Redeye

The River Forecast Centre operates a provincial system that issues flood warnings yet this fall’s abundant rain and intense storms did not appear to trigger critical responses that could have better protected British Columbians. A decade ago an expert report called for changes and increased staffing at the River Forecast Centre, but those recommendations have not been acted on for more than 10 years. We speak with resource policy analyst Ben Parfitt.

Judging by the constant stream of news reports of standoffs and confrontations, it’s apparent that Canada’s reconciliation project has gone off the rails. Standoff is the title of a new book of essays by lawyer and historian Bruce McIvor. In it, he examines why reconciliation is failing and what needs to be done to fix it. Bruce McIvor is a member of the Manitoba Metis Federation and a partner at First People’s Law. He represents First Nations across Canada from Wet’suwet’en opposing the Coastal Gas Link pipeline to Mi’kmaw exercising their fishing rights in Nova Scotia.

It is estimated over half of B.C. workers don’t have sick benefits from their employers. That gap moved into sharp relief at beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many workers felt forced to go to work while they were sick. And while gaining any paid sick days is an improvement for many workers, advocates say five days falls short of what is needed for a healthy community and a healthy economy. Alex Hemingway is a senior economist for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Vancouver City Council has worked hard this past year to establish priorities to address climate change, Indigenous reconciliation, and tenant protection for people living in single-room occupancy hotels. The problem is, without money these changes won’t happen. Redeye collective member Ian Mass joins us to talk about the upcoming debate on the 2022 city budget in his regular City Beat report.

BC has crown corporations for housing, hydro, transit and a number of other key sectors. Now a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Zero Waste BC is calling for a crown corporation to take on the challenge of recycling. This is just one of a number of key proposals in “A Zero Waste Agenda for BC”. We speak with Sue Maxwell, a sustainability consultant with Ecoinspire Planning Services and one of the authors of the report.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has just released its 26th alternative federal budget aptly named Mission Critical: A just and equitable recovery. The goal of the budget is to ensure that the legacy of the pandemic is a publicly-led recovery that leaves no one behind. We speak with David Macdonald, senior economist with the CCPA.

As long as Covid-19 exists anywhere in the world, it is a threat everywhere. But, in spite of our shared risk, the world’s richest countries have exercised a “me first” approach to the Covid-19 vaccine, buying up more than half the total. The People’s Vaccine Alliance says our best chance of all staying safe is to ensure a Covid-19 vaccine is available for all as a global common good. We talk with Brittany Lambert of Oxfam Canada.

Finance has an oversized presence in contemporary mature nations. It has grown enormously in terms of size, relative to the rest of the economy. And, financialization has crept into all aspects of our lives. Housing, education, and healthcare are all targets for investors. More recently, new investment vehicles are being marketed that would even financialize natural ecosystems. We speak with Randall Wray, senior scholar at the Levy Economics Institute and professor of economics at Bard College.

Plastic is everywhere—it’s in our food containers, keyboards, glasses, even our toothbrushes. It’s lightweight, versatile, and so cheap that we often forget how much it permeates our lives. A new book dives into the plastic crisis—answering the questions of who is being harmed, who is to blame and what we must do now to create a more just and livable world for everyone. We speak with author Erica Cirino.

In October, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users conducted a survey asking homeless people about the impact of street sweeps by city workers and police. The stress of having to defend personal possessions against seizure or theft is something that homeless people around the world face on a daily basis. A research project is looking at attempts to govern the belongings of the precariously housed. We speak with Nick Blomley, Professor of Geography at Simon Fraser University and one of the researchers involved in the project.

Over the past two weeks, Vancouver City Council has heard from close to 1000 people about a policy proposal designed to limit new rental apartment buildings to busy arterials and the streets nearby. Some people argue against any new rentals, others say renters should be able to live in quiet neighbourhoods too. We speak with Danny Oleksiuk, a past member of Vancouver’s Renter’s Advisory Committee and co-founder of Abundant Housing Vancouver.

Back in the early 1970s, children from the Raymur housing project in Strathcona were forced to cross train tracks on their way to their elementary school. After months of petitioning for a safe crossing, a group of mothers made their voices heard by blockading the tracks. Carmen Pollard’s short film, Militant Mother, tells the story. We speak with Carolyn Jerome, one of the mothers who stood in front of the trains.

Yves Engler is a Montreal-based activist, author and critic of Canadian politics. He just came out with his eleventh book “We Stand on Guard for Whom? A People’s History of the Canadian Military. In the book, he presents a history of the Canadian military from the perspective of its victims. The Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute sponsored an online launch for the book last month. In this podcast, Yves Engler’s presentation from that event.

In Guatemala, a trial is underway in the case of 183 civilians who were disappeared or murdered in Guatemala City in the 1980s. A military intelligence document known as the Diario Militar, or Military Diary, is being used as evidence of the systematic terrorism carried out by high-ranking military officials and others. Twelve men are now accused of crimes against humanity. We speak with Wendy Mendez, whose mother was disappeared in 1984.

Canada’s extradition act is under scrutiny. The Meng Wanzhou case raised questions about extradition proceedings that have foreign policy implications. Concerns have also been raised about the wrongful extradition of Dr. Hassan Diab to France in 2014. Two years ago, a group of academics, defence counsel and human rights organizations met at Dalhousie University to discuss Canada’s extradition law. Professor Robert Currie joins us to talk about the law reform proposals that came out of that meeting.

Carmen Rodriguez is an internationally acclaimed Chilean-Canadian author, educator and journalist. Her new novel, Atacama, is set against the backdrop of Chile in the first half of the twentieth century and Europe during the Spanish Civil War. It is both a sweeping historical novel and gripping tale of personal drama. Carmen Rodriguez joins us to talk about the book.

A school district on Vancouver Island has responded to one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action with a unique resource called Learning with Syeyutsus. Developed in collaboration with UBC Press and their authors, it’s a free, curated speaker series featuring respected authors at the forefront of Indigenous topics. We speak with Scott Saywell, District Superintendent for Nanaimo Ladysmith Public Schools, and Ricki Bartlett, Director of Instruction for Indigenous Education.

British Columbians will look back at the summer of 2021 as the one where the climate emergency really hit home. First, there was the heat dome, then months of evacuation orders and wildfire smoke across the province. If it hadn’t been for the cooler wetter weather in August, this year would have set a new record for the number of hectares burned. Now that the rains have set in, it’s a good time to look back at the wildfire season. We speak with Marc Lee, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC Office.

Sandeep Johal is a visual artist whose practice includes drawing, collage, textiles, and large-scale murals. ‘What If’ is a major new exhibition of Johal’s work which opened at the Surrey Art Gallery last month. In the show, she layers her personal history with those of South Asian women she wished she knew about when she was growing up in Kelowna in 1980s.

Steven Donziger has spent nearly three decades fighting Chevron on behalf of 30,000 people in the Ecuadorian rainforest. On October 1, he was sentenced to six months in federal prison for criminal contempt for refusing to give Chevron access to confidential client communications. We speak about the case with Paul Paz y Miño of Amazon Watch.