Redeye

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For five days in October, members of community groups, advocates and residents of the Downtown Eastside documented street sweeps and their impact on people’s lives. Vince Tao of VANDU was one of the people observing the actions of the police and city workers and conducting interviews with the people affected. He tells us what he observed.

South False Creek has been called one of the best-planned neighbourhoods in the world. Located between the Granville and Cambie bridges and owned by the City of Vancouver, the land is leased to 2000 housing coop, rental and strata units. These leases are expiring and the City of Vancouver wants to negotiate an entirely different relationship with this community. Redeye collective member Ian Mass joins us with his regular City Beat report.

Emergence: Out of the Shadows is a feature length film is about the strengths and struggles of gay and lesbian South Asian people in Metro Vancouver. For Kayden, Jag, and Amar, awakening to and expressing their sexuality within conservative South Asian families was a lonely and terrifying experience - and yet they emerged. The film showed at Kdocs Film Festival in early October. We speak with producer Alex Sangha.

When you look at Canada as a whole, 71% of Canadians are fully vaccinated. But if you look at individual provinces, the numbers vary quite a bit. Here in BC, we’re currently at 73% of the total population. In Alberta, it’s more like 64%. Although vaccine passports and other incentives have prompted some to get vaccinated, many people are still hesitant. To find out what’s behind this reluctance, we’ve contacted Taylor Lambert. He is the Alberta politics reporter for The Sprawl.

In September, leader of the People’s Party of Canada Maxime Bernier publicly urged his Twitter followers to ‘play dirty’ with the press and exposed the contact details of three journalists. Bernier’s account on Twitter was eventually suspended for 12 hours but Bernier himself was unapologetic. The incident forms part of an escalating pattern targeting journalists whose reporting is unpopular with some politicians and organizations. We speak with Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists.