services available to survivors of sexualized violence and abuse in BC.
Ben Parfitt says that the pending closure of a pulp mill in Prince George and the loss of 300 high-paying jobs in the community is just the beginning of what promises to be a new and painful chapter in the province’s beleaguered forest industry. Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Starting January 31, the province of BC decriminalized the personal possession of certain types and amounts of drugs. But the policy does not cover some commonly used controlled substances and the amounts permitted are too small to have an impact, according to advocates and drug users. Pivot Legal and VANDU have collaborated on a Know Your Rights card to help people figure out if they are protected by the policy. I speak with Caitlin Shane, staff lawyer at Pivot Legal Society.
Colonialism and systemic racism are embedded in Vancouver’s bylaws. A motion before Vancouver Council wants to take a deep dive into these bylaws using an equity lens. Council will also consider a climate justice charter written by people with lived experiences of systemic inequities. Ian Mass joins us with this week’s episode of City Beat.
Despite the climate crisis, 80% of new vehicles sold in Canada in the last two years were SUVs and pickup trucks, up from 55% a decade ago. A research team at SFU says the Canadian obsession with SUVs is seriously disrupting our climate goals. We speak with Zoe Long from the Sustainable Transportation Action Research Team.
We are probably all familiar with the letter-writing campaigns of Amnesty International. Now Amnesty Canada has a new podcast: Rights Back at You. The podcast aims to unravel the Canada you think you know and challenge the systems that hold back human rights. The podcast launched February 1 with an episode on facial recognition and policing protest. We talk with the host of Rights Back at You, Daniella Barreto.
The 45-year old Vancouver Folk Music Festival is a much-loved event for music fans and an important showcase for musicians. So it came as a shock when the festival’s board announced two weeks ago that the 2023 festival had been cancelled and they wanted members to vote to dissolve the society. Following a groundswell of support, the board postponed the AGM and held an open meeting to discuss the festival’s future. Ian Mass was at the meeting and brings us a report.
In a small Indian village, Ranjit wakes up to find that his 13-year-old daughter has not returned home from a family wedding. A few hours later, she’s found stumbling home. She had been dragged into the woods and raped by three men, all known to the family. Ranjit and his wife go to the police, and the men are arrested. The new documentary, To Kill a Tiger, follows Ranjit’s uphill battle to find justice for his child.
There has been a rapid increase in Canadian university tuition fees, creating a barrier for low-income students and widening the gap between privileged students and those who struggle to pay for their studies. Grace Barakat is a sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto. She talks with us about how changes in the cost of tuition are having an impact on Canadian students and their futures.
Canada’s drug prices are the fourth highest in the developed world. New guidelines aimed at lowering prescription drug prices have been in process for more than 2 years, and have met with intense pressure by the industry lobby group, Innovative Medicines Canada. Dr. Joel Lexchin examines the lies and half-truths put out by IMC. Lexchin is Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Management at York University.
Ian Mass joins us with City Beat to talk about Indigenous-led supportive housing, a business-friendly mayor, fires in Downtown Eastside hotels, the demise of Vancouver’s Renter Office and increasing the supply of renewable energy.
A new report by Women Transforming Cities looks at ways to speed up implementation of TRC calls to action within municipalities. As almost 80% of Indigenous people in BC live, work, and study in urban and off-reserve areas, municipalities play a big role in fostering Indigenous relations. Yet, researchers found that almost half of municipalities identified a lack of knowledge and understanding about the calls to action and saw it as a substantial challenge to implement them. Clara Prager is one of the authors of the report.
British Columbia is awash in housing announcements and plans. A rental protection fund designed to thwart real estate investment trusts, one stop shopping for provincial housing permits, a refreshed 10-year housing supply plan, a promised BC Builds plan and a brand new housing ministry. Economist Alex Hemingway joins us to help us figure out if all these plans will change the game on housing in BC.
When Pedro Castillo was elected president of Peru in April 2021, he embodied the hopes of millions of rural, Black and Indigenous peoples. Following more than 18 months of opposition from Congress and the Peruvian elite, Castillo was impeached and jailed after he attempted to rule by emergency poweres. Protests against the arrest have been met with lethal force by the police and the army. As many as 50 people have been killed and over 600 wounded. Meanwhile the Canadian government has sided with the United States in supporting the new president, Dina Boluarte. We speak with Yves Engler of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.
Vancouver parks board threatens to turbocharge commercialization of parks and city council plans for urgent measures to uplift Chinatown and increased support for renters. Ian Mass has these stories and more in this week’s City Beat.
On the final day of the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal in December, 196 countries reached a new global agreement to stem the stunning loss of biodiversity worldwide. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework promises key commitments to halt extinction while recognizing Indigenous People’s rights and title. Charlotte Dawe is Conservation and Policy Campaigner with the Wilderness Committee. She was in Montreal and joins us to share her perspective on what was achieved and what still needs to be done.
Millions of Canadians do not have dental coverage, with 1 in 5 children and over half of seniors without access to regular dental care. A forthcoming book by Nova Scotia dentist Brandon Doucet highlights how Canada’s current dental care system is inconsistent with the primary purpose of the Canada Health Act. Doucet is founder of Coalition for Dentalcare. He joins us to talk about the urgent need for full universal dental care.
City Beat reporter Ian Mass joins us with his regular City Beat report to talk about the year ahead in politics for Vancouver City Council and Metro Vancouver, from police and public safety to affordable housing and budget shortfalls.
By 9:43am on January 3, many of the 100 highest-paid CEOs in Canada had made as much money as the average Canadian worker makes in a year, close to $59,000. New data from 2021 shows that top CEOs broke every compensation record on the books that year. We speak with David Macdonald, author of Breakfast of Champions, a new report on CEO pay.
Late last year, the Gitxaala First Nation filed a judicial review in BC Supreme Court. The First Nation is challenging BC’s Mineral Tenure Act. The act currently allows anyone to get mineral rights just about anywhere in the province. Redeye’s James Mainguy spoke recently with Chief Matthew Hill, hereditary Chief of the Gitxaala First Nation, along with Ruben Tillman, one of the legal team representing the First Nation in BC Supreme Court.
Michael Bueckert is one of three delegates who just returned from a 2-week trip to the occupied Palestinian Territories and Palestinian communities within Israel. The three are all members of different Canadian organizations working to support Palestinian human rights in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Michael Bueckert is Vice-President of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East and author of a report on the trip.
The BC government under Premier David Eby has signaled new directions on protecting BC lands. They have committed to protect 30 per cent of the province’s land by 2030. This includes a mandate to work with Indigenous communities to create Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas. We talk about the new commitment with Torrance Coste, National Campaign Director for the Wilderness Committee.
On November 23, the BC government released its 2022 Climate Change Accountability Report revealing that the province is on course to miss two near-term climate targets in 2025 and 2030. The government projects that it will miss the first target by 15% and the second one by at least 35%. Peter McCartney of the Wilderness Committee joins me to talk about the report and the role of LNG in preventing the province from meeting its climate commitments.
BC Premier David Eby recently introduced new policies to build new homes, reduce rental vacancies and open up strata housing for renters. Dr. Elliot Rossiter says these actions alone won’t solve the housing crisis and that what’s needed is a truly progressive approach to the problem. Elliot Rossiter is a faculty member in the Department of Philosophy at Douglas College, where he is working on a multi-year project on housing justice supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He discusses possible routes to solve the housing crisis.
When the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was presented in Parliament in June 2015, the Commission said the residential school system was a form of cultural genocide. The Canadian government did not take that recognition any further. However, on October 27 this year, a motion calling on the government to recognize Canada's Indian residential schools as genocide passed unanimously in the House of Commons. We speak with Leah Gazan, NDP MP for Winnipeg Centre, who introduced the motion.
Canadian Blood Services has signed a 15-year deal with a for-profit plasma corporation to privatize plasma collection in Canada. BloodWatch says the paid plasma scheme goes against recommendations from the Krever Commission and would negatively affect voluntary collection efforts. We speak with Dr. Michèle Brill-Edwards, a former senior Health Canada regulator and whistle-blower on drug and blood safety. Dr. Brill-Edwards is a long-time board member of the Canadian Health Coalition.
People with Indian Status cards face stigma and discrimination on a daily basis when they show their cards at stores or to officials, according to a landmark study commissioned by the Union of BC Indian Chiefs. The report is titled They Sigh or They Give You the Look: Discrimination and Status Card Usage. We speak with Harmony Johnson, sɛƛakəs, from the Tla’amin Nation, who is the lead author of the report.
Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report, looking ahead to the 2023 budget discussion as council tries to square a 4% increase in the cost of policing with just a 5% increase in property taxes. He also talks about the Vancouver School Board vote on bringing back cops in schools, a motion to fast-track non-market housing and a plan to make Vancouver a more age-friendly city.
For far too long, manufacturing giants have exploited Canadian consumers by making their products increasingly expensive and challenging to repair through restrictive warranties, software locks, and restrictions on access to spare parts and manuals, forcing people to replace their products more often. Now there’s a private member’s bill before Parliament to give consumers the ‘right to repair’. We talk about the issue and the bill with Matt Hatfield of Open Media.
Roger Emsley has been watching and commenting on a Vancouver Port Authority proposal to expand the Roberts Bank coal and container terminal since 2013. Finally, after almost 10 years, the public may have the answer next month. Roger Emsley joins me to talk about the major threats to biodiversity that the project represents and the pending announcement.
Jim Stanford is Director of the Centre for Future Work and is one of Canada’s best-known economic commentators. The webinar “Pick your poison: inflation, recession…or both” was organized by The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Stanford breaks down the factors that have led to current inflationary crisis and how the Bank of Canada is risking an avoidable and painful recession by just raising interest rates and not looking at the factors that got us here. We bring you his presentation in our episode today.
The UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal – COP 15 – starts in December. Countries from around the world are expected to agree on a biodiversity framework. The federal government has called on the provinces and territories to help meet the key goal of the biodiversity conference: to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and achieve its full recovery by 2050. However, a new independent audit by biologist Jared Hobbs highlights huge legal gaps driving species extinction in B.C. We speak with Jens Wieting of Sierra Club BC.
The Living Wage is the hourly rate that a family of four needs to live modestly in BC. It has been calculated every year since 2008. This year’s report was released two days ago and it shows that, for the first time in a decade and a half, the living wage has significantly increased, driven by a spike in the cost of food and shelter. The rate was calculated in 22 communities across BC this year. We talk with Anastasia French, Provincial Manager of Living Wage for Families BC.
In March of this year, Québec senator Rosa Galvez tabled Bill S-243, the Climate Aligned Finance Act. Her bill aims to hold governments and financial institutions to account for their actions, and halt the widespread financial backing of fossil fuels. We speak about the bill with Bruce Campbell, Senior Fellow at Toronto Metropolitan University's Centre for Free Expression.
Despite dire predictions that the pandemic would be a big blow to provincial finances, most provinces have enough funds to pay for the important programs and investments that Canadians need, according to a recent report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives national office. Here in BC, the extent of the province’s fiscal and economic latitude goes well beyond what is discussed in the national report. We speak with economist Alex Hemingway.
The Superior Court of Quebec has issued a landmark decision, finding that police roadside interceptions are often based on skin colour rather than on road safety objectives. Judge Michel Yergeau ruled that the law allowing for such arbitrary detention can no longer stand. The case was brought by Joseph-Christopher Luamba, a 22 year old black Montrealer, who told the court he prepares to pull over whenever he sees a police cruiser. We speak with Laura Berger, staff lawyer with the Canadian Civil Liberties association, an intervenor in the case.
On November 1st, a provincial committee released their report on the toxic drug supply and overdose crisis. The report contains 37 recommendations looking at everything from BC's proposed decriminalization to treatment beds. In response, nearly 60 organizations and individuals released an open letter saying the report obscures the issue of a poisoned drug supply, and recommends nothing outside of the status quo. We speak with Caitlin Shane of Pivot Legal.
City Beat reporter Ian Mass joins us to talk about the new Vancouver City Council’s first meeting. This includes a motion to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, Chinatown, street nurses and police, who appear to want to champion social service reform in the DTES all by themselves.
In February this year, the estimated cost of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project jumped by more than 70%. When the Trans Mountain Corporation announced the increase back in February, we were told that the government would spend no additional public money on the project. A new report by independent economist Robyn Allan says this is not the case, and that the federal government is hiding the real situation from Canadians. We speak with Eugene Kung, staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law who commissioned the report.
One of the first pieces of business the new Vancouver City Council will deal with is a motion from newly re-elected Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung asking council to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism and the definition’s list of examples. City Beat reporter Ian Mass joins me to talk about that motion and other plans coming from this new city council.
Thousands of Ontario education workers hit picket lines on Nov 4 after the Ford government passed Bill 28, using the notwithstanding clause to deny workers the right to strike and imposing a contract on 55,000 CUPE members. We speak with Ryan Kelpin, PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at York University and research associate at the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies.
In April 2020, a group of academics in the Netherlands wrote a manifesto for a post-pandemic recovery. It proposed an approach to building economies where green and socially valuable sectors were promoted, and harmful industries like oil and gas, and even advertising, were demoted. This fledgling movement is called Degrowth. Now a new book helps bring the ideas of degrowth out for discussion. The book is The Future Is Degrowth: A Guide to a World beyond Capitalism. We speak with one of the book’s three co-authors, Aaron Vansintjan.
In September, Cuban citizens at home and abroad cast their ballots in a referendum on the country’s new Families Code. The Code passed by 67%, expanding legal rights for women, children and LGBTQ+ people. The new code has been described as one of the most progressive piece of social policy in the world. Owen Schalk is a writer based in Winnipeg. He was in Cuba this spring and he joins today to talk about the new Families Code.
This week Vancouver City Council considered the final report of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Task Force. The report was developed in a partnership with Musqueam Indian Band, Squamish Nation, and Tsleil-Waututh Nation and the City of Vancouver. The task force states that the calls to action are the first of their kind in Canada and will lead to Vancouver becoming both a national and world leader in implementing a clear strategy towards UNDRIP and reconciliation with nations whose lands and waters the city occupies. We speak with task force co-chair Christine Boyle.
force co-chair Christine Boyle.
Read the report: https://council.vancouver.ca/20221025/documents/p1.pdf
In 2001, Dr. Norma Dunning applied to the Nunavut Beneficiary program, seeking legal recognition of her status as an Inuk woman. In the application process, she was faced with a question she could not answer, "What was your disc number?” Her new book Kinauvit: What’s Your Name is the result of two decades of research into the Eskimo Identification System and its impact on Inuit lives. It’s also a personal account of her search for her grandmother. We speak with Dr. Norma Dunning.
A new report by Independent Jewish Voices documents in detail the reprisals, harassment and intimidation faced by Canadians who engage in scholarship and activism in the area of Palestinian human rights. The report discusses how this chilling effect blunts and shapes the discourse around Palestinian rights and criticism of Israeli policy. We speak with report co-author, Sheryl Nestel.
Municipal elections on October 15 changed the political landscape all over the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island. Redeye collective member Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report to talk about the surprises and some of the challenges facing these new municipal governments.
On September 14, Marjorie Griffin Cohen gave the 2022 Gideon Rosenbluth Memorial Lecture at an event organized by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC office. Her talk was titled Handle With Care: Growth through the care economy benefits people and the climate. In it, she looks at the blind spots in economic thinking that devalue the care economy and in doing so, miss opportunities for expanding the economy in a way that meets people’s needs and address the climate crisis.
A massive electricity plant in Northeast England that has transitioned from coal to wood pellets claims it is creating green energy. But a protest movement in the UK, and environmentalists in BC say this is greenwashing. Now an investigation team has revealed that DRAX intends to supplement its use of wood waste and sawdust with whole trees, logged in primary forests. We speak with Ben Parfitt of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
On October 4, a parliamentary committee released a new report on facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence. The committee stopped short of recommending a ban on the use of facial recognition technology by police, a move that the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group says is critical to prevent mass surveillance of Canadians. We speak with Tim McSorley, national coordinator for ICLMG.
Of all of the processes that are reshaping cities today, gentrification is probably one of the most misunderstood. In her new book, Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies, Leslie Kern addresses seven of the myths about gentrification and exposes the ideologies that make it seem like a natural and desirable process. Leslie Kern is associate professor of geography and environment and women's and gender studies at Mount Allison University, in Sackville, New Brunswick. She joins us to talk about how and why gentrification happens and how to resist it.
Two years ago the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute and others started a campaign to oppose Israeli military recruitment in Canada. A parliamentary petition calling on the Minister of Justice to investigate this recruitment got more than 7500 signatures but died on the order paper. In response to a follow-up petition, the Liberal government last month reiterated the illegality of foreign recruitment but declined to take action. This has prompted two individuals to initiate a private prosecution. Last week, a justice of the peace determined that their case against Sar-El Canada could be heard. We speak with Yves Engler of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.
Coastal Gaslink is poised to drill under Wedzin Kwa – The Morice River on the territory of the Wet’suwet’en. Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and their allies have fought back for years against developments that threaten their land and waters. At this critical time, they are calling for solidarity and support. We speak with Jennifer Wickham.
In his City Beat report, Ian Mass covers the municipal races in the four Lower Mainland cities that could elect progressive councils: Surrey, Burnaby, New Westminster and Vancouver. He also attended two mayoral debates in Vancouver, one on Chinatown and one on housing and real estate issues.
Private surgeries and medical imaging are big business in BC. A new report says that government policies have created a market for these clinics by signing contracts with them to deliver publicly funded services worth almost 400 million dollars over 6 years. Health policy researcher Andrew Longhurst says the provincial government needs to stop subsidizing for-profit clinics and wean BC off its growing reliance on corporate health-care delivery. We speak with Andrew Longhurst.
Tsqelmucwilc is the story of the children who survived the Kamloops Indian Residential School. It is based on the 1988 book Resistance and Renewal, a groundbreaking history of the school - and the first book on residential schools ever published in Canada. The new book has contributions by Garry Gottfriedson, Randy Fred and the KIRS Survivors. We speak with author Celia Haig-Brown.
An organization that advocates for BC’s children and youth says municipal governments need to take more responsibility for supporting the youngest residents of their cities. To this end, First Call has developed a toolkit for voters wanting for raise issues in the upcoming municipal elections taking place across British Columbia on October 15. We speak with Adrienne Montani, executive director of First Call.
In 2019, the Canadian government voted in favour of a resolution on Palestinian self-determination at the United Nations General Assembly. This was a reversal of its vote for the previous 8 years. Despite this symbolic shift, Canada has continued to vote against almost every other resolution which aims to support Palestinian human rights. A report published by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East reveals a stark disjuncture between Canada’s overall stance on Israel and the advice of its foreign affairs experts. We speak with the report author, Michael Buekert.
In the new feature film Unarchived, co-directors Hayley Gray and Elad Tzadok highlight community archives across British Columbia. Their film reveals just some of what has been erased from the official record and challenges larger institutions to re-examine narratives that don’t reflect the totality of our shared experience. Unarchived has its world premiere Sept 30 at VIFF. We speak with Hayley Gray and Elad Tzadok.
Vancouver municipal voters will go to the polls on October 15. Electors will have to sort through 137 candidates to decide who the mayor will be, as well as city councillors, school trustees and park commissioners. To break it down a bit for us, we talk with Redeye collective member Ian Mass with his City Beat report.
In the lead-up to Vancouver’s upcoming municipal election on October 15, Women Transforming Cities has launched the Hot Pink Paper Campaign with eight policy asks for candidates in the election. These policy asks are based on months of community input from women, gender-diverse residents, and front-line organizations. Campaign lead Mahtab Laghaei joins us to talk about what they want to see candidates support.
Carmen Rodriguez is an internationally acclaimed Chilean-Canadian author, educator and journalist. Her 2021 novel, Atacama, is set against the backdrop of Chile in the first half of the twentieth century and Europe during the Spanish Civil War. It is both a sweeping historical novel and gripping tale of personal drama. Carmen Rodriguez joined us in November last year to talk about the book.
Earle Peach is the director of three Vancouver-based choral groups including the High and Lows Choir and Solidarity Notes Labour Choir. He also plays a bunch of instruments and performs with musical groups. In his 2021 book, Questions to the Moon, Peach says songwriting is his strongest self-identification. The book is a collection of stories and lyrics, published by Lazara Press.
In June 2021, NSCAD University in Halifax announced that it was going to set up an institute to study Canadian slavery. The initiative was spearheaded by Dr. Charmaine Nelson, the first Black tenured professor of art history in Canada. The Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery will be a hub for the study of the art, visual cultures, and histories of Canadian slavery and its legacies. We talked with Dr. Charmaine Nelson last year.
In 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to pass a comprehensive law banning on metals mining nationwide. The vote was the result of a 12-year struggle by small farmers and their allies to protect the waters of the Lempa River from the impact of gold mining. Robin Broad and John Cavanagh tell this incredible story in their 2021 book The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved A Country From Corporate Greed. We spoke with John Cavanagh shortly after the book was published.
Canadian history, as many of us learned it in high school, leaves out or distorts the histories of many Canadians who do not fit into the prescribed narrative of this country. Students are often left questioning how they can study a past that does not reflect their present. The book “Transforming the Canadian History Classroom: Imagining a New "We", calls for an approach that places students at the centre of the history classroom. We spoke with author Dr. Samantha Cutrara in February 2021.
The National Trust manages historic properties and areas of countryside in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In September 2020, the Trust commissioned a report on connections between their properties and colonialism, including links with historic slavery. The report attracted the attention of a group of Conservative MPs who attempted to discredit the work of the historians who produced it. In January 2021, we spoke with Professor Corinne Fowler of the University of Leicester about the work and the attacks on it.
A long tradition of the amateur detective exists in the mystery genre. The latest sleuth is Annick Boudreau, a clinical psychologist created by a Vancouver comedian, playwright, and novelist who based the character of Annick Boudreau, in part, on his own therapist. We speak with Charles Demers about the book, Primary Obsessions.
It’s 2022, and Canada is not on track to meet our greenhouse gas emissions targets. To do so, we’ll need radical systemic change to how we live and work—and fast. How can we ever achieve this? Top policy analyst and author Seth Klein reveals we can do it now because did it before during the Second World War. In a conversation recorded in 2020, we speak with Seth Klein about how wartime thinking and community efforts can be repurposed for Canada’s own Green New Deal.
John Ware is an iconic figure in the history of southern Alberta. He was a Black pioneer and rancher who settled in the province before the turn of the century. Born in the American South, he was already an accomplished cowboy by the time he arrived in Alberta. John Ware is the subject of a NFB documentary that showed at the Calgary and Vancouver International Film Festival in September 2020.
Born in 1931, Tla’amin elder Elsie Paul was raised by her grandparents on their ancestral territory just north of Powell River on the Sunshine Coast of BC. As her adult life unfolded against a backdrop of colonialism, she drew strength from the teachings she had learned. She now passes on those teachings to all who visit a new interactive book published by Ravenspace. We talk with one of the co-creators of the book, Elsie Paul’s grandson, Davis McKenzie in July 2020. The book is still available here: http://publications.ravenspacepublishing.org/as-i-remember-it/index
When sociologist Ingrid Waldron started teaching in the School of Nursing at Dalhousie, she says she got a lot of pushback from White student nurses who didn’t understand what race had to do with health. In this wide-ranging conversation recorded in July 2020, Waldron examines the connections between the social determinants of health, environmental racism and police violence.
Eliza Gilkyson describes her album "2020" as a collection of sing-alongs, diatribes, marching songs and love letters to the Earth. We caught up with her in May 2020 at her home in Austin, Texas for an extended conversation about politics, music and the significance of the year 2020 in the United States.
Sharon McIvor’s grandmother was a member of the Lower Nicola Band who married a non-Indigenous man. Under Canada’s Indian Act, status was decided on the basis of male lineage and so their daughter was ineligible for registration as an Indian. Sharon McIvor launched a landmark case to gain equality and won a sweeping legal victory in 2007. The Canadian government continued to drag its feet. Sharon McIvor took the case to the United Nations in 2011. Canada finally ended sex-based discrimination in the Act on August 15, 2019
Mel Watkins died in 2020 at age 87. Mel Watkins was a political economist at the University of Toronto, as well as an activist and writer. In the late 1960s, he was founder and co-leader, with James Laxer, of The Waffle, a left-wing political formation within the NDP that advocated for an “independent, socialist Canada.” Jim Stanford is author of a collection of essays on Mel Watkins’ Staple Theory of Economic Growth. Jim Stanford was formerly an economist with Unifor, and is currently director of the Centre for Future Work. He joined us in April 2020 to pay tribute to his friend and mentor.
In 1884, the Canadian government banned the Haida potlatch. But Haida elders kept the knowledge of the ceremony alive until the ban was lifted. In 1969, a potlatch was held to honour the raising of the first totem pole in 80 years, carved by Robert Davidson. Sara Florence Davidson co-wrote Potlatch as Pedagogy with her father to show how Haida traditions can be brought into present-day classrooms. She joins us in our studio to talk about the process of writing the book – and tells the story of how her father came to carve that first pole at the age of 22.
Precarious work was a major risk factor during the pandemic, and was implicated in the catastrophe that took place in long-term care. A report released last month in Ontario says that government inaction on workplace protections is undermining pandemic recovery. It documents how lack of workplace protections like decent wages and paid sick days has widened existing health inequities. We speak with Dr. Danyaal Raza, a family physician in Toronto and a member of the Decent Work and Health Network.
Northern BC is a territory roughly the size of France, but there is no public transportation system for the 200,000 people who live there. This means each family is obliged to buy and maintain at least one car or truck if they want to be able to get around. We speak with Peter Ewart, a writer and community activist based in Prince George, about the urgent need for a public bus system in rural BC.
Cycling for transportation and recreation is a climate-friendly way to move around your city. It’s affordable and healthy as well as an efficient use of urban space. But in British Columbia, cyclists are endangered every day by out-dated laws that fail to regulate and educate drivers to take care around vulnerable road users. HUB Cycling is advocating for better laws to protect people cycling and walking. We speak with Jeff Leigh, Chair of the Regional Advisory Committee for HUB Cycling.
Flawed ideas about heroin and people who use it have shaped drug law and policy in Canada for decades. A new illustrated book by Susan Boyd traces the history of Canadian heroin regulation over two centuries. Susan Boyd is a scholar/activist and distinguished professor at the University of Victoria. She joins me today to talk about her new book Heroin: An Illustrated History.
What if BC could massively increase public investment in below-market rental housing and that investment could pay for itself? Alex Hemingway is senior economist and public finance policy analyst at the CCPA BC Office. We talk about how this idea would create thousands of low-cost rental homes with no increase in public debt.
The US Supreme Court judge is poised to overturn Roe vs. Wade. In Canada, the landmark abortion rights case is the 1988 Morgentaler ruling, which struck down the country’s abortion law as unconstitutional. But legal protection is not the same as equal access and in many parts of the country, surgical abortion is still practically unavailable. I speak with Meghan Doherty of Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights.
Support for the police is grounded in a series of beliefs about our society – that Canadian laws are just, that the police treat everyone equally, and that without the police, communities would descend into chaos and disorder. The movement to defund the police says these beliefs are myths and imagines a world where police power is eroded and dissolved forever. Disarm, Defund, Dismantle is a new book about police abolition in Canada. I speak with editor Kevin Walby and contributor Jessica Evans.
Ian Mass joins us with his final City Beat till council ramps up for the civic election in the fall. On the agenda, densification and the Broadway plan, a 100-year-old heritage building that no-one wants and a motion to end the detention of applicants for refugee status in provincial jails.
San Francisco has passed a law that requires landlords to bargain with renters who want to organize. The Veritas Tenants Association, whose members live in housing owned by one of the biggest private residential landlords in the city, started a rent strike in Sept 2021. The law was passed after the landlord refused to meet and negotiate with the tenants association. Lenea Maibaum is an organizer at Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco and a member of the Veritas Tenants Association.
In 1956, the Canadian government declared the Arrow Lakes Indian Band, people of the Sinixt Nation, to be extinct. This was one in a long line of colonial attacks against an Indigenous nation whose territory encompasses a long valley that spans what is now the US-Canada border. The Sinixt were not extinct, and continue an active resistance to protect and regain their territories. A new film, Beyond Extinction: Sinixt Resurgence tells the “ongoing story of a people who reject their colonial ghost status.” The film is available online until May 15. We speak with filmmaker Ali Kazimi.
A provincial Special Committee on Reforming the Police Act in BC released its report last week with eleven recommendations that the committee says will lead to “transformational change in policing and community safety.” Meenakshi Mannoe wrote Pivot Legal’s submission to the committee, focusing on curtailing the role of police in complex social issues and eradicating systemic racism within police agencies. Meenakshi Mannoe shares her reaction to the report.
Hollaback! began as a blog to collect stories of street harassment. Now called Right To Be, it has evolved into an organization that fights harassment in all its forms. The first training they developed was on tools to combat street harassment. They have just completed a study that shows the effectiveness of the training for participants. We speak with director of training Kelly Erickson.
In December 2020, a group of Black federal employees filed a proposed class-action lawsuit in the Federal Court of Canada, seeking long-term solutions to address systemic racism and discrimination in the Public Service of Canada. We speak with Nicholas Marcus Thompson, organizer and lead plaintiff in the case.
The pandemic has killed an estimated 18 million people around the world, with many more dying in lower-income countries where vaccination rates remain low. Despite this, Canada continues to oppose an IP waiver at the WTO meaning that vaccines are only available in wealthier countries. We talk with Nikolas Barry-Shaw about how the Canadian government is working with the pharma industry to preserve patents on life-saving vaccines.
If it is built, the Midwest Carbon Express will be the world’s largest carbon capture and storage pipeline. It’s being developed by the Iowa-based company, Summit Carbon Solutions and faces strong opposition from a broad coalition of Indigenous communities, Iowa landowners and environmental groups. Andy Currier is the author of a new report on the Midwest Carbon Express for the Oakland Institute.
Public safety and violent crime have become hot topics as Vancouver City Council grapples with an ever-expanding police budget. On this week’s council agenda: public safety, CCTV cameras and the police budget; an apology to the Italian community, business taxes, affordable housing and much more. We’re joined by Ian Mass with City Beat.
Earlier this month, Israeli soldiers raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a Muslim holy site in Jerusalem. Soldiers threw teargas and stun grenades as they entered the compound and mosque, assaulting hundreds of people. Arming Apartheid is a new report by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East. It says that Canada’s arms exports to Israel have been accelerating in recent years and reached a 30-year high in 2020. We speak with lead author Michael Bueckert.
FortisBC, the largest natural gas distributor in BC, has developed learning resources for schools, marketed as a free K-12 online curriculum developed by teachers and based on BC’s current curriculum. The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment is raising the alarm over this type of biased content in schools. We speak with Dr. Lori Adamson, an emergency room physician in Salmon Arm and parent of a child in elementary school.
While the April 7 budget did include some money for housing coops and non-profit housing, there is little to improve the situation for renters across Canada. We speak about housing and the federal budget with Ricardo Tranjan, political economist and senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Ontario office.
Brent Eichler has been on hunger strike since March 25, calling for a public meeting with Forests Minister Katrine Conroy about the protection of the province’s old-growth forests. Brent has since been joined in his hunger strike by a number of other members of Save Old Growth. In addition to hunger strikes, the group also resumed its blockades of the Trans-Canada Highway at various locations in the province on Monday. We spoke with Brent Eichler last week.
Hotel workers at the Hilton Metrotown in Burnaby are involved in the longest hotel lockout in British Columbia’s history. We speak with Stephanie Fung, Communications Organizer for UNITE HERE Local 40, the Union representing the workers. She’s also a member of Asian Canadian Labour Alliance.
It has been 100 years since Vancouver developed a city-wide plan. That plan reserved over 70% of the city for single family residences. A century later, Vancouver has a new draft city plan. Public comment is open until April 24th and then it goes to council in June for debate. Ian Mass is here with City Beat to discuss the Vancouver plan, the capital budget, the police budget, a mansion tax, 2030 Olympics and lots more.
The Alberta government’s recent public inquiry into “anti-Alberta energy campaigns” was set up to find out how much money was flowing from US foundations to Canadian environment groups. The inquiry was not tasked with finding out how much foreign money was flowing into the Alberta oil patch and influencing Albertan and Canadian politics along the way. Gordon Laxer has done his own investigation. We speak with him about the report Posing As Canadian.
Ukraine’s total external government debt amounts to $54B. The country is set to pay more than $7B in debt repayments this year alone. Lenders have responded to the war and the financial crisis in Ukraine by lending even more money. The Jubilee Debt Campaign in the UK says now is the time to cancel Ukraine’s debt and allow it to spend its money on urgent humanitarian needs.
At the end of February, the Social Media Lab at Ryerson University launched the Ukraine-Russia conflict misinformation dashboard. The dashboard is a website for monitoring online misinformation and disinformation about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. It tracks debunked claims from fact-checkers from around the world. We speak about the dashboard with Professor Anatoliy Gruzd, Canada Research Chair in Privacy-Preserving Digital Technologies.
Although the municipal elections are not until October 15, Vancouver candidates are positioning themselves in advance of debates on public safety, the 2030 Winter Olympics, housing and cultural heritage, coming to City Council this upcoming week. Ian Mass joins us with his regular City Beat report.
The rapid pace of growth in Vancouver means many of the city’s small restaurants, grocery stores and other neighbourhood spaces are being lost to redevelopment. Bill Yuen is the Executive Director of Heritage Vancouver. talks about this aspect of a community’s intangible cultural heritage.
As the war in the Ukraine rages on, Canada is under increased pressure to re-arm. The Trudeau government response is a plan to buy 88 new fighter jets for an overall price tag of $76 billion. In response to that plan, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Canada has released a report titled Soaring: The Harms and Risks of Fighter Jets and Why Canada Must Not Buy a New Fleet. We speak with Tamara Lorincz, author of the report.
On March 12, Saudi Arabia executed 81 people, the largest mass execution in the recent history of the country. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the killings and said UN monitoring indicates some of those executed were sentenced to death after trials that did not meet fair trial guarantees, and for crimes that did not meet the most serious crimes threshold, as required under international law. We speak with Ariel Gold of CODEPINK.
Anyone travelling on West Broadway between Main and Arbutus knows the area is a huge construction zone. The new Broadway Skytrain development, set to be finished by 2025, has created a planning process that will radically change the character of Kitsilano, Fairview and Mt. Pleasant. Ian Mass joins us to discuss this developing Broadway plan, along with a bunch of other issues, in his regular City Beat report.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report on Feb 28. The report says that human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world. We’ve contacted Jens Wieting of Sierra Club BC to get a Canadian perspective on the report.
As the Russian war on Ukraine rages on, Canadian immigration minister Sean Fraser has responded with a new visa program for people fleeing that war. The program will cut red tape and allow Ukrainians to live in Canada for up to two years, with fewer restrictions and conditions to come here. While the program has been welcomed by refugee advocates, it raises questions about Canada’s response to people fleeing other war zones. We speak with long-time Vancouver immigration lawyer Zool Suleman.
In January, a subcommittee of the Halifax Board of the Police Commissioners released a report, which is Canada’s most detailed blueprint to defund, disarm, and dismantle the police. It lays out a plan for how to redirect funding from police to other organizations and pursue police accountability. The subcommittee was chaired by Dr. El Jones, poet, journalist, activist and assistant professor of political and Canadian studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax.
This will be a critical year for wild salmon as all BC federal licenses for fish farms expiring this June. British Columbia is now the only jurisdiction on the west coast of North America still allowing salmon farms. The federal government promised in 2019 to remove all open-pen salmon farms from BC waters by 2025. We speak with Dan Lewis, executive director of Clayoquot Action.
Diet for a Small Planet was the first major cookbook to address the environmental impact of meat production. Author Frances Moore Lappé advocated for a vegetarian lifestyle out of concerns over animal-based industries and products. She also argued that world hunger is not caused by a lack of food but by ineffective food policy. Frances Moore Lappé joins us to discuss the new 50th anniversary edition of the book.
First Nations in BC are working proactively towards re-establishing sovereignty over their territories in British Columbia. Asserting sovereignty over mining activities is a critical part of that work. A recent report by the BC First Nations Energy and Mining Council aims to provide First Nations with tools to guide the development and implementation of new ways for mining to occur on their lands. Tahltan elder Allen Edzerza was the project lead in the process that resulted in the report Indigenous Sovereignty: Implementing Consent for Mining on Indigenous Lands.
In his newly released book Becoming Vancouver, Daniel Francis follows the evolution of the city, tracing decades of transformation, immigration and economic development. Daniel Francis speaks with Ian Mass, our City Beat producer.
Noam Chomsky has been an anti-war, anti-capitalist activist for over 60 years and continues to call liberal elites to account for propping up unjust systems that have brought us to the brink of climate catastrophe and nuclear annihilation. Chomsky spoke at a recent webinar organized by Canada-China Focus, a new pan-Canadian, anti-racist project promoting critical conversations and policy initiatives on Canada-China relations. Chomsky says Canada is at a crossroads on China, and we must work together or perish together.
Tens of thousands of Canadians are asking the federal government to pause any further construction on the TMX pipeline. The Canadian government bought the project from Kinder Morgan in 2018. The last update in 2020 revealed that the expansion cost had ballooned to $12.6B, and now Trans Mountain Corporation says it will cost $21.4B, four times the original estimate. We speak with Eugene Kung, staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law.
Criminology Temitope Oriola says that the truckers convoy is a fascinating study in the sociology of law enforcement. Oriola is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Alberta and joint Editor-in-Chief of African Security journal. His research interests include policing, terrorism, social movements and political violence. His recent article in The Conversation talks about what the convoy reveal about the ties between politics, police and the law.
At the end of November last year, people in Honduras voted overwhelmingly for the platform of democratic socialism put forward by Xiomara Castro. Her Libre Party was formed in the aftermath of the coup that deposed Castro’s husband, Manuel Zelaya. We talk with writer Owen Schalk about the 2009 couple and Canada’s role in Honduras during the reign of terror that followed.
The BC government has released a report on oil and gas royalties from a public consultation in November. The report showed that 77% of survey respondents wanted the government to make environmental protection its top priority in its new royalty regime. We talk with Peter McCartney, Climate Campaigner at the Wilderness Committee.
After emerging from years of brutal dictatorship, the Haitian people dreamed of a democracy that would serve the poor and bring an end to impunity. Between 1991 and 2004, Haitians elected a succession of governments committed to realizing this dream. The pro-democracy movement’s efforts were ultimately derailed by powerful local elites and their allies in the international community, including Canada. Haiti Betrayed was written, directed and produced by Elaine Briere.
Eighteen months ago, Vancouver City Council was enthusiastic about the idea of 100 tiny homes for the homeless. This week they heard that 10 shelter beds is all that is possible and the City will have to foot the bill. Ian Mass joins me with his City Beat report to talk about this, a debate on financial support for a challenge to Quebec’s Bill 21 and more.
British Columbia is ahead of most North American jurisdictions with its composting and recycling programs. However, the Lower Mainland still burns at least 25% of its waste, with a plan to expand that amount. Sue Maxwell is a sustainability consultant with Ecoinspire Planning Services. She joins us to talk about the problems with this waste-to-energy expansion.
Cleaning and food service workers at Simon Fraser University say their working conditions are difficult and their pay lags behind counterparts elsewhere. Contract Worker Justice @SFU is a coalition of workers, students, faculty, and community members at SFU. They are calling on Simon Fraser University to hire these workers directly and to improve their pay and working conditions. John Calvert is an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at SFU and he has been involved in the coalition since its founding.
The storming of the Capitol last year was an unprecedented moment and raised questions about the fragility of democracy in the United States. Christopher Vials joins us to discuss the rise of xenophobic right-wing populism in the U.S. Vials is an associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut–Storrs and author of Haunted by Hitler: Liberals, the Left, and the Fight Against Fascism in the United States.
In 2021, communities across the province have found themselves facing unprecedented costs from forest fires, flooding and storm damage. Meanwhile, the companies who are making huge profits from fossil fuels aren’t contributing a penny to help with the impacts of climate change. Lawyer Andrew Gage says it’s long past time to make fossil fuel companies pay for the chaos they’ve helped to create.
Ottawa academic Hassan Diab was extradited to France 8 years ago to face terrorism charges. He spent 3 years in solitary confinement before French magistrates ruled that there wasn’t enough evidence for a trial and released him. Last year, France’s court of appeal overturned that decision. Now the French court has set a trial date for next year. We hear reaction from Tim McSorley of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group; Jo Wood of the Hassan Diab Support Committee; Alex Neve, formerly of Amnesty Canada, and Rob Currie of Dalhousie University.
Vancouver City Council had its first meeting of the year this week and started off with a motion that got the attention of affordable housing advocates. Depending on who you listen to, single family neighbourhoods across Vancouver are either facing their biggest threat ever or just another small step in gentle densification. Ian Mass joins us to talk about this, and a whole bunch of other Vancouver Council issues in his regular City Beat report.
In British Columbia, the RCMP has a special detachment called the Community-Industry Response Group, set up to enforce injunctions and arrest land defenders blocking access to resource extraction companies. Molly Murphy is a BIPOC activist and journalist who’s experienced first-hand the violence of the RCMP at Fairy Creek. She explains what she’s found out about the background, training and tactics of the C-IRG.
Youth radicalization is on the rise in Canada. With increasing online promotion of far right ideas, young people are exposed a lot of politically motivated misinformation that can lead them to adopt extreme views. Teachers says they feel ill-equipped to recognize the signs of radicalization or know how to effectively intervene. Dr Kawser Ahmed is spearheading an effort to provide resources for educators in Manitoba.
A federal court has ruled that RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki violated her legal obligations when she took more than 3years to respond to a complaint about RCMP spying on anti-pipeline activists. In a groundbreaking decision, Justice Gagné said that the RCMP must respond to complaints within 6 months of receiving a report from the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission. We speak with Jessica Magonet, lawyer with the BC Civil Liberties Association.
There was a time when the relationship between the pharmaceutical industry and Justin Trudeau was described as ‘hostile’. The industry didn’t like the PM’s suggestion that domestic drug prices were too high and should be regulated. But now Trudeau is supporting the industry in its opposition to a drug patent waiver. Nikolas Barry-Shaw is trade and privatization campaigner for the Council of Canadians.
Last week, the federal government and First Nations leaders announced a $40 billion agreement-in-principle to compensate young people harmed by Canada’s discriminatory child welfare system. The agreement also sets aside half the money to reform the welfare system. This comes after a 15-year long fight begun by Cindy Blackstock and the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society. Sarah Clarke is a lawyer with Clarke Child and Family Law. She has represented the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society since 2009.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu passed away on December 26 at the age of 90. For much of the 1970s and 80s, Tutu was one of the foremost critics of apartheid, the South African government’s official policy of racial segregation. After apartheid ended in the early '90s, Tutu was named chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This part of Tutu’s legacy is generally known. However his activism encompassed a great deal more. Bill Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum and a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies.
City councils across the Lower Mainland are waking up from the holidays and gearing up for municipal elections scheduled for this upcoming October. In today’s episode of City Beat with Ian Mass: more money for police, a housing plan for potential homeowners priced out of the market, plus hopes that the three levels of government will cooperate to buy and operate SRO hotels as social housing.
Fossil fuel divestment campaigns started a decade ago on U.S. campuses. By 2015, fossil fuel divestment was reportedly the fastest growing divestment movement in history, and campaigns are starting to show results. Emily Lowan is currently studying at the University of Victoria and led Divest UVic’s campaign for 2 years. She joins us to discuss the successes of and barriers to student-led organizing against fossil fuel investment.
After almost two years of the pandemic and in the midst of a massive wave of Omicron infections, we are now also seeing rising inflation rates across the country. Some critics say the only answer is to cut government spending, raise interest rates and slow down the economy. Sheila Block disagrees. She’s a senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. We speak with her about her suggestions for a made-in-Canada solution to high inflation.
In July 2017, residents of a suburban development in Markham, Ontario awoke to find a giant chrome replica of a cow called Charity facing their homes. The residents had never been consulted about the installation and quickly rose in opposition to the sculpture. The interactive documentary, Charity, looks at the controversy and the bureaucratic processes involved. It raises questions about the role of public art. We speak with Ryan Ferko, one of the documentary’s creators.
The Yellowhead Institute is a First Nation-led research centre based at Ryerson University. They produced a Red Paper in 2019 about land back, the project of reclaiming Indigenous jurisdiction and breathing life into rights and responsibilities. Executive director Hayden King and Matthew Norris of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives discuss the concept of land back in a conversation recorded on December 2.
The pandemic has brought into focus the urgent need for a public health that serves everyone in the community, including those who have traditionally been marginalized. A new book by Zena Sharman asks what health care could look like if queer folks had access safe, appropriate and compassionate medical care. Zena Sharman is a writer, speaker, strategist and LGBTQ+ health advocate. Her new book is called The Care We Dream Of.
In 2017, the Elephant Hill wildfire in British Columbia burned close to 200,000 hectares throughout Secwepemcu’lecw territory. An Indigenous-led review has found there was a disregard of Indigenous fire management practices and local knowledge leading up to and during the Elephant Hill fire. We speak with Sarah Dickson-Hoyle, co-author of the report and a doctoral candidate in the faculty of forestry at the University of British Columbia.
The City of Vancouver 2022 budget complete with a 6.35% tax increase and rezoning for rentals dominated the mainstream civic media these last two weeks. Slipping under the radar were two other important policy and funding initiatives addressing climate change and social infrastructure. Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.
In 2017, the New Westminster school board approved a sanctuary schools policy which aims to give every school-aged child in the district access to education without fear of their personal information being shared with immigration authorities. Yet, on November 30, a mother was handcuffed and detained by Canadian Border Services agents after she dropped her child off at kindergarten at a New Westminster school. We speak with Omar Chu of Sanctuary Health.
A U.S. federal jury has said that three major retailers helped flood two Ohio counties with addictive opioids in a first-of-its-kind verdict. The two counties argued that pharmacies at CVS, Walgreens and Walmart did not stop mass quantities of opioid drugs from reaching the black market. We speak about the verdict with Gerald Posner, an investigative reporter and author of Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America.
The River Forecast Centre operates a provincial system that issues flood warnings yet this fall’s abundant rain and intense storms did not appear to trigger critical responses that could have better protected British Columbians. A decade ago an expert report called for changes and increased staffing at the River Forecast Centre, but those recommendations have not been acted on for more than 10 years. We speak with resource policy analyst Ben Parfitt.
Judging by the constant stream of news reports of standoffs and confrontations, it’s apparent that Canada’s reconciliation project has gone off the rails. Standoff is the title of a new book of essays by lawyer and historian Bruce McIvor. In it, he examines why reconciliation is failing and what needs to be done to fix it. Bruce McIvor is a member of the Manitoba Metis Federation and a partner at First People’s Law. He represents First Nations across Canada from Wet’suwet’en opposing the Coastal Gas Link pipeline to Mi’kmaw exercising their fishing rights in Nova Scotia.
It is estimated over half of B.C. workers don’t have sick benefits from their employers. That gap moved into sharp relief at beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many workers felt forced to go to work while they were sick. And while gaining any paid sick days is an improvement for many workers, advocates say five days falls short of what is needed for a healthy community and a healthy economy. Alex Hemingway is a senior economist for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Vancouver City Council has worked hard this past year to establish priorities to address climate change, Indigenous reconciliation, and tenant protection for people living in single-room occupancy hotels. The problem is, without money these changes won’t happen. Redeye collective member Ian Mass joins us to talk about the upcoming debate on the 2022 city budget in his regular City Beat report.
BC has crown corporations for housing, hydro, transit and a number of other key sectors. Now a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Zero Waste BC is calling for a crown corporation to take on the challenge of recycling. This is just one of a number of key proposals in “A Zero Waste Agenda for BC”. We speak with Sue Maxwell, a sustainability consultant with Ecoinspire Planning Services and one of the authors of the report.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has just released its 26th alternative federal budget aptly named Mission Critical: A just and equitable recovery. The goal of the budget is to ensure that the legacy of the pandemic is a publicly-led recovery that leaves no one behind. We speak with David Macdonald, senior economist with the CCPA.
As long as Covid-19 exists anywhere in the world, it is a threat everywhere. But, in spite of our shared risk, the world’s richest countries have exercised a “me first” approach to the Covid-19 vaccine, buying up more than half the total. The People’s Vaccine Alliance says our best chance of all staying safe is to ensure a Covid-19 vaccine is available for all as a global common good. We talk with Brittany Lambert of Oxfam Canada.
Finance has an oversized presence in contemporary mature nations. It has grown enormously in terms of size, relative to the rest of the economy. And, financialization has crept into all aspects of our lives. Housing, education, and healthcare are all targets for investors. More recently, new investment vehicles are being marketed that would even financialize natural ecosystems.
We speak with Randall Wray, senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute and professor of economics at Bard College.
Plastic is everywhere—it’s in our food containers, keyboards, glasses, even our toothbrushes. It’s lightweight, versatile, and so cheap that we often forget how much it permeates our lives. A new book dives into the plastic crisis—answering the questions of who is being harmed, who is to blame and what we must do now to create a more just and livable world for everyone. We speak with author Erica Cirino.
In October, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users conducted a survey asking homeless people about the impact of street sweeps by city workers and police. The stress of having to defend personal possessions against seizure or theft is something that homeless people around the world face on a daily basis. A research project is looking at attempts to govern the belongings of the precariously housed. We speak with Nick Blomley, Professor of Geography at Simon Fraser University and one of the researchers involved in the project.
Over the past two weeks, Vancouver City Council has heard from close to 1000 people about a policy proposal designed to limit new rental apartment buildings to busy arterials and the streets nearby. Some people argue against any new rentals, others say renters should be able to live in quiet neighbourhoods too. We speak with Danny Oleksiuk, a past member of Vancouver’s Renter’s Advisory Committee and co-founder of Abundant Housing Vancouver.
Back in the early 1970s, children from the Raymur housing project in Strathcona were forced to cross train tracks on their way to their elementary school. After months of petitioning for a safe crossing, a group of mothers made their voices heard by blockading the tracks. Carmen Pollard’s short film, Militant Mother, tells the story. We speak with Carolyn Jerome, one of the mothers who stood in front of the trains.
Yves Engler is a Montreal-based activist, author and critic of Canadian politics. He just came out with his eleventh book “We Stand on Guard for Whom? A People’s History of the Canadian Military. In the book, he presents a history of the Canadian military from the perspective of its victims. The Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute sponsored an online launch for the book last month. In this podcast, Yves Engler’s presentation from that event.
In Guatemala, a trial is underway in the case of 183 civilians who were disappeared or murdered in Guatemala City in the 1980s. A military intelligence document known as the Diario Militar, or Military Diary, is being used as evidence of the systematic terrorism carried out by high-ranking military officials and others. Twelve men are now accused of crimes against humanity. We speak with Wendy Mendez, whose mother was disappeared in 1984.
Canada’s extradition act is under scrutiny. The Meng Wanzhou case raised questions about extradition proceedings that have foreign policy implications. Concerns have also been raised about the wrongful extradition of Dr. Hassan Diab to France in 2014. Two years ago, a group of academics, defence counsel and human rights organizations met at Dalhousie University to discuss Canada’s extradition law. Professor Robert Currie joins us to talk about the law reform proposals that came out of that meeting.
Carmen Rodriguez is an internationally acclaimed Chilean-Canadian author, educator and journalist. Her new novel, Atacama, is set against the backdrop of Chile in the first half of the twentieth century and Europe during the Spanish Civil War. It is both a sweeping historical novel and gripping tale of personal drama. Carmen Rodriguez joins us to talk about the book.
A school district on Vancouver Island has responded to one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action with a unique resource called Learning with Syeyutsus. Developed in collaboration with UBC Press and their authors, it’s a free, curated speaker series featuring respected authors at the forefront of Indigenous topics. We speak with Scott Saywell, District Superintendent for Nanaimo Ladysmith Public Schools, and Ricki Bartlett, Director of Instruction for Indigenous Education.
British Columbians will look back at the summer of 2021 as the one where the climate emergency really hit home. First, there was the heat dome, then months of evacuation orders and wildfire smoke across the province. If it hadn’t been for the cooler wetter weather in August, this year would have set a new record for the number of hectares burned. Now that the rains have set in, it’s a good time to look back at the wildfire season. We speak with Marc Lee, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC Office.
Sandeep Johal is a visual artist whose practice includes drawing, collage, textiles, and large-scale murals. ‘What If’ is a major new exhibition of Johal’s work which opened at the Surrey Art Gallery last month. In the show, she layers her personal history with those of South Asian women she wished she knew about when she was growing up in Kelowna in 1980s.
Steven Donziger has spent nearly three decades fighting Chevron on behalf of 30,000 people in the Ecuadorian rainforest. On October 1, he was sentenced to six months in federal prison for criminal contempt for refusing to give Chevron access to confidential client communications. We speak about the case with Paul Paz y Miño of Amazon Watch.
For five days in October, members of community groups, advocates and residents of the Downtown Eastside documented street sweeps and their impact on people’s lives. Vince Tao of VANDU was one of the people observing the actions of the police and city workers and conducting interviews with the people affected. He tells us what he observed.
South False Creek has been called one of the best-planned neighbourhoods in the world. Located between the Granville and Cambie bridges and owned by the City of Vancouver, the land is leased to 2000 housing coop, rental and strata units. These leases are expiring and the City of Vancouver wants to negotiate an entirely different relationship with this community. Redeye collective member Ian Mass joins us with his regular City Beat report.
Emergence: Out of the Shadows is a feature length film is about the strengths and struggles of gay and lesbian South Asian people in Metro Vancouver. For Kayden, Jag, and Amar, awakening to and expressing their sexuality within conservative South Asian families was a lonely and terrifying experience - and yet they emerged. The film showed at Kdocs Film Festival in early October. We speak with producer Alex Sangha.
When you look at Canada as a whole, 71% of Canadians are fully vaccinated. But if you look at individual provinces, the numbers vary quite a bit. Here in BC, we’re currently at 73% of the total population. In Alberta, it’s more like 64%. Although vaccine passports and other incentives have prompted some to get vaccinated, many people are still hesitant. To find out what’s behind this reluctance, we’ve contacted Taylor Lambert. He is the Alberta politics reporter for The Sprawl.
In September, leader of the People’s Party of Canada Maxime Bernier publicly urged his Twitter followers to ‘play dirty’ with the press and exposed the contact details of three journalists. Bernier’s account on Twitter was eventually suspended for 12 hours but Bernier himself was unapologetic. The incident forms part of an escalating pattern targeting journalists whose reporting is unpopular with some politicians and organizations. We speak with Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists.
In mid-September, vaccine protesters entered three schools in Salmon Arm to deliver notices of Vaccine Liability, bogus legal documents based on the ideology of the Freemen-on-the-Land. To find out more about this anti-government movement and its links to white nationalism, we contacted Edwin Hodge. He’s a lecturer in the Sociology Department at the University of Victoria who researches extremism and white supremacist activism in North American societies.
More than 1,100 people have been arrested this year for breaching a court injunction while protesting logging of old growth at Fairy Creek. On Oct 4, protesters gathered at the BC Legislature to call on the government to take action to protect old growth, especially since its been over a year since Premier John Horgan promised to implement an independent old-growth panel’s recommendations in “totality". We speak with Ken Wu, executive director at Endangered Ecosystems Alliance.
Under Canada’s Indian Act, prior to 1985, a woman who married a non-Indigenous man lost her Indian status, and risked being evicted from her reserve. A new documentary tells the story of a Mohawk woman who lost her status and fought for more than two decades to get it back and end sex discrimination under the Indian Act. We speak with Mohawk writer and director Courtney Montour.
Vancouver City Council is back at work and one of its first tasks was to hear a motion by Vancouver Councillor Christine Boyle about a massive $3-billion expansion of a liquefied natural gas production and storage facility in the Fraser River. In City Beat today, Redeye collective member Ian Mass talks about this proposed LNG expansion, a new Climate Emergency parking program, a proposal for seniors housing and a new plan to supply safer drugs to people.
Two years ago, Environment and Climate Change Canada came out with a report saying that Canada is warming at more than double the global rate. Despite this, Canada increased its emissions more than any other G7 country since it signed the Paris Agreement. At the same time, Canada’s largest public pension plan has increased its shares in fossil fuel companies. A recent report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives looks at the fossil fuel portion of the investment portfolios of Canada’s two biggest pension funds. We speak with co-authors Jessica Dempsey and James Rowe.
In 2008, Hassan Diab was a sociology professor at Carleton University in Ottawa when he was arrested and accused of involvement in the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue. After a lengthy extradition hearing, in 2014, Diab was handed over to France where he was imprisoned, largely in solitary confinement, for over 3 years. In 2018, the charges were dismissed and Diab returned to Canada. But his nightmare didn’t end there. In January 2021, the French appeals court reversed the dismissal of charges and ordered a new trial. Colin Stuart is with the Hassan Diab Support Committee.
The federal government set a tougher target for reducing domestic emissions in 2020 yet the full extent of Canada’s contribution to the climate crisis remains hidden from view. Fraser Thomson is a lawyer at Ecojustice whose work focuses on the impact of fossil fuel operations on communities and the environment. He talks with us about the oil, gas and coal emissions generated by Canadian energy exports.
After 13 years of appeals and more than three years of corporate stalling, the contract laying out the terms of the sale of the Little Mountain social housing site to Holborn Properties has finally been made public. David Chudnovsky calls the terms of the contract “a sweetheart deal” for the developer. We talk with David Chudnovsky, spokesperson for Community Advocates for Little Mountain and former NDP MLA.
Cuba has faced sixty years of an economic blockade by Washington, including many additional measures brought in by the Trump administration. The Biden administration, rather than normalizing relations with Cuba, has stepped up its aggressive rhetoric. The Canadian Network on Cuba in Canada is asking the federal government to condemn Washington's economic sanctions. We speak with Isaac Saney, spokesperson for the group.
Earle Peach is the director of three Vancouver-based choral groups including the High and Lows Choir and Solidarity Notes Labour Choir. He also plays a bunch of instruments and performs with musical groups. But in his new book, Questions to the Moon, Peach says songwriting is his strongest self-identification. The book is a collection of stories and lyrics, just published by Lazara Press.
The Nicaraguan government is encouraging a gold rush in its country, opening up two-thirds of the country to mining concessions. Canadian and Australian corporations, among others, are lining up to mine that gold. But gold mining is linked to displacement, violence and environmental degradation. Anuradha Mittal is executive director of the Oakland Institute and author of the report, Nicaragua’s Failed Revolution.
As many B.C. regions experience severe drought, municipalities and First Nations are calling for the government to stop issuing groundwater extraction licences to commercial bottling companies. The province is currently sitting on at least eight permit applications for water-bottling operations, one of which concerns the town of Golden in the Rocky Mountains. Annette Lutterman is an ecologist and a resident of Golden.
Almost 100 years ago, the Canada, Manitoba and Ontario allowed massive flooding of the Lac Seul First Nation reserve for a hydroelectric project. The Supreme Court of Canada has found that Canada did not seek Lac Seul First Nation’s consent to flood the lands, nor did it expropriate them under the Indian Act. In addition, the Lac Seul First Nation were never adequately compensated for their loss. We speak with Chief Clifford Bull of the Lac Seul First Nation.
In its last set of meetings before a summer break, Vancouver City Council adopted an equity framework that identifies three sources of systemic inequity in the city: colonialism, White supremacy and ableism. Ian Mass tells how council intends to implement its new equity framework in this week’s City Beat report.
Anti-government protests erupted in various Cuban cities the weekend of July 11. People were protesting the dire economic conditions on the island, amid a surge in Covid cases. There were protests in six of Cuba’s fourteen provinces, including the major cities, but the largest protests were in Miami, Florida. CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin says the protests in Cuba can only be understood in the context of the U.S. embargo. Medea Benjamin is the author of several books on Cuba, including No Free Lunch: Food and Revolution in Cuba Today.
In May, the federal government added plastic manufactured items to the toxic substances list of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Campaigners to ban single-use plastic say this is an important first step in reducing the amount of plastic garbage in the environment. Laura Yates is Oceans & Plastics Campaigner with Greenpeace.
Self-driving cars, scooters and bikes of every description, car-share schemes and air taxis… all these modes of transport may be part of our transportation future. And while boosters of each of these modes of transport describe them in glowing terms, understanding the precise costs and benefits is more of a challenge. Todd Litman’s recent book, New Mobilities, examines the questions we need to ask as we plan for these emerging transportation technologies.
On June 17, the digital publication The Narwhal hosted an online event to look at meaningful solutions to the crisis of old-growth logging. Sarah Cox is BC investigative reporter for the Narwhal. She interviews Garry Merkel, a registered professional forester from the Tahltan Nation and co-chair of BC’s old-growth strategic review panel. We’d like to thank The Narwhal for permission to broadcast this interview.
The Wilderness Committee has released a report reflecting the concerns and priorities of leaders in Northern BC. “Northern Vision and Voices: What the region needs to thrive in a changing world” was written by Megan Gordon after six months of interviews in the North. The report says it’s time for British Columbia to invest in building strong communities across the region. We talk with Peter McCartney, climate campaigner for the Wilderness Committee.
On June 29, the BC Supreme Court ruled that the B.C. government had breached the treaty rights of the Blueberry River First Nations. In her ruling, Justice Burke said that the province has allowed so much development in their territory that they can no longer meaningfully exercise their rights under Treaty 8. Lawyers for the Blueberry River First Nations have called the ruling a ‘complete vindication’ of the Nations’ position. Lisa Glowacki is co-counsel for the Nations.
There are more than 100 housing co-ops in Vancouver, the majority located on land leased from the City of Vancouver. Many of these leases are expiring over the next decade and the City and the Co-op Housing Federation have been talking about what to do for the last 5 years. Council will make a decision this week. This and more in Redeye’s regular City Beat report with Ian Mass.
Non-unionized workers in BC have no paid sick leave rights under the Employment Standards Act. Guaranteed paid sick time for all workers crept a step closer in May with the announcement of a temporary three-day paid sick policy but it’s set to run out at the end of this year. We talk with David Fairey, labour economist and co-chair of the BC Employment Standards Coalition.
On May 21, the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute hosted a webinar on the ways in which Canada enables Israeli apartheid. Yves Engler gave a presentation on Canada’s political support for the state of Israel, both now and historically. Yves Engler is a Montréal-based activist and author who has published 11 books including his latest House of Mirrors — Justin Trudeau’s Foreign Policy.
After the remains of 215 children were found on the grounds of the old Kamloops Indian Residential School, there have been expressions of shock and grief, but also calls to action. Kukdookaa Terri Brown is a Crow Clan member of the Tahltan Nation. She is former chief of her people and former president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada. She served 6 years with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada where she heard many stories of children going missing or not returning from residential schools.
The killing of four members of a Muslim family in London, Ontario on June 6 has brought white nationalist violence to the forefront yet again. Jasmin Zine is a Professor of Sociology and Muslim Studies at Laurier University. She is lead researcher with the Canadian Islamophobia Industry Research Project. She says the ingredients for this latest tragedy have long been in the making.
As of May 13, Greyhound suspended all bus service in Canada. The company’s decision leaves many Canadians stranded with no alternative to private car ownership. The National Farmer’s Union says that Greyhound’s exit paves the way for national public transit system that serves all communities across the country. Bess Legault is NFU’s Women’s President and a first generation farmer in the Peace River Valley.
Access to COVID-19 vaccines worldwide shows a stark divide between rich and poor countries. In May, people living in G7 countries were 77 times more likely to be offered a vaccine than those living in the world’s poorest countries. David Adler is a political economist who argues that it is time to end the patent stranglehold on Covid-19 vaccines and to transform the for-profit system of intellectual property that impedes the provision of all life-saving drugs.
Translink is introducing a modernization plan for HandyDart, which thousands of people living with disabilities depend on for public transportation. Redeye Collective member Ian Mass joins us today with his regular City Beat report to talk about this plan, the climate emergency policy Vancouver City Council passed last year that has hit a potential roadblock and redevelopments that show us the best and worst of planning and public participation.
Lawyer and activist Hasan Alam was one of the speakers Thursday June 10 in Vancover at a vigil for the Afzaal family in London, Ontario, murdered by a white supremacist on Sunday night. Hasan Alam was one of the co-founders of the Islamophobia Legal Assistance hotline in 2015.
NSCAD University in Halifax is going to set up an institute to study Canadian slavery. The initiative will be spearheaded by Dr. Charmaine Nelson, who was the first Black tenured professor of art history in Canada. The Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery will be a hub for the study of the art, visual cultures, and histories of Canadian slavery and its legacies. We talk with Dr. Charmaine Nelson today.
In a new book just published by UBC Press, editors Miu Chung Yan and Sean Lauer document how the neighbourhood house model, a century-old type of community organization, can help overcome isolation in urban neighbourhoods by creating welcoming places, drawing on a five-year study to document and contextualize the neighbourhood house network in Vancouver. We speak with Miu Chung Yan and Sean Lauer.
In February, Dr Peter Victor gave the 2021 Gideon Rosenbluth Memorial Lecture. Peter Victor is a Professor Emeritus at York University and was Gideon Rosenbluth's graduate student at UBC in the late sixties. More than 30 years later, they co-authored a research paper called Saving the Environment: How Canada Can Abolish Poverty and Unemployment Even in a No-Growth Economy. A couple of years later, based on their work together, Peter wrote his book, Managing without Growth. Slower by Design, not Disaster.
In mid-April, Germany’s highest court ruled that a rent cap imposed by the Berlin state government is illegal. German federal court overturned the law, saying lawmakers in the state had no right to instigate it. We speak about rent control and the Berlin rent cap with Alexander Vasudevan, associate professor in human geography and fellow at Christ Church at the University of Oxford. He and David Madden co-authored a recent piece in the Guardian arguing that the Berlin law, though defeated in court, shows how to cool overheated markets.
In 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to pass a comprehensive law banning on metals mining nationwide. The vote was the result of a 12-year struggle by small farmers and their allies to protect the waters of the Lempa River from the impact of gold mining. Robin Broad and John Cavanagh tell this incredible story in their new book The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved A Country From Corporate Greed. We speak with John Cavanagh.
A group of Xinka people in Guatemala opposes the development of the Escobal mine, owned by Vancouver based Pan American Silver. Members of the Peaceful Resistance of Santa Rosa, Jalapa, and Jutiapa have been shot at and received death threats in response to requests for a consultative process, a request which has been upheld in court. Jen Moore is an associate fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies. She joins us from Mexico City to discuss the mine and the resistance to it.
Over-representation of Indigenous peoples in the criminal justice system is an ongoing crisis in Canada. In B.C., the First Nations Justice Council is implementing a strategy to bring down the number of people who become involved with the criminal justice system. Mitch Walker is with the First Nations Justice Council and he joins us today to talk about this strategy and more specifically, Gladue reports, which can play a pivotal role in this new approach.
On April 23, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the existence of the Sinixt people in south-eastern BC, 65 years after they were declared extinct by the federal government. The ruling is the end of a long legal battle for the Sinixt and for Richard Desautel of Washington State who, in 2010, shot and killed an elk in the traditional territory of the Sinixt to challenge the extinction claim. We talk with the lawyer for the Sinixt, Mark Underhill.
128 speakers have signed up this week to talk to Vancouver city council about upzoning and densifying much of Vancouver for social housing. Council was also considering support for prioritizing Commercial Drive as a pedestrian-first street, patents on Covid-19 vaccines, accessible washrooms at Skytrain stations and an apology for a decision made 107 years ago. Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.
Later this month the city of Vancouver will submit its application to Health Canada for permission to decriminalize simple possession of illicit drugs. The application defined a threshold limit for possession without consulting with drug users. They say this limit is far too low. Caitlin Shane is a staff lawyer with the Pivot Legal Society, working on drug policy. She spoke with James Mainguy last week.
The scale of the Israeli attack on Gaza is the most intense since the 7-week Israeli war on Gaza in 2014. To find out more about the reasons behind the current escalation, we speak with Yara Shoufani. She is a Palestinian organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement (Toronto Chapter). Yara Shoufani has a masters in Political Science with research focused on colonization and gentrification in Palestine. We spoke on Friday May 14.
On April 27, the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Health Coalition held an online day of action calling on the federal government to create national standards for long-term care in Canada, instead of handing the job off to an accreditation industry with no power to enforce standards. In this podcast, we hear from John Cartwright, Pam Beattie and Pat Armstrong. We’d like to thank the Council of Canadians and Canadian Health Coalition for making the recording of the event available to us.
In April, over 100 Canadians staged a hunger strike to raise awareness of the federal government’s plan to purchase 88 new advanced fighter jets for a total cost of over $76 billion. Dr. Brendan Martin is a member of the Vancouver chapter of the organization, World BEYOND War. He finished a two-week fast on April 23 as part of the No New Fighter Jets Coalition and joins us to talk about the campaign.
The 2021 Federal Budget promised to support people living in Indigenous communities, and allocate over $18 billion over the next five years to improve the quality of life and create new opportunities. Riley Yesno says as “historic and unprecedented” as this Budget may be, that does not mean it is sufficient. Riley Yesno is a queer Anishinaabe writer, researcher, and public speaker from Eabametoong First Nation. She is currently a Canadian Journalism Foundation Fellow, and a Yellowhead Institute Research Fellow.
In July 2020, Vancouver City Council passed a motion to decriminalize poverty. Council heard about a variety of impacts, including the intersecting impacts of poverty, gender, and racism on interactions with police. A report on the implementation of this task came to Council last week and Ian Mass, our City Beat reporter, joins us to tell us about the outcome. Plus a social housing update and a new 3-day car race proposed for Vancouver.
On April 26, the Vancouver School Board voted to end its school liaison officer program. Meenakshi Mannoe is Criminalization & Policing Campaigner at Pivot Legal Society and was involved in the fight to remove police from school. She joins us to talk about her concerns with the motion the Vancouver School Board passed and what’s next for the campaign to remove police from schools.
All Mountain caribou in Canada are at risk of extinction, and none more so than the southern Mountain Caribou of BC and Alberta. Herds have been in decline for over three decades. In March, the federal government rejected an emergency order under the Species at Risk Act to protect the threatened caribou. We speak with Charlotte Dawe, Conservation and Policy Campaigner for the Wilderness Committee.
Holborn Properties bought 224 Little Mountain social housing units in 2007 with a promise to rebuild. Fourteen years later, the lot still sits empty. Activists are fighting to see the sales agreement that the BC Liberal government signed with Holborn. A government arbitrator ordered BC Housing to release the contract but Holborn continues to fight to keep it private. We catch up on what’s happening with David Chudnovsky of Community Advocates for Little Mountain.
Yellow Objects is part digital experience and part theatrical installation. The work is inspired by the democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and created by Derek Chan, co-artistic director of Rice & Beans Theatre. Derek Chan grew up in Hong Kong and is a playwright, director, performer and translator. We speak with him about how the work came about and how he adapted it once the pandemic made live theatre productions impossible.
Someone Like Me, premiering at Toronto’s Hot Docs this month, documents what happens when a group of strangers from Vancouver’s queer community sponsor Drake, a gay asylum seeker from Uganda. With the help of Rainbow Refugee, they embark on a year-long quest for personal freedom. We speak with filmmakers Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams.
The 360 Riot Walk is a multilingual interactive tour which invites participants to trace a layered history of labour politics, anti-Asian racism, and community resistance in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The tour has 13 stops between Gassy Jack and Oppenheimer Park. We speak with artist Henry Tsang, creator of the 360 Riot Walk.
The Canadian and Ontario governments recently announced they are giving $470 million to Sonofi Pasteur, a French vaccine maker, to build a new plant to manufacture vaccines for influenza. In December we talked with Colleen Fuller about how the Mulroney government sold off Canada’s Connaught Labs and their research and production capacity. We’ve connected with her again to get her take on Canada’s role in the provision of affordable vaccines, here and abroad.
It is clear that the Covid-19 pandemic has drastically reduced transit ridership, and that rebuilding rider confidence will be challenging. Councillor Jean Swanson has a motion before Vancouver City Council specifically focused on preserving bus ridership, which makes up over 60% of transit trips in Metro Vancouver. Redeye collective member and City Beat commentator Ian Mass joins us to talk about all the goings on at Vancouver City Hall and beyond.
A year into the pandemic, it’s clear that any recovery plan has to include public investment in child care. The Canadian child care sector was fragmented and under-funded before the pandemic and it’s just gotten worse. A new study by David Macdonald and Martha Friendly of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives surveyed child care providers in 37 Canadian cities and found staggering differences in how much parents pay for child care fees across the country. We talk with Iglika Ivanova, senior economist with the CCPA-BC office.
The ride-hailing giant Uber recently announced its answer to complaints about lack of benefits and labour protections for its workers when it unveiled its Flexible Work+ plan last. Uber is asking provincial governments to amend labour legislation to allow gig workers to accumulate benefit funds that they could spend on things like health insurance and pension plans. We speak with Brice Sopher, an Uber Eats courier and organizer with the Gig Workers United union.
The upcoming provincial and federal budgets are being called the most important in a generation with the opportunity of addressing long standing systemic inequality and injustices. Alex Hemingway is an economist and public finance policy analyst at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC Office. He joins us to talk about what British Columbians are hoping to see in these budgets.
On April 1. BC Supreme Court granted an injunction to logging company Teal-Jones Group to remove Fairy Creek/Ada’itsx forest defenders. This clears the path for the destruction of one of the last intact old-growth areas on Vancouver Island, on the territory of the Pacheedaht First Nations. We speak with two people from the Sierra Club, senior forest and climate campaigner Jens Wieting and forest relations coordinator Ma̱k’wa̱la – Dakota Smith.
According to a recent study, more than one and a half million child laborers were working in cocoa growing areas of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana in 2019. In a landmark human rights case, eight young men from Mali are bringing a class action suit against big chocolate companies. They managed to escape after being trafficked as children and forced to harvest cocoa in Cote D’Ivoire. We speak with lawyer and executive director of International Rights Advocates Terry Collingsworth.
According to a recent study, outbreaks of infectious diseases are more likely in areas that have been stripped of their forest cover or land that is used for monoculture plantations. The study, published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science, suggests epidemics are likely to increase as biodiversity declines. We speak with Claire Lajaunie, researcher with the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in France.
Vancouver City Council is at risk of slipping into divisive politics which will hinder a solution for South False Creek residents who fear eviction from their homes. Plus the push to host the 2030 Olympics, plans for the post Covid economic recovery and policy overload for City staff. We talk with our City Beat reporter, Ian Mass.
Music streaming services like Spotify are great for people who love to listen to music but have robbed musicians of much of their income. Musicians say the paltry payout rates are unfair and make it hard to make a living through their work. The Union of Musicians and Allied Workers (UMAW) launched a campaign called Justice at Spotify last fall, and they organized worldwide protests outside Spotify’s offices this month. We speak with musician and UMAW organizer Zack Nestel-Patt.
If you were asked to name the countries that have produced vaccines against Covid-19, you probably wouldn’t think of Cuba. Yet Cuba is currently the only Latin American country developing Covid-19 vaccine candidates. The Soberana 1 and 2 vaccines have shown strong immune response against the virus during clinical studies. Conner Gorry is Senior Editor of MEDICC Review and has been reporting on the Cuban health system from Havana for nearly 20 years. She spoke with me from Minneapolis.
In March, Vancouver City Council unanimously passed a motion to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, UNDRIP, in Vancouver. To find out what this means for the three host nations, Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-waututh, urban Indigenous people and the City of Vancouver, we speak with Alexander Dirksen, co-vice chair of the City’s Urban Indigenous Peoples’ Advisory Committee.
Statistics show that the lower your income, the less likely you are to have employer-paid sick days. Given that the jobs where women workers predominate don’t pay well, it’s clear that the introduction of paid sick leave would increase gender equality across the board. This March, the BC Employment Standards Coalition is calling on the provincial government to include the right to paid sick days in the Employment Standards Act. We talk with Kaitlyn Matulewicz, executive director of the Worker Solidarity Network.
Nearly 6,000 workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama are sending in their ballots in a certification drive that will make history if it succeeds. Ballots must reach the National Labor Relations Board regional office in Alabama by March 29 to be counted. Jonathan Rosenblum is the author of Beyond $15: Immigrant Workers, Faith Activists, and the Revival of the Labor Movement. He also works as a community organizer for Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant. We spoke with Jonathan Rosenblum on March 16.
Activists across Canada say that it’s long past time that the federal government addressed environmental racism in this country. Nova Scotia MP Lenore Zann has brought forward a private member’s bill to develop a strategy to combat this form of structural racism. Bill C-230 is going to second reading in the House of Commons on Tuesday March 23. Dr. Ingrid Waldron is associate professor in the School of Nursing at Dalhousie University and co-producer of the 2019 film There's Something in the Water based on her book of the same name. We talk with her from Halifax.
Phase 3 of the vaccine rollout in British Columbia is expected to start in April and includes everyone over 60. But neither the province nor the feds have prioritized disabled individuals and their essential caregivers in its vaccine distribution plan. In contrast to other countries which clearly indicate that people with certain types of disabilities are high priority, Canada has yet to give this guidance. Yona Lunsky is a senior scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto and teaches in the Department of Psychiatry at University of Toronto.
Vancouver has been developing a neighbourhood to house 20,000 people in South Vancouver for the last 30 years. Unfortunately, despite promising the best in amenities, the City faces rising costs with little money to pay for what was promised. Ian Mass brings us his City Beat report on this and other city issues.
Most of us can’t go to Tofino yet this year, with public health restrictions on non-essential travel. But if you’ve been longing to connect with the spirit of wild West Coast experiences, you can connect through film this weekend, March 12-14. The first-ever Tofino Adventure Film Festival is hosted by the folks at Clayoquot Action. We spoke today with festival curator, Keegan McColl.
While President Biden has made positive moves on the domestic front, activists are sounding the alarm about the direction of his foreign policy with the naming of Senator Robert Menendez to chair the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Menendez has repeatedly attacked the United Nations and the International Court of Justice and supported unconditional military aid to right-wing governments. We speak about Biden’s foreign policy with Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern studies at the University of San Francisco.
The federal government’s new Bill 22 repeals some of the offences that currently carry mandatory minimums, but it leaves quite a number still in place. Meghan McDermott says that any imposition of sentencing requirements on judges leads to problems with systemic racism within the justice system. Meghan McDermott is with the BC Civil Liberties Association.
Migrant rights advocates estimate that 1.6M people in Canada don't have permanent resident status and at least 500,000 people are undocumented. Both groups could have problems getting the vaccine. Last week, the Migrant Rights Network sent a letter signed by more than 250 organizations calling on the prime ministers and provincial and territorial leaders to make sure that vaccines are available for everyone in Canada, regardless of immigration status. We speak with Dr. Danyaal Raza of Canadian Doctors for Medicare.
Six months after mass worldwide protests in support of racial justice, support continues to grow for a divestment from policing and prisons. Choosing Real Safety was collaboratively developed and authored by the Abolition Coalition and its allies. Over 250 organizations and over 3,000 individuals have signed on to support the declaration. We speak with Kit Rothschild, Violence Prevention Coordinator at PACE society.
A letter signed by Naomi Klein, David Suzuki and Noam Chomsky, as well as a hundred other academics, activists and artists was delivered to Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau’s office on Feb 25. It called on the federal government to stop propping up a repressive and corrupt dictatorship in Haiti, pointing out that for the past two years, Haitians have demonstrated their overwhelming opposition to Jovenel Moïse with massive protests and general strikes calling for his departure from office. We speak with Yves Engler of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers says we should re-imagine Canada Post and use its existing network to connect Canadians as part of a green and just recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic. We talk with Kate Holowatiuk about the vision they have developed - Delivering Community Power.
A new study has found that air pollution from fossil fuels was responsible for more than 8.7 million deaths globally in 2018. This death toll exceeds the combined total of people who die globally each year from smoking tobacco plus those who die of malaria. The study was published in the journal Environmental Research earlier this month. We talk with Eloise Marais, Associate Professor in Physical Geography at University College, London and one of the authors of the study.
Vancouver City Council approved rezoning applications for two new housing projects spearheaded by local Indigenous societies, despite neighbourhood opposition. Council also looked at how they could support reconciliation, bring in paid sick leave and protect West End residents from homophobic street preachers. All this, and more, in today’s City Beat with Ian Mass.
Ben Parfitt says the BC government doesn’t have a good handle on how much water the major industries in the province use. He argues that we need to get that information before we can implement effective policies to encourage conservation and sound management of our water. Ben Parfitt is a resource policy analyst with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
The BC government says that fracking and the natural gas industry will not only be economically beneficial for the province but also consistent with the province’s climate action plan. Peter McCartney disagrees. McCartney is climate campaigner for the Wilderness Committee and author of the just released report Planet on Fire: Let’s End Fracking in BC.
Following the unanimous passage of an NDP motion, the Canadian government has designated the Proud Boys as a terrorist entity. The move came swiftly on the heels the Trump-led white nationalist insurrection at the US Capitol. While this might seem like a big win, many progressive and anti-racist organizations are asking if putting white supremacists on the terrorist list is the right approach. We speak with BCCLA board member and lawyer Hasan Alam.
Hassan Diab’s ordeal began over 12 years ago when France requested his extradition in relation to the bombing of a Paris synagogue in 1980. Hassan was extradited to France in 2014 where he spent 3 years in solitary confinement. Finally French authorities dropped all charges against Hassan Diab, citing lack of evidence, and Diab returned to Canada. Now a French court has said it wants to proceed to trial in his case. Tim McSorley of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group says the Canadian government must intervene to prevent a further miscarriage of justice.
A new program recently introduced by the Vancouver Police Department authorizes officers to remove people if they have allegedly violated the provincial Trespass Act. The VPD’s Trespass Prevention Program allows them to do this even if there wasn’t a call to 911. We talk with Meenakshi Mannoe, criminalization and policing campaigner at Pivot Legal Society.
The Saudi-led bombing and blockade of Yemen has led to the death of 250,000 people and created the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. On Jan 25, people around the world protested against their governments’ support for the war. In Canada, peace and labour activists blocked trucks at Paddock Transport International, a Hamilton company involved in shipping Canadian-made, light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. We talk about Canada’s role in the crisis in Yemen with Simon Black, assistant professor at Brock University and co-founder of Labour Against the Arms Trade.
Real estate investment trusts (REITs) are large investment companies that own, and in most cases operate, rental apartment buildings. Housing activists say REITs result in the loss of affordable rental units and drive gentrification, in order to make the highest profit for their investors. On February 9, Vancouver city councillor Jean Swanson is bringing a motion to the council meeting that is designed to protect affordable rental housing in Vancouver. We talk with Sara Sagaii of the Vancouver Tenants Union.
Canadian supermarkets throw out tons of unsold food every day. A common misunderstanding is that this food is rotten and useless. The truth is that most food thrown out is edible. Greenpeace is calling on supermarkets to reform their practices. They would like to see the big chains commit to a zero edible food waste target. We talk with Ann Foo, a volunteer with Go Zero Food Waste.
Canadian history, as many of us learned it in high school, leaves out or distorts the histories of many Canadians who do not fit into the prescribed narrative of this country. Students are often left questioning how they can study a past that does not reflect their present. A new book, Transforming the Canadian History Classroom: Imagining a New "We", calls for an approach that places students at the centre of the history classroom. We speak with author Dr. Samantha Cutrara.
In May last year, the Alberta government cancelled blanket environmental protections that had been in place since the 1970s, paving the way for foreign mining companies to operate open-pit coalmines in the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains. We talk with Toby Malloy of the National Farmers Union.
The 4,300 unionized employees who work at the publicly-owned Hastings Park at the Pacific National Exhibition have been left out of Canada's economic recovery plan and are subsequently out of work. Vancouver City Council finally paid some attention to this issue last week. Also, in this week’s City Beat report, Ian Mass talks about housing for renters, VSB property, the Port of Vancouver and a nasty fight at Surrey Council.
As the world struggles with the second wave of the pandemic and vaccines are being rolled out, we are starting to hear calls for an app that could store a record of a Covid-19 vaccination. Françoise Baylis is a philosopher with a special interest in medical ethics. She tells us some of her concerns with how a vaccination record for Covid-19 could be used.
In 2017 the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons started an international movement to develop a treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. On January 22, the treaty was endorsed by 122 countries at the United Nations. Canada was not a signatory but there is a petition to Parliament to change that. Dr. Nancy Covington is with the Canadian affiliate of the International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War.
Sign the petition: https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Sign/e-3028
On Jan 18, Nunavut Independent Television made history when it launched Canada’s first all-Inuit Inuktut TV channel. Uvagut TV is the first Indigenous–language channel in Canada. Lucy Tulugarjuk is chair and executive director of Nunavut Independent Television. She’s also director of the Inuit-language children’s film, Tia and Piujuq. Lucy Tulugarjuk speaks with us two days after Uvagut TV goes on the air.
There are a complex web of laws and jurisdictional issues that affect our coasts and oceans. The question is how we can use these laws to better protect our water and marine life. West Coast Environmental Law has put together a guide to these marine protection laws. We speak with lawyer Stephanie Hewson about that guide.
The Vancouver School Boards owns billions of dollars worth of property around Vancouver, including the land that the Kingsgate Mall is located on. Some VSB trustees are considering selling off land to private developers to meet funding priorities. OneCity school board trustee Jennifer Reddy is opposed to what she calls the privatization of public land. She explains her concerns.
As the climate emergency advances, we need to push for a just transition for everyone. Workers in extractive industries, and the communities that depend on them, deserve solid plans to address the negative effects of the fossil fuel wind-down. Marc Lee and Seth Klein take a look at possible models in a recent post on the CCPA blog, policynote.ca. We talk with senior economist Marc Lee.
Six years ago, the BC Civil Liberties Association made a complaint against the RCMP after it discovered that it spied on the activities of people opposed to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline project. The final report of the Complaints Commission for the RCMP came out in mid-December. We talk with Jessica Magonet of the BCCLA about what the report said and why it took so long to come out.
The MST Corporation is a partnership between the Musqueam Indian Band and the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nation and it’s the developer of a big parcel of land in the Cambie corridor. Ian Mass joins us in a new edition of City Beat to tell us more about MST and to discuss other civic issues from land acknowledgements in Surrey to inappropriate tweets in Vancouver.
The global pandemic has deepened the divide between the wealthy and those struggling to make ends meet. This crisis of inequality has fostered new calls for a wealth tax. Two Ontario doctors say that healing economic inequity will lead to better health for everyone. Drs. Danyaal Raza and Edward Xie published the recent commentary, Let’s turn wealth into health with a 1% tax on the rich on healthydebate.ca. We speak with Dr. Edward Xie.
The National Trust manages historic properties and areas of countryside in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In September, the Trust commissioned a report on connections between their properties and colonialism, including links with historic slavery. The report attracted the attention of a group of Conservative MPs who are attempting to discredit the work of the historians who produced it. We speak with Professor Corinne Fowler of the University of Leicester about the work and the attacks on it.
British Columbia's energy minister says he has received a report on the status of the Site C dam project and will present its findings to cabinet soon. Bruce Ralston says the report by former deputy finance minister Peter Milburn is "helpful," but he wouldn't discuss its findings until they are reviewed by the cabinet and Premier John Horgan. We talk with Rita Wong, long-time activist and opponent of the Site C dam.
The newly released book Great Anarchists aims to bring radical ideas to a wider, non-academic audience. The book presents a series of vignettes on ten individuals who helped to lay the foundations of the anarchist tradition. We speak with co-author Ruth Kinna of Loughborough University in the UK.
As B.C. expands the safe supply program for illicit drugs, researchers are calling on the province to do the same for people living with severe alcohol dependencies. BC currently has five of Canada’s managed alcohol programs – known as MAPs. We speak with Meaghan Brown is a PhD candidate at the UVic school of nursing and collaborator on the Canadian MAP Study at the University of Victoria.
The tragic deaths of thousands of seniors in care homes has highlighted the critical need for federal standards in the provision of long-term care. The pandemic has exposed a fragmented and under-resourced system that is heavily reliant on for-profit delivery. A new discussion paper released in November proposes foundational principles for continuing care services across the country. We speak with co-author Marcy Cohen.
The vaccine rollout in Canada has given us the sense that there is light at the end of the tunnel. But the pandemic continues to rage, and the picture for poorer countries that aren’t first up for vaccine distribution is much bleaker. Jason Nickerson is humanitarian affairs advisor for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières in Ottawa. He says equitable access can only be guaranteed through fundamental change to the way that lifesaving medicines and vaccines are developed and distributed. We spoke with Jason Nickerson on Dec 15.
In September, the Canadian government signalled its intention to develop nuclear power as part of its investment in clean technology companies. One aspect of the plan could see small modular reactors placed in remote communities currently powered by diesel. We discuss this new strategy with Susan O’Donnell of the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick.
A new report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives takes a look at the economic performance of coal mines located in mountain caribou habitat in northeastern British Columbia, where mining has been identified as a key driver of caribou extirpation. Economist Robyn Allan is co-author of the report, Who Benefits From Caribou Decline?
City councils around the Lower Mainland are wrapping up a busy year, full of unprecedented challenges and crises. Redeye’s City Beat reporter Ian Mass joins us to look back on the six biggest issues municipalities faced in 2020.
As countries are rolling out plans to distribute new vaccines for Covid-19, Canada has to depend on foreign corporations to produce and obtain vaccines. But that has not always been the case - Canada used to have significant capacity to develop and produce important vaccines and drugs. Health policy researcher Colleen Fuller explains how Canada lost that capacity and how it hampers our ability to create a national pharmacare program.
On November 18, the federal Conservatives convinced the NDP, Greens and the Bloc to support a motion declaring that the People’s Republic of China is threatening Canada’s national interest and its values, and Parliament needs to do something decisive about it. To talk about the significance of this resolution, we're joined by John Price, professor emeritus of Transpacific History at the University of Victoria and author of the book Orienting Canada: Race, Empire and the Transpacific.
Medea Benjamin of Code Pink for Peace condemns the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and says it’s aimed at derailing future efforts at diplomacy with Iran. She points out that, with Iran scheduled to have elections in June, incoming president Joe Biden has just four months to bring the United States back into the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. We talk with Medea Benjamin from Miami.
A group of dedicated volunteers has just launched a new podcast about the arts and mental health. When the team, led by music producer Earle Peach, got together a year ago to start planning, they had no idea how timely a mental health podcast would be in 2020. The first two episodes are up on their podcast. We speak with the host of the Art Heals Podcast, Elaine Joe.
Find Art Heals at https://arthealspodcast.podbean.com/
The BC NDP say that its CleanBC plan will put the province on the path to a cleaner, better future. However, this climate strategy seems at odds with the decision by the NDP government to continue to provide subsidies to oil and gas companies in the form of tax breaks, royalty reductions and investments of public money. We talk with Kai Nagata, energy and democracy director at Dogwood.
Over 16,000 petitions were delivered to Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino’s office in November calling for changes to student work permit rules before Dec 31d. Covid-19 related job losses have meant that hundreds of thousands of former international students may be unable to qualify for permanent resident status. And the deadline for renewal of work permits is fast approaching. We speak with Simran Dhunna of Migrant Students United.
In November, the federal government tabled legislation that makes net-zero emissions by 2050 a legally-binding target. While this is being seen as a positive first step, Canada has missed every single emission-reduction target it has ever set. Anna Johnston of West Coast Environment Law says that changes are needed for the law to show true climate leadership. We spoke with her last month.
Canada Energy Regulator just came out with its latest long-term energy outlook. The analysis in the report shows that with even modest new climate policies, there’s no need to build the Trans Mountain and Keystone XL pipelines, undermining Prime Minister Trudeau’s position that the expansion of oil production is consistent with Canada’s climate policy. We speak with Eugene Kung of West Coast Environmental Law.
At a time when the Vancouver Police department is under pressure from a broad range of activist groups and the City of Vancouver to end street checks, it has formed a new neighbourhood response team in the downtown core that could lead to an expansion of this type of police activity. We talk with Meghan McDermott of the BC Civil Liberties Association about the VPD’s new unit.
Discover Canada is the official study guide for people who are preparing to take the Canadian citizenship test. But its portrayal of Canada is far from accurate, according to five women faculty members at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. We speak with Anne-Emanuelle Birn, Professor of Critical Development Studies and Global Health at the University of Toronto.
Read the article: https://theconversation.com/canadian-citizenship-study-guide-should-tell-the-truth-about-racism-144629
Vancouver City Council just spent two weeks discussing the climate emergency plan they asked staff to develop last year. They heard from 75 speakers both for and against the actions recommended in the plan – and ended up passing all 37 recommendations. Ian Mass joins us on our City Beat feature with more details about the climate plan and several other motions coming before council tomorrow.
A long tradition of the amateur detective exists in the mystery genre. The latest sleuth is Annick Boudreau, a clinical psychologist created by a Vancouver comedian, playwright, and novelist who based the character of Annick Boudreau, in part, on his own therapist. We speak with Charles Demers about the book, Primary Obsessions.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is reported to be the largest private foundation in the world holding almost $47 billion in assets. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Foundation has risen to a position of even greater prominence. However as a private institution, the Gates Foundation’s interests and investments remain largely hidden from public view. Tim Schwab raises questions about the accountability and transparency of the institution’s investments in his recent article, “When the Poor Get Sick, Bill Gates Gets Richer”, which appeared in the October edition of The Nation.
Justin Trudeau once claimed that Canada had no colonial past. A new book just out from Fernwood Press would disagree. Canada In the World looks closely at Canadian foreign policy and finds a consistent pattern of colonial conquest and capital accumulation. We speak with the book’s author, Tyler Shipley, professor of society, culture, and commerce at Humber College.
The Canadian government has announced that the final provisions of the Secure Air Travel Regulations are now in force. These new regulations modify Canada’s No Fly List regime but, according to the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, they do not address the basic problems that plague the system and continue to result in the undermining of individuals’ rights as they travel. We talk with Tim McSorley, national coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.
More than 150 residents of long-term care and assisted living homes have lost their lives to Covid-19. However, tens of thousands more have been deeply impacted by the loss of connection to family and loved ones. Seniors Advocate Isobel MacKenzie says there have been more calls, letters and emails on the issue of visit restrictions than any other single issue in the history of the Office. She joins us to speak about the findings of a recent survey by the Office of the Seniors Advocate that garnered more than 15,000 responses.
On October 7, a huge crowd of people gathered outside a court building in Athens. They were waiting to hear the verdict in the trial of 68 members of the far-right organization Golden Dawn. The hearing was the biggest trial of fascists since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg after WWII. The crowd in Athens erupted with joy when news emerged that the judges had ruled that Golden Dawn was a criminal gang, not a legitimate political party. We speak with Patrick Strickland, an author, journalist and editor who divides his time between Athens and Texas.
The Fraser estuary is one of the largest estuaries on the Pacific coast of North America. It is the rearing grounds for Canada’s most productive salmon runs and connects a food web that links fish, birds and marine mammals across thousands of kilometres of the North Pacific Ocean. The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority is proposing another massive container terminal on Roberts Bank in the Strait of Georgia. We speak about the project with Misty MacDuffee of the Raincoast Conservation Foundation.
Over 200 scholars of 20th century authoritarianism have signed an open letter of concern about the current state of democracy. The letter was released just a couple of days before the presidential election in the United States. It states that, while democracy appeared to be flourishing everywhere in the years following the end of the Cold War, today it seems to be withering or in full-scale collapse globally. We speak with Jennifer Evans of the New Fascism Syllabus board, who wrote the letter.
A constitutional test of Quebec's Bill 21 began Monday in the Quebec Superior Court in Montreal. The law, which was passed last year, prohibits public teachers, as well as government lawyers and other civil servants, from wearing religious symbols such as turbans and hijabs at work. The National Council of Canadian Muslims and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association are among the groups involved in the challenge. We speak with Sarah Abou-Bakr, Quebec Advocacy Coordinator with the NCCM.
British Columbia in known around the world for its beautiful natural scenery and abundant wildlife. But some species in BC have been dwindling. Sockeye salmon stocks plunged last year and caribou, moose and mountain sheep have also seen significant declines. A broad coalition had formed to urge the provincial government to take concrete steps to protect and restore habitat. We speak with John Bergenske, conservation director at Wildsight.
Built in the 1950s, the Little Mountain social housing complex was a key public asset in Vancouver. 13 years ago, the BC Liberals sold the housing to a private developer, Holborn Properties, in a deal shrouded in secrecy. Hundreds of people were displaced and more than 200 family homes were demolished. The residents were promised a quick return to new and modern homes but today, most of the social housing units remain un-built and the land sits virtually vacant. Community advocate David Chudnovsky joins us to talk about a recent legal victory in the fight to restore Little Mountain.
In January 2019, Vancouver City Council unanimously approved OneCity Councillor Christine Boyle's motion declaring that we are in a global state of climate emergency and that constitutes a crisis for Vancouver. The motion went on to direct staff to prepare recommendations for ramping up the city’s climate actions in line with efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C. On November 3rd, the largest and most comprehensive set of climate emergency recommendations will be debated by city politicians.
On October 24, Chile voted in favour of replacing its neoliberal constitution written more than 40 years ago under the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. 78% of people backed a new charter in a plebiscite held Sunday. Estefanía Milla-Moreno is from Santiago, Chile. She is currently a PhD candidate in forestry at the University of British Columbia.
A new report on the current and future viability of the Site C dam on the Peace River was released this month in the midst of BC’s recent election campaign. Energy economist Robert McCullough concluded that the project is a net loss and will cost British Columbians well into the future. Ken Boon is president of the Peace Valley Landowners Association. We spoke with him about the McCullough report.
If a mining company comes into a community to prospect for a mine and community members don’t want it there, they have to hit the ground running. A new book is going to make it a whole lot easier to do that. Unearthing Justice is a comprehensive guide on how to protect your community from the mining industry. We speak with author Joan Kuyek, founding national coordinator of Mining Watch, Joan Kuyek.
It’s 2020, and Canada is not on track to meet our greenhouse gas emissions targets. To do so, we’ll need radical systemic change to how we live and work—and fast. How can we ever achieve this? Top policy analyst and author Seth Klein reveals we can do it now because did it before during the Second World War. We speak with Seth Klein about how wartime thinking and community efforts can be repurposed for Canada’s own Green New Deal.
British Columbians relied heavily on a private carrier until Greyhound abandoned its BC routes in 2018, stranding thousands of highway bus users. What’s left is a dysfunctional patchwork of privately-owned bus services, private charters, taxis and local transit. A new campaign is calling for the provincial government to create a unified system that will guarantee all British Columbians essential transit access to the rest of the province. We talk with Maryann Abbs of Let's Ride: Make Public Transit BC Wide.
In the United States, Black and Latino pedestrians more likely to get hit by a car than white pedestrians They are less likely to own cars and more likely to take transit and walk. Plus, Black and Latino neighborhoods are passed over for safety improvements that white communities have the political clout to secure. These are some of the facts in a new book by journalist Angie Schmitt called Right of Way: Race, Class and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America. We spoke with Angie Schmitt in September.
A new report points out that women, Two-Spirit and gender-diverse people are at the forefront of Canada’s pandemic response. More than half of women workers are concentrated in occupations known as the 5Cs: caring, cashiering, catering, cleaning and clerical functions. It says women need to be centred in Canada’s economic recovery efforts going forward. A Feminist Recovery Plan for Canada is co-authored by YWCA Canada. We speak with Anjum Sultana of the YWCA.
Municipal and provincial levels of government say that their hands are tied when it comes to bringing about decriminalization of drugs in their jurisdictions. But that’s not true, according to a new report by Pivot Legal. Author Caitlin Shane says there are simple actions that non-federal levels of government can take to reduce the harms of criminal sanctions for drug users.
Black Canadians are more than three times as likely as the general population to know someone who died of Covid-19. This is just one of the findings of a new online survey of several thousand Canadians about their experiences with Covid-19 since the pandemic started. The study was carried out by the Edmonton-based African Canadian Civic Engagement Council and Innovative Research Group. Dunia Nur is president of the ACCEC.
Research over the past 15 years shows that climate change has drastically amplified the conditions that help wildfires ignite and spread. Simon Donner is a climate scientist and professor of geography at the University of British Columbia. He discusses the factors that led to the catastrophic wildfires in the western United States.
The recently released report, A New Future for Old Forests, contains 14 recommendations on how BC can better manage its endangered old-growth forests. Jens Wieting applauds the report but is concerned about the BC government’s response to it. Jens Wieting is senior forest and climate campaigner with the Sierra Club.
John Ware is an iconic figure in the history of southern Alberta. He was a Black pioneer and rancher who settled in the province before the turn of the century. Born in the American South, he was already an accomplished cowboy by the time he arrived in Alberta. John Ware is the subject of a new NFB documentary now showing at the Calgary and Vancouver International Film Festival.
Lower Mainland city councils got back to work this week with no shortage of challenging topics on the agenda. Vancouver City Council discussed a whole raft of motions to tackle homelessness, including tiny houses, RV parking and more. Redeye Collective member Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.
The prevalence of misinformation about Covid 19 is much higher on social media than in traditional news sources. A group of Canadian researchers has found that people who consume a lot of social media end up believing conspiracy theories and misinformation, and as a result do not engage in safe behaviours that prevent the spread of COVID-19. We speak with Lisa Teichmann, a member of the research team.
Last year, the BC government expanded its wolf cull program in an attempt to protect endangered mountain caribou in the province. The adoption of this strategy was based on a study by Robert Serrouya and others at the University of Alberta. But when biologist Lee Harding went back into the data Serrouya used, he found that killing wolves had no detectable effect on the caribou populations it was trying to protect. We talk with Lee Harding.
Local craft and artisanal businesses are often celebrated as an antidote to the corporatization of everyday life. Yet workers in these local enterprises say they can be toxic places to work, offering low pay and little protection from arbitrary management practices. Benjamin Anderson is a labour studies lecturer and PHD candidate at SFU. He explains what he’s heard from workers at local breweries, cafes and pubs.
The Tulsequah Chief mine is in a remote corner of northwest BC. This mixed-metals mine has been leaching contaminated water into the largest tributary of the salmon-producing Taku River for more than 60 years, and the last owner of the mine is now bankrupt. We talk with journalist Matt Simmons about the delays in getting work started on the cleanup.
While children are less directly affected by Covid-19, the pandemic may have long-term adverse effects on the health and well-being of children and adolescents. Dr. Michael Kobor is Canada Research Chair in Social Epigenetics and Professor in the UBC Department of Medical Genetics. He talks to us about how social factors can get “under the skin” to influence child health and development.
WAVAW Rape Crisis Centre has introduced a new text and chat app to help support survivors of sexual assault during the Covid-19 pandemic. WAVAW Connect allows survivors to contact support workers confidentially from any device. Dalya Israel and Ashley Teja of WAVAW explain how the new app works.
In a recent blog post, Heather Lawson argues that the assumption that police presence saves those who experience sexual violence contradicts the experiences of many survivors, particularly Indigenous women and girls. Heather Lawson is the McInturff Fellow at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. She spoke with us on August 10.
Undocumented workers and asylum seekers in Canada say the federal government’s new regularization program is deeply unfair to the hundreds of thousands of non-status workers who have being doing essential work during the Covid-19 pandemic. We speak with Mohamed Barry, an organizer with Solidarity Across Borders in Montreal.
BC Hydro has classified the health of the project as ‘red’ meaning that it’s in deep trouble. The dam is facing unknown cost overruns, schedule delays and serious geotechnical problems. Sarah Cox is author of a prize-winning book about opposition to the Site C dam called Breaching the Peace and she continues to follow the project closely for The Narwhal. We spoke with Sarah Cox on August 11.
Businesses and governments are increasingly making the use of non-medical masks mandatory in indoor public spaces. But, according to the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, new laws mandating masks are exactly the type of government action that tends to overshoot the mark, to the unreasonable and unjustified detriment of our freedoms. We speak with Cara Zwibel of the CCLA.
Shortly after President Donald Trump sent federal agents to Portland, a federal judge in Portland issued a restraining order against the agents barring them from attacking journalists and legal observers. Black Lives Matter Chicago and other organizations have filed lawsuits to prevent a similar occupation of their cities. We speak with Marjorie Cohn, former president of the National Lawyers Guild in the United States.
On July 22, the Federal Court of Canada ruled that a pact that turns refugees back at the Canada-US border is unconstitutional. The Safe Third Country Agreement was brought in 16 years ago and designated the United States as a safe country for refugees. The court challenge was brought by the Canadian Council for Refugees, Amnesty International and the Canadian Council of Churches, as well as several refugees turned back at the border. We speak with Janet Dench of the Canadian Council of Refugees.
Six years ago, Vancouver declared itself a City of Reconciliation. But one of city council’s advisory committees says it hasn’t seen meaningful action on anti-racism or reconciliation. Michelle Cyca is a spokesperson for the Urban Indigenous Peoples' Advisory Committee. We speak with her about why the committee isn’t satisfied with what council has done to advance its stated goals.
Last month Canada was rejected for the second consecutive time in its bid for a temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council, losing to Norway and Ireland. Now many organizations and activists are pushing for a formal and democratic review of Canadian foreign policy. James Mainguy speaks with Tamara Lorincz, who is a member of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.
(Audio re-uploaded Aug 5: now plays full episode)
In June, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that a decades-old section of the Criminal Code was unconstitutional. The law was brought in following the acquittal of a man who sexually assaulted an elderly woman while intoxicated. The federal government enacted Section 33.1 amid reports that extreme drunkenness was being used to defend against a sexual assault charge. We speak with Isabel Grant, professor at the Allard School of Law UBC.
Born in 1931, Tla’amin elder Elsie Paul was raised by her grandparents on their ancestral territory just north of Powell River on the Sunshine Coast of BC. As her adult life unfolded against a backdrop of colonialism, she drew strength from the teachings she had learned. She now passes on those teachings to all who visit a new interactive book published by Ravenspace. We talk with one of the co-creators of the book, Elsie Paul’s grandson, Davis McKenzie.
Read the book here: http://publications.ravenspacepublishing.org/as-i-remember-it/index
Since the Depression years, the Bank of Canada has played a critical role in recovery from financial crises. The Bank’s current bond-buying program has allowed the federal government to shore up incomes and keep our economy functioning during the pandemic. But we are facing a new age of austerity if governments take their cues from conservative voices already calling for cuts to program spending. We speak with Scott Aquanno, professor of political science at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa.
In March, every Canadian province and territory declared some kind of state of emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Public spaces across the country were closed and gatherings were restricted. In some provinces, public health recommendations became legally-enforceable with significant fines attached. A new report looks at some of the results of that enforcement effort. We speak with Abby Deshman, co-author of the report and Criminal Justice Program Director with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
Salt marshes in the Fraser River delta are a vital ecosystem for birds and other wildlife. But they are being squeezed between the dykes that protect farmland on one side, and sea level rise on the other. An innovative pilot project aims to protect the salt marsh so that it can, in turn, protect the low-lying land along the coast. We talk about the project with Sḵwx̱wú7mesh journalist Stephanie Wood.
Close to 4 million Canadians can’t afford to eat well or get enough food to keep hunger at bay. Food insecurity is about more than just access to food - it’s also about poverty, and BIPOC people are disproportionately impacted. We talk with Leslie Campbell, who oversees FoodShare Toronto's school and community based programs.
On July 21, over 200 people are signed up to speak to a motion brought by councillor Jean Swanson calling for the police board to itemize the work officers do related to mental health, homelessness, drug use and sex work. The motion is the first step in an attempt to move funding from the VPD and into community-led harm reduction and safety initiatives. We speak with Taz Khandwani about what the motion says and what it hopes to achieve.
When sociologist Ingrid Waldron started teaching in the School of Nursing at Dalhousie, she says she got a lot of pushback from White student nurses who didn’t understand what race had to do with health. In this wide-ranging conversation, Waldron examines the connections between the social determinants of health, environmental racism and police violence.
Canada has committed millions to research and development of some of the world’s most promising candidate vaccines and therapeutics to treat Covid-19. However there is no guarantee that this expenditure of public money will result in a vaccine or treatment that is affordable. Jason Nickerson is the Humanitarian Affairs Advisor for Doctors Without Borders in Ottawa. He argues that public investment should not result in high profits for private corporations.
Fortis BC is proposing a major $3 billion expansion to its LNG storage facility on the Fraser River. Local residents are concerned 300-metre LNG tankers negotiating the river will pose a serious threat to public safety in Delta. We speak with Eoin Finn of the Friends of Tilbury Coalition about why they think this expansion poses a threat to public safety in Delta.
If you would like to comment on the proposal, you have until July 16. Go to https://lngtankersafety.org/ to find out how to submit your comments.
Over the past few weeks, Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and send military troops into cities and states if they fail to quell the recent protests against racism and police brutality happening throughout the U.S. Chris Savage is a lawyer in Washington, D.C. who is leading an attempt to have the Insurrection Act replaced. We talk with him about the dangers of the current legislation and what he would like to see replace it.
In 2018, the Alberta Energy Regulator approved an application for a 10,000-barrel-a-day tar sands project adjacent to Moose Lake. The Fort McKay nation went to court to challenge the approval and, in May, the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled in their favour. Ben Parfitt is a long-time analyst with the BC Office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He explains the grounds for the decision and its significance for similar court challenges in BC.
Vancouver’s tight rental housing market has eased significantly since coronavirus-related travel restrictions brought many short-rental units back into the rental housing market. Economist Marc Lee of the BC office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says now is the time to make sure that short-term rentals are properly regulated so that renters in Vancouver aren’t squeezed out of the city.
Street checks are when police stop someone in public to question them and record their information in a police database, outside the context of an investigation. Statistics show that Black and Indigenous people are by far the most common target of this kind of police attention. The BC Civil Liberties Association, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs and the Hogan’s Alley Society are calling for a stop to the practice. We talk with BCCLA policy lawyer Latoya Farrell about their concerns about the legality and usefulness of street checks.
Vancouver police evicted homeless campers from a tent city near Crab Park in the early morning of June 16. Organizers and observers say the police moved in without due notice and did not work with local agencies to provide other housing options for the campers. We talk with organizer Chrissy Brett and lawyer Anna Cooper about their concerns about the way the VPD enforced the court injunction to remove them from the Vancouver Port Authority parking lot.
The police killing of George Floyd ignited a global uprising against police violence and created a space for anti-racist voices to be heard. One idea that has gained traction as a result is that of defunding the police and investing in other programs to deliver safety and security. Sandy Hudson co-founded Black Lives Matter Toronto and is vice-chair of the Black Legal Action Centre. She’s currently a UCLA law student. Sandy Hudson joins us to talk about what defunding the police could look like.
In 2016, 200,000 Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were rendered stateless overnight in an attempt to expel Black people from the Dominican Republic. Documentary filmmaker Michèle Stephenson returned to her country of birth the following year and tells their story in her new film Stateless. The film is available online all week until Friday June 26 as part of the DOXA film festival. We speak with Michèle Stephenson from her home in New York.
The new invasive species the Asian giant hornet has been characterized in the media as the Asian murder hornet. Christianne Wilhelmson and Gillian Der of the Georgia Strait Alliance say terms like this are deeply unscientific and serve to promote racist stereotypes about Asians. We spoke with them on June 1.
In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a marked rise in harassment of people who are Asian and Asian Canadian. These attacks range from verbal assaults to physical assaults. Often we’ve seen bystanders intervene to show solidarity and defend the people being targeted. Asian Americans Advocating Justice and Hollaback have partnered to offer online training in how to safely and effectively intervene. We speak with Emily May of Hollaback.
The UN Security Council currently has five temporary seats available. Canada, Ireland, and Norway are vying for two of those seats with the final vote to be held on June 17th. On May 19th, an open letter was published, calling for a “no” vote for Canada to join the Security Council. We talk with Yves Engler, one of the signatories of the letter.
Early signs suggest that race matters, when it comes to COVID-19. In Chicago, black residents are 30 per cent of the population, but make up more than 70 per cent of COVID-19-related deaths. And yet Canada doesn't collect race-based data. In a recent article on Policy Options, physician Aimée-Angélique Bouka and academic Yolande Bouka argue that Canada should be collecting better health data that looks closely at the intersecting issues of race and immigration.
Over 5500 academics have signed a letter calling for the democratization of work in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The letter says that human beings should be seen as one resource among many. Simon Black is one of the co-signers of the letter. He is a writer, activist and academic and currently assistant professor at the Centre for Labour Studio at Brock University.
The Healthcare for All National Coalition is calling on all levels of government to ensure healthcare access for everyone in Canada. Their open letter to the federal government was endorsed by more than 200 organizations, including the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Labour Congress. Janet Cleveland is a researcher on the rights and health of refugees and non-status migrants at McGill University. She joins us again to talk about why this issue is so important.
The Covid-19 crisis has disproportionately impacted communities already vulnerable because of poverty, racism and other forms of inequality. The Vancouver Just Recovery Coalition formed to advocate for a progressive, equality-focused recovery when the pandemic is finally over. We speak with Kimberley Wong and Matthew Wong, co-chairs of the Coalition.
With the advent of CERB, millions of Canadians now find themselves getting a regular monthly cheque from the federal government. This has sparked renewed interest in the idea of a Universal Basic Income. On May 14, the Broadbent Institute hosted a webinar titled Lift the Floor: Would a Universal Basic Income guarantee a good life for all Canadians? with Simon Black of Brock University and Armine Yalnizyan, Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers. We spoke with Armine Yalnizyan on May 20.
Racist attacks against Chinese-Canadians are on the rise. Vancouver police said twice as many hate crimes against Asians were reported in April, compared to the previous month. Conservative MP Derek Sloan is unapologetic for having posted on social media that Dr Theresa Tam had "failed Canadians" through her performance during the pandemic and asking if she worked "for Canada or for China." Justin Kong is a community and labour organizer in Toronto. He is executive director of the Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter. He spoke with us on May 19.
Recently, a dozen health experts in Quebec wrote an open letter calling for better measures to protect vulnerable populations as things reopen. The letter says governments need to adopt policies that will allow workers to stay home if they are at risk of serious complications from Covid-19. Janet Cleveland of McGill University is one of the authors of the letter. She spoke with us from Montreal on May 16.
As the elite in the United States continue to push for a reopening of the economy, it’s the lives of working people that are at risk. Chris Brooks is a staff writer for Labor Notes and author of a recent article The Hammer and The Dance: Why Reopening Now Will Kill. We spoke with Chris Brooks on May 12.
With a potential vaccine against Covid-19 many months away, some governments are exploring the idea of proof-of-immunity cards for Covid-19. Francoise Baylis says we should fight tooth and nail against proof-of-immunity cards. Francoise Baylis is University Research Professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax and co-author with Harvard molecular biologist Natalie Kofler of an opinion piece published recently on CBC online. I spoke with Francoise Baylis on May 12.
Eliza Gilkyson describes her just-released album 2020 as a collection of sing-alongs, diatribes, marching songs and love letters to the Earth. We caught up with her at her home in Austin, Texas for an extended conversation about politics, music and the significance of this year in the United States.
A new report by BC Coalition to End Youth Homelessness outlines how the pandemic has created urgent and pressing issues for vulnerable youth in BC and especially youth in care. We spoke in early May with Katherine McParland, executive director of A Way Home Kamloops and someone with lived expertise in homelessness.
The Migrant Workers Centre in Vancouver has launched a campaign calling on the federal government to grant an amnesty to the thousands of undocumented workers in Canada. They say the Covid-19 crisis has exposed the extent to which the Canadian economy depends on migrant workers and it’s essential to regularize their status immediately. Natalie Drolet is staff lawyer and executive director of the Migrant Worker Centre. We spoke with her on May 5.
For 27 years, thousands of Indigenous people and campesinos in Ecuador's Amazon have been fighting Chevron, seeking compensation for the contamination of their land by oil extraction activities. Paul Paz y Miño of Amazon Watch joins us to talk about the twists and turns of their long fight for justice.
The current Covid-19 pandemic has us questioning the relationship between the density of cities and the spread of the coronavirus. The conventional wisdom says that more people living closer together results in a deadlier outbreak. Patrick Condon of UBC’s School of Architecture disagrees. We spoke with him on April 30.
As bricks and mortar schools shut their doors due to Covid-19, teachers scrambled to move classes online. These new digital classes have highlighted socio-economic inequalities among Canadian families as they struggle to help their kids succeed. We caught up with Erika Shaker on April 29 to talk about how the pandemic is impacting Canadian children.
Indigenous leaders and health professionals have raised concerns about the size of the construction work camps at the Site C dam project near Fort St John and the LNG Canada project near Kitimat. Dr. Warren Bell, founder of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, says the work camps pose a danger to the workers themselves, as well as local communities. We spoke with Dr. Warren Bell on April 28.
Andrew Longhurst and Kendra Strauss say in a recent article that the coronavirus pandemic has shown the weaknesses in the system of care for seniors in BC, saying it’s time to end profit-making in the sector. Andrew Longhurst is a research associate with the CCPA-BC and a researcher and policy analyst with the Health Sciences Association of BC. He spoke with us on April 22.
A group of Indigenous leaders and health care professionals says the federal government must provide more resources to fight Covid-19 in Indigenous communities. They say that First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, are among the most vulnerable Canadians and the least equipped to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. Dr. Anna Banerji is a pediatric infectious disease specialist and has been studying lower respiratory infections in Inuit children for over 20 years. Dr. Banerji spoke with us on April 21.
While Canada and the provinces are running up deficits to help people survive the current financial crisis, cities operate by different rules. City Beat’s Ian Mass joins us to discuss the challenges facing Vancouver and other Lower Mainland cities and how they plan to cope.
The only thing spreading faster than the coronavirus is misinformation about it. Social media posts with incorrect information can be shared and viewed hundreds of thousands of times a day. Mike Caulfield is a digital information literacy expert working at Washington State University. He has developed a site with a four-step process to use with Covid-19 related material to help us sort fact from fiction. We spoke with him on April 14.
On April 2nd, Mel Watkins died at age 87. Mel Watkins was a political economist at the University of Toronto, as well as an activist and writer. In the late 1960s, he was founder and co-leader, with James Laxer, of The Waffle, a left-wing political formation within the NDP that advocated for an “independent, socialist Canada.” Jim Stanford is author of a collection of essays on Mel Watkins’ Staple Theory of Economic Growth. Jim Stanford was formerly an economist with Unifor, and is currently director of the Centre for Future Work. He joins us to pay tribute to his friend and mentor.
Prompted by the pandemic, the federal government is allowing provinces to develop a safe, regulated supply of drugs to address both the overdose crisis and the dangers of COVID-19. This radical policy change is being praised by harm reduction advocates such as Scott Bernstein, Director of Policy with the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition. Scott Bernstein joins us to discuss the implications of this new policy.
On March 31, an outbreak of COVID-19 was announced in West Kelowna at the Bylands Nurseries. BC’s provincial health officer it concerned that there could be more outbreaks among temporary foreign workers — a group that advocates say is extremely vulnerable. Amy Cohen is a professor of anthropology at Okanagan College and a volunteer community organizer with RAMA Okanagan, a migrant rights group based in Kelowna. We spoke with her on April 14.
The climate crisis threatens the very existence of human life on the planet, yet governments do little or nothing to fight it. In contrast, governments around the world have acted swiftly and decisively to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Two scientists from McGill University have addressed this difference in a recent commentary. We speak with Ross Otto, co-author with Eric Galbraith, of the article, versions of which can be found on The Conversation and in The Narwhal.
Politicians readily adopt military terminology to talk about a robust response to a national threat. During a real war, liberal democratic order is temporarily suspended and the state extends its power to limit the population’s rights. The problem comes when the threat is over but governments are loath to give up their newly-acquired authority. Cas Mudde joins us to discuss the responses of governments around the world to the pandemic. Cas Mudde is professor on international affairs at the University of Georgia, columnist with the Guardian and author of The Far Right Today.
For decades, marine biologists have been chronicling the demise of ocean ecosystems and the rising threats to ocean species. But now a major new scientific review published a few days ago in the journal Nature shows how fast oceans can recover if they are protected. Boris Worm is one of the contributors to the review. He’s a professor in marine conservation biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax. We spoke on April 6.
If British Columbia is going to meet its emissions targets, it’ll have to phase out its fossil fuel industries by mid-century. A new report says that a managed fossil fuel wind-down is good for climate, jobs and communities. Marc Lee is a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which produced the report, titled Winding Down BC’s Fossil Fuel Industries: Planning for Climate Justice in a Zero-Carbon Economy. We spoke with him on March 31.
People who identify as Black in Vancouver make up about 1% of the population, and it is a community that is spread out across the Metro area. For young people that often means being the only Black kid in their class, and facing discrimination and micro-aggressions in their everyday lives. Dr. Gillian Creese is Professor of Sociology at UBC where she is currently the Associate Dean of Arts, Faculty and Equity. Her new book, Where Are You From? Growing Up African-Canadian in Vancouver, is published by University of Toronto Press. We spoke Gillian Creese on March 31.
As the coronavirus crisis deepens, people across the country have had to shift many of their activities online. This leaves people living in rural communities and low-income Canadians scrambling as they struggle with inadequate Internet access. Rodrigo Samayoa is a digital campaigner at Open Media. He explains their campaign to demand that ISPs change their practices during the pandemic.
The Likhts’amisyu clan of the Wet’suwet’en has launched legal action to protect their traditional territory from fracked gas pipelines. The constitutional and charter challenges to Coastal Gaslink and other fossil projects on Wet’suwet’en territory are based on the equity rights of future generations in a time of climate crisis. We speak with Wet’suwet’en hereditary leader Chief Dsta’Hyl – Adam Gagnon of the Likhts’amisyu clan.
The coronavirus pandemic has spread to almost every country in the world. Iran has been especially hard hit and continued sanctions from the United States make it impossible for Iran to purchase the medical supplies it needs to help the Iranian people. Cavan Kharrazian is an Iranian-American researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. We spoke with him on March 25.
Infectious diseases have been a part of humanity since the beginning of civilization. It does seem, however, that diseases have been emerging more frequently in the past few decades. Researchers have, in fact, seen pattern between environmental destruction and the rise of new diseases. Kate Jones is a Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity at University College, London. James Mainguy spoke with Kate Jones on March 25.
The new Emergency Benefit announced by the Ministry of Finance will be available to those directly or indirectly affected by COVID-19, including those not eligible for Employment Insurance. Pam Frache, coordinator of the Fight for $15 and Fairness in Toronto, said the $2000 per month flat rate is a step in the right direction but that it’s vital that the benefit is available to all workers, regardless of income level and immigration status, get the support they need. We spoke with Pam Frache on March 24.
After years of advocacy by OHIP For All and other community organizations across Ontario, the Ontario government announced last week that it would expand medical coverage during the COVID-19 outbreak. The province is waiving the 3 month waiting period for Ontario Health Insurance Plan coverage. The province is also going to cover the cost of COVID-19 services for uninsured people who do not meet the criteria for OHIP coverage. We speak with Dr. Arnav Agarwal, an internal medicine resident physician and member of OHIP For All.
Indigenous people in BC are hoping for significant changes in how they are treated in the justice system following a new agreement between the province and the BC First Nations Justice Council. The strategy aims to reduce the number of Indigenous people in prison, support First Nations to restore their own justice systems, and more. We talk with Doug White and Annita McPhee of the BC First Nations Justice Council.
Months of protests have forced the Chilean government to agree to a referendum on whether or not to draft a new constitution. The vote was scheduled for April but has now been postponed to October due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Claudia Paez is with Van4Chile. She talks about what led to the protests that erupted last fall and the referendum questions that Chileans will be answering this coming October.
Musicians have precarious incomes at the best of times, relying on multiple sources of income that include performing in bars, restaurants, community centres and festivals. All these gigs are now gone for the foreseeable future as public health officials try to contain the spread of COVID-19. We speak with Dusty Kelly of the Vancouver Musicians Association.
Social immunity, also known as collective immunity, describes the additional level of disease protection arising in social groups from collective disease defences. Malcolm Steinberg argues that this is what we need now to help us through the COVID-19 pandemic. Malcolm Steinberg is director of the Public Health program at Simon Fraser University.
Almost all of the wealth created since the financial crash of 2008 has gone to the richest one per cent. This has led to more, and wealthier, billionaires with very little benefit to the majority of citizens. Chuck Collins is director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies. His recent op-ed piece, The US Would Be Better Off With Fewer Billionaires, appeared last month on the CNN Business website.
The Green New Deal aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half within 10 years. To meet this target, Eric Doherty says Canada must transform its transportation system and that transformation has to include a highway bus service to link cities and towns across the country. Eric Doherty is an environmental and transportation consultant, currently based in Victoria.
Vancouver and water; Burnaby and tenants; women’s health and contraception; migrant rights and the police. Ian Mass brings us a roundup of the council motions that caught his eye this week in his regular City Beat report.
Speak My Language is new radio documentary series that explores the problems faced by five Chinese seniors trying to access health care. The documentaries were produced by youth working in collaboration with the seniors. The series is a project of the Yarrow Intergenerational Society for Justice. Rachel Lau is the project coordinator of Speak My Language.
Most people think of bail as simply the pledge of an amount of money. But for marginalized people, bail often comes with conditions that restrict people from entering court-designated red zones, which are often the places they usually go. Nick Blomley is co-author with Marie-Eve Sylvestre and Céline Bellot of the new book Red Zones: Criminal Law and the Territorial Governance of Marginalized People. He joins us in our studio to explain the how the imposition of red zones affects marginalized people.
It’s a familiar story these days. Land defenders and activists blockade a road to try to prevent a pipeline or an oil terminal being built. Resource corporations go to court to get an injunction, then the RCMP move in and make arrests. Solidarity actions erupt, resulting in more injunctions and more arrests. Irina Ceric and Shiri Pasternak say that the decision to grant injunctions has become a political one as much as a legal one. Irina Ceric is a lawyer and criminology instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. She joins us in our studios.
Community advocates are concerned that many Vancouver residents can’t access essential services without fear or risk of deportation. The fear persists despite a city policy passed nearly four years ago to ensure access to city services without fear. Two city councillors have a motion before council that aims to make Vancouver safer for migrants. We speak with city councillor Christine Boyle about why this motion is important for all residents.
In his first book, The Skin We’re In, journalist and activist Desmond Cole challenges the complacency of people who believe Canada is a post-racial nation. He chronicles just one year—2017—in the struggle against racism in this country. Desmond Cole was in Vancouver recently as part of a cross-country tour talking about his book. He joined us in our studio for a lively and engaging conversation about the realities that Black people face every day in Canada.
The last bushfire season in Australia was one of the worst on record. As of January, an area more than three times the size of Nova Scotia has been burned, with thousands of home destroyed and dozens of people killed. Graham Appleton lives in an area devastated by the fires. He broadcasts at a community radio station in the Shoalhaven area of New South Wales. He was in Vancouver to visit friends and joined us in our studio to talk about the fires.
The Yellowhead Institute has produced what it calls a Red Paper about reclaiming Indigenous jurisdiction and breathing life into rights and responsibilities. Land Back talks about how Canada dispossesses Indigenous peoples from the land and what communities are doing to get it back. We talk with Hayden King, co-author with Shiri Pasternak, of Land Back and executive director of the Yellowhead Institute at Ryerson University.
Vancouver City Council debated a whole raft of progressive motions this past week focusing on public health, arts and culture, homelessness and the climate crisis. Ian Mass joins us with his regular City Beat report to discuss these initiatives.
The Frontier mine was one of the largest tar sands mines ever proposed for northern Alberta. On Feb 23, Teck Resources withdrew its application for the $20 billion project, just days before the federal government was planning to deliver a decision on the project’s future. We speak with Duncan Kinney, executive director of Progress Alberta.
A lack of public capital investment in seniors care facilities has led to the majority of new assisted living units are being built by for-profit corporations. This means low and moderate income seniors may not be able to afford this supportive housing option when they are unable to live independently any more. We talk with Andrew Longhurst about the increasing privatization of assisted living facilities in BC. Andrew Longhurst is a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Some members of the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition are celebrating what they see as measures that will help reduce poverty and inequality. Others are frustrated by inaction that leaves many people in poverty still far behind. Viveca Ellis is interim community organizer with the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition.
Journalists on Wet’suwet’en territory during the recent wave of arrests say that the RCMP went out of their way to prevent them from doing their job. Jerome Turner, a reporter for Ricochet Media, says he was detained for several hours in an area without cell coverage while police enforced the injunction against land defenders. We talk about the rights of the media during police actions with Karyn Pugliese, award-winning broadcast journalist and president of the Canadian Association of Journalists.
The Broadcasting and Telecommunications Review committee recently published a 200-page report with recommendations on everything from how to regulate new organizations to how to make companies like Netflix and Facebook incorporate more Canadian content. We speak with Dr Sarah Ganter of the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University.
Bumblebee populations have been in sharp decline for several years, threatening the production of a wide range of fruits, vegetables and nuts. Now a new study has shown a clear link between climate change and the loss of bumblebees and other important pollinators. Peter Soroye is a PhD student in the department of biology at the University of Ottawa. He is the lead author of the study, published this month in the journal Science.
Senator Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire Democratic Party primary and came a very close second to Pete Buttigieg in Iowa. With Nevada coming up on Saturday, Sanders is in a strong position to win that state too. As his campaign gains momentum, corporate media hostility to Sanders is ramping up. We talk with Luke Savage of Jacobin magazine about the media landscape surrounding the fight for the Democratic Party nomination.
Like many cities around the world, Vancouver is facing serious challenges from climate change, including flooding, drought and high temperatures. An innovative new strategy was approved by city council in November. It aims to mitigate the problems of too much and too little rain and give residents a breath of fresh air during heat waves. Melina Scholefield is in charge of implementing green infrastructure for Vancouver. She joins us to talk about the new Rain City strategy.
Ian Mass attended a panel discussion recently focusing on important planning decisions made by Vancouver City Council during their first year in power. The panel came up with the top five transformational policies that are going to shape the city and the region in the next few years. He also talks about a newly-released discussion paper on the future of cooperative housing in Vancouver.
In January, the Correctional Investigator of Canada, Dr. Ivan Zinger, reported that the number of Indigenous people in prison has reached historic highs. In Alberta, a committee of the Criminal Trial Lawyer Association has called for a mass pardon for non-violent Indigenous inmates. Denise Lightning is a lawyer who sits on the Committee to Reduce Aboriginal Incarceration. She is a member of the Samson Cree Nation. She speaks with us about why so many Indigenous people are in prison and how to change that number.
When internationally renowned Haida carver Robert Davidson was only 22 years old, he was instrumental in changing the history of his people forever. With help from his family, Davidson committed to carving the first new totem pole in Old Massett in almost a century. Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter’s new film Now Is The Time documents the raising of that pole in 1969, an event would signal the rebirth of the Haida culture.
The film has been chosen to stream on the New York Times’ Op-Docs platform. We speak with Christopher Auchter about the events depicted in the film.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/opinion/sundance-haida-totem-pole.html
In Western Canada, where oil and gas companies dominate the economy, fossil fuel industry supporters claim that public education is pro-environment and anti-oil. But a new study that set out to assess how climate change is taught in Saskatchewan classrooms came up with a different conclusion. Simon Enoch and Emily Eaton wrote the report. Simon Enoch is director of the Saskatchewan office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
A Freedom of Information request by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has revealed that BC Hydro is very concerned about the earthquake risk posed by fracking operations close to the Peace Canyon dam and the Site C dam construction site. Ben Parfitt a resource policy analyst with the CCPA. He shares some of the findings from hundreds of pages of emails, memos, and handwritten meeting notes.
A new trade agreement, known as CUSMA, replaced the 26-year-old North American Free Trade agreement was signed late last year. Now it’s before the Canadian government for ratification. Scott Sinclair is senior trade researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He takes us through the new agreement to see what’s changed.
Nearly two years ago, the BC government said safe, affordable, licensed care would become the standard in the province. They launched Childcare BC to fulfill that campaign promise. Sharon Gregson is a spokesperson with the $10aDay child care campaign. She joins us to assess how the provincial government is doing so far.
Nancy McLean is an award-winning historian whose latest book, Democracy in Chains, traces the anti-democratic roots of the right-wing politics now transforming the United States. Nancy McLean was the keynote speaker at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives gala dinner here in Vancouver last November. In this talk, she tells the story of the vast machine developed to entrench the interests of monied elites in policy and law.
In their ground-breaking new book, Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Abigail Bakan argue that, what they call a mythologized exceptionalism makes it hard to challenge the racial contract that underpins the Israeli state. In this extended interview, we discuss the notion of a racial contract and why Israel is treated as an exception in discussions of comparative political systems in nation states. Yasmeen Abu-Laban is professor of political science at the University of Alberta, Abigail Bakan teaches at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
Bikemaps.org taps into information from cyclists all over the world to make biking safer for everyone. Cyclists enter their local cycling trouble spots and create an interactive map of their city. This local knowledge of cycling safety, hazards, and even bike thefts is then analyzed to identify hot spots for safety, risk, and crime. We speak with Karen Laberee, executive director of Bikemaps.org.
The dispute over access to Wet’suwet’en territory to build the Coastal Gaslink pipeline has resulted in a standoff between the hereditary chiefs and Premier John Horgan. Horgan has invoked “the rule of law”. But lawyer Eugene King says the BC government’s stance ignore much of the previous law in cases establishing rights and title. Eugene Kung is with West Coast Environmental Law.
Five years after the TRC released its executive summary and 94 calls to action for reconciliation, only nine have been completed. Historian Ian Mosby started checking the status of Canada’s progress a year after the TRC report. This year, he was joined by Ryerson colleague Eva Jewell. She is Anishinaabe from the territory of Deshkan Ziibiing in southwestern Ontario. She talks with us about the lack of progress of the TRC calls to action.
Metro Vancouver is planning to accommodate another million people in the next 20 years. City Beat’s Ian Mass runs us through how the region plans to do this. Also, in this episode, pressures on SRO housing from the new St. Paul’s Hospital location and the push to divest the city from fossil fuels.
In November last year, the National Association of Japanese Canadians delivered a report recommending key actions to address the historic wrongs committed against Japanese Canadians. In this episode, elder and human rights campaigner Mary Kitagawa talks about the intangible harms of internment. Following that, Judy Hanazawa, president of the Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens Association, talks about the recommendations for redress.
False Creek South embodies Vancouver’s progressive planning policies of the 1960s and 1970s. Its unique mix of social housing, coops and strata units is now under threat as the majority of housing units are built on City land. Sharon Yandle and Nathan Edelson are with the False Creek South Neighbourhood Association. They join us to discuss the future of this area in a city where densification is the byword of the day.
A United Nations committee working to end racism is urging Canada to immediately stop the construction of three major projects in BC as they do not the free, prior and informed consent of impacted Indigenous groups. The committee on the elimination of racial discrimination monitors a convention to end racial discrimination signed by countries including Canada, and is calling for a suspension of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, Site C dam and Coastal GasLink pipeline. We speak with Kukpi7 Judy Wilson of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs.
A new report by the Canadian Farmers Union says that farm mechanization has driven farm incomes down and greenhouse gas emissions up. NFU president Katie Ward says the only way out of the farm crisis and the climate crisis is a more diversified farm landscape that will lower emissions and produce more local food. In this episode, she explains how those changes could come about.
Canada’s population is increasingly racialized. Unfortunately, the rapid growth in the racialized population is not being matched by a corresponding increase in economic equality, according to a new study released in December. We talk to Sheila Block, one of the authors of Canada’s Colour-Coded Income Inequality, and a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Ontario office.
Tenants in Burnaby have fought hard against renoviction and demoviction. They saw their campaign rewarded in December when the City of Burnaby enacted some of strongest tenant protection legislation seen in the region. Now housing activists say Vancouver needs to follow suit. We talk with Sara Sagaii of the Vancouver Tenants Union.
A federal government review panel has just concluded hearings on a Vancouver Fraser Port Authority proposed container terminal on Roberts Bank in the Strait of Georgia. Opponents of this expansion say the terminal’s impact is as profound as the Trans Mountain oil pipeline terminal presently being built in Burnaby. We talk with Roger Emsley of Against Port Expansion.
In his bestselling book Assholes: A Theory, philosopher Aaron James presents a provocative theory of the asshole to explain why such people exist, especially in an age of raging narcissism and unbridled capitalism. Assholes: A Theory is a new documentary by veteran filmmaker John Walker. He joins us in studio to discuss how he came to make the film and who he talks to – and about – in the movie.
The most recent analysis by the New York-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis shows an additional $320 million in new subsidies was given in the first six months of this year to finance the already highly-subsidized Trans Mountain Pipeline, calling into question the economic feasibility of the expansion project. We talk with Tom Sanzillo, co-author of the report.
Colleen Fuller is a long-time health policy researcher and advocate for public health care. She says the media keep saying Dr. Brian Day’s Charter challenge is about the constitutional right to reduced wait times. She disagrees. She says the case is about whether doctors have a constitutional right to bill patients. She joins us to talk about the case as final arguments begin.
Canadian academic Hassan Diab was extradited to France five years ago on the basis of unreliable, unsourced intelligence. He spent three years in a French jail before he was finally released and returned home to Canada. Hassan Diab and his supporters are calling for a full public inquiry to find out what went wrong in his case. They also want to see significant changes to Canada’s Extradition Act to make sure that this doesn’t happen to another Canadian. We speak with Bessa Whitmore from the Hassan Diab Support Committee.
The White Peace Poppy Campaign began in the mid-1920s as a response to growing militarism in Britain. The poppy commemorates all those who have died in war, including civilian casualties. We speak with two people who are participating in a White Poppy wreath-laying ceremony today, November 11, in Vancouver. Teresa Gagné is co-founder of the White Peace Poppy Campaign in Canada. Fazineh Keita was a child soldier in Sierra Leone. He’s founder and co-director of the Innocence Lost Foundation.
According to a new report, the US military is one of the largest polluters in history. It consumes immense amounts of fossil fuels and emits more planet-heating gases than industrialized countries such as Sweden and Portugal. Benjamin Neimark is senior lecturer at the Lancaster Environment Centre and one of the authors of the report The Hidden Carbon Costs of the Everywhere War. He joins us from the UK.
A recent Statistics Canada study found that the number of people working at minimum wage jobs has doubled over the past ten years. Many minimum wage worked are aged 25 or older and an increasing number work at big companies. Armine Yalnizyan is an economist with the Atkinson Foundation in Toronto where her current research looks at the future of labour in a period of rapid technological change.
On October 25, over a million people took to the streets of Santiago, Chile in the largest mobilization since the end of the dictatorship. President Sebastián Piñera has announced a major cabinet reshuffle and introduces a few reforms but mass protests continue. José Arias Bustamante is a forest engineer from Chile, currently doing graduate work at UBC. He speaks with us about the roots of the uprising and the goals of the movements involved in the protests.
A landmark study by a research lab in Europe has shown that large-scale restoration of the Earth’s forests is the world’s most effective solution to capture carbon emissions. The Crowther Lab published its research in the journal Science in July. Dr. Jean François Bastin led the study. He is currently a researcher at Gand University in Belgium and we spoke with him from there.
Vancouver, Victoria and Saanich are three municipalities that have pledged to switch to 100% renewable energy within the next 30 years. A new report by the UVic Environmental Law Centre shows how to make this goal attainable. Executive director Deborah Curran says municipalities are uniquely placed to make a big impact during the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Laura Lamb is a long-time visual artist and former member of the Redeye collective. About a year ago, she closed down her art studio in order to dedicate her time to Extinction Rebellion. She joined us in studio a few days before the Oct 7 Bridge Out action in Vancouver to explain why she joined and what’s behind Extinction Rebellion’s direct action tactics.
On Friday Oct 11, Extinction Rebellion is hosting a public talk titled "Heading for Extinction & What to Do about it" at Christchurch Cathedral, 690 Burrard Street, Vancouver. For more information: https://www.facebook.com/events/2423248978001067/
Aboriginal people have been systematically targeted for assimilation into Canadian society since colonization began. Residential schools and child apprehensions were used to remove children from their parents. In addition, thousands of Indigenous women were sterilized, many without their prior knowledge or consent. Karen Stote is the author of An Act of Genocide, published by Fernwood. She is an assistant professor at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.
A recent opinion piece in the Vancouver Sun and the Province sparked public outcry for stoking the flames of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment. Sean Holman says Mark Hecht’s op-ed is just another example of Postmedia content that undermines journalism to propagandize for radicalized right causes. Sean Holman is a journalism professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary.
Josie Osborne was recently re-elected for a third term as the mayor of Tofino. Amy Lubik is a first-time Port Moody city councillor. They join us in studio to talk about the rural and urban resolutions they’re looking forward to debating at the annual Union of BC Municipalities conference taking place in Vancouver September 23 to 27.
Sharon McIvor’s grandmother was a member of the Lower Nicola Band who married a non-Indigenous man. Under Canada’s Indian Act, status was decided on the basis of male lineage and so their daughter was ineligible for registration as an Indian. Sharon McIvor launched a landmark case to gain equality and won a sweeping legal victory in 2007. The Canadian government continued to drag its feet. Sharon McIvor took the case to the United Nations in 2011. Canada finally ended sex-based discrimination in the Act on August 15.
More Indigenous children have been apprehended than ever went through the residential school children. One of the reasons for these apprehensions is the lack of adequate child and family services on reserve. On Sept 6, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ordered the federal government to pay $40,000 to each child who was apprehended or taken from their homes on reserve, no matter what the reason. We talk about the ruling with Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs.
In The Whale and The Raven, German director Mirjam Leuze explores the world of whale researchers against the backdrop of contested oil and gas development in the traditional territory of the Gitga’at First Nation in Northwest British Columbia. The film was co-produced with the National Film Board of Canada. It shows Oct 4 and 6 at the Vancouver International Film Festival. We speak with co-producer Henrik Meyer.
Last week, the Federal Court of Appeal agreed to hear an appeal in six legal cases opposing the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. At the same time, they dismissed six other cases that sought to quash the approval of the pipeline. Andrea Palframan is with RAVEN, a group that raises legal defence funds to assist Indigenous people argue for their legal rights in court. She explains what to expect in the upcoming court challenges.
Ian Mass joins us with our regular City Beat. In this episode, he talks about Vancouver’s big new culture plan, Kennedy Stewart’s about to take control of the tent city at Oppenheimer Park, and a cynical move by the Maple Ridge mayor to turn 200 layoffs at the Hammond lumber mill into a real estate opportunity.
The day after Yves Engler went to a press conference to ask Marc Garneau a question about arms sales to the Saudis, two RCMP officers showed up at his Montreal home to talk with him. We speak with Yves Engler about his recent attempts to raise foreign policy criticism at public events and the RCMP’s response to his actions.
The tent city in Oppenheimer Park has been in place for more than a year. Recently, the Vancouver Parks Board issued an order telling residents to remove tents and structures by the evening of August 21. At the deadline, dozens of tents remained and there was little evidence of a city crackdown. We talk with organizer Christy Brett to find out what happened that day.
Three independent filmmakers embarked on a creative collaboration with women in prison and advocates. The result is the documentary Conviction. It envisions alternatives to prison through the eyes of women behind bars and those fighting on the front lines of the decarceration movement. We speak with director Teresa MacInnes.
The Corporate Mapping Project has just released a major report on who’s who in Canada’s fossil fuel industry. It’s called the Fossil-Power Top 50 and it’s a comprehensive listing of the most influential industry players across the country. Bill Carroll is a professor of sociology at the University of Victoria and a co-director of the Corporate Mapping Project.
In 1884, the Canadian government banned the Haida potlatch. But Haida elders kept the knowledge of the ceremony alive until the ban was lifted. In 1969, a potlatch was held to honour the raising of the first totem pole in 80 years, carved by Robert Davidson. Sara Florence Davidson co-wrote Potlatch as Pedagogy with her father to show how Haida traditions can be brought into present-day classrooms. She joins us in our studio to talk about the process of writing the book – and tells the story of how her father came to carve that first pole at the age of 22.
There is a new global elite who control our economic future. In his new book, former Project Censored director and media monitoring sociologist Peter Phillips unveils who these players are. The book includes such power players as Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Jamie Dimon, and Warren Buffett. We speak with Peter Phillips about the transnational capitalist class.
The use of secret police and informers to undermine and disrupt activism has a long history. This new book reflects on the surveillance, harassment and infiltration directed against individuals and organisations labelled as ‘threats to national security’. We speak with Aziz Choudry, editor of the book.
A new book by long-time Quebec activist Alexa Conradi explores the fissures and tensions in current-day Quebec society. In the book, Conradi looks critically at Quebec’s feminism, relations with Indigenous people and systemic racism. From 2006-2009, she served as the first elected president of the political party Québec Solidaire. From 2009-2015, she was president of Canada’s largest feminism organization, the Fédération des Femmes du Québec. Alexa Conradi speaks with us from Stuttgart, Germany where she is now living.
Salakshana, Jeeti, and Kira Pooni suffered years of sexual assault after their older cousin moved into their Williams Lake home almost four decades ago. Baljit Sangra’s new film Because We Are Girls accompanies the Pooni sisters in the final three years of their long fight to bring their abuser to justice. Because We Are Girls has its world premiere May 1 at the Hot Docs festival in Toronto. It opens the DOXA film festival in Vancouver on May 3. We talk with Baljit Sangra from Toronto.
Two multinational corporations recently took 22 per cent of the money in the awarding of Work BC employment-training contracts. Shortly after that, non-profits learned that open procurement will be used to secure the next round of contracts for BC’s child-care resource and referral centres. We speak with Jody Paterson of the Board Voice Society of BC, an organization which represents BC community non-profits serving the social determinants of health.
Following the Christchurch massacre, many Canadians are questioning the commitment of some Canadian politicians to an inclusive, multicultural society. In particular, Jason Kenney of the Alberta United Conservative Party and Andrew Scheer of the federal Conservative Party have been called out for their weak response to the Christchurch killings and the far right in Canada. Bashir Mohamed is an independent journalist based in Edmonton who has been tracking the connections between Kenney, Scheer and the far right.
Media coverage of the current scandal involving the engineering firm SNC-Lavalin and Justin Trudeau has focused primarily on the Prime Minister’s Office. Largely missing from any discussion are the crimes the company is accused of committing as well as the company’s long and influential relationship with Canada’s foreign policy. We speak with Yves Engler, a Montreal-based author and activist. His most recent book is Left, Right: Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada.
Kathleen Belew says we should understand the Christchurch mosque killings, the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue and the U.S. Coast Guard officer’s plan to assassinate politicians as originating from the same source, the white power movement. Kathleen Belew is an assistant professor of history at the University of Chicago and author of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America.
Acclaimed author Joy Kogawa collaborated with the Toronto tech studio Jam 3 and the NFB to tell the story of the Japanese-Canadian internment during World War II. East of the Rockies is an augmented reality experience told from the perspective of 17-year-old Yuki. Kogawa’s grandchild, Anne Canute, was creative consultant on the project and voiced the narrative in the interactive. Anne Canute joins us in studio to talk about East of the Rockies.
Desmond Cole is an activist and journalist based in Toronto. In a feature article for Toronto Life magazine several years ago, he shared his experiencing of carding, saying he’s been stopped by police over 50 times. Last month, he was in Vancouver to speak at the annual fundraising gala of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Less than 24 hours after he arrived in Vancouver, he was carded by Vancouver police. In his keynote address at the gala, Desmond Cole talks about the connection between carding and white supremacy and discusses the Black Test for evaluating the value of new policy initiatives in Canada.