On today's episode: the drama continues in the CPC leadership race, Canadians must not take their democracy for granted, and a tragic story out of Calgary serves as a reminder that racism and prejudice are deeply rooted in our systems.

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Pierre Poilievre's "pay-as-you-go" approach to spending might work in the home, but not in the government.

Inflation continues to rise, and while corporate greed might be one of the contributing factors, only government policy can be the solution.

Santiago tries to convince Rodger that the Greens are relevant, but Rodger remains highly unconvinced.

Rodger is joined by Peter Bergmanis, Chair of the London Health Coalition, to discuss what’s at stake in privatizing our healthcare and how we can fight it.

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This week we're joined by Washington Post columnist David Moscrop and commentator, columnist, and True North fellow Andrew Lawton for a postmortem on the Ontario election. Why went wrong, who won, and who lost?

About David Moscrop

David Moscrop is a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, the host of the podcast Open to Debate, and the author of "Too Dumb for Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones."

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About Andrew Lawton

Andrew Lawton is a broadcaster and columnist. Currently, he is a fellow at True North and a weekly columnist for Loonie Politics. His written work has been published across the world, including in the Washington Post, the National Post, the Toronto Sun, the Edmonton Sun, and Global News. Andrew has appeared as a commentator on CBC, CTV, TVO, CTS, and on BBC World. Andrew ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in Ontario’s 2018 provincial election.

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Toronto District School Board Trustee and 2021 NDP Candidate Norm Di Pasquale drops by the studio to chat with Rodger and Santiago about all things that plague our society and politics, and how we can all do better.

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We’re in our feelings about this election as we enter the home stretch. We talk all things election Ontario and the big plans of the parties. Then, we’re joined by Andy Kroeber, NDP candidate for Elgin-Middlesex-London to discuss his riding and what the good people of the region need from Queen’s Park. Santiago steps in to guest co-host.

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We’re joined by former Ontario and federal Minister of Health Tony Clement and (newly) former ONDP MPP Rima Berns-McGown to discuss all things Ontario election and just who Ontarians should select on June 2nd.

About Hon. Tony Clement

The Honourable Tony Clement is a former Minister in the Stephen Harper Government federally, and the Mike Harris and Ernie Eves Governments in the Province of Ontario.

During his time in the House of Commons (2006-2019) Mr. Clement served as: Minister of Health, Minister of Industry, President of the Treasury Board and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario. He therefore played a lead role in getting Canada’s economy back on track after the most significant global economic recession since the 1930s. In Opposition Clement was Foreign Affairs Critic and Justice Critic.

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About Rima Berns-McGown

Dr. Rima Berns-McGown is the former member of Provincial Parliament for Beaches-East York. She served as the Official Opposition Critic for Poverty and Homelessness and a member of the Standing Committee on the Legislative Assembly.

Before she was elected, Rima taught Diaspora Studies at the University of Toronto. She holds a PhD in International Politics from the University of Aberystwyth, an MA from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International studies of the Johns Hopkins University, and a Bachelor of Journalism and Political Science from Carleton University. She has a long history of writing about and advocating for systemic change that creates equity and societies that truly work for everyone who lives in them.

Rima was born in South Africa of a mixed background and is proud to be a member of Ontario’s first Black Caucus.

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June 3rd is coming fast and furious. Where do the polls stand and can red or orange break through? Can the NDP find the winning message? Then, we’re joined by Sam Kaplun, Independent candidate for MPP in Eglington-Lawrence.

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New season, new format, new schedule. We’re joined by Jess McLean to discuss her new show on the New Left Media Network. The Ontario Liberals propose the NDP’s policy they opposed last year. Th PM made a surprise trip to Ukraine. Conservatives gather for an unofficial debate — the result is, we all lose.

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Roe v. Wade looks dead in a huge setback to reproductive rights in the US. While our struggle is different, equity in access is already a major issue and nothing is guaranteed. What can be done now to prevent regression in Canada?

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The PCs, Libs, and NDP aren’t the only choices on the ballot in Ontario — two right-wing parties are also vying for your heart. The Ontario Party (headed by Canada’s biggest goober) and the New Blue Party are battling out which can be more reactionary and draw the kook crowd. The fight now comes with Trump endorsed star power!

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Doug Ford has unveiled his platform budget and it is filled with surprises! If we didn’t completely forget about political promises/actions 15 minutes after they happen, some might even call him a hypocrite.

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Our systems fail us. They resist change by nature and uphold oppression. This week, a report on Canadian antisemitism and the name change of a Toronto university illustrate the challenges of systemic change.

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There is a lot of political posturing on the plight of the Uyghur people. We’re joined by Darren Byler to cut through it and discuss what life is like for Uyghurs under colonialism in Western China, in the diaspora, and what we can do to support their struggle.

About In the Camps China’s High-Tech Penal Colony

How China built a network of surveillance to detain over a million people and produce a system of control previously unknown in human history.

A cruel and high-tech form of colonization has been unfolding over the past decade in China’s vast northwestern region of Xinjiang, where as many as a million and a half Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Hui have vanished into high-security camps and associated factories. It is the largest internment of a religious minority since World War II.

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About Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City

In Terror Capitalism anthropologist Darren Byler theorizes the contemporary Chinese colonization of the Uyghur Muslim minority group in the northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang. He shows that the mass detention of over one million Uyghurs in “reeducation camps” is part of processes of resource extraction in Uyghur lands that have led to what he calls terror capitalism—a configuration of ethnoracialization, surveillance, and mass detention that in this case promotes settler colonialism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the regional capital Ürümchi, Byler shows how media infrastructures, the state’s enforcement of “Chinese” cultural values, and the influx of Han Chinese settlers contribute to Uyghur dispossession and their expulsion from the city. He particularly attends to the experiences of young Uyghur men—who are the primary target of state violence—and how they develop masculinities and homosocial friendships to protect themselves against gendered, ethnoracial, and economic violence. By tracing the political and economic stakes of Uyghur colonization, Byler demonstrates that state-directed capitalist dispossession is coconstructed with a colonial relation of domination.

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About Darren Byler

Darren Byler is a sociocultural anthropologist whose teaching and research examines the dispossession of stateless populations through forms of contemporary capitalism and colonialism in China, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia.

His monograph, Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City (Duke University Press, 2021), examines emerging forms of media, infrastructure, economics and politics in the Uyghur homeland in Chinese Central Asia (Ch: Xinjiang). The book, which is based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork among Uyghur and Han internal male migrants, argues that Chinese authorities and technologists have made Uyghurs the object of what it names “terror capitalism.” It shows that this emergent form of internal colonialism and capitalist frontier-making utilizes a post-9/11 discourse of terrorism, what he shows produces a novel sequence of racialization, to justify state investment in a wide array of policing and social engineering systems. These techno-political systems have “disappeared” hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in “reeducation”]]>Fan of the show? Support us on Patreon.

There is a lot of political posturing on the plight of the Uyghur people. We’re joined by Darren Byler to cut through it and discuss what life is like for Uyghurs under colonialism in Western China, in the diaspora, and what we can do to support their struggle.

About In the Camps China’s High-Tech Penal Colony

How China built a network of surveillance to detain over a million people and produce a system of control previously unknown in human history.

A cruel and high-tech form of colonization has been unfolding over the past decade in China’s vast northwestern region of Xinjiang, where as many as a million and a half Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Hui have vanished into high-security camps and associated factories. It is the largest internment of a religious minority since World War II.

Buy In the Camps China’s High-Tech Penal Colony now

About Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City

In Terror Capitalism anthropologist Darren Byler theorizes the contemporary Chinese colonization of the Uyghur Muslim minority group in the northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang. He shows that the mass detention of over one million Uyghurs in “reeducation camps” is part of processes of resource extraction in Uyghur lands that have led to what he calls terror capitalism—a configuration of ethnoracialization, surveillance, and mass detention that in this case promotes settler colonialism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the regional capital Ürümchi, Byler shows how media infrastructures, the state’s enforcement of “Chinese” cultural values, and the influx of Han Chinese settlers contribute to Uyghur dispossession and their expulsion from the city. He particularly attends to the experiences of young Uyghur men—who are the primary target of state violence—and how they develop masculinities and homosocial friendships to protect themselves against gendered, ethnoracial, and economic violence. By tracing the political and economic stakes of Uyghur colonization, Byler demonstrates that state-directed capitalist dispossession is coconstructed with a colonial relation of domination.

BuyTerror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City now

About Darren Byler

Darren Byler is a sociocultural anthropologist whose teaching and research examines the dispossession of stateless populations through forms of contemporary capitalism and colonialism in China, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia.

His monograph, Terror Capitalism: Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City (Duke University Press, 2021), examines emerging forms of media, infrastructure, economics and politics in the Uyghur homeland in Chinese Central Asia (Ch: Xinjiang). The book, which is based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork among Uyghur and Han internal male migrants, argues that Chinese authorities and technologists have made Uyghurs the object of what it names “terror capitalism.” It shows that this emergent form of internal colonialism and capitalist frontier-making utilizes a post-9/11 discourse of terrorism, what he shows produces a novel sequence of racialization, to justify state investment in a wide array of policing and social engineering systems. These techno-political systems have “disappeared” hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in “reeducation” camps and other forms of productive detention while empowering millions of state workers and private contractors who build the system. The book considers how the ubiquity of pass-book systems, webs of technological surveillance, urban banishment and mass internment camps have reshaped human experience among native Uyghurs and Han settler-colonizers in the capital of the region Ürümchi. Ultimately, the book presents an analysis of resistance to terror capitalism, what he terms a “minor politics of refusal,” that emerges from the way Uyghurs and Han allies use new media and embodied practices of care taking to oppose this colonial formation.

His current research follows up on the argument of his first book to consider how contemporary capitalism and colonialism travels through digital infrastructural systems from China to Malaysia. This multi-sited project, supported by funding from Columbia University's Global Reports series and a Luce Foundation and American Council of Learned Societies Early Career Fellowship involves field research and in-depth interviews with technology workers, former detainees and other stateless Muslim populations affected by the infrastructural power of digital surveillance along China’s New Silk Road. The project will result first in a narrative-driven book titled In the Camps: China's High-Tech Penal Colony (Columbia Global Reports 2021). Drawing on ongoing fieldwork with stateless populations in Kazakhstan and Malaysia this initial publication will then be expanded into an academic monograph that focuses on infrastructural state power in the context of global China.  

In public-facing work regarding the crisis confronting the Uyghurs and others in Northwest China, he has worked in an advisory capacity with faculty and researchers at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University to build a Xinjiang Documentation Project featuring personal testimonies and archives, internal police reports, translations and other documents concerning the ongoing detention of Turkic Muslims in China and the erasure of their native knowledge. He also writes a regular column on these issues for the journal SupChina, as well as essays for other public outlets such as the Guardian, Noema Magazine, and ChinaFile. He has also been asked to contribute expert witness testimony on Canadian and Australian foreign policy issues before the Canadian House of Commons and the Australian Parliament, and he has written policy papers on technology and policing for the Wilson International Center for Scholars and the University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Study of Contemporary China. As part of his work in amplifying the voices of Uyghur cultural leaders he has co-translated a Uyghur language novel titled The Backstreets (Columbia University Press 2021). The novel is written by a leading modernist author Perhat Tursun who disappeared into the internment camp system in Northwest China 2018.  

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The NDP unveils it’s policy platform, the Ontario Liberals jump into the culture war debate, and the NDP loves trees 200 million times more than Stephen Del Duca.

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Ontario E-Day is coming and no matter the result at the ballot box, the ONDP caucus at Queen's Park will look different in the next sitting of provincial parliament. Some MPP have chosen not to run again, some have been barred, and some have lost a contested nomination.

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We’re back from hiatus! Ontario election fever is sweeping the province — we cover what’s shaping up in the race and what is yet to come as we race towards EDay.

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It's April Fools Day and it's Carbon Tax Increase Day! It's unlucky timing for the tax increase, with gas prices through the roof Conservatives will be on a rampage of blame. The budget drops on April 7th, expect it kick off a serious debate on defence spending and present the first real test to the NDP-Liberal Confidence and Supply Agreement. Then, what private member bills should we be watching as they work their way through the House of Commons?

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change-makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week, we’re joined by Professor Radhika Desai and MP Peter Fragiskatos, to debate the role of NATO in a changing world and Canada’s place in a changing NATO. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continuing, what does the conflict mean for the future of the alliance?

About Radhika Desai

Dr. Radhika Desai is Professor at the Department of Political Studies, and Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. She is the author of Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013), Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2nd rev ed, 2004) and Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the Labour Party (1994), a New Statesman and Society Book of the Month, and editor or co-editor of Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism, a special issue of International Critical Thought (2016), Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy(2015), Analytical Gains from Geopolitical Economy (2015), Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today’s Capitalism (2010) and Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms (2009).

She is also the author of numerous articles in Economic and Political Weekly, International Critical Thought, New Left Review, Third World Quarterly, World Review of Political Economy and other journals and in edited collections on parties, political economy, culture and nationalism.

With Alan Freeman, she co-edits the Geopolitical Economy book series with Manchester University Press and the Future of Capitalism book series with Pluto Press.

She serves on the Editorial Boards of many journals including Canadian Political Science Review, Critique of Political Economy, E-Social Sciences, Pacific Affairs, Global Faultlines, Research in Political Economy, Revista de Economía Crítica, World Review of Political Economy and International Critical Thought. 

About Peter Fragiskatos

Peter Fragiskatos was first elected as the Member of Parliament for London North Centre in 2015.

In this role, Mr. Fragiskatos previously served as a member of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, the Standing Committee on Finance, and the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations. He was also a member of various other committees, parliamentary associations, and interparliamentary groups.

Prior to entering federal politics, Mr. Fragiskatos was a political scientist at King’s University College at Western University and a media commentator. His works have been published by major Canadian and international news organizations, including Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, BBC News, and CNN.

Born in London, Ontario, Mr. Fragiskatos has combined his passion for politics with a desire to give back to his community. He has served on the boards of Anago (Non) Residential Resources Inc. and the Heritage London Foundation. An active volunteer, he ran a youth mentorship program and has worked with many local not-for-profit groups, such as the London Food Bank, the London Cross-Cultural Learner Centre, and Literacy London, a charity dedicated to helping adults improve their reading and writing skills.

Mr. Fragiskatos holds a Political Science degree from Western University, a master’s degree in International Relations from Queen’s...]]>Fan of the show? Support us on Patreon!

Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change-makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week, we’re joined by Professor Radhika Desai and MP Peter Fragiskatos, to debate the role of NATO in a changing world and Canada’s place in a changing NATO. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continuing, what does the conflict mean for the future of the alliance?

About Radhika Desai

Dr. Radhika Desai is Professor at the Department of Political Studies, and Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. She is the author of Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013), Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2nd rev ed, 2004) and Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the Labour Party (1994), a New Statesman and Society Book of the Month, and editor or co-editor of Russia, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism, a special issue of International Critical Thought (2016), Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy(2015), Analytical Gains from Geopolitical Economy (2015), Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today’s Capitalism (2010) and Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms (2009).

She is also the author of numerous articles in Economic and Political Weekly, International Critical Thought, New Left Review, Third World Quarterly, World Review of Political Economy and other journals and in edited collections on parties, political economy, culture and nationalism.

With Alan Freeman, she co-edits the Geopolitical Economy book series with Manchester University Press and the Future of Capitalism book series with Pluto Press.

She serves on the Editorial Boards of many journals including Canadian Political Science Review, Critique of Political Economy, E-Social Sciences, Pacific Affairs, Global Faultlines, Research in Political Economy, Revista de Economía Crítica, World Review of Political Economy and International Critical Thought. 

About Peter Fragiskatos

Peter Fragiskatos was first elected as the Member of Parliament for London North Centre in 2015.

In this role, Mr. Fragiskatos previously served as a member of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, the Standing Committee on Finance, and the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations. He was also a member of various other committees, parliamentary associations, and interparliamentary groups.

Prior to entering federal politics, Mr. Fragiskatos was a political scientist at King’s University College at Western University and a media commentator. His works have been published by major Canadian and international news organizations, including Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, BBC News, and CNN.

Born in London, Ontario, Mr. Fragiskatos has combined his passion for politics with a desire to give back to his community. He has served on the boards of Anago (Non) Residential Resources Inc. and the Heritage London Foundation. An active volunteer, he ran a youth mentorship program and has worked with many local not-for-profit groups, such as the London Food Bank, the London Cross-Cultural Learner Centre, and Literacy London, a charity dedicated to helping adults improve their reading and writing skills.

Mr. Fragiskatos holds a Political Science degree from Western University, a master’s degree in International Relations from Queen’s University, and a PhD in International Relations from Cambridge University.

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The race for Conservative Party leader is heating up as the endorsements roll in and the battle lines are taking shape. Patrick Brown announces his campaign co-chair, former CPC MP & Canadian Alliance Interim Leader John Reynolds, a Harperite. Is Brown signaling to neocons that he’s their guy? What does conservative internationalism mean for Canada?

Santiago guest co-hosts!

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Infant food insecurity. In Canada. In 2022. Author and academic, Lesley Frank joins us to discuss her research and book, Out of Milk, Infant Food Insecurity in a Rich Nation. Why is it that the most vulnerable among us go hungry in one of the wealthiest nations in the world? How deep does the problem go? What can be done about it?

About Out of Milk: Infant Food Insecurity in a Rich Nation

“Did you ever go to bed and wonder if your child was getting enough to eat?” For food insecure mothers, the worry is constant, and babies are at risk of going hungry. Out of Milk calls out the pressing need to establish the economic and social conditions necessary for successful breastfeeding and for accessible, reliable, and safe formula feeding for families everywhere.

Through compelling interviews, Lesley Frank answers the breastfeeding paradox: why women who can least afford to buy infant formula are less likely to breastfeed. She reveals that what and how infants are fed is linked to the social and economic status of those who feed them. Out of Milk uncovers the shocking reality of food insecurity for formula-fed babies, the economic and social constraints limiting mothers’ ability to breastfeed, and the lengths to which mothers must go to provide for their children. But in a country that leaves the problem of food insecurity to ineffective charity models, public policies are failing to support our most vulnerable populations.

This book is important reading for health practitioners, social workers, community agency workers, and policymakers involved with food insecurity, infant feeding, poverty, social welfare, health, or food policy. It is also essential for students and scholars in sociologies of health, food, family; nutrition; food studies; nursing, public/social policy; and women’s and gender studies.

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About Lesley Frank

Lesley Frank is the Canada Research Chair in Food, Health, and Social Justice at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. She is a leading scholar of infant food insecurity in Canada, with publications in the journals Food, Culture and Society; Food and Foodways; Canadian Food Studies; and the Canadian Medical Association Journal. She is the author of the annual Nova Scotia Family and Child Poverty Report Card and a steering member of Campaign 2000, a cross-Canada public education movement that works to increase public awareness of the levels and consequences of child and family poverty. Her work has been featured on CBC’s The Current.

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The Ford government proudly announces a new deal that will bring thousands of EV battery manufacturing jobs to Windsor, but declines to answer questions as to how much the province is giving the corporations in incentives. Then, CEO of Blackrock Larry Fink lays some major predictions on shareholders in his annual letter in response to the war in Ukraine — the end of globalization, distress to supply chains, and increased inflation. What does it mean for Canada?

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Unifor accuses former president Jerry Dias of corruption in the saddest story in labour today. Then, the battle to unseat Jason Kenney is heating up. Will he lose his premiership in what may be the largest political convention in Canadian history.

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Yesterday’s announcement of the details of the Supply Agreement between New Democrats and Liberals paves the way for certainty in government for the next three years and delivers hard won change for Canadians. We explore the agreement and the politics around it.

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We're joined by Cory Johnston, host of The Mind of a Skeptical Leftist, to discuss his journey to the left from a Conservative upbringing, the politics of Saskatchewan, and Anarchism.

About Cory Johnston

Cory is a podcaster & youtube creatorwho comes at politics and theory from an anarchist lens. When not creating content for you to enjoy, he spends his work days as a laborer in the oilfields of conservative Saskatchewan.

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Rodger’s back and two more Conservatives jump into the leadership race, taking the total to eight. Who are they? Does it matter or is it a race between Brown/Charest and Poilievre? CP Rail employees go on strike and the government immediately threatens to force them back to work. Can labour laws be fixed to protect the right of workers to strike?

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Rodger’s still on Spring Break so Santiago is filling in. We cover OPSEU and Ontario colleges and universities avoiding a strike what does it mean for students, faculty, and politics? Then, the government is lifting the testing requirement for border crossing. The timing is odd, no?

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change-makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week, we’re joined by Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion & Liberal MP for Windsor-Tecumseh Irek Kusmierczyk and commentator and columnist Andrew Lawton, to debate the invocation of the Emergencies Act. Was it justified? Should such legislation exist? What does it mean for our future?

About Irek Kusmierczyk

Irek and his family have lived in the Windsor-Tecumseh riding for more than 35 years after immigrating to Canada from Poland. His father worked in the auto industry and his mom was a teller at a small local credit union. His parents instilled in Irek a passion for community service leading him to a career on Windsor City Council, where he was elected in three consecutive elections. On council, Irek successfully advocated for historic investments in flood protection, road improvements, libraries and parks that improve quality of life. 

Irek was elected to Parliament in 2019 to represent the residents of Windsor-Tecumseh and, shortly thereafter, he was appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to serve as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion. 

Irek earned his PhD from Vanderbilt University in the United States and a Master’s Degree in Government from the London School of Economics specializing in local government and cross-border environmental relations around the Great Lakes. He has government experience working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an Atlantic Council of Canada Fellow. 

About Andrew Lawton

Andrew Lawton is a broadcaster and columnist. Currently, he is a fellow at True North and a weekly columnist for Loonie Politics. His written work has been published across the world, including in the Washington Post, the National Post, the Toronto Sun, the Edmonton Sun, and Global News. Andrew has appeared as a commentator on CBC, CTV, TVO, CTS, and on BBC World. Andrew ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in Ontario’s 2018 provincial election.

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Rodger’s on Spring Break so Santiago is filling in. Patrick Brown slams Pierre Poilievre’s pst support of the niqab ban and other Harper era platform pieces that play on Canadians base fears and islamophobia. Pierre strikes back. Then, a strike is all but certain for Ontario university faculty. What does it mean for students and faculty?

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Global governance, often the domain of economists, bankers, and those with tin foil hats is essential if humanity has any hope of facing the existential problems of today. We need strong, democratic institutions, and a global voice for and of the people. Long resigned to science fiction and the aspirations of tyrants, can we build a global government that drives humanity forward? One that creates a more fair and just world? We’re joined by global governance expert Augusto Lopez-Claris and economist & philosopher Vivek Dehejia to explore.

About Augusto Lopez-Claros

Augusto Lopez-Claros is Executive Director and Chair of the Global Governance Forum. He is an international economist with over 30 years of experience in international organizations, including most recently at the World Bank. For the 2018/2019 academic years Augusto Lopez-Claros was on leave from the World Bank as a Senior Fellow at the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Between 2011 and 2017 he was the Director of the World Bank’s Global Indicators Group, the department responsible for the Bank’s Doing Business report and other international benchmarking studies. Previously he was Chief Economist and Director of the Global Competitiveness Program at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, where he was also the Editor of the Global Competitiveness Report, the Forum’s flagship publication, as well as a number of regional economic reports. Before joining the Forum he worked for several years in the financial sector in London, with a special focus on emerging markets. He was the International Monetary Fund’s Resident Representative in the Russian Federation during the 1990s.

Before joining the IMF, Lopez-Claros was a Professor of Economics at the University of Chile in Santiago. He was educated in England and the United States, receiving a diploma in Mathematical Statistics from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Duke University. He is a much-sought-after international speaker, having lectured in the last several years at some of the world’s leading universities, think tanks and international organizations. In 2007 he was a coeditor of The International Monetary System, the IMF, and the G-20: A Great Transformation in the Making? and The Humanitarian Response Index: Measuring Commitment to Best Practice, both published by Palgrave. He was the editor of The Innovation for Development Report 2009–2010: Strengthening Innovation for the Prosperity of Nations, published by Palgrave in November 2009 and a subsequent edition published in 2010. More recent publications include: “Fiscal Challenges After the Global Financial Crisis: A Survey of Key Issues” (2014), “Removing Impediments to Sustainable Economic Development: The Case of Corruption” (2015), “The Moral Dimension of the Fight Against Corruption” (2017), Equality for Women = Prosperity for All (St. Martin´s Press, 2018), and Financing Instruments for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation (2021). In May of 2018 Sweden’s Global Challenges Foundation awarded Lopez-Claros the New Shape Prize for his work (with Arthur Dahl and Maja Groff) “Global Governance and the Emergence of Global Institutions for the 21st Century.” A book of the same title was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.

About Vivek Dehejia

Dr. Vivek Dehejia was Resident Senior Fellow in Political Economy at IDFC Institute. Dr. Dehejia is also Associate Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Carleton...]]>Like the show? Support us on Patreon!

Global governance, often the domain of economists, bankers, and those with tin foil hats is essential if humanity has any hope of facing the existential problems of today. We need strong, democratic institutions, and a global voice for and of the people. Long resigned to science fiction and the aspirations of tyrants, can we build a global government that drives humanity forward? One that creates a more fair and just world? We’re joined by global governance expert Augusto Lopez-Claris and economist & philosopher Vivek Dehejia to explore.

About Augusto Lopez-Claros

Augusto Lopez-Claros is Executive Director and Chair of the Global Governance Forum. He is an international economist with over 30 years of experience in international organizations, including most recently at the World Bank. For the 2018/2019 academic years Augusto Lopez-Claros was on leave from the World Bank as a Senior Fellow at the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Between 2011 and 2017 he was the Director of the World Bank’s Global Indicators Group, the department responsible for the Bank’s Doing Business report and other international benchmarking studies. Previously he was Chief Economist and Director of the Global Competitiveness Program at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, where he was also the Editor of the Global Competitiveness Report, the Forum’s flagship publication, as well as a number of regional economic reports. Before joining the Forum he worked for several years in the financial sector in London, with a special focus on emerging markets. He was the International Monetary Fund’s Resident Representative in the Russian Federation during the 1990s.

Before joining the IMF, Lopez-Claros was a Professor of Economics at the University of Chile in Santiago. He was educated in England and the United States, receiving a diploma in Mathematical Statistics from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Duke University. He is a much-sought-after international speaker, having lectured in the last several years at some of the world’s leading universities, think tanks and international organizations. In 2007 he was a coeditor of The International Monetary System, the IMF, and the G-20: A Great Transformation in the Making? and The Humanitarian Response Index: Measuring Commitment to Best Practice, both published by Palgrave. He was the editor of The Innovation for Development Report 2009–2010: Strengthening Innovation for the Prosperity of Nations, published by Palgrave in November 2009 and a subsequent edition published in 2010. More recent publications include: “Fiscal Challenges After the Global Financial Crisis: A Survey of Key Issues” (2014), “Removing Impediments to Sustainable Economic Development: The Case of Corruption” (2015), “The Moral Dimension of the Fight Against Corruption” (2017), Equality for Women = Prosperity for All (St. Martin´s Press, 2018), and Financing Instruments for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation (2021). In May of 2018 Sweden’s Global Challenges Foundation awarded Lopez-Claros the New Shape Prize for his work (with Arthur Dahl and Maja Groff) “Global Governance and the Emergence of Global Institutions for the 21st Century.” A book of the same title was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.

About Vivek Dehejia

Dr. Vivek Dehejia was Resident Senior Fellow in Political Economy at IDFC Institute. Dr. Dehejia is also Associate Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and Columnist, Mint.

He holds a PhD in Economics (1995) from Columbia University in New York, where his thesis supervisors included the Nobel laureate Robert Mundell and the noted international trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati. Dr. Dehejia is also co-author of "Indianomix: Making Sense of Modern India" (Random House India, 2012, republished in paperback 2015).

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Jean Charest is in and putting his bet on pipelines! Gas prices are HIGH. This is among the clearest day to day manifestation of corporate greed affecting Canadians. Charest shirks questions on Bill 21. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is addressing the House of Commons tomorrow and the Prime Minister is introducing him. Will he use the opportunity with all eyes on Ottawa to make a major announcement? Maybe Kiefer Sutherland, Tommy Douglas’ grandson, should run for parliament?

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Conservatives are popping up left and right to seek the leadership. What does it all mean for the future of the party, the country, and the left?

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The Russian invasion of Ukraine has created a humanitarian crisis. 1.5 million people, mostly women and children, have been displaced with many fleeing across the Polish border in pursuit of safety. NLR Counterpoint panelist Adam Zivo from the National Post is reporting on the ground and joins us to tell us what he’s seen and experienced as the conflict rages on and the human toll compounds.

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With government making the decision to return to 'normal', workers are at risk of surveillance, job loss, and more. What's at stake?

The Conservative leadership race is shaping up — buckle up, it's going to be a long one. It looks like Pierre Poilievre won't be running unopposed.

Then, we're joined by Tiffany Balducci in the CUPE Ontario Union Hall to discuss the latest IPCC report on the climate crisis, what labour's role is in a just transition, and how we can push forward on what is an overwhelming existential challenge.

Links

Green Jobs Oshawa

PROGRESS FOR GREEN JOBS OSHAWA - Council of Canadians

A CUPE Cast podcast episode on climate crisis

CUPE National Environment Policy

Green Economy Network, One Million Jobs campaign

CUPE Climate Change Emergency Declaration

Ontario NDP Green New Democratic Deal

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A life and career of fighting to amplify voices of young people demanding change has lead Irwin Elman to seek to become the NDP MPP for Don Valley West — former Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne’s riding. What does his race look like and what can be done to pry this seat away from the Liberals?

About Irwin Elman

Irwin Elman is an award-winning child and youth advocate running for Ontario’s New Democrats in Don Valley West. Elman was the Ontario Child Advocate from 2008 to 2019.

Elman is an experienced educator, counsellor, youth worker, program manager, policy developer, and youth advocate. He has previously worked as Manager of the Pape Adolescent Resource Centre in Toronto and Director of Client Service at Central Toronto Youth Services. His advocacy has been recognized by organizations including The Children’s Aid Foundation of Canada, which presented him with a “Stand Up For Kids Award.”

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Rodger’s still on hiatus so Santiago steps in to discuss the cost of gas, and the licking of the lips of those who love oil & gas while Canadians struggle to fill the gas tank. Joe Biden's State of the Union speech focused on 'Buy American'. What does this mean for Canadian workers and the future of industrial policy?

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Rodger’s on hiatus so Santiago steps in to discuss the Bank of Canada raising the overnight interest rate and the apocalyptic IPCC report that has been overshadowed by current events.

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Pierre Poilievre makes his case that Canadian oil is the solution to the invasion of Ukraine. Maybe Conservatives want to run government like a poorly run business. Max Bernier brings the Nazi heat.

Links

Why the left shouldn’t underestimate Pierre Poilievre - Oliver Mackenzie, Canadian Dimension

Pierre Poilievre—Harper but with fangs bared - Mitchell Thompson, The Breach

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The race for leader of the Conservative Party of Canada may be decided already — or not? We're going old school with some names being tossed out as contenders. Is it all an effort to create the illusion of competition?

The Ontario election is coming. Joining us in the CUPE Ontario Union Hall, CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahn joins us to talk about Ford's plan to scrap license plate tag renewal and forego $1 billion in revenue.

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What does freedom look like? Is it the stuff of mask mandates and vaccine passports or the yearning to self-direct the destiny of a people? Can we say that policing is democratic? How do we effect real change in our world? Former Toronto City Councillor and NDP MP, and current Executive Director of the Institute for Change Leaders, Olivia Chow joins us to discuss.

About Olivia Chow

For over thirty years, Olivia Chow has been an effective and well-known public figure, serving in Toronto’s municipal politics and on the national stage as a Canadian Member of Parliament. She was voted Best City Councillor seven times by readers of NOW magazine and Best MP in 2010. Readers of the Toronto Sun voted her Top Torontonian in 2012 and Canadian Immigrant magazine named her as one of Canada’s Top 25 Immigrants. Olivia also wrote the best selling memoir “My Journey”, published in 2014.

In 2015, Olivia Chow joined X University as a Distinguished Visiting Professor. Her work focuses on community engagement and leadership development.

As a founder of the Institute for Change Leaders, Olivia and her team of 30+ trainers have taught community and political organizing to thousands of organizers since March of 2015. 

Olivia’s career has been all about creating lasting change. Olivia was born in Hong Kong and moved to Toronto with her parents when she was thirteen. She studied Philosophy and Fine Art at university and has worked as a college professor, an ESL teacher, a counsellor for new immigrants, and a sculptor.

She became an activist as a young woman, fighting for the rights of refugees and immigrants. For over 20 years, she was at the forefront of the ultimately successful campaign to achieve a national apology and redress for the discriminatory “Chinese Head Tax”. Olivia won her first election in 1985 and served on the Toronto Board of Education for six years. In 1991, Olivia became the first Asian-born woman elected as a Metro Toronto Councillor. She was re-elected to the city council five times, serving with distinction for 14 years. While at City Hall, she served as Chair of the Community Services Committee and Vice-Chair of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), among other senior responsibilities.

Throughout her career, Olivia has been at the forefront, working for progress for all. She has reached across party lines and travelled across the country, forging alliances with municipal and provincial leaders, business and advocacy groups.

Olivia married Jack Layton in 1988, and together they forged one of Canada’s most remarkable political partnerships, sharing a passion for life and a commitment to change. Jack became the leader of the New Democratic Party and Canada’s Leader of the Opposition in Parliament before he died of cancer in 2011. Since his passing, Olivia has continued the quest to make Toronto a better city and Canada a better country for all. 

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About the Institute for Change Leaders

The Institute advances education by developing and delivering courses to the public that teach participants the tools, principles, ethics and values of participatory democracy in order to acquire knowledge and skills to be involved, and leaders, in democratic processes.

Founded in 2016 by Olivia Chow, the Institute for Change Leaders (ICL) teaches the skills that organizers need to win social change. ICL believes students learn best when they practice what they learn, and are constantly engaged in small group learning. They deliver a full curriculum in regular sessions online and at X University, and work with organizations to deliver tailored trainings in their...]]>Fan of the show? Support us on Patreon!

What does freedom look like? Is it the stuff of mask mandates and vaccine passports or the yearning to self-direct the destiny of a people? Can we say that policing is democratic? How do we effect real change in our world? Former Toronto City Councillor and NDP MP, and current Executive Director of the Institute for Change Leaders, Olivia Chow joins us to discuss.

About Olivia Chow

For over thirty years, Olivia Chow has been an effective and well-known public figure, serving in Toronto’s municipal politics and on the national stage as a Canadian Member of Parliament. She was voted Best City Councillor seven times by readers of NOW magazine and Best MP in 2010. Readers of the Toronto Sun voted her Top Torontonian in 2012 and Canadian Immigrant magazine named her as one of Canada’s Top 25 Immigrants. Olivia also wrote the best selling memoir “My Journey”, published in 2014.

In 2015, Olivia Chow joined X University as a Distinguished Visiting Professor. Her work focuses on community engagement and leadership development.

As a founder of the Institute for Change Leaders, Olivia and her team of 30+ trainers have taught community and political organizing to thousands of organizers since March of 2015. 

Olivia’s career has been all about creating lasting change. Olivia was born in Hong Kong and moved to Toronto with her parents when she was thirteen. She studied Philosophy and Fine Art at university and has worked as a college professor, an ESL teacher, a counsellor for new immigrants, and a sculptor.

She became an activist as a young woman, fighting for the rights of refugees and immigrants. For over 20 years, she was at the forefront of the ultimately successful campaign to achieve a national apology and redress for the discriminatory “Chinese Head Tax”. Olivia won her first election in 1985 and served on the Toronto Board of Education for six years. In 1991, Olivia became the first Asian-born woman elected as a Metro Toronto Councillor. She was re-elected to the city council five times, serving with distinction for 14 years. While at City Hall, she served as Chair of the Community Services Committee and Vice-Chair of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC), among other senior responsibilities.

Throughout her career, Olivia has been at the forefront, working for progress for all. She has reached across party lines and travelled across the country, forging alliances with municipal and provincial leaders, business and advocacy groups.

Olivia married Jack Layton in 1988, and together they forged one of Canada’s most remarkable political partnerships, sharing a passion for life and a commitment to change. Jack became the leader of the New Democratic Party and Canada’s Leader of the Opposition in Parliament before he died of cancer in 2011. Since his passing, Olivia has continued the quest to make Toronto a better city and Canada a better country for all. 

Follow Olivia Chow on Twitter

About the Institute for Change Leaders

The Institute advances education by developing and delivering courses to the public that teach participants the tools, principles, ethics and values of participatory democracy in order to acquire knowledge and skills to be involved, and leaders, in democratic processes.

Founded in 2016 by Olivia Chow, the Institute for Change Leaders (ICL) teaches the skills that organizers need to win social change. ICL believes students learn best when they practice what they learn, and are constantly engaged in small group learning. They deliver a full curriculum in regular sessions online and at X University, and work with organizations to deliver tailored trainings in their workplaces.

ICL's mission is to ensure organizers are continually developing the skills they need to transform the resources they have into the change they want. The Institute does this by teaching organizing strategies and providing a platform for the growth of a network of organizers.

The Institute's curriculum comes from Marshall Ganz, a Harvard professor who codified the relationship-building organizational framework we teach after years of organizing with the Civil Rights and United Farm Workers movements. He was a key trainer and organizing strategist behind President Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. The Institute offers the first accredited Marshall Ganz-based community-organizing course in Canada.

Learn more about the Institute for Change Leaders

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Imperialism is imperialism is imperialism. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made for a harrowing few days and brought up interesting questions for the left to grapple with.

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Russia has invaded Ukraine.

The Trudeau government gets the Emergencies Act passed, then just days later cancels it. What’s the deal?

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The Emergencies Act passes after Ottawa has been cleared. Why do we still need it? Is it an overstep? A circumvention of the rule of law? Could publicly owned and operated tow trucks have saved us all this hassle?

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What is the role of the state? Is big government good, bad, or indifferent? We welcome NLR Counterpoint panelist and former Libertarian Party of Canada leader Tim Moen on to debate the role of the state.

About Tim Moen

Tim Moen is a Canadian libertarian podcaster, blogger, activist, and politician. He was the leader of the Libertarian Party of Canada from May 2014 to August 2021. Outside of politics, he is a firefighter, paramedic, business owner, and filmmaker.

Moen became the leader of the Libertarian Party of Canada in May 2014, succeeding former leader Katrina Chowne. He ran in the 2014 Fort McMurray—Athabasca by-election. His campaign received considerable attention from a variety of Canadian and US news outlets, such as CNN, Huffington Post, Reason.com, due to his social media memes explaining libertarianism.

Moen is an anarcho-capitalist. He supports ending all government surveillance programs, withdrawing all troops stationed abroad, legalizing cannabis, decriminalizing drugs, legalizing prostitution, and tax cuts.

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About Joe Roberts

Joe Roberts loves big government.

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The debate over invoking the Emergencies Act rages in the House of Commons, with all sense of civility seemingly thrown out the window. Conservative MPs are screaming out ‘dictator’ when the PM speaks and deploying a Jewish MP to defend their supporting a movement that includes swastika bearers — even extending the battle to Fox News and the NY Post. Are Canadian politics forever broken?

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This week, we’re joined by writer Oliver Mackenzie and National Post columnist Adam Zivo for a conversation on the Nordic Model.

About Oliver Mackenzie

Oliver Mackenzie is a Victoria-based video producer, graphic designer, and writer. His recent clients have included People’s Policy Project, Common Cause, and Digital Foundry.

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About Adam Zivo

Adam Zivo is a regular columnist at the National Post, an activist having previously consulted with the Canadian Armed Forces on LGBTQ+ issues, and former Junior Research Fellow at the NATO Association of Canada focusing in the areas of cyber and information warfare and social media manipulation.

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Justin Trudeau has invoked the Emergencies Act, moving to end the blockades on border crossings and the occupation of Ottawa. Why now and why do it at all?

Fred Hahn and Michael Hurley drop by the CUPE Ontario Union Hall to discuss the ‘Freedom Convoy’ and what we must do now.

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How will nations adapt to technology that will invariably change our world? Will we reject change or embrace it and the new world it could bring with it? We’re joined by futurist and writer Brett along to discuss his new book, The Rise of Technosocialism and what the concept means for humanity.

About The Rise of Technosocialism

What is the impact of COVID-19 on world economies? If the cost of providing universal health care is lower than the cost of building a political movement to prevent it, would politicians still view it as socialism? In a world where algorithms and robots take the jobs of immigrants and citizens alike, are border controls an effective response? If unemployment skyrockets due to automation, would conservative governments rather battle long-term social unrest, or could they agree on something like universal basic income? When renewable energy sources are a fraction of the cost of coal generated electricity, should lobbyists be able to prevent changes to energy infrastructure? When the crowd's mood is measured in influence and exabytes, will real-time democracy render elections a thing of the past?

International Bestselling authors Brett King and Dr. Richard Petty explore the seismic social changes that will be thrust on the world over the coming decades. The Rise of Technosocialism seeks to answer how our children will live with AI and climate disruption, the impact of COVID-19 in our lives along with which economies will likely emerge victorious in an always-on, smart world.

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About Brett King

Brett King is a world-renowned entrepreneur, futurist, speaker, international bestselling author, and media personality. China’s President Xi Jinping cited his book Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane on the topic of Artificial Intelligence in his 2018 national address; the same book that was listed as a Top 10 non-fiction book in North America. In 2019 his book Bank 4.0 was awarded the Top Book by a Foreign Author in Russia for that year.

In 2020 King was inducted into the Fintech Hall of Fame by CB Insights. In 2015 he was shortlisted for the Advance Global Australian of the Year Award. His books have been released in over a dozen languages. Banking Exchange magazine dubbed him the “King of Disruptors”, while The Australian newspaper in Australia called him the “Godfather of Fintech”.

Brett has spoken in more than 50 countries, at TED, Wired, Techsauce, Singularity University, Web Summit, The Economist, IBM’s World of Watson, CES, SIBOS and many more. He has appeared as a commentator on CNBC, BBC, ABC, Fox, and Bloomberg. He has spoken live to virtual audiences of over 42 million people.

He advised the Obama administration on Fintech strategy, and today advises regulators, lawmakers and boardrooms around the world on digital transformation and future readiness....]]>Fan of the show? Support us on Patreon!

How will nations adapt to technology that will invariably change our world? Will we reject change or embrace it and the new world it could bring with it? We’re joined by futurist and writer Brett along to discuss his new book, The Rise of Technosocialism and what the concept means for humanity.

About The Rise of Technosocialism

What is the impact of COVID-19 on world economies? If the cost of providing universal health care is lower than the cost of building a political movement to prevent it, would politicians still view it as socialism? In a world where algorithms and robots take the jobs of immigrants and citizens alike, are border controls an effective response? If unemployment skyrockets due to automation, would conservative governments rather battle long-term social unrest, or could they agree on something like universal basic income? When renewable energy sources are a fraction of the cost of coal generated electricity, should lobbyists be able to prevent changes to energy infrastructure? When the crowd's mood is measured in influence and exabytes, will real-time democracy render elections a thing of the past?

International Bestselling authors Brett King and Dr. Richard Petty explore the seismic social changes that will be thrust on the world over the coming decades. The Rise of Technosocialism seeks to answer how our children will live with AI and climate disruption, the impact of COVID-19 in our lives along with which economies will likely emerge victorious in an always-on, smart world.

Buy The Rise of Technosocialism

About Brett King

Brett King is a world-renowned entrepreneur, futurist, speaker, international bestselling author, and media personality. China’s President Xi Jinping cited his book Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane on the topic of Artificial Intelligence in his 2018 national address; the same book that was listed as a Top 10 non-fiction book in North America. In 2019 his book Bank 4.0 was awarded the Top Book by a Foreign Author in Russia for that year.

In 2020 King was inducted into the Fintech Hall of Fame by CB Insights. In 2015 he was shortlisted for the Advance Global Australian of the Year Award. His books have been released in over a dozen languages. Banking Exchange magazine dubbed him the “King of Disruptors”, while The Australian newspaper in Australia called him the “Godfather of Fintech”.

Brett has spoken in more than 50 countries, at TED, Wired, Techsauce, Singularity University, Web Summit, The Economist, IBM’s World of Watson, CES, SIBOS and many more. He has appeared as a commentator on CNBC, BBC, ABC, Fox, and Bloomberg. He has spoken live to virtual audiences of over 42 million people.

He advised the Obama administration on Fintech strategy, and today advises regulators, lawmakers and boardrooms around the world on digital transformation and future readiness. King founded Breaking Banks and The Futurists podcasts (distribution to 180 countries, 9 million annual listeners). King founded the world’s first mobile challenger bank—Moven —in 2011, raising $47m to-date and sits on the board of the largest US non-profit focused on financial inclusion, the Financial Health Network.

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The Ford government unveils its 55 point housing plan ahead of this year's election. What does it mean for Ontarians and the NDP?

Where are the Liberals? Why won't they come on the show?

The Conservatives are jettisoning reason in their embrace of the far right, it's a 'win at all costs' ideology that may help them maintain their relevance, but it's bad for Canadian society.

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Denise Batters is back baby! The CPC is erasing Erin O'Toole and moving the party to the right — what happens now?

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Friend of the show and NDP MP Peter Julian is back to discuss what we should expect from this session of parliament and what the NDP intends to fight for — working people, housing, and equity & justice for disabled Canadians.

About Peter Julian

Peter was born and raised in the New Westminster-Burnaby area where his family has lived for four generations. After graduating from New Westminster Secondary School, Peter held a number of jobs as a manual labourer and factory worker for local small businesses. After dropping out of school, Peter, as an adult learner, later attended the University of Quebec in Montreal and graduated with a degree in Political Science (International Relations).

Prior to his election to the House of Commons, Peter worked as a Financial Administrator. He is a former Executive Director of the Western Institute for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (WIDHH) and, under his leadership; WIDHH won consecutive Canadian Consumers’ Choice Awards for Excellence in Business (2003-2004). He was instrumental in building the British Columbia Disability Employment Network, a consortium of community groups, organizations and non-profit societies dedicated to serving people with disabilities.

A founding member of the Council of Canadians (CoC), Peter rose to become the National Executive Director of the Council, Canada’s largest citizen’s organization.

In New Westminster, Peter co-founded the Save St. Mary’s Hospital Community Coalition that fought tirelessly to save this community hospital.

He is a former volunteer with Emergency Social Services, Royal City Soccer, East Burnaby Minor Baseball, the United Way and the United Church.

He has been both a soccer coach & a basketball coach.

Instrumental in building the British Columbia Disability Employment Network.

Former National Policy Coordinator and Assistant and Acting Federal Secretary of the New Democratic Party of Canada.

Longtime member of the New Westminster Chamber of Commerce and proud member of the Burnaby Board of Trade.

He is fluent in English and French and has a working knowledge in American Sign Language.

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Canadian politics has really been something over the last 10 days. A shift has occurred, one that may be impossible to walk back, and one that has left us feeling politically depressed and dispossessed. Canadian MAGA is here to stay. What happens next?

Then, we're joined in the CUPE Ontario Union Hall by Harry Goslin, President of OCEU CUPE 1750, representing workers at Ontario's WSIB. We discuss the Ford government's redistribution of benefits intended for workers to business, the failure of Ontario's emergency sick days, and what you should do if you think you contracted COVID on the job.

Links

Join the Campaign to Expand WSIB Coverage in Ontario

Submit a WSIB claim

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What is to be learned from social upheaval and revolution? How do existing movements play into social change? Through the exploration of recent revolutions, political and otherwise, we can learn what conditions are necessary to drive change and how to make it lasting.

About Revolutionary Rehearsals in the Neoliberal Age

This ambitious volume examines revolutionary situations during a non-revolutionary historical conjuncture--the neoliberal era. The last three decades have seen an increase in the number of political upheavals that challenge existing power structures, many of them taking the form of urban revolts. This book compellingly explores a series of such upheavals--in Eastern Europe, South Africa, Indonesia, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, sub-Saharan Africa (including Congo, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso) and Egypt. Each chapter studies the ways in which protest movements developed into insurgent challenges to state power, and the strategies that regimes have deployed to contain and repress revolt.

In addition to empirical chapters, the book engages in theorization of revolution, dealing with questions such as the patterning of revolution in contemporary history, the relationship between class struggle and social movements, and the prospects of socialist revolution in the twenty-first century.

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About Gareth Dale

Gareth is Associate Head of the Department of Social and Political Sciences. He worked at Birkbeck, the LSE, and Swansea University before joining Brunel in 2005. His most recent books are the edited collections Revolutionary Rehearsals in the Neoliberal Age (2021) and Exploring the Thought of Karl Polanyi (2019). In 2016 he published Karl Polanyi: A Life on the Left and Reconstructing Karl Polanyi: Excavation and Critique, and a critique of ‘Green Growth’. Previous publications include books on Karl Polanyi (2010), the political economy of Eastern Europe, migrant labour in the European Union, and a trilogy on East Germany (its economic history, protest movements, and 1989 revolution).

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change-makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week, we’re joined by the Ontario Director of the Canadian Taxpayer Federation Jay Goldberg and NDP activist and candidate for ONDP president Jessa McLean to discuss wealth inequality in Canada, and taxing the wealthy as a proposed solution.

About Jay Goldberg

Jay spent most of his career in academia, where he was most recently a policy fellow at the Munk School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. Jay was motivated to leave academia and join the Canadian Taxpayers Federation as Interim Ontario Director after seeing the consequences of high taxes, high deficits, and government waste on everyday Canadians.

Jay grew up in Toronto and spent some time living in Vancouver. He currently lives in Guelph with his wife Caroline. Jay is an avid reader of history and enjoys spending time with his dogs, Winston and Lincoln.

Jay holds an Honour’s Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from the University of Toronto, and a Master of Arts Degree in Political Science from the University of British Columbia.

About Jessa McLean

Jessa McLean is a community and political organizer from Scarborough, Ontario. Jessa was the NDP candidate for York-Simcoe during the 2019 federal by-election and again during the 2019 federal election, is president of the riding association, and stood as a candidate for President of the NDP at the 2021 Convention and is running for President of the ONDP at the upcoming convention.

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Conservatives in revolt. Is today the end of Erin O’Toole?

The new Premier of Manitoba forgot to disclose millions in real estate deals. Maybe the NLR fam can hold her accountable?

Then, on the second day of Blck History Month, we’re joined in the CUPE Ontario by Aubrey Gonsalves. Aubrey serves as President of CUPE 2316, representing members at the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto and was recently elected CUPE National’s Diversity Vice-President representing Black and racialized workers.

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Saturday’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ protest ended without the demands of protesters being met but the rhetoric around their movement reached a fever pitch. We take a step back, a deep breath in, and discuss the protest and the troubling media discourse that should give activists of any ideology pause.

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The premiers are not united by much, but they are united in their demand for more money from Ottawa.

Doug Ford is the last holdout on a national childcare plan.

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

From coast to coast to coast Canada is facing a housing crisis. The issue occupied the discourse in the 2021 federal election and is top of mind for Canadians facing a change of address, whether renting or buying. With costs continuing to soar and interest rates below inflation, what can be done, and what is the government's role in helping homebuyers and renters?

We're joined by National Post columnist Sabrina Maddeaux and activist and former Libertarian Party of Canada leader Tim Moen to debate solutions.

About Sabrina Maddeaux

Sabrina Maddeaux is a National Magazine Award-winning writer and editor. Her work strives to spark meaningful discussions on topics from politics to pop culture, finance, and feminism.

Sabrina is a freelance columnist for the National Post, where she’s known for her bold opinions and has been referred to as the paper’s “resident pissed-off millennial.” She covered Canada’s 44th federal election for the paper full-time, with daily written and video columns that often trended online and appeared on the paper’s front page.

Her work has also appeared in the Globe and Mail, Vox, Refinery29, Toronto Star, FASHION Magazine, ELLE Canada, Toronto Sun, NOW Magazine, Bay Street Bull, and many other publications.

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About Tim Moen

Tim Moen is a Canadian libertarian podcaster, blogger, activist, and politician. He was the leader of the Libertarian Party of Canada from May 2014 to August 2021. Outside of politics, he is a firefighter, paramedic, business owner, and filmmaker.

Moen became the leader of the Libertarian Party of Canada in May 2014, succeeding former leader Katrina Chowne. He ran in the 2014 Fort McMurray—Athabasca by-election. His campaign received considerable attention from a variety of Canadian and US news outlets, such as CNN, Huffington Post, Reason.com, due to his social media memes explaining libertarianism.

Moen is an anarcho-capitalist. He supports ending all government surveillance programs, withdrawing all troops stationed abroad, legalizing cannabis, decriminalizing drugs, legalizing prostitution, and tax cuts.

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Conservatives, led by Jason Kenney, are spreading disinformation about empty grocery shelves and the impacts of vaccine mandates on our food supply chain and ignoring the realities of Canadians struggling to put food on the table. This is happening as a convoy of trucks heads towards Ottawa to protest the vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers. Why the obfuscation?

Escalations in Ukraine are threatening to boil over with disinformation flying and imperial forces facing off. What is the left to do? Can we oppose war and also stand against imperialism?

Then, we’re joined in the CUPE Ontario Union Hall by Carolyn Ferns of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care and Athina Basiliadis, a Frontline Child Care Worker and a Child Care Representative on the CUPE Social Service Workers' Coordinating Committee to discuss yet another failure of the Ford government to protect frontline workers and our children.

Ontario Coalition for Better Childcare

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Jared Walker has learned a thing or two working in communications in the offices of both Jagmeet Singh and Andrea Horwath — starting with never check the DMs. Jared joins us to discuss the complex strategies of campaigning, how social media is shaping our politics, and how campaigns of the future may look.

About Jared Walker

Jared A. Walker is an organizer, activist, writer and communications professional, presently working as Principal Speechwriter and Media Relations Coordinator for the Leader and Caucus of Ontario’s Official Opposition NDP. Prior to this, he was Speechwriter to the Leader, Parliamentary Leader and Caucus of Canada’s NDP. He also served as Communications Director on Jagmeet Singh’s historic NDP leadership campaign.

Jared has worked on national and regional campaigns – both partisan and issue-based – in the US and Canada, including most notably serving as the New York State Coordinator of Students for Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential election.

He has also worked in communications, fundraising, and community development for a variety of nonprofits and charities in the Greater Toronto and New York areas.

As a speaker, Jared has engaged audiences around the world on a wide range of issues including youth mobilization, community building, racial justice and engaging men to end gender-based violence.

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Doug Ford announces a phased reopening ‘in light of improving conditions’. What is he talking about?

Continued issues with access to fresh water in the territories highlights the inequity of Ontario/Quebec and every other Canadian.

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This week, we’re joined by activist and former NDP candidate Shailene Panylo and National Post columnist Adam Zivo for a conversation on defunding the police and police abolition.

About Shailene Panylo

Shailene Panylo is a community organizer, activist, and advocate based in the Durham Region. She represented the NDP for Oshawa in 2019 and 2021.

Shailene is a University of Toronto Alumni with an HBSc. in Molecular Biology, Immunology & Disease, and Women & Gender Studies and a TEFL instructor certified by the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE).

Shailene currently works as the Research & Government Relations Coordinator for the Canadian Federation of Students National office and proudly serve as a Director and Coordinator for the Durham Black Students' Network.

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About Adam Zivo

Adam Zivo is a regular columnist at the National Post, an activist having previously consulted with the Canadian Armed Forces on LGBTQ+ issues, and former Junior Research Fellow at the NATO Association of Canada focusing in the areas of cyber and information warfare and social media manipulation.

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What’s the deal with snow removal in PEI? Unionized provincial workers have been replaced by private contractors in at least one municipality, how are these decisions made and is it just one more step in the war on working people by conservative governments?

Air Canada and Westjet are asking us to stop testing for COVID-19 at the airport while omicron is ravaging us. They can spin it all they like, it’s bad for public health.

Then, we’re joined in the CUPE Ontario Union Hall by Ontario School Board Council of Unions President Laura Walton who represents thousands and thousands of workers in schools who are deeply concerned with the safety of a return to in person learning while the Ford government has abandoned common sense. What can we do to fight back?

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Nova Scotia MLA Suzy Hansen joins us for a conversation on the power of change, how we can bring it, and what it looks like to fight for it when the terrain looks difficult. Hope and hard work go a very long way to building a better future.

About Suzy Hansen

Born and raised in Halifax’s North End, Suzy is a grassroots organizer, community leader, and mother of seven beautiful children. In 2016, she won a seat on the Halifax Regional School Board for District 5 (Peninsula North/Fairview), where she advocated passionately for our students and schools. In 2021, Suzy was elected MLA to represent the people of Halifax Needham. Suzy has worked with Phoenix Youth Programs for the past 9 years, supporting youth and community, and building trusting relationships between stakeholders and service providers.

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The prevailing narrative is that the economy has mostly rebounded. Led by TSX performance and GDP numbers, the status quo is content that all will be just fine. Are these really how we want to judge ourselves? Can’t we find a better way to judge if our society is prospering? Or do we just get back to business as usual?

Then, Alberta’s making moves to privatize laundry at its hospitals. It may not seem like much, but it’s laundry today and then surgery tomorrow. Every loss in public healthcare is a step towards a US style system.

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The crisis in housing is reaching fever pitch across Canada, with it hitting especially hard right at home for one of our co-hosts.

It's being reported that the Bank of Canada is going to be raising the overnight lending rate next week in what will be the beginning of a series of increases seeking to control inflation. It's bad news for the working class and the same tired monetary policy that got us into this mess.

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After federal teasing of mandatory vaccines, Quebec Premier Legault announces a “financial penalty” for Quebeckers who refuse to vaccinate. It draws serious questions about bodily sovereignty and the ability of the wealthy to avoid vaccination.

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole claims that Canada-US relations have never been worse. It’s definitely not true. Has O’Toole lost the script and where is the opposition right now? Is there even a government right now?

CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahn joins us in the CUPE Ontario Union Hall to discuss the extreme failures of the Ford government as Omicron cases surge and overwhelm Ontario’s healthcare system. It’s so much more than COVID though. It didn’t have to be this way and Ford is to blame.

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World renowned leftist philosopher Slavoj Žižek joins for a sweeping and wide ranging conversation on the urgency of this moment as we struggle through COVID-19 while trying to cling to failed paradigms. In a world where the status quo realizes that the old way must give way to the new, there is little action being taken to transition to what Žižek calls the “communism of necessity”. How can the left win in the face of a century of losses? How do we battle against the losses of the working class to the politics of the right? What is to be done?

About his new book Heaven In Disorder

As we emerge (though perhaps only temporarily) from the pandemic, other crises move center stage: outrageous inequality, climate disaster, desperate refugees, mounting tensions of a new cold war. The abiding motif of our time is relentless chaos.

Acknowledging the possibilities for new beginnings at such moments, Mao Zedong famously proclaimed “There is great disorder under heaven; the situation is excellent.” The contemporary relevance of Mao’s observation depends on whether today’s catastrophes can be a catalyst for progress or have passed over into something terrible and irretrievable. Perhaps the disorder is no longer under, but in heaven itself.

Characteristically rich in paradoxes and reversals that entertain as well as illuminate, Slavoj Žižek’s new book treats with equal analytical depth the lessons of Rammstein and Corbyn, Morales and Orwell, Lenin and Christ. It excavates universal truths from local political sites across Palestine and Chile, France and Kurdistan, and beyond.

Heaven In Disorder looks with fervid dispassion at the fracturing of the Left, the empty promises of liberal democracy, and the tepid compromises offered by the powerful. From the ashes of these failures, Žižek asserts the need for international solidarity, economic transformation, and—above all—an urgent, “wartime” communism.

Buy the book here

About Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek (b. 1949) is a Slovenian-born philosopher and psychoanalyst. He is a professor of philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS, a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, and founder and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana. Aside from these appointments, Žižek tirelessly gives lectures around the globe and is often described as “the Elvis of cultural theory”. Although, more seriously, as British critical theorist Terry Eagleton confers, Žižek is the “most formidably brilliant” theorist to have emerged from Europe in decades. Many, in fact, now consider Žižek to be “the most dangerous philosopher in the West.”

He grew up in in Ljubljana, Slovenia, which at the time was part of the former Yugoslavia. The regime’s more permissive, albeit “pernicious,” policies allowed for Žižek’s exposure to Western theory and culture, in particular film, English detective novels, German Idealism, French structuralism, and Jacques Lacan. Studying at the University of Ljubljana, he completed his master’s degree in philosophy in 1975 with a thesis on French structuralism and his Doctoral degree in philosophy in 1981 with a dissertation on German Idealism. He then went to Paris, along with Mladen Dolar, to study Lacan under Jacques Alain-Miller (Lacan’s son-in-law and disciple). During this time in Paris, from 1981–85, Žižek completed another dissertation on the work of Hegel, Marx, and Kripke through a Lacanian lens. After his return to...]]>Fan of the show? Support us on Patreon!

World renowned leftist philosopher Slavoj Žižek joins for a sweeping and wide ranging conversation on the urgency of this moment as we struggle through COVID-19 while trying to cling to failed paradigms. In a world where the status quo realizes that the old way must give way to the new, there is little action being taken to transition to what Žižek calls the “communism of necessity”. How can the left win in the face of a century of losses? How do we battle against the losses of the working class to the politics of the right? What is to be done?

About his new book Heaven In Disorder

As we emerge (though perhaps only temporarily) from the pandemic, other crises move center stage: outrageous inequality, climate disaster, desperate refugees, mounting tensions of a new cold war. The abiding motif of our time is relentless chaos.

Acknowledging the possibilities for new beginnings at such moments, Mao Zedong famously proclaimed “There is great disorder under heaven; the situation is excellent.” The contemporary relevance of Mao’s observation depends on whether today’s catastrophes can be a catalyst for progress or have passed over into something terrible and irretrievable. Perhaps the disorder is no longer under, but in heaven itself.

Characteristically rich in paradoxes and reversals that entertain as well as illuminate, Slavoj Žižek’s new book treats with equal analytical depth the lessons of Rammstein and Corbyn, Morales and Orwell, Lenin and Christ. It excavates universal truths from local political sites across Palestine and Chile, France and Kurdistan, and beyond.

Heaven In Disorder looks with fervid dispassion at the fracturing of the Left, the empty promises of liberal democracy, and the tepid compromises offered by the powerful. From the ashes of these failures, Žižek asserts the need for international solidarity, economic transformation, and—above all—an urgent, “wartime” communism.

Buy the book here

About Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek (b. 1949) is a Slovenian-born philosopher and psychoanalyst. He is a professor of philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS, a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, and founder and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana. Aside from these appointments, Žižek tirelessly gives lectures around the globe and is often described as “the Elvis of cultural theory”. Although, more seriously, as British critical theorist Terry Eagleton confers, Žižek is the “most formidably brilliant” theorist to have emerged from Europe in decades. Many, in fact, now consider Žižek to be “the most dangerous philosopher in the West.”

He grew up in in Ljubljana, Slovenia, which at the time was part of the former Yugoslavia. The regime’s more permissive, albeit “pernicious,” policies allowed for Žižek’s exposure to Western theory and culture, in particular film, English detective novels, German Idealism, French structuralism, and Jacques Lacan. Studying at the University of Ljubljana, he completed his master’s degree in philosophy in 1975 with a thesis on French structuralism and his Doctoral degree in philosophy in 1981 with a dissertation on German Idealism. He then went to Paris, along with Mladen Dolar, to study Lacan under Jacques Alain-Miller (Lacan’s son-in-law and disciple). During this time in Paris, from 1981–85, Žižek completed another dissertation on the work of Hegel, Marx, and Kripke through a Lacanian lens. After his return to Slovenia, he became more politically active writing for , a weekly newspaper, co-founding the Slovenian Liberal Demorcratic Party, and running for one of four seats that comprised the collective Slovenian presidency (Žižek came in fifth).

Žižek rose to prominence in 1989 following his first book published in English, . Since then he has written countless books, in fact, perhaps the only thing more numerous than the talks he tirelessly gives across the globe are the books on which those interviews stand. For the last twenty-five years Žižek has been writing predominantly in English, and to a far lesser extent in his native Slovenian, for obvious reasons. He has also co-authored a number of books with Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Eric Santner, John Millbank, Ernesto Laclau, Boris Gunjević, and Agon Hamza, among others. Further, he is the editor of a number of consequential series, including Wo Es War by Verso, SIC by Duke University Press, and Short Circuits by MIT Press. Finally, Žižek is a consistent contributor to , , and other journals.

Lets “begin at the beginning”––as Žižek is fond of saying, clearly referring to the project of German Idealism, as is evident to the careful reader––or better, still, let’s begin before the beginning. The style of Žižek’s work is infamous. From his many talks and lectures, through his essays and books––the introductory, the directly political works, and the more serious, challenging works ()––Žižek’s style has often led many to not take him seriously. It should, however, be asked: why does Žižek speak and write as he does (given his frequent remarks that his true love is serious philosophical thought, more specifically still, the resurrection of German Idealism)? And what is style? The answer to the second is simpler than that of the first: style, as Jacques Lacan states in the opening pages of É, is always a question of to whom one is addressing oneself. The answer to the first, however, is the same.

Žižek’s style has long been a point of discussion, and often a consideration by which he is not only not taken seriously and disregarded, but also a preoccupation that offers some sympathizers an excuse to not engage with his thought seriously. Perhaps this is reason enough to take it––as well as our preoccupation with it––more seriously. His style involves not only a disregard for the distinction between high and low culture––strikingly collapsing genres into one another––academically inappropriate uses of examples to illustrate serious philosophical, psychoanalytic and political issues, etc., but also the curious and frustrating moment in which he refuses to answer to the demands of his readers and listeners as to what they are to do with it all, by claiming that he does not know.

But is this really so particular to Žižek? What is the Žižekian procedure, when minimally defined? Žižek always begins with a cultural phenomenon or presupposition, which is slowly poked and probed by other cultural phenomena and presuppositions, until the reader finds himself in a position opposite to the one from which he may have begun, but without ever having been confronted with “philosophical truth,” stated with straight authority. Conceptual tools are used throughout, but are introduced slowly only as to clarify and distinguish the immanent analysis, only fully developed at the end. Moreover, as irreflexive or spontaneous relationships, oppositions, positions, and definitions of phenomena are subverted, the same result takes place in theory. In both cases, odd couples are formed between philosophies, between theories and political practices, between emblems and implications, processes, assumptions and conclusions, and so on. Figures enter the scene in odd positions, arguments are continually problematized, up until the very end, at which point a novice to Žižek’s philosophy is not immediately left with a clear conclusion of his position, but rather a web of confusion, so to speak, and yet at the same time the sense that there is a system­­ of sorts––the consistent grasp of which is the work still left for the reader. Finally, we could even add that the very sequence of Žižek’s work is constant, although his exact position has shifted a number of times, such that he always begins not only with ideology, but with ideology at its purest, that is, a position presupposing itself non-ideological, and an articulation of how the position sees itself, finally arriving at some formulation of absolute knowledge; or, as Žižek constantly reminds his readers, absolute knowing, and the consequent ethical stance to be assumed. There is no reason not to be frank: the Platonic dialogues find their resurrection here.

A second remark bears mention here: in his books and talks Žižek assumes the position offered to him, or even demanded of him––the position of he who, is supposed to, know. The position is offered to him, and demanded of him precisely because he consistently catches theories and positions at the moment of their contradiction or duplicity. Assuming the position, Žižek frustrates the demand; that is, he assumes the position without answering to the demand––revealing the desire of his audience. In short, Žižek’s style, his discourse, is the embodiment of one of the primary elements of his theory: the community of analysts as the model for an emancipatory collective. As Lacan would say, in regards his position, at its most elementary, is not articulable, because it is articulated.

As he so often publicly proclaims, Žižek is a card-carrying Lacanian. This itself is peculiar, given his distance from Jacques-Alain Miller, on, amongst other things, the political implications of psychoanalysis, and most specifically, the psychoanalytic school as a model for emancipatory political organization. In fact, a large part of Žižek’s political project, if not its foundation, assumes the possibility of a passage where Lacan is popularly assumed to have found only an impasse. Even so, Žižek is a Lacanian; it is by way of his fidelity to Lacan, by way of his return to Lacan, that he can see the limits of Lacan and move beyond.

While Žižek’s “exact position” has shifted a number of times, his basic constellation (as he often reiterates, for instance in ) has remained constant: Hegel, Marx, and Lacan. And within this constellation are three related concerns to which he relentlessly returns: (1) enjoyment as a political factor, (2) the subject as a self-relating negativity, and (3), the problem of appearance, i.e., not what is hidden behind it, but precisely why anything appears in the first place, as he writes in :

(Parallax View, p. xx)

Žižek’s search for these conditions of possibility lead him not only to the Lacanian conceptions of the non-existence of the Big Other or the Real as barred, but to German Idealism. Recently, it has become ever more frequent that Žižek confirms that his true master is not Jacques Lacan but G.W.F. Hegel. This remark bears mention as Žižek’s return to German Idealism is not at all merely a resurrection of Hegel, but of all the great philosophers of this time––Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel––or, more accurately, of the movement from Kant to Hegel.

We find mention of this movement from Kant to Hegel frequently in his works. And in brief, Žižek’s understanding of this transition is that Hegel ontologized Kant, meaning, that Hegel names the transition from an epistemological void to an ontological one:

(The Ticklish Subject, p. 55)

The void in the ontological edifice, according to Žižek’s reading of Hegel, is itself the subject. And so, the movement from Kant to Hegel is the movement from the inaccessible Thing beyond the subject’s reach to the subject itself as the Thing incapable of being reduced to the world of phenomena around which is exists. Žižek’s thesis is that the Hegelian Absolute is not a calm and serene All at peace with itself, but an Absolute constantly at war with itself, internally torn asunder by unrest and antagonism. The name of this crack in the One is the subject. This is, he proposes, the sense of Hegel’s fundamental thesis, announced at the outset of , is that the True is not only Substance, but equally Subject.

What takes place for Žižek here is a shift in the real: from the Kantian real to the Hegelian. As is often the case, Žižek uses the terms of psychoanalysis to read philosophy. In this case, he uses Lacan’s conception of the Real to draw out the shift: there is the Kantian Real-as-presupposed and the Hegelian Real-as-posed, i.e., the Kantian Real of being is a being that pre-exists and exists beyond the realm of phenomena, while the Hegelian Real is one posited by the subject behind the real of phenomena. In the first instance, the real is a substantial fullness that precedes the advent of, again in Lacanian terms, the Imaginary-Symbolic reality, i.e., phenomena, while in the second it is an empty void situated within the Imaginary-Symbolic reality, and the posited consequence of breakdowns, inconsistencies, and impasses within it. This is, however, a simplified distinction for the simple reason that as the shift in Lacan, announced after the Seventh Seminar, , is not a simple change from one notion of the real to another, homologously, the movement from Kant through to Hegel is not a simple substitution. The full account of this movement demands an understanding of Žižek’s interpretation of the entire sequence of attempted resolutions to the Kantian problem, i.e., of the passage from Kant to Fichte to Schelling to Hegel, and Žižek’s continuous meditation on this problem constitutes the very kernel of all of his works.

In sum, at the strictly philosophical level, Žižek’s work focuses on the resurrection of German Idealism, specifically the notion of the subject as self-relating negativity, and the problem of the ontological conditions of possibility for appearance. His latest work, as announced in the subtitle of his latest book, , is to establish the foundations of dialectical materialism. At the political level, Žižek’s project can be said to have three primary concerns: first, the identification of contradictions in late or contemporary capitalism, along with its democratic-liberal ideology, second, the overarching problem of enjoyment as a political factor, and three, theoretical work on a new form of mastery and organization.

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Remember when we were promised action in the housing crisis during the 2021 election? What happened to that? How about some new ideas to solve the problem?

Ottawa has agreed to a settlement with Indigenous communities to end the cycle of court cases. In true Liberal fashion, it’s non-binding. Will the dollars ever be paid?

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After a disastrous and unnecessary election call, former Nova Scotia Premier Iain Rankin calls it quits. He’s stepping down from leadership of the party and will likely fade into obscurity, or at least the world of corporate lobbying.

Canadian media giants ask the government to protect their profit from social media giants. Social media giants threaten to block news from their platforms. This is what happens when we hand over the public commons to private corporations.

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Omicron is ravaging us. With policy changing daily, and the announcements at and furious, one thing is clear — there will be none of the supports, financial or otherwise, of 2020.

The Canadian Dream is alive? A new initiative is pushing for Canada to grow to 100 million people by the year 2100. Is 100 million really a game changer? Without making significant changes to our economy today aren’t we damning millions more to life in an unaffordable and unjust system?

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Omicron is devouring Ontario’s healthy and Premier Doug Ford has sent a fairly clear message — we don’t care about you. Go to work, shut up, and die if you have to.

As he has since the beginning of this crisis, PM Justin Trudeau has the authority to take control through the Emergencies Act. Spoiler alert, he won’t use it.

$10 a day childcare seems to be all but a done deal with the rumours that Ontario will announce it is joining the federal government’s scheme. What other problems could they solve so quickly?

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Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan appears to be dead, and Justin Trudeau’s threats had nothing to do with it. In the aftermath, we wonder, does Justin Trudeau think that the status quo is good enough for Canadian workers?

Justin Trudeau has done a series of in depth interviews lately, in one of which he laments the ‘cynicism of the left’. Is it cynicism or seeing calling out broken promises and unfulfilled advancement?

CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahn drops by the CUPE Ontario Union Hall to discuss the highs and lows of 2021, the struggle we’re all feeling with Omicron, and his hopes for building a better Ontario in 2022.

Links

Ontario Health Coalition

CUPE Ontario

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We’re taking a mental health day today but enjoy this unreleased episode from last Monday when we had technical difficulties!

Justin Trudeau doubles down against US climate legislation by threatening tariffs. Who is he fighting for and who is he kidding with this?

You probably remember Liberal MP George Chahal as the guy who stole Conservative campaign lit from the doorstep and was caught on a Ring doorbell cam. If that wasn’t bad enough, he’s back in the news, accused of advising a constituent on how to commit CERB fraud when he was a city councilor.

Then, Quebec’s Bill 21 is against our values. Period. It’s in the news again for the absolute wrong reasons.

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The call to extend the vote to youth voters has been heard with NDP MP Taylor Bachrach announcing his intention to table a private members bill that would lower the voting age to 16. Now it’s up to the House to decide.

The fear of Quebec reprisal continues in the saga of Bill 21 and the teacher removed from the classroom under the law. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh enters the fray with a disappointing response. Who will stand for justice? Are we just to accept moral bankruptcy on this issue?

Then, President of CUPE’s Ontario Council of Hospital Unions Michael Hurley joins us in the CUPE Ontario Union Hall to discuss Doug Ford’s Bill 37. The bill has a nice name, but would be devastating to Ontario seniors given the failure of this government to protect them in private long term care.

Get involved in the fight to protect Ontario Healthcare

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The BCNDP has been under fire from the left of its caucus for not calling the RCMP off of Wetʼsuwetʼen territory. Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has stayed mum. Now, with the left of his caucus calling for him to publicly denounce John Horgan, what will Singh do?

TWO THIRDS of Canadians are worried their income won’t keep up with the cost of living. You read that right, two thirds. Is Ottawa listening? Does anyone care about us?

We’ve got a halfway boycott folks. Which is it, is China bad enough to boycott, or not? Where is the political fortitude from Trudeau?

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Surprise surprise, it sucks working for Conservatives. Erin O’Toole calls for an investigation into CPC MP Shannon Stubbs but political motives remain.

The power of the PMO continues its creep. Liberal Ministers are doing their jobs with no direction on their mandates. Does it matter if JT is the sole decider?

Then we head to the CUPE Ontario Union Hall where we’re joined by CUPE Ontario’s newly elected Secretary-Treasurer, Yolanda McClean. Yolanda’s election is historic for CUPE Ontario as the first black woman to serve in the role. What does her election mean for the union and for Canadian labour?

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Maxime Bernier survives his self-initiated leadership review as head of the PPC. What’s next for the party? What do we have to learn from them?

The hits keep coming for Canada’s banking sector — profit, profit, profit. How can we stop the financialization of Canadian life at our expense?

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Canadians under 18 have filed a challenge to voting laws in their quest for universal sufferage. Their argument, that it is unconstitutional to bar them from voting is interesting and could change elections significantly in Canada.

Friend of the show, Dr. Amita Kuttner has been named the interim leader of the Green Party of Canada — a tough job, maybe the toughest in Canadian politics at this point. What does their appointment mean about the future of the party?

The conversion therapy ban was FINALLY passed by a stroke of political genius in the form of unanimous consent initiated by Erin O'Toole and the Conservative Party of Canada. There's a lot more at play here than the politics of social conservatism versus moderation and a lot to learn by the left.

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week, we’re joined by journalist and activist Dimitri Lascaris & economist and National Post columnist Rupa Subramanya to go around the horn on what the chances of success are for the fifth Foreign Minister in six years, the Trudeau foreign policy vision (or lack thereof) and China — what is our role and how do we navigate the dangers and pitfalls of rising tensions with the US.

About Dimitri Lascaris

Dimitri Lascaris is a lawyer, journalist, and activist, and was a candidate in the last federal Green Party leadership race in Canada. He is also a longtime contributor and current board member at The Real News.

About Rupa Subramanya

Rupa Subramanya is an economist, Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation, and columnist for the National Post and Nikkei Asia. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and The Globe and Mail, and she is co-author of the best-selling book, Indianomix.

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Our good friends in the Canadian banking sector have piled the cash high during the pandemic and now they are ready to pop in the form of stock buybacks and fat dividend payments — the problem is that they are doing it with our money. Then, the Liberals introduced legislation to give *some* workers *some* paid sick days. It's too little too late.

Speaking of paid sick days, CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahan drops by the Union Hall to discuss Doug Ford's 27th pass on paid sick days for Ontario workers. TWENTY-SEVENTH. During a pandemic and while feigning an attempt to 'fight for workers'. Ontario deserves better.

You're going to want to listen to tomorrow's Counterpoint w/ Dimitri Lascaris and Rupa Subramanya where we discuss all things CHINA. Until then, enjoy this video of Donald Trump saying China a lot.

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Net zero is often thrown out as the answer to our climate nightmares, including right here in Justin Trudeau's Canada — but is it? We're joined by Holly Jean Buck to discuss just what 'net zero' is, what it is not, and if we can save ourselves by shooting for good enough when it comes to climate action.

About Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero is Not Enough

Around the world, countries and companies are setting net-zero carbon emissions targets. But what will it mean if those targets are achieved? One possibility is that fossil fuel companies will continue to produce billions of tons of atmospheric CO2 while relying on a symbiotic industry to scrub the air clean. Focusing on emissions draws our attention away from the real problem: the point of production. 

The fossil fuel industry must come to an end but will not depart willingly; governments must intervene. By embracing a politics of rural-urban coalitions and platform governance, climate advocates can build the political power needed to nationalize the fossil fuel industry and use its resources to draw carbon out of the atmosphere. 

Buy the book here

About Holly Jean Buck

Holly Jean Buck is a geographer and environmental social scientist studying rural futures, the politics of platforms, and how emerging technologies can address environmental challenges. She works as an Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University at Buffalo in Buffalo, New York, and has a Ph.D. in Development Sociology from Cornell University. She is the author of After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration and Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero Is Not Enough.

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We’re back and the NLR team is now regionally diverse! Today we cover the ridiculous notion that Saskatchewan is a sovereign nation within Canada that Premier Scott Moe put forward and the new wave of shutdowns due to the Omicron variant. Are they necessary? Should we be comfortable locking down again?

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A message has been sent — cross Erin O’Toole or threaten his leadership and you’re out. Conservative aligned Senator Denise Batters is the first to go.

Then, we’ve all heard of the Panama Papers. Apparently it’s taken this long, and charges being sought by the American Securities and Exchange Commission for the CRA to act.

JT hoped off the plane in Washington to lobby against Joe Biden’s EV tax credit. In a sign of how seriously the president is listening, he left and went to Detroit to sell the plan. Just who is Trudeau fighting this fight for?

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change-makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week we're joined by journalist Fitsum Areguy and professor of economics and philosophy Vivek Dehejia to explore the possibility of rising interest rates, exploding housing costs, and Canadians being left out in the cold. What can we do? Then, it is being reported that inflation is at an 18 year high with some journalists making the case that it's good for the 99%. Is it true and what impact does it have on the people? Is Modern Monetary Theory a solution? Finally, an old favourite — oil & gas. The two paths discussed in our discourse are "leave it in the ground" or "drill baby drill". Is it that binary? Is there another way?

About Fitsum Areguy

Fitsum Areguy (he/him) is a Black activist and writer who grew up in Kitchener. He draws on years of experience as a community worker and advocate for youth rights and disability justice to inform his artistic practice. He is co-founder of Inside Waterloo and Textile Magazine which he sees as not only an avenue for creative expression but also as a vehicle for liberation and decolonization through the arts.

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About Vivek Dehejia

Vivek Dehejia is Associate Professor of Economics at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics (1995), awarded with distinction, from Columbia University in New York, where his doctoral dissertation was supervised by Professor Jagdish Bhagwati, the celebrated international trade economist. His other advisers included Professor Robert Mundell, the 1999 Nobel Laureate in Economics. Dehejia’s fields of specialization include international trade, economic development, and international macroeconomics. His research areas include the study of globalization and development and the economic development of India. His recent work has focused on the political economy of reform in India. Dehejia has published in numerous academic journals and also is a frequent commentator in print and on TV in India. He is a columnist for Business Standard, a leading business daily in India. He is co-author of Indianomix: Making Sense of Modern India (Random House India, 2012).

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Alberta announces that it's joined the federal Liberals' scheme to offer $10 a day childcare leaving Ontario as the last holdout. It's a win that's desperately needed by both Jason Kenney and Justin Trudeau, and a surefire election issue for Doug Ford.

Bill 2 in Quebec has been modified but is still a discriminatory law against transgender Quebeckers as the CAQ continues it's push to fight the culture war legislatively.

Then, we're joined by CUPE Ontario Executive Committee member & Pink Triangle Committee representative Susan Gapka in the CUPE Ontario Union Hall to discuss this weekend's Trans Day of Remembrance, CUPE Ontario's role in the fight for Trans workers, and the issues that face Trans Canadians every day.

Links

The 519 Trans Day of Remembrance (TDoR) 2021

The 519 Trans Day of Remembrance 2021 Registration

How to be a Trans ally

Trans Day of Remembrance | Canadian Union of Public Employees

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Amazon permeates our lives in so many ways, from lightning-fast consumerism to hoarding metadata - it does it all. It makes sense that a platform originating in bookselling has had an impact on the author and of fiction itself. Literary critic Mark McGurl joins us to discuss his new book Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon, and the deep impact that platform capitalism has had on the artform that is the written word.

About Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon

Since it was first launched in 1994, Amazon has changed the world of literature. The “Everything Store” has not just transformed how we buy books; it has affected what we buy, and even what we read. In Everything and Less, acclaimed critic Mark McGurl explores this new world where writing is no longer categorized as high or lowbrow, literature or popular fiction.

Charting a course spanning from Henry James to E. L. James, McGurl shows that contemporary writing has less to do with writing per se than with the manner of its distribution. This consumerist logic—if you like this, you might also like …—has reorganized the fiction universe so that literary prize-winners sit alongside fantasy, romance, fan fiction, and the infinite list of hybrid genres and self-published works.

This is an innovation to be cautiously celebrated. Amazon’s platform is not just a retail juggernaut but an aesthetic experiment driven by an unseen algorithm rivaling in the depths of its effects any major cultural shift in history. Here all fiction is genre fiction, and the niches range from the categories of crime and science fiction to the more refined interests of Adult Baby Diaper Lover erotica.

Everything and Less is a hilarious and insightful map of both the commanding heights and sordid depths of fiction, past and present, that opens up an arresting conversation about why it is we read and write fiction in the first place.

Buy the book here

About Mark McGurl

Mark McGurl is the Albert Guérard Professor of Literature at Stanford University, where he has been a member of the English Department since 2012. His scholarly work centers on the relation of literature to social, educational and other institutions from the late 19th century to the present. He is former Director of the Stanford Center for the Study of the Novel, and has worked with the Stanford Literary Lab. He teaches a range of classes on American literature and related topics. His book, Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon is forthcoming from Verso in 2021.

McGurl is the author of The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard), which was the recipient of the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism for 2011. Links to reviews, interviews and other articles related to this book have been gathered here. McGurl’s previous book was The Novel Art: Elevations of American Fiction after Henry James (Princeton). He has also published articles in journals such as Critical Inquiry, Representations, American Literary History, and New Literary History.

McGurl received his BA from Harvard, then worked at the New York Times and the New York Review of Books. He earned his PhD in comparative literature from Johns Hopkins, and until 2011 taught at UCLA.

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The federal government is set to release their 5G blueprint, with all signs pointing to the exclusion of Huawei from Canada’s plan. Is this simply anti-China sentiment or are there legitimate concerns?

Thousands of Canadians on the financial knifes edge are poised to lose benefits for taking pandemic related emergency payments. What does this say about Canada and the codification of poverty?

Then, Hamiltonians successfully block the removal of an encampment. What does the future hold and when will the hammer of police violence drop?

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A damning and terrible report on the state of youth group homes in Saskatchewan shows the abject failure of the province to care for those in its care. What does it say about us as Canadians?

Then, Cargill workers in High River, Alberta are going on strike. Their workplace has been ground zero for COVID outbreaks in the past year and workers are demanding safer conditions. What responsibility does Cargill have to the workers, the community, and Albertans?

Big news — just one month after symbolically voting to end equalization, the number show that Alberta took in more money from Ottawa than it sent — yet another egg in the face for Jason Kenney and his UCP friends.

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week we’re joined by activist and former NDP candidate for Oshawa Shailene Panylo and journalist, writer, and actor Rob Salerno to dive deep on the non-coalition coalition talks between the ruling Liberals and NDP. Who is the most to gain? Then, the PMO has been running government for five months, does the office hold too much power? What reforms should be made? We round out the episode in the Kevin Vuong saga. What should be done?

About Shailene Panylo

Shailene Panylo is a community organizer, activist, and advocate based in the Durham Region. She represented the NDP for Oshawa in 2019 and 2021.

Shailene is a University of Toronto Alumni with an HBSc. in Molecular Biology, Immunology & Disease, and Women & Gender Studies and a TEFL instructor certified by the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education (OISE).

Shailene currently works as the Research & Government Relations Coordinator for the Canadian Federation of Students National office and proudly serve as a Director and Coordinator for the Durham Black Students' Network.

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About Rob Salerno

Rob Salerno is a writer, actor, and journalist based in Los Angeles, California, and Toronto, Canada. His preoccupations as a writer include social justice and probing issues that polite people wouldn’t touch.

Rob’s work has been published in VICE, Advocate, National Post, Metro Toronto, NOW Magazine, #CdnCult Times, FAB, Homorazzi.com, Eye Weekly, and Outlooks and he’s appeared as a commentator on CTV News and Sun News Network. He is best known for his work as a reporter and columnist with Xtra, Canada’s Gay & Lesbian newspaper, now DailyXtra.com, where he covers such topics as: national, provincial, and municipal politics; community organizations and activism; human rights law; crime; media analysis; HIV/AIDS; and immigration and refugee issues. He is well-known in the LGBT community for fearlessly sharing his unconventional opinions on topics of the day.

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Vaccine politics plays a part in who’s in and who’s out in the ‘shadow cabinet’, opening the door for the PPC and Maxime Bernier to pick off a MP. When will this all be behind us?

Then, we’re joined in the CUPE Ontario Union Hall by Fred Hahn, President of CUPE Ontario to discuss the political theatre by Doug Ford on minimum wage and the economic statement for the province’s future.

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The status quo may seem permanent and unchangeable but as David Potter tells us, there are significant disruptions throughout modern history that have fundamentally changed the world — sometimes seemingly overnight. What can we learn from our past in making the world anew? How can movements breakthrough? Most importantly, are disruptive movements doomed to becoming centrist?

About Disruption: Why Things Change

How do things change? The question is critical to the historical study of any era but it is also a profoundly important issue today as western democracies find the fundamental tenets of their implicit social contract facing extreme challenges from forces espousing ideas that once flourished only on the outskirts of society. This books argues that radical change always begins with ideas that took shape on the fringes. Throughout time the "mainstream" has been inherently conservative, allowing for incremental change but essentially dedicated to preserving its own power structures as the dominant ideology justifies existing relationships. In this tour of radical change across Western history, David Potter will show how ideologies that develop in opposition or reaction to those supporting the status quo are employed to effect profound changes in political structures that will in turn alter the way that social relations are constructed.

Not all radical groups are the same, and all the groups that the book will explore take advantage of challenges that have already shaken the social order. They take advantage of mistakes that have challenged belief in the competence of existing institutions to be effective. It is the particular combination of an alternative ideological system and a period of community distress that are necessary conditions for radical changes in direction. The historical disruptions chronicled in this book-the rise of Christianity, rise of Islam, Protestant reformations, Age of Revolution (American and French), and Bolshevism and Nazism--will help readers understand when the preconditions exist for radical changes in the social and political order. As Disruption demonstrates, not all radical change follows paths that its original proponents might have predicted. An epilogue helps situate contemporary disruptions, from the rise of Trump and Brexit to the social and political consequences of technological change, in the wider historical forces surveyed by the book.

Buy the book here

About David Potter

David Potter is Francis W. Kelsey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Roman History and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan. His previous books include The Origin of Empire: Rome from the Republic to Hadrian, Constantine the Emperor, The Victor's Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium, and Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint.

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London, Ontario has a plan to address homelessness but advocates are concerned. In order to solve the challenges the city faces, political will must take on property developers that horde the downtown core, not ship the vulnerable to the hinterlands.

Mainers have voted to block a planned power line with Hydro Quebec. If the utility wants to do business in the good old USA, it must learn to play politics the American way.

Alberta posts the highest increases in university tuition in Canada. What else should we expect from a province that is stripping away its revenue in order to bolster corporate profit?

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Each week on Counterpoint, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week we're joined by Washington Post columnist David Moscrop and National Post columnist Adam Zivo for a discussion on Justin Trudeau's commitment to cap carbon emissions, the move by BC to decriminalize drugs, and Doug Ford's announcement of a $15 minimum wage.

About David Moscrop

David Moscrop is a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, the host of the podcast Open to Debate, and the author of "Too Dumb for Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones."

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About Adam Zivo

Adam Zivo is a regular columnist at the National Post, an activist having previously consulted with the Canadian Armed Forces on LGBTQ+ issues, and former Junior Research Fellow at the NATO Association of Canada focusing in the areas of cyber and information warfare and social media manipulation.

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What does autocracy look like? Is it a “strongman” rising in the shadows or can it be the ascent of a leader without a democratic mandate as well? We go to Manitoba where the new Premier was elected by just over 8,000 PC loyalists and questions linger around her legitimacy.

Then, we head east to PEI for an update on the provinces mobile health units. Many of the questions we asked when the program was launched have now been presented by the PEI Liberals. How can we expect transparency on public private partnerships and ethics issues when the goal is to privatize healthcare?

Before we go, CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahn joins us in the CUPE Ontario Union Hall for a look at the Ontario Federation of Labour’s detailed plan to beat Doug Ford and create a better province for working people — on Election Day and beyond.

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It's time to reimagine what our government does on behalf of Canadians, how it does it, and who it serves. It's time to rekindle democratic socialism for a new path forward for Canada. Andrew Jackson joins to discuss his new book which lays out the arguments for a future that turns away from capitalism and towards replacement with something altogether different.

About The Fire and the Ashes: Rekindling Democratic Socialism

In The Fire and the Ashes, long-time union economist and policy analyst Andrew Jackson looks back on a fascinating career in the labour movement, the NDP, and left politics, combining keen historical analysis with a political manifesto for today.

As one of the few trade union economists in Canada, Jackson brings a unique insider perspective and decades of experience to bear on his critical reflections on the history and changing fortunes of the NDP, the failures of neoliberalism, and the waning and recent renewal of the democratic socialist tradition.

What plays out is a battle of ideas fought by Jackson and the wider left—one meant to rekindle both political veterans and a new generation of activists who believe that a true democracy cannot exist with great inequalities of wealth and political power, and that social ownership and public investment must be brought squarely into the mainstream.

Buy the book here

About Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson is the Broadbent Institute's Senior Policy Advisor.

In September, 2012 he retired from a long career as Chief Economist and Director of Social and Economic Policy with the Canadian Labour Congress.

In 2011, he was awarded the Sefton Prize by the University of Toronto for his lifetime contributions to industrial relations. Educated at the University of British Columbia and the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he earned a B. Sc. and an M.Sc. in Economics, Andrew is the author of numerous articles and five books, including Work and Labour in Canada: Critical Issues, which is now in its second edition with Canadian Scholars Press.

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Thousands of CUPE members in New Brunswick are exercising their right to withhold their labour — and Premier Blaine Higgs is threatening to do everything in his power to force them back to work.

Then, it's time for a realignment in the HoC! We discuss who's vote has more impact, what the newly minted seats mean for the balance of power, and what we can do to limit the hegemony of Ontario in the legislature.

We round out the show with the shameful action by the Liberal government, once again taking Indigenous kids to court — even after Justin Trudeau looked into our faces and said his government didn't do this. Will there ever be justice?

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Whether it’s targeted at women in the workplace, Indigenous People’s, or working Canadians, Canada loves oppression.

On today’s drop we look at a bombshell lawsuit that has been filed against the Alberta Premier’s Office — but we shouldn’t be surprised by it. The Saskatchewan Throne Speech calls for ‘more policing’ in a policy move that’s tone deaf to the moment. Should we expect anything else from neoliberals?

Then, the Vatican announces a Papal visit to Canada after the outcry at the Catholic Church’s role in the genocide of Indigenous Peoples, will we get an apology or something more? We wrap it all up with analysis of the two big announcements from the Bank of Canada this week — an end to quantitative easing and a forecasted hike of the bank rate. What does it mean for working people?

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Trudeau shuffles the cabinet and we explore who’s in, who’s out, and what does it all mean! Then, we’re joined in the Union Hall by CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahn to discuss Bill 124, the minimum wage, funding cuts for public services, lack of permanent paid sick days, housing, and more of the horrors in the Ford Republic of Ontario.

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Postmodernism permeates our lives and has fundamentally changed our world. Entwined with neoliberalism, our societies and our lives and our governments have been changed by these two ideological movements. Our social safety nets and our socio-economic ladders have ben cut away and we have been left with a world that may be unsalvagable. Stuart Jeffries joins us to discuss and explore what this new type of capitalism means for our future.

Links

Buy Everything, All the Time, Everywhere

About Everything, All the Time, Everywhere: How We Became Postmodern

Postmodernism stood for everything modernism rejected: fun, exuberance, irresponsibility. But beneath its glitzy surface, postmodernism had a dirty secret: it was the fig leaf for a rapacious new kind of capitalism. It was the forcing ground of “post truth,” by means of which western values were turned upside down. But where do these ideas come from and how have they impacted on the world?

In this brilliant history of a dangerous idea, Stuart Jeffries tells a narrative that starts in the early 1970s and still dominates our lives today. He tells this history through a riotous gallery that includes, among others: David Bowie, the iPod, Madonna, Jeff Koons’s the Nixon Shock, Judith Butler, Las Vegas, Margaret Thatcher, Grand Master Flash, I Love Dick, the RAND Corporation, the Sex Pistols, Princess Diana, Grand Theft Auto, Jean Baudrillard, Netflix, and 9/11.

We are today scarcely capable of conceiving politics as a communal activity because we have become habituated to being consumers rather than citizens. Politicians treat us as consumers to whom they must deliver. Can we do anything other than suffer from buyer’s remorse?

About Stuart Jeffries

Stuart Jeffries is a journalist and author. He was for many years on the staff of the Guardian, working as subeditor, TV critic, Friday Review editor and Paris correspondent. He now works as a freelance writer, mostly for the Guardian, Spectator, Financial Times and the London Review of Books.

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The hits just keep coming for the CAF. This time, it’s come to light they’ve trained fascists in Ukraine. Then, Québec replaces ethics and religious values curriculum with “Québec values” class. We round it out in PEI, where government is actually doing something right-ish.

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The Gitxsan People, say enough is enough and refuse to allow BC child services to remove any more children from their community. A new report shows serious issues with racism inside the culture of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada — what will be done to correct it? Then, the Teamsters file for unionization at yet another Amazon fulfillment facility. What will be the first facility to win in the fight against Amazon?

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change-makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week, we’re joined by columnist, and commentator Andrew Lawton and NDP activist and former candidate Jessa McLean to discuss Canada's role in the provocation in the Taiwan Strait, the P3 transit debacle in Ottawa, and if the Ontario NDP can pull out a victory in next year's provincial election.

About Andrew Lawton

Andrew Lawton is a broadcaster and columnist. Currently, he is a fellow at True North and a weekly columnist for Loonie Politics. His written work has been published across the world, including in the Washington Post, the National Post, the Toronto Sun, the Edmonton Sun, and Global News. Andrew has appeared as a commentator on CBC, CTV, TVO, CTS, and on BBC World. Andrew ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in Ontario’s 2018 provincial election.

About Jessa McLean

Jessa McLean is a community and political organizer from Scarborough, Ontario. Jessa was the NDP candidate for York-Simcoe during the 2019 federal by-election and again during the 2019 federal election, is president of the riding association, and stood as a candidate for President of the NDP at the 2021 Convention.

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The results are somewhat in and the results in Alberta are pretty groundbreaking. Calgary and Edmonton both have new mayors, the teeth win, and daylight savings time may just survive. We explore the results, known and unknown. Then we’re joined by CUPE Ontario President, Fred Hahn in the Union Hall with CUPE Ontario, our new weekly segment. It appears Doug Ford and the PCs are in full campaign mode, positioning the premier as a big spender who came to the rescue of Ontarians during the pandemic. The reality couldn’t be more different.

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Homlessness is a global challenge, yet municipalities are forced to deal with it as a local issue. It's how they approach change that makes an impact. We’re joined by former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Homeless Services Linda Gibbs and professor and former Assistant Commissioner of Policy and Research at the New York City Department of Homeless Services Jay Bainbridge to discuss their new book, How Ten Global Cities Take On Homelessness, and how we can build a world where everyone has a home to call their own.

Links

Buy How Ten Global Cities Take on Homelessness

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About How Ten Global Cities Take On Homelessness

This book takes on perhaps the most formidable issue facing metropolitan areas today: the large numbers of people experiencing homelessness within cities. Four dedicated experts with first-hand experience profile ten cities—Bogota, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Houston, Nashville, New York City, Baltimore, Edmonton, Paris, and Athens—to explore ideas, strategies, successes, and failures. Together they bring an array of government, nonprofit, and academic perspectives to offer a truly global perspective. The authors answer essential questions about the nature and causes of homelessness and analyze how cities have used innovation and local political coordination to address this pervasive problem.

Ten Global Cities will be an invaluable resource not only for students of policy and social work but for municipal, regional, and national policymakers; nonprofit service providers; community advocates and activists; and all citizens who want to collaborate for real change. These authors argue that homelessness is not an insurmountable social condition, and their examples show that cities and individuals working in coordination can lead the charge for better outcomes.

About Linda Gibbs

Linda Gibbs served as Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services for New York City from 2005 to 2013.

Supervising the city’s human service, public health and social justice agencies, she spearheaded major initiatives on poverty alleviation, juvenile justice reform and obesity reduction. Two of the collaborative efforts she shaped to address significant social challenges are “Age Friendly NYC,” a blueprint for enhancing the livability of older New Yorkers, and “Young Men’s Initiative,” an initiative addressing race-based disparities facing Black and Latino young men in the areas of health, education, employment training and the justice system. Gibbs also improved the use of data and technology in human service management, contract effectiveness, and evidence-based program development. During her tenure, New York City has been the only top 20 city in the U.S. whose poverty rate did not increase while the national average rose 28%.

Prior to her appointment as Deputy Mayor, Gibbs was Commissioner of the New York City Department of Homeless Services (DHS) and held senior positions with the New York City Administration for Children’s Services and the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget.

About Jay Bainbridge

Dr. Bainbridge’s research applies statistical and research methods to public sector problems. His current research focuses on trends, causes, and solutions to homelessness, especially with respect to the street homeless. Previous to]]>Fan of the show? Support us on Patreon!

Homlessness is a global challenge, yet municipalities are forced to deal with it as a local issue. It's how they approach change that makes an impact. We’re joined by former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Homeless Services Linda Gibbs and professor and former Assistant Commissioner of Policy and Research at the New York City Department of Homeless Services Jay Bainbridge to discuss their new book, How Ten Global Cities Take On Homelessness, and how we can build a world where everyone has a home to call their own.

Links

Buy How Ten Global Cities Take on Homelessness

Follow Linda Gibbs on Twitter

Follow Jay Bainbridge on Twitter

About How Ten Global Cities Take On Homelessness

This book takes on perhaps the most formidable issue facing metropolitan areas today: the large numbers of people experiencing homelessness within cities. Four dedicated experts with first-hand experience profile ten cities—Bogota, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Houston, Nashville, New York City, Baltimore, Edmonton, Paris, and Athens—to explore ideas, strategies, successes, and failures. Together they bring an array of government, nonprofit, and academic perspectives to offer a truly global perspective. The authors answer essential questions about the nature and causes of homelessness and analyze how cities have used innovation and local political coordination to address this pervasive problem.

Ten Global Cities will be an invaluable resource not only for students of policy and social work but for municipal, regional, and national policymakers; nonprofit service providers; community advocates and activists; and all citizens who want to collaborate for real change. These authors argue that homelessness is not an insurmountable social condition, and their examples show that cities and individuals working in coordination can lead the charge for better outcomes.

About Linda Gibbs

Linda Gibbs served as Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services for New York City from 2005 to 2013.

Supervising the city’s human service, public health and social justice agencies, she spearheaded major initiatives on poverty alleviation, juvenile justice reform and obesity reduction. Two of the collaborative efforts she shaped to address significant social challenges are “Age Friendly NYC,” a blueprint for enhancing the livability of older New Yorkers, and “Young Men’s Initiative,” an initiative addressing race-based disparities facing Black and Latino young men in the areas of health, education, employment training and the justice system. Gibbs also improved the use of data and technology in human service management, contract effectiveness, and evidence-based program development. During her tenure, New York City has been the only top 20 city in the U.S. whose poverty rate did not increase while the national average rose 28%.

Prior to her appointment as Deputy Mayor, Gibbs was Commissioner of the New York City Department of Homeless Services (DHS) and held senior positions with the New York City Administration for Children’s Services and the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget.

About Jay Bainbridge

Dr. Bainbridge’s research applies statistical and research methods to public sector problems. His current research focuses on trends, causes, and solutions to homelessness, especially with respect to the street homeless. Previous to joining Marist College, he was Assistant Commissioner of Policy and Research at the New York City Department of Homeless Services, and he continues to consult on homeless services policy and planning for national and international cities. 

Working with Bloomberg Associates, he recently guided the first systematic street counts internationally in Mexico City, Bogota, Paris, and Athens. He has published in journals such as the American Journal of Public Health on topics related to homelessness prevention, aging of the homeless population, and the health of the homeless.

He is co-author of the book How Ten Global Cities Take on Homelessness. This book takes on perhaps the most formidable issue facing metropolitan areas today: the large numbers of people experiencing homelessness within cities. Four dedicated experts with first-hand experience profile ten cities—Bogotá, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Houston, Nashville, New York City, Baltimore, Edmonton, Paris, and Athens—to explore ideas, strategies, successes, and failures.

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Ontario Liberal leader Steven Del Duca makes a slew of promises, including to resign if he fails. Do the Liberals know there is so little faith in them fulfilling their word? Parliament is finally coming back after five long months of vacation. Does the PM take the job of governance seriously? Canada gets roped into an American provocation with China — the only loser in this Cold War is Canada. Then, Ontarians in need of optometric care are finding that they can’t get it — don’t blame optometrists, blame Doug Ford.

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Calgarians & Albertans go to the polls on Monday with a slew of plebiscites, referenda on the ballot — they’ll select a new mayor too. We look at the ballot and all of the questions voters will face. Then, Nova Scotia PCs put forward legislation to set fixed election dates which would bring them in line with the rest of Canada. Pack your bags! The US border is opening to Canadians, but should we be worried?

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week we’re joined by columnist and commentator Tom Parkin & activist and National Post columnist Adam Zivo to explore the blocking of young leftists from nomination by the ONDP — what’s at stake and how do we fix it? Former candidate for NDP president Jessa McLean has taken the federal party to task. What will come of the issues she and others have raised? The stories have just decided to stick with O’Toole as leader, should the other parties open leadership reviews?

About Tom Parkin

Tom Parkin is a frequent columnist and commentator with a bluntly social democratic point of view — imagining a government that works for the Canadian people.

Every week, Tom debates the top political issues on TV and radio shows — on a broad range of issues and on political strategy.

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About Adam Zivo

Adam Zivo is a regular columnist at the National Post, an activist having previously consulted with the Canadian Armed Forces on LGBTQ+ issues, and former Junior Research Fellow at the NATO Association of Canada focusing in the areas of cyber and information warfare and social media manipulation.

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Winnipeg Schools do away with resource officers, Doug Ford says the money just isn’t enough to sign on to Trudeau’s childcare plan, and Canadians are overwhelmingly aligned in opposition to China.

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We’re joined by the Brooklyn Bad Boy himself, journalist David Klion for a wide ranging conversation on his path to left politics from his childhood in the Washington, DC suburbs, Israel/Palestine and the cognitive dissonance of Liberal Zionism, left foreign policy in a technocratic system, and American Empire with Canada in its shadow.

Links

Jewish Currents

Jewish Currents Newsletter

Articles by David

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About David Klion

David Klion is an editor at Jewish Currents and has written for The Nation, The New York Times, The New Republic, and other publications. He has a master's degree in Soviet history from the University of Chicago and has lived and worked in Russia.

About Jewish Currents

As an award-winning magazine of politics, culture, and ideas, Jewish Currents publish quarterly in print and daily online. Currents has received acclaim for it’s in-depth reporting, trenchant analysis, and rigorous cultural criticism, and for it’s attention to literary quality and style. 

Issues Jewish Currents covers include the uses and misuses of antisemitism, the inner workings of Jewish communal organizations, Israel/Palestine politics on the ground and internationally, race and racialization, strategies and horizons of American left movements, the global rise of the far right, diasporic cultural expression, labor, climate, incarceration, immigration, and feminism. Since relaunching in 2018 with an all-new staff and design, the magazine has quickly established itself as an essential voice in the contemporary conversation.

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NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh calls the election results 'disappointing' and initiates an internal review — an important step. Will the party make had choices if need be to win? Doug Ford talks out of both sides of his mouth on vaccine mandates — one for workers, and another for members of the PC caucus. Well, which is it Doug? Then, the Bank of Canada warns of the serious risk that the housing bubble may burst. Who's most at risk... Spoiler alert, it's regular folks.

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A vaccine mandate is coming today that will apply to federal workers and Canadian travelers. How will the government guarantee equity? Yellowknife City Council kills plans for a new shelter at the behest of business. Who should our municipal governments serve, capital or the people? 'Both' is not an option. Then, Calgary UFCW workers vote 97% in favour of strike action against Loblaws. How can workers use their collective position to achieve better conditions and wages?

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Maximillian Alvarez has committed his life to justice for working people through a career focused on telling their stories and journalism that exposes the challenges in our society that are swept under the rug and ignored. He joins us for a conversation on the state of the media, the political discourse, the world, the unignorable failures of capitalism that permeate our lives. How we can begin to reframe our society and imagine a world anew?

Links

The Real News

Working People Podcast

Articles by Maximillian

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About Maximillian Alvarez

Maximillian Alvarez is a writer and editor based in Baltimore, the host of Working People, ​“a podcast by, for, and about the working class today”, and Editor-in-Chief of the Real News. His work has been featured in venues like In These Times, The Nation, The Baffler, Current Affairs, and The New Republic.

About the Working People Podcast

Working People is a podcast about working-class lives in 21st-century America. In every episode you'll hear interviews with workers from around the country, from all walks of life. We'll talk about their life stories, their jobs, politics, and families, their joys and hopes and frustrations. We aim to share and celebrate the diverse stories of working-class people, to remind ourselves that our stories matter, and to build a sense of shared struggle and solidarity between workers around the country.

About the Real News

The Real News Network (TRNN) makes media connecting you to the movements, people, and perspectives that are advancing the cause of a more just, equal, and livable planet. We broaden your understanding of the issues, contexts, and voices behind the news headlines. 

We are rigorous in our journalism and dedicated to the facts, but unafraid to engage alongside movements for change, because we believe journalism and media making has a critical role to play in illuminating pathways for collective action. 

That’s why we make media engaging people not as a passive audience of consumers and spectators, but as active—or soon-to-be activated—participants in the struggle for a better world. Our platform highlights the voices and ideas not just of academics and pundits, but grassroots participants in social movements for change: the people on the frontlines of fights against injustice.

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The fallout from the PM's decision to vacation in Tofino on the first national day of Truth & Reconciliation continues. Elizabeth May must speak out after being asked not to. The rich just can't stop hiding their wealth at our expense.

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In a landmark decision the Human Rights Tribunal has delivered a verdict that the government of Canada must pay the maximum reparations to victims of the residential ‘school’ system. What could have been a moment of national unity ha now become a stain on Canadian society. Then, newly elected Liberal MP George Chahal in Calgary was caught stealing Conservative campaign literature from the door on a home security camera. In a test of personal ethics, George fails miserably. A new report from the Canadian Business Development Corporation says that 52% of small and medium businesses are struggling with a ‘labour shortage’. Apparently we need to educate the capitalists about supply and demand.

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week we’re joined by writer and National Post columnist Sabrina Maddeaux & activist and National Post columnist Adam Zivo to explore what will define the upcoming session of Parliament, and if real action on housing will, a key election issue for all parties will make the agenda. Then, we cover the call for a woman to be appointed Minister of Defence — will it happen and can it change the toxic culture of the Canadian Armed Forces? Finally, we discuss Annamie Paul’s exit from leadership, what is the future of the Green Party and how did sexism, racism, and antisemitism play into her challenges?

About Sabrina Maddeaux

Sabrina Maddeaux is a National Magazine Award-winning writer and editor. Her work strives to spark meaningful discussions on topics from politics to pop culture, finance and feminism.

Sabrina is a freelance columnist for the National Post, where she’s known for her bold opinions and has been referred to as the paper’s “resident pissed-off millennial.” She covered Canada’s 44th federal election for the paper full-time, with daily written and video columns that often trended online and appeared on the paper’s front page.

Her work has also appeared in the Globe and Mail, Vox, Refinery29, Toronto Star, FASHION Magazine, ELLE Canada, Toronto Sun, NOW Magazine, Bay Street Bull and many other publications.

About Adam Zivo

Adam Zivo is a regular columnist at the National Post, an activist having previously consulted with the Canadian Armed Forces on LGBTQ+ issues, and former Junior Research Fellow at the NATO Association of Canada focusing in the areas of cyber and information warfare and social media manipulation.

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The courts lift the injunction at Fairy Creek, but not without some harsh criticism of the RCMP. Can this moment lead to necessary conversations on police reform? Then, Democracy Watch files a lawsuit to prevent another snap election without a vote of non-confidence. When might the next election be and who will be ready? Speaking of leaders, Annamie Paul resigned with some very powerful words. Will the sexism, racism, and antisemitism she alleges be ignored?

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Remember the promise of the early internet? It was a network of information sharing that would free us from corporate control, allow for free sharing of ideas and information, and revolutionize the world. Then, through gentrification and copying of capital, it became a vehicle controlled by capital, serving as a tool to advertise, sell, and message to us. Author, professor, and researcher Jessa Lingel joins us to discuss reclaiming our digital freedom and a vision for a better digital commons.

Links

Get The Gentrification of the Internet

About Jessa Lingel

Jessa Lingel is an associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, where she studies digital culture, looking for the ways that relationships to technology can show us gaps in power or possibilities for social change. She received her Ph.D. in Communication and Information from Rutgers University. She has an M.L.I.S. from Pratt Institute and an M.A. from New York University.

Lingel’s research focuses on three key areas: alterity and appropriation, and investigations of how information and technology is altered, tinkered with, subverted, and articulated by marginalized groups; politics of infrastructure, where systems of categorization, organization, and design can reveal underlying ideologies and logics; and technological activism as a way of exploring how socio-technical practices can contribute to projects of social justice.

In her activist work, Lingel concentrates on prison abolition, libraries as vehicles for DIY education, and local access to mental health resources.

About the The Gentrification of the Internet

The internet has become a battleground. Although it was unlikely to live up to the hype and hopes of the 1990s, only the most skeptical cynics could have predicted the World Wide Web as we know it today: commercial, isolating, and full of, even fueled by, bias. This was not inevitable. The Gentrification of the Internet argues that much like our cities, the internet has become gentrified, dominated by the interests of business and capital rather than the interests of the people who use it. Jessa Lingel uses the politics and debates of gentrification to diagnose the massive, systemic problems blighting our contemporary internet: erosions of privacy and individual ownership, small businesses wiped out by wealthy corporations, the ubiquitous paywall. But there are still steps we can take to reclaim the heady possibilities of the early internet. Lingel outlines actions that internet activists and everyday users can take to defend and secure more protections for the individual and to carve out more spaces of freedom for the people—not businesses—online.

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Now that the election is behind us, it’s back to politics as usual. That means disappointments are bountiful! In a shocker to no one, disgraced and disavowed Liberal Kevin Vuong won’t step down. Then, Manitoba is about to get a new Premier! Spoiler alert, it’s going to be a social conservative or a likely social conservative! And, Hydro Québec pens a multi-billion dollar deal showing just how profitable publicly owned business can be.

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change-makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week, we’re joined by journalist, activist, and Green Party of Canada leadership candidate Dimitri Lascaris and broadcaster and columnist Andrew Lawton to go around the horn. After Monday's results, was the election worth it? In a campaign that was mired in malaise, are the leaders of the parties vulnerable? Who will be there to take their place? Then we cover the lowest turnout in Canadian history — what lead to it and how do we fix it? We talk PPC, the rising tide of anger, the Conservatives' red/blue Tory divide, and lessons learned from election 44.

About Dimitri Lascaris

Dimitri Lascaris is a lawyer, journalist, and activist, and was a candidate in the last federal Green Party leadership race in Canada. He is also a longtime contributor and current board member at The Real News.

About Andrew Lawton

Andrew Lawton is a broadcaster and columnist. Currently, he is a fellow at True North and a weekly columnist for Loonie Politics. His written work has been published across the world, including in the Washington Post, the National Post, the Toronto Sun, the Edmonton Sun, and Global News. Andrew has appeared as a commentator on CBC, CTV, TVO, CTS, and on BBC World. Andrew ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in Ontario’s 2018 provincial election.

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How does a radical kid from Toronto end up running a public policy institute in Alberta? It’s just the path of life for Gordon Laxer. Gordon’s work took him to the belly of the beast, fighting for climate action in the heartland of oil & gas, and advocating for a renewed insurgency effort within the NDP — an effort that earned him a blacklisting from the party for his leadership in the Waffle. We discuss his life, his other, his work, and everything in between.

Links

Gordon’s website

The Parkland Institute

About Gordon Laxer

Gordon Laxer is the founding Director and former head of Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Parkland is a non-corporate research institute that does public policy research to serve the public interest. When the Progressive Conservatives ruled Alberta under Ralph Klein, the Globe and Mailcalled Parkland Alberta’s ‘unofficial opposition’. Parkland’s mission has been to change the political culture of Alberta.

Laxer is a Political Economist and professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, and the author of After the Sands: Energy and Ecological Security for Canadians (Sept 2015) Douglas & McIntyre. Ge has authored or edited five other books, including Open for Business: The Roots of Foreign Ownership in Canada (Oxford Uni Press), which received the John Porter Award for best book written about Canada, and have published over 50 journal articles and refereed book chapters and reports.

He was the Principal Investigator of a $1.9 million research project: Neoliberal Globalism and its Challengers: Reclaiming the Commons in the Semi-periphery (2000-2006).

He is a socially-engaged, public intellectual. His op eds have been published in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Edmonton Journal, the Calgary Herald, the Montreal Gazette, the Vancouver Sun, the Province(Vancouver), the Winnipeg Free Press, the Victoria Times Colonist, the Hill Times, the Saint John Chronicle Herald, the St. John’s Telegram, Canadian Dimension, and other publications. He has been interviewed a number of times on venues such as the CBC’s The Current, As it Happens, and the House, and served on the board of the Council of Canadians from 2004 to 2009.

About the Parkland Institute

Parkland Institute is an Alberta-wide, non-partisan research centre situated within the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta.

Parkland Institute studies economic, social, cultural, and political issues facing Albertans and Canadians, using the perspective of political economy. The Institute shares the results of its research widely and promotes discussion of the issues its research raises.

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If the last 36 days of New Left Radio have been a vivisection of the election as it happened, consider this the autopsy of it’s fetid, putrid corpse. Not much has changed, but now we’re facing a whole new world. What did we learn? Who’s at the end of a knife when it comes to their leadership? Will we ever change?

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This is it folks, the big day is here.... It's Roll Up the Rim to Win! Wait, it's also E-Day. We speculate, prognosticate, and foresee what the day has in store. One big prediction though, not much will change as a result of this election.

Now, just go vote!

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In the waning days of the election, the parties are bringing out fresh new celebrity faces to endorse their message…. of Chrétien, Mulroney, and Broadbent. It’s campaign 1993 y’all!

Erin O’Toole has tried to position his Conservatives as friendly to labour, but labour isn’t buying what he’s selling. No matter how hard he tries, his history paints a picture that should give working people pause.

Trudeau, O’Toole, and Singh have all now said that the debate commission should apologize about the Bill 21 question it asked of Yves-François Blanchet at the English language debate. Are votes in Québec more important than free political debate and justice for religious minorities?

We profile Hawa Mire, NDP hopeful for York South-Weston, in the Candidate Corner! Join us this Sunday at 3pm ET to make some calls in a final push to send her to Ottawa!

Links

Connect with Hawa’s campaign

Signup to call on Sunday at 3pm ET

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week, we’re joined by Washington Post contributing columnist David Moscrop & economist and National Post columnist Rupa Subramanya to discuss what’s being mostly ignored by the mainstream press. Another minority government looks to be all but certain, with it, will electoral reform make a comeback? With the ascendency of the PPC, has the culture war arrived in Canada? Why are the major parties ignoring the economic plight of Canadians? We debate it all and more on this week’s Counterpoint.

Articles Mentioned

Moving beyond the centrist consensus in Election 44 - David Moscrop, Canadian Dimension

The People's Party of Canada's rise is more complicated than anti-Trudeau rage - Rupa Subramanya, National Post

Canadians are angry, and the PPC stand to benefit - Joe Roberts, Ricochet

About David Moscrop

David Moscrop is a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, the host of the podcast Open to Debate, and the author of "Too Dumb for Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones."

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About Rupa Subramanya

Rupa Subramanya is an economist, Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation, and columnist for the National Post and Nikkei Asia. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and The Globe and Mail, and she is co-author of the best-selling book, Indianomix.

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News from Northern Ontario is a depressing wake up call for Canadian politics. The attack on Liberal candidate Marc Serré is just the latest escalation of unacceptable political violence. Why is this happening? Where is it coming from? Who is to blame?

In a shocking pre-release clip for tonight in-depth Face to Face on CBCNN, Annamie Paul says she is considering stepping down as leader after the election. What is the future of the Green Party with or without Paul at the helm?

With misinformation and conspiracies plaguing our politics, how can we hope to move forward? What is the path away from QAnon and towards sanity?

Then, we feature Green Party hopeful for Vancouver Quadra, Devyani Singh. A climate scientist and leading voice on climate action, Singh is in a fight against a sitting conservative Liberal for the future of our society and planet.

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You've read his explosive columns calling for Doug Ford's resignation and calling Trump a fascist, now get to know the man behind the words. We're joined by Washington Post Contributing Columnist, political theorist, author, and now NLR Counterpoint panelist, David Moscrop. We discuss the origins of his political formation and the family and educational path that led to his political viewpoint. Then, we cover socialism in Canada, how it manifests, and how to position it in our work, his book Too Dumb for Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones, and how to make structural change in a political world that is fundamentally Liberal.

Links

Buy Too Dumb for Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones

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About David Moscrop

Dr. David Moscrop is a political theorist, former Vanier Canada Scholar, and former Postdoctoral Fellow with the Scholarly Communication Lab. His recent work has looked at why political pundits share scholarly research online and political communication online. In 2019, he published his first book: Too Dumb for Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones. Previously, he has written on democratic deliberation.

Alongside his scholarly work, Dr. Moscrop is a contributing columnist with the Washington Post, a frequent contributor to Maclean's Magazine, and a commentator on Canadian politics for television, radio, and print journalism. He is also the host of Open To Debate, a longform current issues podcast.

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We’re in the home stretch of Election 44 with just a week to go and the campaigns are taking wild shots to see what sticks. Remember the SNC Lavalin affair? No? Don’t worry, it’s hard to keep track with the myriad of ethics accusations since then. We’ll, it’s in the news again.

Francois Legault kind of didn’t not endorse the Conservatives. Will it make an impact in Quebec one way or the other?

Speaking of endorsements, in a shocker, former Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes outright endorsed her local Tory. How will it be received by the public?

In the Candidate Corner, we profile NDP hopeful for the Yukon, Lisa Vollans-Leduc. The riding is extremely competitive for the NDP and Lisa’s experience as in public policy helps her to understand how to craft policy in Ottawa that would be truly transformational for Yukoners.

Links

Volunteer & Donate to elect Lisa Vollans-Leduc

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Débat des Chefs is in the books and it was a SNOOZE. We discuss the night, the ups and downs, and what the effect might be on the campaigns. Since we recorded before the English debate, we make some predictions… we’re we right?

Then, the Conservative platform promises a boatload of new healthcare spending — not so fast, it looks like it’s all smoke and mirrors. What will the stories do to healthcare if elected? Can we trust them?

Then, we feature NDP hopeful for Oshawa, Shailene Panylo. Shailene is in a very competitive race and is the real deal. Show your support by volunteering and donating today.

Links

Connect with Shailene’s Campaign

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week, co-founder and editor of Ricochet Media, Ethan Cox & writer, actor, and journalist Rob Salerno to go around the horn on what surprises the home stretch of this election may have in store now that Canadians are tuning in. We discuss the assault rifle ban debate, is it real or manufactured? Can we trust either Trudeau or O’Toole? Then, we prognosticate on what lessons we’ll learn the day after the ballots are counted and the future of Maxime Bernier’s PPC

About Ethan Cox

An editor and co-founder with Ricochet, Ethan is currently studying police misconduct in Canada as a 2021 Michener-Deacon Fellow. His writing has appeared in many national and international outlets, and he has won three national awards for investigative journalism. Ethan is also a television pundit in Montreal, a strategist for good causes and a board member with the Quebec Community Newspaper Association.

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About Rob Salerno

Rob Salerno is a writer, actor, and journalist based in Los Angeles, California, and Toronto, Canada. His preoccupations as a writer include social justice and probing issues that polite people wouldn’t touch.

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Rob’s work has been published in VICE, Advocate, National Post, Metro Toronto, NOW Magazine, #CdnCult Times, FAB, Homorazzi.com, Eye Weekly, and Outlooks and he’s appeared as a commentator on CTV News and Sun News Network. He is best known for his work as a reporter and columnist with Xtra, Canada’s Gay & Lesbian newspaper, now DailyXtra.com, where he covers such topics as: national, provincial, and municipal politics; community organizations and activism; human rights law; crime; media analysis; HIV/AIDS; and immigration and refugee issues. He is well-known in the LGBT community for fearlessly sharing his unconventional opinions on topics of the day.

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Justin Trudeau was assaulted in London, Ontario in an act of political violence. No matter what you think of him or his politics, this is not acceptable. An anger that has been festering in Canadian politics is exploding onto the scene and the People's Party is rising in the polls. What does this mean for the Canadian discourse? What does it mean for the future of Canadian democracy?

Don't discount the People's Party. They are here. They are serious. They are not going away. It is a mistake for the status quo and Canadians to think they are a joke. We can stop them now if we take them seriously and respond.

The Liberals have missed the point on housing. Their plan is weak, their solution is lukewarm, and it doesn't address the underlying concerns. We discuss how to solve the problem and what their failure means.

We highlight NDP hopeful for Kitchener Centre, Beisan Zubi in the Candidate Corner! Beisan has a truly unique race with the Liberal dropping out, this one is hot folks!

Links

Connect with Beisan Zubi's Campaign

Here’s why I never reported sexual harassment while working on Parliament Hill by Beisan Zubi

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With the longest continuous occupation in the world, the movement for justice in Israel/Palestine and Palestinian liberation has been a strong voice for decades. The events of the early summer - the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah and the brutal violence inflicted on the people of Gaza seems to have changed the paradigm in North America, with millions pouring into the streets in solidarity with Palestinians and demanding a change to the brutal and dehumanizing occupation. We're joined by Aaron Lakoff of Independent Jewish Voices, and Dalia Al-Masri of the Palestinian Youth Movement to discuss the shifting landscape, the Canadian response, and what we can do to support a just resolution in the region.

Links

Independent Jewish Voices

Palestinian Youth Movement

Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions Movement

BDS List

About Independent Jewish Voices

We are a group of Jews in Canada from diverse backgrounds, occupations and affiliations who share a strong commitment to social justice and universal human rights. We come together in the belief that the broad spectrum of opinion among the Jewish population of this country is not reflected by those institutions that claim to represent Jewish communities as a whole. We further believe that individuals and groups within all communities should feel free to express their views on any issue of public concern without incurring accusations of disloyalty.

We have therefore resolved to promote the expression of alternative Jewish voices, particularly in respect of the grave situation in the Middle East, which threatens the future of Palestinians and Israelis as well as the stability of the whole region.

About Palestinian Youth Movement

The Palestinian Youth Movement (“PYM”) is a transnational, independent, grassroots movement of young Palestinians in Palestine and in exile worldwide as a result of the ongoing Zionist colonization and occupation of our homeland. Our belonging to Palestine and our aspirations for justice and liberation motivate us to assume an active role as a young generation in our national struggle for the liberation of our homeland and people. Irrespective of our different political, cultural and social backgrounds, we strive to revive a tradition of pluralistic commitment toward our cause to ensure a better future, characterized by freedom and justice on a social and political level, for ourselves and subsequent generations.

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We dive into the Liberal platform, what’s in it and what’s glaringly not. After calling this election, having months to prepare, and honing their policy, the Liberals seems to be flailing when it comes to vision. We’re left with a hodgepodge of left over promises from their previous campaigns that seem to have been left unfinished. Why should we think 2021 is any different?

Last night, we had our first debate in TVA’s Face-Á-Face. The French language debate had some high stakes for The BQ’s Yves-François Blanchet after a gaffe prone start to their race. Will his performance help his party in the polls? Justin Trudeau seems intent on making this election a referendum on the unvaccinated and he doubled down during the face off. Is anyone buying it?

We profile NDP candidate Shawna Lewkowitz in the Candidate Corner Shawna is a tireless advocate for working Canadians and is running an incredibly tight race in London West, a long time Liberal riding. Let’s help Shawna paint London West orange!

Links

Volunteer to elect Shawna Lewkowitz

Donate to Shawna’s campaign

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Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

This week, we’re joined by journalist, activist, and Green Party of Canada leadership candidate Dimitri Lascaris and National Post columnist Adam Zivo to explore the recent protests against Justin Trudeau. Do they go to far and what do they mean in the broader context of our politics? Then, we veer into the role of media, bias, and the Canadian media landscape before finishing off with a discussion on the Conservative plan to scrap the carbon tax in favour of cap and trade. What matters and what doesn’t in this debate?

About Dimitri Lascaris

Dimitri Lascaris is a lawyer, journalist, and activist, and was a candidate in the last federal Green Party leadership race in Canada. He is also a longtime contributor and current board member at The Real News.

About Adam Zivo

Adam Zivo is a regular columnist at the National Post, an activist having previously consulted with the Canadian Armed Forces on LGBTQ+ issues, and former Junior Research Fellow at the NATO Association of Canada focusing in the areas of cyber and information warfare and social media manipulation.

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Goodbyes are hard, hellos might be harder.

Off the top, Marxists love to hate social democracy. Marxism may be the dominant stream of socialist thought, but is it the only way?

Today marks goodbye for Manitoba Premier Brain Pallister who succumbed to the implosion of his poll numbers and the turncoating of his political allies. After months of speculation about what happens in the next Manitoba election, one thing is clear — Brian Pallister won't be a part of it.

Today also marks the first hello we'll get from the Liberal platform. What can we expect? Will it be chock full of surprises or just more of the same? Get ready to dig into whatever is released and tp tear it apart with us!

In the candidate corner, rather than simply profile a candidate, we're asking you to join a national day of action on September 11th with Joe & Rodger. We'll be phone banking for NDP candidate Matthew Green from Hamilton Centre to help send him back to the House. Matthew is a friend of the show, a champion of the people, and a tireless advocate for a better Canada. Join us!

Links

Join Joe & Rodger for a national day of action for NDP champion Matthew Green!

Follow Joe on Twitter

Follow Rodger on Twitter

Stay connected with the latest from New Left Radio by joining our mailing list today!

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We’re joined by Geo Maher, author of the new book A World Without Police to explore the origins of policing in North America, the very real and very dangerous hold that policing us on government and society. Maher tells us that the path towards abolition and not reform is not only realistic, but necessary, if we hope to build a more safe and secure society for all.

Links

A World Without Police by Geo Maher

About A World Without Police

Tens of millions of people poured onto the streets for Black Lives Matter, bringing with them a wholly new idea of public safety, common security, and the delivery of justice, communicating that vision in the fiery vernacular of riot, rebellion, and protest. A World Without Police transcribes these new ideas—written in slogans and chants, over occupied bridges and hastily assembled barricades—into a compelling, must-read manifesto for police abolition.

Compellingly argued and lyrically charged, A World Without Police offers concrete strategies for confronting and breaking police power, as a first step toward building community alternatives that make the police obsolete. Surveying the post-protest landscape in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Oakland, as well as the people who have experimented with policing alternatives at a mass scale in Latin America, Maher details the institutions we can count on to deliver security without the disorganizing interventions of cops: neighborhood response networks, community-based restorative justice practices, democratically organized self-defense projects, and well-resourced social services.

A World Without Police argues that abolition is not a distant dream or an unreachable horizon but an attainable reality. In communities around the world, we are beginning to glimpse a real, lasting justice in which we keep us safe.

About Geo Maher

Geo Maher has previously taught at Vassar College, San Quentin State Prison, and the Venezuelan School of Planning in Caracas. He is the author of five books, including We Created Chavez, Decolonizing Dialectics, Building the Commune, Spirals of Revolt, and World Without Police.

Stay connected with the latest from New Left Radio by joining our mailing list today!

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Erin O’Toole and his Conservatives are fighting a very smart battle in this election, outflanking the Liberals to the left on working class issues and stealing the NDP’s thunder. The biggest loser in this battle is Liberals who increasingly become the party of the elite and out of touch. It’s a smart strategy.

Political battles are won and lost on the terrain of culture, and O’Toole is expertly appealing to the cultural and class divides in Canada, foraging a new working-class conservatism which appreciates the quickness to demand and end to flags at half staff in recognition of the residential ‘school’ atrocities, while also speaking to the economic concerns of Canadian workers. The left better pay attention, the Conservatives are out to eat our lunch.

Then, we profile Peter Julian in the candidates corner! A champion for the issues of working Canadians and a fierce critic of the all to cozy relationship between corporate Canada and government, Peter needs our help to go back to parliament and to continue the fight!

Links

The Broadbent Institute announced Jen Hassum as Executive Director

Erin O’Toole: Don’t laugh, populism can win by Joe Roberts

A pro-labour Conservative party invading NDP turf is hardly surprising by Adam Zivo

Donate to Peter Julian’s campaign!

Volunteer for Peter’s re-election!

Stay connected with the latest from New Left Radio by joining our mailing list today!

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Our long awaited and often plugged new Thursday format is finally here.Each week, we’ll bring you a panel discussion with Canada’s leading journalists, columnists, politicos, and change makers discussing what’s happening in the newsphere.

To kick it all off, we’re joined by Washington Post contributing columnist David Moscrop and columnist and commentator Tom Parkin to explore key takeaways from the first 10 days of election 44, what can be learned from the shocker in Nova Scotia, and ask the question, can the NDP maintain their current momentum between now and September 20th. We round out the conversation with the panels insights into issues that we should be discussing in this campaign and aren’t.

About David Moscrop

David Moscrop is a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, the host of the podcast Open to Debate, and the author of "Too Dumb for Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones."

About Tom Parkin

Tom Parkin is a frequent columnist and commentator with a bluntly social democratic point of view — imagining a government that works for the Canadian people.

Every week, Tom debates the top political issues on TV and radio shows — on a broad range of issues and on political strategy.

Stay connected with the latest from New Left Radio by joining our mailing list today!

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Election 44 just doesn’t quit with the twists and turns. Yesterday, Erin O’Toole made what might be a fatal error, and a massive gift for the Liberals m, announcing publicly that he supports a ‘two-tiered’ healthcare system. Canadians overwhelmingly oppose privatization of healthcare — will O’Toole’s embrace of a ‘pro-choice’ stance make waves?

We’ve covered policy platforms as they’ve been released, and yesterday we got the news straight from the mouth of Green Party leader Annamie Paul, if you want to know the parties stances on the issues — just google it. Are the Greens right to avoid a full platform or is this yet another sign of the deep challenges within the party?

In the Candidate’s Corner we profile Green Party Candidate Craig Gravelle, seeking to represent the good people of the Nickel Belt.

Links

Learn more & donate to Craig’s campaign

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Dennis Kucinich’s career has been the epitome of the unexpected. Beginning with his election as mayor of Cleveland in 1977 at the age of 31 and dubbed ‘the Boy Mayor,’ Kucinich has had a long career that has taken him fro the halls of power to the grips of poverty and back again, from the halls of Congress to the campaign trail for president and governor, and now back to where it all began in a campaign for mayor of Cleveland. We sit down with Dennis to discuss his career, his roots, his new book, and how he manages to stay grounded in fighting for what he believes against all odds and in the face of attacks from everyone from mafia hit men to the general public.

Links

Dennis Kucinich for Mayor

Cleveland’s abc 5 Coverage of the campaign

The saga of Dennis Kucinich: When one man stood up to corporate power - review at salon.com

The Division of Light & Power - Get the book

Dennis’ Bio from kucinich.com

Dennis Kucinich's roots are in Cleveland, and his priorities have always been for the love and betterment of a city that gave him a life he never thought possible. His father was a truck driver, his mother a homemaker, and Dennis led as the eldest of seven siblings in a household that knew the struggle not uncommon to the average Clevelander today.

Even today, Dennis can hear the meager pennies clinking across the kitchen table and the muffled voices of his parents toiling over the next month's rent. Having lived in seventeen different locations in Cleveland, even living out of the family car, Dennis intimately understands the experience of poverty too many citizens of Cleveland live through today.

Dennis worked many jobs to finance his way through college. Dennis earned his Bachelor's Degree and Master's Degree at Case Western Reserve University with hard work and determination.

Elected to Cleveland City Council in 1969 and then elected Mayor in 1977, Dennis was known as “The Boy Mayor '' and the youngest person elected mayor of a large city in the United States. In his time as Mayor, Dennis fought against corruption, corporate interests, and assassination attempts to deliver the rights, needs, and expectations that residents deserved. 

Despite his commitment to the people, he was cast out by the banks and corporate interests in the 1979 election. Years later, Cleveland City Council would recognize Dennis for his work as Mayor and how he fought to keep Muny Light, now known as Cleveland Public Power, in the hands of the people of Cleveland, saving the city over 195 million dollars in taxes, utility rates, and preserved hundreds of local union jobs.

Leaving public life for a time, Dennis went on a spiritual journey to rediscover himself and grow from his time as mayor.

In 1996 Dennis was given a chance to serve the people once again when he was elected to the U.S House of Representatives for Ohio's 10th Congressional District, where he served for 16 years, bringing his people-first policies front and center in the halls of Congress. Then, in 2004 and 2008, taking those same policies on the campaign trail in the race...]]>Fan of the show? Support us on Patreon!

Dennis Kucinich’s career has been the epitome of the unexpected. Beginning with his election as mayor of Cleveland in 1977 at the age of 31 and dubbed ‘the Boy Mayor,’ Kucinich has had a long career that has taken him fro the halls of power to the grips of poverty and back again, from the halls of Congress to the campaign trail for president and governor, and now back to where it all began in a campaign for mayor of Cleveland. We sit down with Dennis to discuss his career, his roots, his new book, and how he manages to stay grounded in fighting for what he believes against all odds and in the face of attacks from everyone from mafia hit men to the general public.

Links

Dennis Kucinich for Mayor

Cleveland’s abc 5 Coverage of the campaign

The saga of Dennis Kucinich: When one man stood up to corporate power - review at salon.com

The Division of Light & Power - Get the book

Dennis’ Bio from kucinich.com

Dennis Kucinich's roots are in Cleveland, and his priorities have always been for the love and betterment of a city that gave him a life he never thought possible. His father was a truck driver, his mother a homemaker, and Dennis led as the eldest of seven siblings in a household that knew the struggle not uncommon to the average Clevelander today.

Even today, Dennis can hear the meager pennies clinking across the kitchen table and the muffled voices of his parents toiling over the next month's rent. Having lived in seventeen different locations in Cleveland, even living out of the family car, Dennis intimately understands the experience of poverty too many citizens of Cleveland live through today.

Dennis worked many jobs to finance his way through college. Dennis earned his Bachelor's Degree and Master's Degree at Case Western Reserve University with hard work and determination.

Elected to Cleveland City Council in 1969 and then elected Mayor in 1977, Dennis was known as “The Boy Mayor '' and the youngest person elected mayor of a large city in the United States. In his time as Mayor, Dennis fought against corruption, corporate interests, and assassination attempts to deliver the rights, needs, and expectations that residents deserved. 

Despite his commitment to the people, he was cast out by the banks and corporate interests in the 1979 election. Years later, Cleveland City Council would recognize Dennis for his work as Mayor and how he fought to keep Muny Light, now known as Cleveland Public Power, in the hands of the people of Cleveland, saving the city over 195 million dollars in taxes, utility rates, and preserved hundreds of local union jobs.

Leaving public life for a time, Dennis went on a spiritual journey to rediscover himself and grow from his time as mayor.

In 1996 Dennis was given a chance to serve the people once again when he was elected to the U.S House of Representatives for Ohio's 10th Congressional District, where he served for 16 years, bringing his people-first policies front and center in the halls of Congress. Then, in 2004 and 2008, taking those same policies on the campaign trail in the race for President of the United States. He championed many of the beliefs that encompass some of the most popular policies today on those campaigns.

Now, all these years later, Dennis is returning to where his life of public service began. He has answered the call because he sees the city he loves struggling with many of the same issues that it has always faced. 

Cleveland, like many cities, has its issues. The ravaging of the Covid-19 pandemic revealed a city steeped with a pay-to-play environment, with a lack of vision for Cleveland. A new vision will once again make Cleveland THE BEST LOCATION IN THE NATION.

The background of Dennis Kucinich has shaped his life and led him into the arena one more time to better the lives of everyday residents of Cleveland, guiding him into the 2021 CLEVELAND MAYORAL RACE.

Cleveland and Cleveland leadership can no longer operate on the mentality of East Side or West Side. It must act as ONE Cleveland, united in building a city for all. To have leadership that works to represent those with the deepest needs and not simply those with the deepest pockets—helping foster leadership and community engagement that can bring about economic and social growth to the city.

It will take a steady, experienced, healing hand to lead Cleveland above and beyond.

To achieve all this and more, it will take a people-powered movement that will be able to LIGHT UP CLEVELAND and bring a BETTER AND BRIGHTER future to the city of Cleveland!

Stay connected with the latest from New Left Radio by joining our mailing list today!

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Season 4 is here!

Yesterday marked 10 years since we lost Jack Layton. Agree with him or not, he was giant in the world of Canadian politics and his impact and influence is still felt, and missed.

The Liberals seemed to have grossly misjudged the ease to which they would sail through this campaign. They seem to be regrouping on strategy and rolled out their ‘platform’ — spoiler alert, it’s policy bullet points and literally nothing we haven’t heard from them yet. Did they botch this whole thing?

We look at the current polling and ask, can the NDP continue their upswing?

Links

Liberal ‘platform’

Like the show? Support us on Patreon at the ‘solidarity’ level and join the NLR Bookclub powered by Verso Books and you’ll get a hand selected in your mailbox each month!

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The Liberals are making promises on the campaign trail. The promises, like their politics are stale and recycled versions of promises made and broken before — politics that have cost Canadian lives during the pandemic. Should anyone believe them now?

Derek Sloan, Canada’s most ridiculous political figure is parachuting in to Alberta to run his right-wing campaign in a VERY blue district. Can he pull it off?

NDP hopeful for Lakeland, Des Bissonnette joins Rodger in the Candidate Corner to talk about their race and the challenges they’ve had to face simply to run.

Links

Donate to Des’ Campaign

Follow Des on Twitter

Like the show? Support us on Patreon at the ‘solidarity’ level and join the NLR Bookclub powered by Verso Books and you’ll get a hand selected in your mailbox each month!

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Elections Canada made a couple of flabbergasting announcements yesterday — poll workers won’t be required to be vaccinated and mail in ballots won’t begin to be counted until the day after the election. With public health at risk and the integrity of our election at stake, are we setting ourselves up for US election style shenanigans?

Parties and the press love to blabber about platforms but should they? The Liberals, Bloc, and Greens have yet to release them — and why should they? Do platforms matter in the age of our interconnected politics?

In the Candidate Corner, we’re joined by NDP hopeful for Etobicoke-Lakeshore Sasha Kane. Sasha tells us a bit about her motivation to run and what’s at stake for the riding.

Links

Apply for a Mail-In Ballot

Volunteer & Donate to Sasha’s Campaign

Follow Sasha on Twitter

Like the show? Support us on Patreon at the ‘solidarity’ level and join the NLR Bookclub powered by Verso Books and you’ll get a hand selected in your mailbox each month!

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The results of the Nova Scotia election were a stunner. After calling an early election to seek a majority, Iain Rankin and the NS Liberals were soundly defeated in a whopper of an upset. The Progressive Conservatives will now form a majority government and the results have to leave the federal Liberals wondering what this means for them come September 20th.

The NDP policy platform, Ready for Better, has a lot to like. It’s an inspiring policy plan, but like always, there’s room for improvement. We look at some of the highlights and discuss a few places where the party could stand to be more bold.

Links

Solutions for Nova Scotians - PC Platform

Ready for Better - NDP Platform

Listen to our interview w/ Konstantine Malakos

Volunteer with Konstantine

Donate to Konstantine’s Campaign

Like the show? Support us on Patreon at the ‘solidarity’ level and join the NLR Bookclub powered by Verso Books and you’ll get a hand selected in your mailbox each month!

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Today’s election coverage has elections x2 for you! Today is E-Day in Nova Scotia where the Liberals have been sliding in the polling and the opposition has been edging closer. Will Iain Rankin eat a slice of humble pie for calling an early election to grab power? Will it send a message to a bow beardless, campaign trail ready Trudeau?

Platforms are almost always long, boring documents that no one actually reads. The Conservatives have broken the mould with a magazine complete with a GQ-esque cover of leader Erin O’Toole. It’s pretty laughable, but what’s even more laughable is what’s inside.

Links

Listen to our interview w/ Lindsay Mathyssen

Volunteer to re-elect Lindsay Mathyssen

Donate to Lindsay’s Campaign

Like the show? Support us on Patreon at the ‘solidarity’ level and join the NLR Bookclub powered by Verso Books and you’ll get a hand selected in your mailbox each month!

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After months of speculation — here we are. With an election upon us, what are the issues and messaging that will shape the debate? Where are the party leaders and what are they doing today? What does the path to victory look like from here? We break it down and look forward to what the next 35 days hold.

Links

Wealth Tax Debate - Joe Roberts & Franco Terrazano on the KNCW’s Mike Smyth show

Volunteer with Brian Chang’s campaign

Donate to Brian Chang’s campaign

Like the show? Support us on Patreon at the ‘solidarity’ level and join the NLR Bookclub powered by Verso Books and you’ll get a hand selected in your mailbox each month!

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Here it is folks — Trudeau’s electoral dysfunction is finally over. The Liberals are busily leaking to the media that an election call is coming on Sunday and we’ll be heading to the polls September 20th. The NDP policy platform is live, and the party is positioning itself in contrast to the Liberals. Will it be enough?

Then, we aren’t speculating, we in a fourth wave of COVID-19. Will the Liberals and the Conservatives agree to the commitment the NDP made to ensure all candidates are fully vaccinated before they begin campaigning or will they put public health at risk?

Links

Ready for Better - NDP Policy Platform

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Ontario shows it’s disdain for workers through a diminishing WSIB program at the expense of workers. Is this attack on the social safety net neoliberalism or just capitalism in general?

The Nova Scotia NDP is surging in support in provincial election polls and the Liberal government is suffering from an all time low approval rating. With over a third of voters undecided, it’s anyone’s race!

We now know statistically who the Canada’s vaccine hesitant are and they ain’t Maxime Bernier stans. It appears middle aged white women in Ontario who Liberal are the ones we should outraged by, you know, besides for the obvious reasons.

Links

Volunteer for the NSNDP

Books

The Origin of Capitalism by Ellen Meiksins Wood

Evolutionary Socialism by Eduard Bernstein

Like the show? Support us on Patreon at the ‘solidarity’ level and join the NLR Bookclub powered by Verso Books and you’ll get a hand selected in your mailbox each month!

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The drama with Annamie Paul’s leadership just. won’t. stop. Two more GPC senior staff are out in the latest round of cullings. Could all this have been avoided? What does it mean for the GPC in an inevitable election?

Brian “Bri Guy” Pallister has announced he won’t seek re-election as Premier of Manitoba. Can the party cauterize the wound he’s leaving to have a shot at retaining their control of government? A lot depends on their choices moving forward.

Affordable housing is a definitive issue across Canada. As an election nears, the parties are crafting their messaging on housing, employing the same neoliberal policy solutions that got us here in the first place. Is there a breakaway solution? Where will it come from?

Links

Centre for Canadian Progress

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Whether it's telling us that we need oil& gas money to transitions to clean energy, crying jurisdiction, or ignoring agreements made with Indigenous communities, it seems that the Liberal government is addicted to nonsense.

On today's drop, we cover the government's latest plea for public support on pipelines, the latest province to sign on to the government's $10 a day childcare plan, and the latest from the UN lightly suggesting that 'social contracts' are needed with Indigenous communities.

Links

Campaign for a United Nations Citizens Assembly

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With the possibility that an election is called today, lots of housekeeping is happening, including the announcement that three Liberal MPs won’t be seeking re-election. That group includes ‘progressive’ MP for Spadina-Fort York, Adam Vaughan. What does this mean for the campaign and for the potential results?

A shocking new Nanos poll says that the majority of Canadians support a boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games. What does this say about Conservative messaging on China and the Liberals strategy to stay mostly mum on foreign policy? Could it factor into the campaign?

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A new report from the Parliamentary Budget Office shows that an investment of $13.7 billion is needed to improve long term care and save lives. Is there any chance it happens?

A damning report from the Commonwealth Fund reinforces what everyone already knows, healthcare in the US is TERRIBLE. The report has some serious implications for Canada too, namely that we aren’t much better.

A memorial to victims of residential “schools” was set on fire in Calgary in an apparent act of hate based vandalism. The dog whistle politics of Alberta conservatives bear some responsibility.

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An ‘increase’ in gun violence in Montréal, that really isn’t really an increase, highlights the affects of poverty and racialization on law enforcement response and spending.

A report from the Senate shows that incarcerated Canadians suffer from human rights abuses while in federal prisons — prisons that warehouse the poor and BIPOC disproportionately.

Once again, Justin Trudeau has been exonerated from an ethics charge and an abuse of power. When will we abolish these systems that hurt Canadians and benefit those in power? How can we?

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Dr. Devyani Singh, the Green hopeful for Vancouver Quadra joins us to discuss her run for MP, the riding, and the very urgent challenge of climate change. We discuss if climate action and capitalism are compatible, the future for workers in a post-oil economy, and just what is happening with the Green Party and the leadership kerfuffle that is looming over the election.

Links

Follow Devyani on Twitter

Devyani’s Bio

Dr. Devyani Singh is a queer woman of colour, a financial analyst and a scientist working on energy and climate policy. She has a Ph.D. in Forestry, an M.B.A. in Finance, and an M.Sc. in Environmental Science. Devyani has worked on global energy policy issues in India on getting clean cooking access to millions of people, with First Nations in the Great Bear Rainforest on sustainable forestry initiatives, and most recently on emissions from oil and gas fracking in Canada. Working with these various stakeholders has shown her the importance of collaboration across government, industry, and Indigenous communities.

Devyani has been a Green supporter for as long as she can remember. As a climate scientist and a woman of colour, the Greens are the only party that reflects her values for an equitable and sustainable future. This is why she chose to run with them for the 2020 Provincial elections - as a candidate from Vancouver-Point Grey. Even though Devyani did not win, she successfully got over 17% of the vote, the strongest result for a Green in this riding to date. Her campaign was successful because she helped raise the voices of those not traditionally represented in politics - BIPOC, queer persons, immigrants, and renters.

Stay connected with the latest from New Left Radio by joining our mailing list today!

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Erin O’Toole and his CPC look like a lost cause. His bubble is bursting fast and the rats at the CPC are eating their own. What do these low expectations mean for O’Toole and how will the Liberals position themselves against the NDP?

Economists are warning that the housing bubble is entering dangerous territory. Will anyone listen? Does anyone care when there’s money to be made? And, how do we fix housing in this country anyway?

For all the headlines that read “Canada’s little known history of slavery” on Emancipation Day, sorry to burst your bubble, but history is whitewashed, and slavery is part of Canada’s past.

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The PM drops big bucks on the Muskrat Falls Dam project in Newfoundland, but just who is his audience and what message is he trying to send?

Manitobans overwhelmingly despise Brian Pallister — now it seems the long knives are out. Stories of intrigue and increasingly bizarre behaviour are making Pallister look more and more like the most paranoid of petty dictators.

Have you heard an election is coming? Elections Canada says it’s ready but according to new polling 37% of the 18,000,000 Canadians that cast a ballot in 2019 says they might vote by mail. Are we headed for US election drama?

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In preparation for our new Thursday format for season four that will bring in you a round table of journalists, columnists, and pundits discussing the news, ideas, and policies In Canada, we’re trying something new.

Each Thursday, we’ll discuss some of the week's most important, thought-provoking, or enraging opinion columns.

Today’s columns are:

To address housing affordability, we need high vacancy taxes - Adam Zivo, National Post

Liberals just don't get it when it comes to Alberta - Joe Oliver, Financial Post

Nova Scotia Liberals steeped in sexism - Rodger Moran, Halifax Chronicle

Stay connected with the latest from New Left Radio by joining our mailing list.

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Erin O’Toole makes big promises on equalization in Newfoundland, with a promise tailor made for Albertans. What’s in store for the future of the Conservative Party?

Justin Trudeau was in New Brunswick yesterday and promised to withhold ‘millions’ in federal transfer payments to the province to compel Premier Blaine Higgs to restore access to women’s health care. When the cameras shut off and the reporters had gone home, a Liberal staffer clarified the actual amount is just over $140,000.

The Bearspaw First Nation is taking the federal government to court for control of its own finances. When will the governments treatment of Indigenous communities match its own rhetoric?

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Glengarry-Prescott-Russell isn’t the average riding and Konstantine Malakos isn’t the average candidate. A progressive, rooted in the values of his upbringing in a working class family, and in a working class town, Konstantine is seeking to serve the people to bring needed change to his community. We sit down with Konstantine to discuss the future of rural Ontario, the depth of the housing crisis, how his lived experience shaped his politics, and the kind of leadership the people of the riding need — and he hopes to bring — in Ottawa.

Links

Federal NDP candidate Malakos to hold town hall on housing crisis June 2

Malakos acclaimed as federal NDP candidate in Glengarry-Prescott-Russell

Support & Connect w/ Konstantine’s Campaign

Konstantine’s Bio

Konstantine is a homesteader, community builder, human rights activist, and is endlessly optimistic that better is not only possible but within reach. Having grown up in Peterborough as a first-generation Canadian who worked in his family’s pizzeria, Konstantine witnessed firsthand the impacts of factory closures on businesses and households. Konstantine is seeking to represent Glengarry-Prescott-Russell in the House of Commons.

Stay connected with the latest from New Left Radio by joining our mailing list today!

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Stephen Harper's pet project, the 'Victims of Communism Memorial,' is overbudget, a burden to the taxpayers, and supported by fascists and neo-Nazis. What does this say about the political posturing on the suffering of others?

A foreign company is seeking tax breaks to pull potash from the earth in Saskatchewan. We talk corporate welfare, the bleak future of resource extraction, and climate action.

The Yukon signs onto the government's plan for $10 a day childcare. What does this program tell us about federal jurisdiction today, and in the future? Will the Liberal argument against compelling the provinces to act fall apart when there's a holdout or two?

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NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is flying high in likability polling, while CPC leader Erin O’Toole — well, he’s not. What else does the polling have to tell us in the interregnum before a fall election?

A Vancouver property developer is proposing a new development with ‘affordable units’ for frontline workers. Is it real or just a ploy?

Then, a wild story of alleged fraud and grifting by an Ontario CEO. Hey, leases of Bentleys, multi-millions dollar personal loans, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in charitable gifts are all par for the course, right?

Stay connected with the latest from New Left Radio by joining our mailing list.

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In preparation for our new Thursday format for season four that will bring in you a round table of journalists, columnists, and pundits discussing the news, ideas, and policies In Canada, we’re trying something new.

Each Thursday, we’ll discuss some of the week's most important, thought-provoking, or enraging opinion columns.

Today’s columns are:

Jeff Bezos' space adventures will benefit us all, so stop the whining - Matt Gurney, National Post

Cubans deserve our support, but the left would rather embrace murderous dictators - Rex Murphy, National Post

The downsides of vaccine passports have been exaggerated - Blake Murdoch, Globe & Mail

Other Links

Jewish Currents Magazine (20% off subscription)

Stay connected with the latest from New Left Radio by joining our mailing list.

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The newsphere is poppin' and NLR Minute has you covered. Liberal darling and former Wall Street/Central Banker, Mark Carney says he won't seek a seat in the House of Commons. But why not Mark?!?

Then, the Nisga'a nation is seeking a $10 billion LNG project in Northern BC, putting the left's values of supporting Indigenous sovereignty and opposing oil & gas extraction at odds. What's the answer?

A new report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue shows that the pandemic was a boon for the Canadian far right. How do we oppose the hate and violence they espouse?

Regressive New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs, often overshadowed by the likes of Doug Ford and Jason Kenney, is doling out millions to billionaires and giving public employees a resounding 'eff you.' Workers are fighting back with a little help from their allies nationwide.

Books Mentioned

A World Without Police by Geo Maher (Get it at the link or by joining the NLR Bookclub!)

Groundings with my Brothers by Walter Rodney

A Future Without Hate or Need by Ester Reiter

Other Links Mentioned

Support the New Brunswick NDP (Residents of any province can help!)

Stay connected with the latest from New Left Radio by joining our mailing list today!

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Born and raised in Northern Ontario, Erika Lougheed knew that government could better serve her community. In order to make it happen, she hit the streets, knocking doors and discussing the pressing issues facing her community. Her hard work and dedication earned her the vote of her community, electing her to East Ferris council. Now, as a candidate for the ONDP, she is seeking to unseat the government of Doug Ford and bring transformative leadership to Nipissing.

Links

North Bay Nugget Article on Erika’s Acclamation

Erika’s opinion piece on housing from Bay Today

Support & Connect w/ Erika’s campaign

Erika’s Bio

Councillor Lougheed has roots throughout Northern Ontario and has happily made East Ferris her permanent home. She has a long history in non-profit management with the United Way, YMCA, and Nipissing University as well as experiences as a wilderness canoe guide, yoga teacher, communications professor, business owner and hobby farmer. You can often find Erika walking through the trails in East Ferris with her family and her Chesapeake Bay Retriever, Agatha and Bulldog, Ronda. She is an active volunteer, aspiring potter, as well as a strong advocate for equity and the environment.

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Then, for all the talk, and all the column inches wasted on the turmoil within the Green Party of Canada, all seems quiet. The party’s Federal Council has cancelled a review of Annamie Paul’s leadership and her membership review. What does it mean for the party and what does it mean for the future of ecosocialism? Dimitri Lascaris and his newly launched Green Left hope it means change.

Resources & Links

Latest a NS election polls numbers

Joe’s column from the Sunday Star

NLR Interview w/ Dimitri Lascaris

The Green Left

Join the New Left Radio Bookclub! Support us on Patreon at the ‘solidarity’ level and receive a curated book each month from our friends at Verso Books, have a chance to submit questions to the author for us to ask on the show, and more!

The pandemic forcing many to work from home gave workers a chance to take a step back and evaluate what is important in their lives. Now, droves of Millennials and Gen Z are leaving their jobs in the search for a better balance and higher wages in what is being called ‘the great resignation.’

The PM has repeatedly recognized that systemic racism exists in Canadian society. Now, a class action lawsuit has been filed by Black public employees seeking to fundamentally address the problem in the public sector. How will the crown battle this in court? Learn more about the action here.

Join the New Left Radio Bookclub! Support us on Patreon at the ‘solidarity’ level and receive a curated book each month from our friends at Verso Books, have a chance to submit questions to the author for us to ask on the show, and more!

Each Thursday, we’ll discuss some of the weeks most important, thought provoking, or enraging opinion columns.

Today’s columns are:

The performative snobbery of social justice invades the supermarket - Jonathan Kay, National Post

More than leadership or policy, it’s the Conservative temperament that’s putting off voters - Andrew Coyne, Globe & Mail

Justin Trudeau and Erin O’Toole are promising 1 million jobs. But both are ignoring a bigger challenge - Heather Scoffield, Toronto Star

Like the show? Support us on Patreon and help us to continue delivering analysis on today’s most important stories from a democratic socialist viewpoint.

Like the show? Support us on Patreon and help us to continue delivering analysis on today’s most important stories from a democratic socialist viewpoint.

Elected in 2019, she’s had a front row seat to the economic, social, and human devastation caused by the regressive politics of Jason Kenney’s UCP government. We discuss the battles of the past two years, and what the future holds.

Each Thursday, we’ll discuss some of the weeks most important, thought provoking, or enraging opinion columns.

Today’s columns are:

High-frequency rail sounds good – but does Via have to run it? - Andrew Coyne, Globe & Mail

324 billion good reasons for Albertans to negotiate a new deal with Canada - David Staples, Edmonton Journal

Canadians expect our governments to do more for those living with disabilities - Rabia Khedr & Guillaume Parent, Toronto Star

Like the show? Support us on Patreon and help us to continue delivering analysis on today’s most important stories from a democratic socialist viewpoint.

Each Thursday, we’ll discuss some of the weeks most important, thought provoking, or enraging opinion columns.

Today’s columns are:

Canada needs its own Declaration of Independence - Peter Donolo, Globe & Mail

It is time to rename British Columbia - Jennifer Cole, Toronto Star

Canada could use Stephen Harper right now — he would never have sued the speaker - Rex Murphy, National Post

Books Mentioned:

Groundings with My Brothers - Walter Rodney

Like the show? Support us on Patreon and help us to continue delivering analysis on today’s most important stories from a democratic socialist viewpoint.

The RCMP has a union contract. Police unions are nothing to celebrate.

Then, the plight of the Uyghur people is politicized by the fringe left and the fringe right. How should we navigate the very real violence committed by the Chinese state and oppose the political posturing of conservative forces?

Then, we discuss the news that more Indigenous families are separated by the state today than at the height of the residential school system, and news of Canadian discoveries of mass graves has spurred the US to begin an investigation of its own residential school system. What will they find? Is a global reckoning with the atrocities of settler colonialism coming?

Then, India Walton becomes the first socialist mayor of a major US city in 61 years with her against all odds win in Buffalo. Her win. is a reminder that change is possible. Is this the start of a new day?

each Thursday, we’ll discuss some of the weeks most important, thought provoking, or enraging opinion columns. Today’s columns are:

Canada Day is a day for all Canadians — Indigenous and non-Indigenous — to celebrate