Redeye

Non-unionized workers in BC have no paid sick leave rights under the Employment Standards Act. Guaranteed paid sick time for all workers crept a step closer in May with the announcement of a temporary three-day paid sick policy but it’s set to run out at the end of this year. We talk with David Fairey, labour economist and co-chair of the BC Employment Standards Coalition.

On May 21, the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute hosted a webinar on the ways in which Canada enables Israeli apartheid. Yves Engler gave a presentation on Canada’s political support for the state of Israel, both now and historically. Yves Engler is a Montréal-based activist and author who has published 11 books including his latest House of Mirrors — Justin Trudeau’s Foreign Policy.

After the remains of 215 children were found on the grounds of the old Kamloops Indian Residential School, there have been expressions of shock and grief, but also calls to action. Kukdookaa Terri Brown is a Crow Clan member of the Tahltan Nation. She is former chief of her people and former president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada. She served 6 years with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada where she heard many stories of children going missing or not returning from residential schools.

The killing of four members of a Muslim family in London, Ontario on June 6 has brought white nationalist violence to the forefront yet again. Jasmin Zine is a Professor of Sociology and Muslim Studies at Laurier University. She is lead researcher with the Canadian Islamophobia Industry Research Project. She says the ingredients for this latest tragedy have long been in the making.

As of May 13, Greyhound suspended all bus service in Canada. The company’s decision leaves many Canadians stranded with no alternative to private car ownership. The National Farmer’s Union says that Greyhound’s exit paves the way for national public transit system that serves all communities across the country. Bess Legault is NFU’s Women’s President and a first generation farmer in the Peace River Valley.

Access to COVID-19 vaccines worldwide shows a stark divide between rich and poor countries. In May, people living in G7 countries were 77 times more likely to be offered a vaccine than those living in the world’s poorest countries. David Adler is a political economist who argues that it is time to end the patent stranglehold on Covid-19 vaccines and to transform the for-profit system of intellectual property that impedes the provision of all life-saving drugs.

Translink is introducing a modernization plan for HandyDart, which thousands of people living with disabilities depend on for public transportation. Redeye Collective member Ian Mass joins us today with his regular City Beat report to talk about this plan, the climate emergency policy Vancouver City Council passed last year that has hit a potential roadblock and redevelopments that show us the best and worst of planning and public participation.

Lawyer and activist Hasan Alam was one of the speakers Thursday June 10 in Vancover at a vigil for the Afzaal family in London, Ontario, murdered by a white supremacist on Sunday night. Hasan Alam was one of the co-founders of the Islamophobia Legal Assistance hotline in 2015.

NSCAD University in Halifax is going to set up an institute to study Canadian slavery. The initiative will be spearheaded by Dr. Charmaine Nelson, who was the first Black tenured professor of art history in Canada. The Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery will be a hub for the study of the art, visual cultures, and histories of Canadian slavery and its legacies. We talk with Dr. Charmaine Nelson today.

In a new book just published by UBC Press, editors Miu Chung Yan and Sean Lauer document how the neighbourhood house model, a century-old type of community organization, can help overcome isolation in urban neighbourhoods by creating welcoming places, drawing on a five-year study to document and contextualize the neighbourhood house network in Vancouver. We speak with Miu Chung Yan and Sean Lauer.

In February, Dr Peter Victor gave the 2021 Gideon Rosenbluth Memorial Lecture. Peter Victor is a Professor Emeritus at York University and was Gideon Rosenbluth's graduate student at UBC in the late sixties. More than 30 years later, they co-authored a research paper called Saving the Environment: How Canada Can Abolish Poverty and Unemployment Even in a No-Growth Economy. A couple of years later, based on their work together, Peter wrote his book, Managing without Growth. Slower by Design, not Disaster.

In mid-April, Germany’s highest court ruled that a rent cap imposed by the Berlin state government is illegal. German federal court overturned the law, saying lawmakers in the state had no right to instigate it. We speak about rent control and the Berlin rent cap with Alexander Vasudevan, associate professor in human geography and fellow at Christ Church at the University of Oxford. He and David Madden co-authored a recent piece in the Guardian arguing that the Berlin law, though defeated in court, shows how to cool overheated markets.

In 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to pass a comprehensive law banning on metals mining nationwide. The vote was the result of a 12-year struggle by small farmers and their allies to protect the waters of the Lempa River from the impact of gold mining. Robin Broad and John Cavanagh tell this incredible story in their new book The Water Defenders: How Ordinary People Saved A Country From Corporate Greed. We speak with John Cavanagh.

A group of Xinka people in Guatemala opposes the development of the Escobal mine, owned by Vancouver based Pan American Silver. Members of the Peaceful Resistance of Santa Rosa, Jalapa, and Jutiapa have been shot at and received death threats in response to requests for a consultative process, a request which has been upheld in court. Jen Moore is an associate fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies. She joins us from Mexico City to discuss the mine and the resistance to it.

Over-representation of Indigenous peoples in the criminal justice system is an ongoing crisis in Canada. In B.C., the First Nations Justice Council is implementing a strategy to bring down the number of people who become involved with the criminal justice system. Mitch Walker is with the First Nations Justice Council and he joins us today to talk about this strategy and more specifically, Gladue reports, which can play a pivotal role in this new approach.

On April 23, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the existence of the Sinixt people in south-eastern BC, 65 years after they were declared extinct by the federal government. The ruling is the end of a long legal battle for the Sinixt and for Richard Desautel of Washington State who, in 2010, shot and killed an elk in the traditional territory of the Sinixt to challenge the extinction claim. We talk with the lawyer for the Sinixt, Mark Underhill.

128 speakers have signed up this week to talk to Vancouver city council about upzoning and densifying much of Vancouver for social housing. Council was also considering support for prioritizing Commercial Drive as a pedestrian-first street, patents on Covid-19 vaccines, accessible washrooms at Skytrain stations and an apology for a decision made 107 years ago. Ian Mass joins us with his City Beat report.

Later this month the city of Vancouver will submit its application to Health Canada for permission to decriminalize simple possession of illicit drugs. The application defined a threshold limit for possession without consulting with drug users. They say this limit is far too low. Caitlin Shane is a staff lawyer with the Pivot Legal Society, working on drug policy. She spoke with James Mainguy last week.

The scale of the Israeli attack on Gaza is the most intense since the 7-week Israeli war on Gaza in 2014. To find out more about the reasons behind the current escalation, we speak with Yara Shoufani. She is a Palestinian organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement (Toronto Chapter). Yara Shoufani has a masters in Political Science with research focused on colonization and gentrification in Palestine. We spoke on Friday May 14.

On April 27, the Council of Canadians and the Canadian Health Coalition held an online day of action calling on the federal government to create national standards for long-term care in Canada, instead of handing the job off to an accreditation industry with no power to enforce standards. In this podcast, we hear from John Cartwright, Pam Beattie and Pat Armstrong. We’d like to thank the Council of Canadians and Canadian Health Coalition for making the recording of the event available to us.