In episode six we welcome national director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Sandra Schwartz and CPAWS economic analyst, Jason Wong, lead author of  the CPAWS white paper, Widely Enjoyed but Inadequately Valued: Understanding the Economic, Environmental and Health Benefits of Canada’s Protected and Conserved Areas.

We discuss the first of its kind report that offers a new way of valuing conservation and the protection of our lands and waters, not as barriers to economic growth,but as long-term and essential green infrastructure that enriches our lives, our communities and our economy.

Explaining the reasons for the report, Schwartz says:

“The point was actually to have a different way to talk to decision-makers, to businesses and to Canadians about the value that Nature brings us … We wanted to make sure as an organization that governments better recognize … Nature itself is an essential infrastructure that supports communities. It supports their wellbeing. It supports long-term prosperity as well … So this was a first report, a first of its kind in Canada … Protected areas are not a constraint on growth, but that they are investments and they’re investments that generate measurable returns and reduce long-term risk.”

According to Wong:

“We’re finding that our protected areas contribute around $10.9 billion to Canada’s GDP. As a comparison, the offshore oil and gas industry in that same time period, came in around $8.3 billion … I mean, our protected areas are outpacing some of these well-established and well-regarded extractive industries in terms of how much they contribute financially to the Canadian economy …  we’re talking about keeping the social fabric of a community alive, it’s like, okay, now that I have a job here, I don’t have to move out … the local school there doesn’t have to close … And that directly relates to the fabric, the cohesion of the community that allows it to remain vibrant … From the national level down to the local level, protected areas provide an enormous array of benefits to Canadians.”

About today’s guests:

National executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Sandra Schwartz is a solutions-oriented leader, who has worked in a wide range of public policy, strategic communications and political roles, where she has been a strong advocate for sound environmental policy and has championed progressive ideas for clean energy and tackling climate change.

Schwartz holds Masters degrees in management and in environmental studies, and has a well-grounded understanding of the public and private influences on Canada’s natural heritage, with over 20 years’ experience within the federal government, national associations, and not-for-profit organizations.

Schwartz also has a long history of community service, including as board member on several national non-profit organizations, and as founding member of a prominent women’s network. She also served two terms as an elected trustee on the Ottawa-Carlton District School Board.

She lives in Ottawa and is happiest out enjoying nature with her husband and their two children. She maintains her connection to Canada’s wilderness by visits to parks, where she enjoys camping, canoeing, hiking, and cross-country skiing.

Jason Wong is an economic analyst with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.

Wong’s interest in conservation economics stems from a love of exploring and protecting the outdoors. His main interest is in investigating alternative economic approaches that value and safeguard nature.Wong’s interests are centred around research on alternative economic systems as a way to address the structural and institutional issues behind loss of nature and climate change. This includes the braiding of varied knowledge systems into a comprehensive perspective of the world around us. He is always open to intriguing new collaborations and data-informed policymaking. Outside of work, Wong hopes to build his own canoe one day and to explore more of Canada’s nature by water.

Wong is lead author of the CPAWS’ report, Widely Enjoyed but Inadequately Valued: Understanding the Economic, Environmental and Health Benefits of Canada’s Protected and Conserved Areas

Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute.

Image: Sandra Schwartz, Jason Wong / Used with permission.

Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.

Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)

Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.

Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca.

Host: Resh Budhu.

The post From ecosystems to economics: How Canada’s conserved and protected areas contribute billions to the economy appeared first on rabble.ca.

This latest episode of the Courage My Friends podcast series features “The Radical Labour of Care” panel discussion with: Indigenous midwife, leader, and educator, Claire Dion Fletcher; crisis outreach worker, case manager, and advocate in Toronto’s Downtown East, Lorraine Lam; and program director of the Latinx Womyn’s Program at the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/Multicultural Women Against Rape, Grissel Orellana. It is moderated by Eliza Chandler, associate professor in the School of Disability Studies and executive director of the Office of Social Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University.

This latest session of TMU’s Transformation Café series was hosted at the 34th annual Labour Fair at George Brown Polytechnic. Under this year’s Labour Fair theme, “Building a Working Peoples’ City,” the panel discussed the essential, but undervalued labour of care, interventions in the increasingly inaccessible, unaffordable and hostile city and building practices of mutual aid, community safety and collective survival toward caring and liveable cities.

Dion Fletcher explains:

“My work is very grounded in an Indigenous feminist perspective, and that self-determination of our nations cannot be fully realized unless all members of our nations are included. And that means we must address the gendered nature of colonization. And that sovereignty of our nations cannot happen without sovereignty of our bodies. And so this has led me to a deep commitment to reproductive justice”

According to Lam:

“The root of care for me is really about compassion.And the original Latin meaning of the word compassion comes from two different words … “to suffer” and “with.” And so for me, the radical root of care … is really about compassion, which is different from pity. ‘Cause you can walk by someone and have pity on them. You can have sympathy for them. You might even get empathy for them. But the goal is really about: what does it mean to suffer with? And I think that’s what pushes us towards thinking about solidarity.”

Orellana says:

“The frontline work as labour, it’s so devalued. When we’re doing so much caring, so much support, so much healing going on, so much advocacy … And I find it difficult … I mean, I’ve been working in the field for a long time. But more Latin American people are coming in. And every time I sit down with a person it is like when I came here 38 years ago, it’s the story over and over again … But we are all needed, needed, needed. We’re all important and beautiful.”

About today’s guests:

Eliza Chandler (she/her) is an associate professor in the School of Disability Studies and executive director of the Office of Social Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University whose work is grounded in disability arts. As a scholar, curator, and organizer, she explores how disability arts reshape cultural spaces through critical access, disability justice, and disability-led creative practice. Chandler’s work highlights disability arts as a vital site of political, aesthetic, and world-making knowledge.

Claire Dion Fletcher (she/her) is a Lenape- Potawatomi and mixed settler registered midwife. Fletcher is current vice-president of the Canadian Association of Midwives and past co-chair of the National Council of Indigenous Midwives. She is an assistant professor at the Toronto Metropolitan University Midwifery Education Program. Her teaching focuses on Indigenous midwifery and social justice issues. Fletcher is deeply committed to increasing diversity in the midwifery profession through Indigenous-led education.

Lorraine Lam (she/her) is a Chinese-Canadian daughter of a solo parent, with an education in music, sociology and social work. For over a decade, she has worked in Toronto’s Downtown East, walking alongside community members navigating homelessness, drug use, incarceration, poverty, racism, and systemic injustice. Her work is shaped by these communities that have taught her to centre harm reduction, anti-oppression, and trauma-informed practices. She is currently a caseworker at Amadeusz, supporting individuals with firearms-related charges, and she serves on the board of Building Roots and organizes with Christians for a Free Palestine: Toronto and Shelter & Housing Justice Network. Lam also co-authored a chapter in Displacement City (University of Toronto Press, 2022) Find her at www.lorrainelam.me, IG: @lorrainelamchops, X: @lorrainelamchop, Bluesky: @lorrainelamchops.bsky.social and Tiktok: @lorrainelamchops.

Grissel Orellana (she/they) is from El Salvador, Central America and lives in Tkaronto/Toronto. She identifies as Indigenous, from Mestiza ancestry. Grissel is a feminist, a human rights activist/defender, a lesbian femme, a mother, a healer, and a survivor of war and gender-based violence. Orellana has worked at the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/Multicultural Women Against Rape for 26 years. She is currently a program director of the Latinx Womyn Program at the Centre, where she continues to triumph for a diversity of Latin American survivors. This program is a space for support, personal growth, collective development and dialogue about our role as Latinx immigrants, political refugees, and survivors of multiple abuse and human rights violations, here in Toronto, Canada. In her work at the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/Multicultural Women Against Rape, Orellana is part of a collective that advocates for liberation from all forms of violence.

Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.

Images: Eliza Chandler, Claire Dion Fletcher, Lorraine Lam, Grissel Orellana (Used with permission)

Tech & Recording Support: Ben McCarthy

Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.

Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)

Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.

Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute of Labour and Social Justice and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca.

Host: Resh Budhu.

The post Labour Fair 2026: The radical labour of care appeared first on rabble.ca.

In the latest episode of the Courage My Friends series, we welcome organizer with the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network Kara Anderson and welcome back Canada organizer for World Beyond War and coordinator of the Arms Embargo Now Campaign, Rachel Small. We discuss Canada’s radical turn toward militarism and its ramping up of defence spending, the many and deep connections between militarism and mining in the mining capital of the world and solidarity organizing against the march to war.

Reflecting on Canada’s increased defence spending, Small says:

“ Canadian military spending had already doubled from $20 billion to over $40 billion over the past decade … And then last June, Carney gave it an extra $9 billion overnight and then committed to doubling it again over the next decade. So … the number that’s kind of being floated around is that the new defence spending would amount to $150 billion per year in the next decade … It’s vastly more than the federal government spends on all health and social transfers to all the provinces and territories combined. It’s an enormous flow of funding that’s pretty unprecedented in Canada since at least World War II. This is an enormous gift to Trump. It’s Canada literally doing precisely what Trump demanded Canada do.”

On the link between militarism and mining, Anderson says:

“The playbook for mining is the ways in which colonization itself has perpetuated itself … What is the premise for going into other countries? It’s to get resources. And how do you do that? You do that through violence. Like the OG colonial ways. But I think that just reinforces why it’s so important to shut things down, like mining … mining is so central to a lot of the violence, the militarization that we see in the world today… You go in, you use violence to take the land, .. and then you use that to make weapons. And then these weapons, again end up in opposite parts of the world, blowing things up … these weapons also end up back in the same communities from which they were mined and they’re used to further suppress these communities. ”

About today’s guests:

Kara Anderson is an organizer with the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network, as well as a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto working on food justice.

Rachel Small works as the Canada Organizer for World BEYOND War, a global grassroots organisation and network working to abolish war and the military industrial complex, is a founding member of the Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition, and coordinates the Arms Embargo Now Campaign. She has done grassroots organizing within local and international social/environmental justice movements for nearly two decades, with a special focus on working in solidarity with communities harmed by Canadian extractive industry projects.

Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.

Image: Kara Anderson, Rachel Small / Used with permission.

Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.

Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)

Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.

Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca.

Host: Resh Budhu.

The post Mining, militarism and organizing against the march to war appeared first on rabble.ca.

In our third episode of the Courage My Friends series season 10, Tom Fraser, a union researcher and author of Invested in Crisis: Public Sector Pensions Against the Future, and Becca Steckle, a research and policy analyst with Just Peace Advocates, join us to discuss how Canada’s public sector pensions are funding crises from housing to genocide, the restructuring of Canadian retirement security into capital funding for militarism and welfare erosion around the world and the urgent need for divestment toward a radical pension politics.

According to Fraser:

“What I see as specifically contradictory about the structure of the pension fund is that in an age of de-industrial capitalism returns on investment and ..profits ..are directly contradictory with the point of the pension itself … [which] is to enable the continued life of the worker after retirement. But the structure of that sort of capital accumulation necessitates taking value from those same sorts of necessities. There is a basic level contradiction in terms between the pension as finance and the pension as welfare. And they ultimately hit their collision point in the moment we call retirement.”

Reflecting on what pensions are funding, Steckle says:

“If you look at most of all eight of those pensions … there is a significant percentage of those investments in companies that are actively funneling money, whether the companies themselves are participating in war crimes, genocide, armed conflict … For example, if you look at CPP, the Canadian Pension Plan. They had in 2025 an estimated $27 billion just invested in companies complicit in the occupation, apartheid genocide in Palestine by Israel … That doesn’t include how the companies are violating Indigenous rights here in so-called Canada. That doesn’t include Sudan. That doesn’t include Haiti … That is just looking at Palestine.”

About today’s guests:

Tom Fraser is a researcher based in Toronto. His book on the political economy of Ontario’s pension funds, Invested in Crisis: Public Sector Pensions Against the Future, was released by Between the Lines in February 2025.

Becca Steckle (she/they) holds a law degree from Osgoode Hall Law School and is a registered nurse (RN, non-practicing). As a research and policy analyst at Just Peace Advocates (JPA), Steckle helps to analyze and expose institutional complicity, particularly Canadian institutional complicity in occupied Palestine and Kashmir. As part of JPA’s work, they have analyzed the investment portfolios of more than 15 entities to identify companies complicit in Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide in the report Our Pensions Are Funding Genocide. She is deeply committed to local organizing efforts and believes in Disability Justice as a daily praxis.

Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.

Image: Becca Steckle, Tom Fraser / Used with permission.

Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.

Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)

Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.

Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute of Labour and Social Justice and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca. 

Host: Resh Budhu.

The post Pension divestment: From funding crises to radical pension politics appeared first on rabble.ca.

In our second episode of the season, executive director of Oxfam Canada, Lauren Ravon returns for our annual focus on the Oxfam Inequality Report and this year we are also joined by senior director of Strategy and Innovation at Family Service Toronto and national director of Campaign 2000, Leila Sarangi.

We discuss Oxfam’s latest report on global inequality, Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power, the capture of political power by the billionaire class, the rise of authoritarianism and how this is being lived in Canada.

 Ravon says:

“One of the main points that we’re trying to get across in this year’s Oxfam report. Is saying that not only does massive wealth allow you to buy luxury items … It allows you to buy political influence, and this is really what we see as most troubling … this political capture … around the world and it’s a risk for us here in Canada too, is that ultimately extreme wealth concentration, this kind of billionaire wealth that we’re talking about, is incompatible with the very idea of democracy. That you cannot have a healthy democracy when so much is held in the hands of so few … And it’s not a new trend, but we’re seeing it accelerating. And what’s really concerning is that this is eroding civil and political rights … is actually a really fertile ground for authoritarianism.”

Reflection on increasing poverty in Canada, Sarangi says:

“Our data has shown and our report cards the last two years, the largest historic increases in poverty since the pandemic. So it’s striking. While billionaire wealth is growing, poverty rates are rising, and incomes are plummeting, and depth of poverty is increasing … We have in Canada, two and a half million children living in food insecure households. ..in the provinces alone, we’re not asking about the Territories. We’re not collecting that data … Parents are skipping meals so the kids don’t have to. They’re foregoing buying medication or they’re cutting their pills in half to save money. They’re making strategic decisions every day, every week.”

Oxfam’s Global Inequality Report: Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power

Oxfam Canada’s Report: The Rise of the Super-Rich: The State of Inequality in Canada

About today’s guests:

Lauren Ravon is a feminist and social justice advocate with over 20 years of experience in human rights and international development. She is currently the executive director of Oxfam Canada, where she leads a fabulous team working to advance women’s rights and economic justice by tackling the root causes of poverty, inequality and exclusion. Before joining Oxfam, Ravon worked at the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (Rights & Democracy) where she managed the organization’s human rights advocacy programs in the Americas. She has also worked to tackle gender-based violence and promote sexual and reproductive rights with Planned Parenthood Global and the International Rescue Committee. Ravon has conducted extensive policy research and campaigned on the right to food, economic inequality and tax justice, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and the role of women’s movements. She is passionate about building alliances across sectors to protect and advance human rights. Ravon co-chairs the board of directors of the Humanitarian Coalition, which brings together Canada’s leading aid organizations to join forces during international humanitarian disasters. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Welcome Collective, a local organization dedicated to supporting refugee claimants in Montreal.

Leila Sarangi is senior director of Strategy and Innovation at Family Service Toronto and National Director of Campaign 2000: End Child and Family Poverty. With over 25 years of experience in non‑profit leadership, coalition‑building, and policy advocacy, she is a nationally recognized leader on child and family poverty, income security, gender equity, and social infrastructure. Leila is the lead author of Campaign 2000’s annual national Child and Family Poverty and Disability Poverty Report Cards and regularly testifies before Parliamentary and municipal committees. She currently serves as chair of the board of Social Planning Toronto and as a board member of Child Care Now. In 2024, she received the King Charles III Coronation Medal for her contributions to poverty eradication.

Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.

Image: Lauren Ravon, Leila Sarangi / Used with permission.

Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.

Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)

Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.

Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca. 

Host: Resh Budhu.

The post Oxfam Inequality Report 2026: Resisting the rule of the rich and protecting freedom from billionaire power appeared first on rabble.ca.

In the season 10 premiere of the Courage My Friends podcast series, we are pleased to welcome back journalist, author and director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, Vijay Prashad and professor of International Relations at St. Thomas University, Shaun Narine. 

We discuss the recent US military attack on Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy (the so-called “Donroe Doctrine”) and what this means for Canada, and how all of this is connected to the decline of US hegemony, the rise of Asia and the West’s shift into hyper-imperialism.

Speaking on the US National Security Strategy or the “Donroe Doctrine”, Narine says:

“They’re actually saying, look, the Western Hemisphere is ours … And I think in a lot of ways, the Venezuela situation was an easy sort of first pass at asserting this …’Let’s go in. Let’s take out Maduro. And let’s send the message to the entire region”… And of course, the message was received.And if I’m reading this correctly, and from Canada, they’re making good on the threat that no country in the Western Hemisphere can do anything that the United States finds to be objectionable.”

On hyper-imperialism, Prashad explains:

“The United States and its European partners … hollowed out the manufacturing. Hollowed out science and technology. Hollowed out the universities … and find suddenly the center of gravity of the world economy shifting to Asia … They’ve lost the source of power they used to have over raw materials, over finance, over science and technology. But two sources of power remain. One of them is military power … The other source of power is the power of information … And they use it pretty effectively to try to dampen other powers. But there are contradictions.”

About today’s guests:

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power. His most recent book, with Grieve Chelwa, is How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa (Johannesburg: Inkani Books, 2026). Prashad is director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and chief correspondent for Globetrotter. He is an editor at LeftWord Books (New Delhi), at Inkani Books (Johannesburg), and at La Trocha (Chile). He has appeared in two films – Shadow World (2016) and Two Meetings (2017).

Shaun Narine is a professor of International Relations at St. Thomas University in Fredericton. He specializes in studying institutions in the Asia Pacific but has also written and commented on Canadian and US foreign policy and great power politics, including the rise of China.                      

Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here. 

Image: Vijay Prashad, Shaun Narine  / Used with permission.

Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased. 

Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy) 

Courage My Friends Podcast Organizing Committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu. 

Produced by: Resh Budhu, The Tommy Douglas Institute of Labour and Social Justice and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca. 

Host: Resh Budhu. 

The post Venezuela, Canada and the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ appeared first on rabble.ca.

Our final episode of this Courage My Friends season features a December 10th Human Rights Day Panel Discussion, the first of a series of events celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Community Worker Program at Toronto’s George Brown College. Community workers and human rights advocates, Brianna Olson Pitawanakwat, Samira Mohyeddin, Diana Gallego, Desmond Cole and Diana Chan McNally discuss the meaning of human rights in Canada 77 years after the UN adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, critical issues facing us today and the power of solidarity-driven, rights-based organizing.

Speaking to Canada’s approach to human rights, Pitawanakwat says:

“A big wakeup call was a couple of days ago when the UN passed the International Day Against Colonialism and Canada abstained. Because Canada is very much still rooted in this colonial mechanism and ideology here … In Anishinaabe culture, we don’t rely on the idea of rights, rights are a European construct. We rely on the idea of responsibility … If we relied on human rights, we would be in a dismal place, which is where we are today.”

According to Chan McNally:

“Every time you see an encampment that is someone exercising their right to housing by literally making their own tent.We have downloaded the responsibility directly on homeless people to ensure their own rights. And criminalizing even that action of survival … It’s ludicrous, ludicrous to me.”

Speaking to the importance of community work, Cole says:

“People are doing it in this school and in this program. The reason that I always say yes, when you ask me to come here … I was homeless myself more than 20 years ago when I moved to this city. Somebody who took a community worker program referred me to a youth shelter and changed my life. For real.”

On the role of independent journalism, Mohyeddin reflects on her upcoming documentary about the pro-Palestine student encampment at UofT:

“Our corporate media was vilifying these young people. And you know, my motto for journalism has always been to ‘Make mad the guilty and appall the free.’ And I think that if we operate from that place, even as citizens, we can really make a change.”

On the power of solidarity, Gallego says:

“The system want us being isolated. Solidarity is a word they trying to penalize … Solidarity is going and bringing the power that the Indigenous community have with the Palestinian movement. Bringing the solidarity of the unions back to us, back to the people.Being a community worker … Being the first face that a refugee is seeing in Canada and seeing the welcoming and seeing the support, means a lot.”

About today’s speakers:

Brianna Olson Pitawanakwat is an Anishinaabekwe, Indigiqueer and member of Wiikwemkoong Unceded First Nation. As an Indigenous Birthworker, jingle dress dancer, artisan and radical educator, she is committed to principles of Indigenous Liberation and self determination. Her journey as a Birthworker began on the prairies where she practiced Harm Reduction and perinatal outreach for over a decade. She holds an undergrad degree from University of Victoria social work program and has a Masters in social work from university of Toronto with a trauma specialization. Olson Pitawanakwat  currently co-leads Toronto Indigenous Harm Reduction and Native Arts Society, both 2spirit/Queer/Trans led initiatives.

Desmond Cole is a journalist, radio host, and activist. His debut book, The Skin We’re In, won the Toronto Book Award and was a finalist for the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award and the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. It was also named a best book of 2020 by The Globe and Mail, NOW Magazine, CBC, Quill & Quire, and Indigo. Cole’s writing has appeared in the Toronto Star, Toronto Life, The Walrus, and the Ottawa Citizen, among others. He lives in Toronto.

Diana Gallego is a Colombian trained lawyer with a background in advocacy, human rights, and social justice. In 2002, she was forced to flee Colombia with her husband and son, an experience that deepened her commitment to working with immigrants and refugees. She is a graduate and former faculty with Community Work from George Brown College in Toronto and joined the FCJ Refugee Centre in 2015, where she is now one of the Co-Executive Directors.  Gallego served as president of the Canadian Council for Refugees, from 2023 to 2025. She also serves on the Inland Protection steering committee of the CCR, focusing on the social and economic integration of refugees and family reunification as primary areas of her advocacy.

Samira Mohyeddin is a multi-award winning journalist and documentary filmmaker. She has a Master of Arts in Modern Middle Eastern History from the University of Toronto and a graduate of genocide Studies from the Zoryan Institute. For nearly a decade, she was a producer and host at CBC Radio and CBC Podcasts. She resigned from the CBC in November 2023 and founded On The Line Media, where she brings audiences intimate conversations and informed commentary with a focus on critical and contextual journalism. Mohyeddin was the 2024 – 2025 inaugural journalism fellow for the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto and is the 2025 PEN Canada Ken Filkow Prize recipient. She is currently in production on a documentary about the Palestine solidarity student encampment at the University of Toronto.

Diana Chan McNally (she/they) is an alumni and former faculty of the Community Worker program at George Brown College (Toronto) and is a community worker in downtown Toronto. As someone with lived-experience of social services and of being unhoused, Chan McNally’s work focuses on human rights and equity issues for people who are homeless. Chan McNally is the founder and Coordinator of the Ontario Coalition for the Rights of Homeless People and works with human rights organizations The Shift and Maytree.

For Community Worker Program and application information, please visit  Community Worker Program at George Brown College

Donate to the 50th Anniversary Community Worker Program Student Bursary

Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.

Image: Diana Gallego, Samira Mohyeddin, Brianna Olson Pitawanakwat (Photog. Mahihkan Studios), Desmond Cole (Photog. Gage Fletcher), Diana Chan McNally (Photog. Gage Fletcher) / Used with permission – Photographer, Gage Fletcher

Panel Recording: Prof. Ben McCarthy

Introduction to Session: Prof. John Caffery

Community Worker Program 50th Anniversary Organizing Committee: Prof. John Caffrey, Dr. Rusa Jeremic, Prof. Berti Olinto, Dr. William Payne, Stefan Kallikaden, Dr. Bill Fallis, Prof. Emeritus Bob Luker, Prof. Resh Budhu

Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.

Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)

Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.

Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca. 

Host: Resh Budhu.

The post December 10th Human Rights Day panel discussion: The ongoing struggle for rights in Canada appeared first on rabble.ca.

In episode six of the Courage My Friends’ season nine, we welcome impact strategist with Animikii, Indigenous Technology, Jeff Doctor, technology and human rights lawyer with Tekhnos Law and senior fellow with The Citizen Lab, Cynthia Khoo, senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood. 

We discuss Canada’s accelerated approach to artificial intelligence and the mobilization of civil society groups against it, multiple impacts of largely unregulated AI on people, planet and democracy, Indigenous perspectives on data sovereignty and digital colonialism and the meaning of AI beyond the hype.

Reflecting on the government’s accelerated AI development, Mertins-Kirkwood says:

“There’s definitely a distinct moment that’s happening right now. A particular hype cycle, a push to adopt this current iteration of ‘artificial intelligence’, whatever that means … The question is why are we doing it. The way that the federal government in particular talks about AI is frankly very ideological … We need to adopt it for its own sake, independent of what that actually means … We’re just kind of rushing without having a clear sense of where we’re going.”

On civil society’s objection to the “national sprint” consultation on AI, Khoo says:

“…As people who are familiar with this field and topic … we’re kind of appalled … AI has spread through so many spheres of society, it’s not just a tech issue anymore, it’s a whatever issue you care about … This 30-day “sprint” with leading language and incredibly narrow scoping from our government, it’s frankly embarrassing. And just shows they’re not really taking seriously the … empirically demonstrated … harms of AI and what’s really at stake for everyone across the country. ’”

On the subject of data sovereignty, Doctor says:

“Every technology has politics, Every technology is a product of its time … And enter this current moment where this magic bean of AI, this bundle of excuses comes together, that, oh we have to extract more, we have to mine more, we have to use more energy. As an Indigenous person this is nothing new to me … Indigenous territories, lands and peoples as sacrifice zones … for the greater good or for national sovereignty … Who’s national sovereignty?”

About today’s guests:

Jeff Doctor is a Cayuga Nation citizen from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. As an Impact Strategist with Animikii, Jeff works with Indigenous Peoples across Turtle Island to develop web applications that support their self-determination and digital sovereignty. Jeff also volunteers with Protect the Tract: a Haudenosaunee grassroots project that promotes healthy land stewardship of the Haldimand Tract, and is an artist-in-residence at the University of Toronto as a member of the Akni:ho’gwa:s Artist Collective.Jeff has an MA in sociology and a decade of experience supporting Indigenous data sovereignty from the ground up. His focus is improving practical Indigenous data governance through advocacy, counter-mapping, and building appropriate, ethical software that helps Indigenous Peoples get their land, cash, and data back.

Cynthia Khoo is a technology and human rights lawyer at Tekhnos Law, and a senior fellow at the Citizen Lab (University of Toronto). Previously, she was a senior associate at Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy & Technology in Washington, DC. Cynthia’s legal practice, research, and expertise focuses on how the Internet and emerging technologies impact the human rights of historically marginalized groups, in particular their rights to privacy, equality, and freedom of expression. She holds a J.D. from the University of Victoria and LL.M. (Law and Technology) from the University of Ottawa, where she worked as junior counsel at and represented the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) as an intervener in cases before the Supreme Court of Canada.

Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood is a senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, where he focuses on climate, artificial intelligence and economic policy.

Read the OPEN LETTER to the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation from civil society organizations and individuals opposing “National Sprint” consultation on AI strategy

Individual and Organizations can sign onto the Open Letter, that has been re-opened for signatures, here.

Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.

Image: Cynthia Khoo, Jeff Doctor, Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood / Used with permission.

Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased. 

Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy) 

Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu. 

Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca. 

Host: Resh Budhu. 

The post The AI hype-machine: Canada’s ill-advised ‘national sprint’ on artificial intelligence appeared first on rabble.ca.

In episode five, we are pleased to welcome award-winning author Saeed Teebi who speaks to us about his powerful new book, You Will Not Kill Our Imagination: A Memoir of Palestine and Writing in Dark Times. 

In our annual focus on the power of storytelling, we discuss what it means to be a Palestinian writer in these times, the challenges of writing against dehumanizing narratives, complicity in the attempted erasure of Palestinian life, identity and art through both violence and silence and how imagination, story and writing become profound acts of resistance in a time of genocide.

On the condemnation of Palestinian language and writing, Teebi says:

“In the face of actual violence waged against them, Palestinians are tried and convicted of presumptive violence for their language.Our words are assumed to be code words or dog whistles that mean something else necessarily more nefarious than what we say they mean … The usual language remains available to the rest of the world to use freely. It is only Palestinians and their allies who have been segregated out of it. A linguistic apartheid that applies to us wherever we are, in the same way that the geographic apartheid applies to us in occupied Palestine.”

About today’s guest:

Saeed Teebi is an award-winning writer and lawyer. His debut short story collection, Her First Palestinian, was a finalist for several awards, including the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Prize. His nonfiction has appeared in The Globe and Mail and The New Quarterly. Born in Kuwait, he resettled in the United States, then Canada. He now lives in Toronto.

Check out his latest book: You Will Not Kill Our Imagination: A Memoir of Palestine and Writing in Dark Times.

Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute.

Image: Saeed Teebi, photography by Sarah Köhler (Used with permission)

Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.

Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)

Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.

Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute of Labour and Social Justice and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca. 

Host: Resh Budhu.

The post You Will Not Kill Our Imagination: Author Saeed Teebi on Palestine, writing and imagination appeared first on rabble.ca.

In episode four, we welcome co-executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, Karen Cocq, advocacy and media relations coordinator at The Refugee Centre in Montreal, Alina Murad and President of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, Aisling Bondy.

We discuss the Carney Government’s new border security acts, Bill C-2 and its questionable make-over with the recently tabled Bill C-12, how they effectively rewrite Canada’s approach to refugee rights and protections, whether this new security regime is a response to the Trump tariff demands or an opportunity to continue Canada’s years-long tightening of the borders, and if passed, what these acts could mean for those seeking asylum and for Canada as a whole.

On Bill C-2, Cocq says:

“We’re calling it this mass deportation machine … government being able to use these new powers to remove many more people, that’s what’s really frightening to us … that it’s going to look a little bit more like what’s happening in the United States.”

On the tabling of Bill C-12, Bondy says:

“When we first heard, Oh, there’s a new Bill … the Conservatives won’t support C-2. This is great, maybe it won’t pass. And we heard there’s going to be a new version. Okay, maybe they’re going to make some of the refugee aspects less bad. And then we find out no, everything’s the same and this is really just a way to get it through faster. And so this actually entirely is a rather unfortunate development.”

According to Murad:

“Bureaucracy is not going to deter people from seeking safety when there is a need, right? … People who come to Canada … have well-founded claims. They have well-founded fear. They have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they do deserve safety provided by Canada. This is not going to change.”

About today’s guests:

Aisling Bondy is the current president of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers (CARL), a national organization comprised of several hundred lawyers who practice in refugee law. She is the founder of Bondy Immigration Law and is a member of the Refugee Lawyers’ Association, the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, the Canadian Immigration Lawyers Association, the Ontario Bar Association and the Canadian Bar Association.

Karen Cocq is co-executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), a membership-based organization of migrants. MWAC is the secretariat of the cross-country Migrant Rights Network, the largest coalition of migrant led organizations in Canada. She has been active in migrant justice and workers’ rights organizing for 20 years.

Alina Murad is the advocacy and media relations coordinator at The Refugee Centre in Montreal. She leads policy research and advocacy initiatives addressing systemic barriers faced by refugees and asylum seekers in Canada. Follow them on Instagram @therefugeecentre and @pointofentrypodcast.

Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.

Image: Aisling Bondy, Karen Cocq, Alina Murad, / Used with permission.

Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.

Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)

Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.

Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca. 

Host: Resh Budhu. 

The post Bills C-2 and C-12: How Canada’s border security acts endanger refugee rights appeared first on rabble.ca.

In our third episode we welcome support staff president for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union Local 418 at St.Lawrence College. Amanda Shaw, second vice president of OPSEU Local 415 at Algonquin College, Martin Lee and from George Brown College, member of OPSEU’s part-time and sessional divisional executive, Ben McCarthy.

We discuss the mass layoffs and program and campus closures across Ontario’s 24 publicly funded colleges, impacts on college workers, students, and wider communities, what this means for the future of public post-secondary education and how what has been publicized as a “crisis” is really a scandal of the deliberate dismantling of the public college system by the Government of Ontario.

According to Lee:

“We’ve been using the word ‘crisis’ a lot, right? And, you know, it’s got all the symptoms of being a crisis … But it’s not a crisis, it’s a scandal. What we’re actually looking at is a scandal. A crisis is something that happens. A rainfall, you know, it’s an act of God. No, no, this is deliberate and intentional. And the more you see it, the more it becomes clear that this is an active process by the Doug Ford government.”

Reflecting on the situation facing college workers and communities, Shaw says:

“We’re seeing a hemorrhaging of our members from the system. It’s about job security. It’s about protecting the jobs in the communities … it’s about keeping a viable educational option in the communities and making sure that we’re able to meet industry need … If we don’t have colleges that exist in those smaller communities, then what’s to be said of education?”

On the changing nature of union organizing, McCarthy says:

“Part of this neoliberal trend that emphasizes the bottom line also emphasizes an individualism that does not serve worker rights, that does not serve worker power…If disaster capitalism continues to profit off of these moments of unrest, of uncertainty to their profit..that’s also a possibility for us, that is organized labour..To step into that uncertainty, and by collectivizing our fight, raising the water in the harbour for everybody.”

Read OPSEU’s report, Dismantling Public Futures: Diverting Training Money from Ontario Colleges Through Ford’s Skills Development Fund Endangers the Provincial Economy

And Ben McCarthy’s article in The Grind, The Manufactured Crisis in Ontario Colleges

About today’s guests:

With 25 years of experience in the college system, Amanda Shaw currently works for St. Lawrence College on the Cornwall campus as an academic planning assistant. She is currently serving as support staff local president for OPSEU/SEFPO Local 418, and is on her third term.

Ben McCarthy is a labour organizer, artist, and teacher working in Toronto, Canada. He is a member of the divisional executive representing precarious faculty with OPSEU. He teaches courses in labour history, immigration, and cultural production at George Brown college. His artwork interrogates the technological and economic conditions that produce the listening subject.

Dr Martin Lee is the second vice-president of OPSEU Local 415 at Algonquin College. In his teaching role, Martin is a professor of biochemistry, a former academic coordinator, and active researcher in the field of applied physical biochemistry. In OPSEU at a provincial level, he was on the Workload Monitoring Group (WMG), resulting in the world’s largest cohesive study of faculty workload. This then led to his involvement in the Ontario College Academic Bargaining team for 2024 (and ongoing). His union work focuses on building the data which drives the local and the division and tries to bring an equity lens to the voice of the membership, often supporting these arguments with the data needed to formulate novel approaches. He has presented the topic of what he calls ‘data-weaving’: the process of taking any and all sets of information that a local has at hand, and using it to better understand large union sets, including those with multiple sites, multiple job classifications, or subgroups.

Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.

Image: Amanda Shaw, Ben McCarthy, Martin Lee / Used with permission.

Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.

Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)

Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.

Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute of Labour and Social Justice and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca.

Host: Resh Budhu.

The post Crisis or scandal? The deliberate dismantling of Ontario’s public college system appeared first on rabble.ca.

In this episode we welcome, climate justice and Indigenous rights organizer from Stellat’en First Nation and senior advisor at the David Suzuki Foundation, Janelle Lapointe; member services and movement building manager with Climate Action Network Canada, Lauren Latour and Canada organizer for World Beyond War, Rachel Small.

We discuss the Draw the Line National Day of Action taking place across Canada on September 20th, the reasons for this historic cross-movement coalition and the urgency of drawing the line now in this moment of converging and overwhelming crises, for people, for peace and for planet.

Speaking to origins of Draw the Line, Latour says:

“After years and years and years of communities from across progressive spaces saying, we need to learn how to work together in community. We need to learn how to build coalition. It just felt like this was the perfect opportunity for that.”

On the critical need for a coalition, Lapointe says:

“We’re all waking up to the root cause of the crises, which is imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and those systems were intentional and systemic and focus on division. And so I think we need to be just as intentional, strategic with our unity. And I think that’s what this mobilization is all about.”

Reflecting on why we need  to Draw the Line now, Small says:

“You can’t quadruple Canada’s military budget without stealing those billions of dollars from everything else and from everyone else … We have to refuse … and instead say, no. Actually Carney, you’re gonna need to choose a side … because we are drawing the line.”

For more information on the National Day of Action, please visit Draw the Line

About today’s guests:

Janelle Lapointe is a climate justice and Indigenous rights organizer from Stellat’en First Nation. She is currently a senior advisor at the David Suzuki Foundation and a guest on Treaty 13 territory, the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Huron-Wendat peoples, as well as the Mississaugas of the Credit. She leans on her lived experience growing up on her small reserve in Northern British Columbia to ensure that intersectionality is at the forefront of environmental narratives, to build power and help others see their stake in fighting back against the status quo.

Lauren Latour works as member services and movement building manager for Climate Action Network Canada, the farthest-reaching network of organizations taking action on climate and energy issues in the land currently called Canada. Currently based on unceded Anishinaabe Algonquin land in Ottawa, Lauren draws on over a decade of experience in progressive spaces as she works to support the climate movement from behind – emphasizing efficacy, and forefronting a justice-based approach.

Rachel Small works as the Canada organizer for World BEYOND War, a global grassroots organisation and network working to abolish war and the military industrial complex, is a founding member of the Jews Say No to Genocide Coalition, and coordinates the Arms Embargo Now campaign. She has done grassroots organizing within local and international social/environmental justice movements for nearly two decades, with a special focus on working in solidarity with communities harmed by Canadian extractive industry projects.

Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.

Image: Janelle Lapointe, Lauren Latour, Rachel Small / Used with permission.

Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.

Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)

Courage My Friends podcast organizing committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.

Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca.

Host: Resh Budhu.

The post On September 20: Draw the line for people, for peace, for planet appeared first on rabble.ca.