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This fall, someone will be replacing John Horgan as NDP Leader of British Columbia. Could that person be Anjali Appadurai? This week on the show rabble's national politics reporter Stephen Wentzell sits down with the Appadurai to talk about what inspired her to run for leadership and how her experience in grassroots organizing is guiding her campaign. "My role as an insurgent candidate is to open the door for the voices of community and the voice of the grassroots to be lifted on this platform and to be lifted, ultimately, into the halls of power." If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. Or, if you have feedback for the show, get in touch anytime at editor@rabble.ca. Photo by: Fruit Basket Agency

This week on the show, Breanne Lavallée-Heckert, the research manager at Indigenous Climate Action, talks about the importance of Indigenous stewardship in regard to the climate crisis and how people can support Indigenous Climate Action. Founded in 2015, Indigenous Climate Action is an Indigenous-led organization guided by a diverse group of Indigenous knowledge keepers, water protectors and land defenders from communities and regions across Turtle Island. The vision of the organization is "a world with sovereign and thriving Indigenous Peoples and cultures leading climate justice for all." Indigenous Climate Action inspires action through the development of tools and opportunities created with, by and for Indigenous communities, with the goal of uplifting Indigenous voices, sovereignty, and stewardship of the lands and waters for future generations. Today, Breanne Lavallée-Heckert joins rabble audience editor Jillian Piper to talk about the idea of joy for Indigenous youth as an act of rebellion, defunding the police, and why climate solutions cannot happen without Indigenous governance. This podcast is part of rabble's series "The Boiling Point." The Boiling Point examines the ways increasingly high temperatures due to the climate crisis are affecting our summers in Canada on a social, institutional, and ecological level. The series also explains how Canadians can take action against climate change and make real differences in their communities. Follow more stories here. If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. Or, if you have feedback for the show, get in touch anytime at editor@rabble.ca. Photo by: Aaron Burden

This week on the show, rabble contributor Doreen Nicoll speaks to Leila Sarangi, national director of Campaign 2000. Campaign 2000 is a network of national, regional and local partner organizations who have come together to increase public awareness of the levels and consequences of child and family poverty in Canada. Each year, the organization releases a national report card, measuring the progress – or lack of progress – of reaching the goal of eliminating poverty. Last month on the site, national politics reporter Stephen Wentzell detailed the government's announcement that it would begin the recovery of Canada Emergency Response Benefits (or, CERB) from recipients that the CRA considers ineligible. In response to this announcement, Campaign 2000 released a statement saying that these clawbacks will have the gravest effect on mothers – in particular, those with multiple children living on an earned income of $33,000 a year. Today, Sarangi joins Nicoll to talk about this statement and also about how poverty is a systemic issue - brought on by colonialism's ongoing legacy in Canada. Solutions to poverty must look at things through a lens of dismantling racist systems in place. If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. Or, if you have feedback for the show, get in touch anytime at editor@rabble.ca. Photo by: note thanun

This week on the show, rabble labour reporter Gabriela Calugay-Casuga speaks to poet and activist El Jones. Based on Halifax Nova Scotia, Jones is a powerhouse in social movements focused on anti-racism, human rights, and decarceration. In September 2020, she was appointed chair of a 15-person subcommittee which was tasked with defining "Defund the Police" in Halifax. Jones and the subcommittee compiled a 218-page report which featured 36 recommendations to reallocate resources away from the police to more appropriate service providers. Jones has also appeared on past Off the Hill political panels, including Off the Hill: Whose budget is it anyway? and Off the Hill: Games of the Throne. You can listen to segments from both of those panels on previous rabble radio episodes, or find the full versions of the panels on rabbleTV. Today, Jones joins Calugay-Casuga to talk about how we 'value' work and how to move past capitalist ideas of labour. The two also talk about how to create inclusive spaces in activist movements. Jones, on how anyone can support transformative justice: "There's this idea that there's a class of people that 'do activism,' but that's not a mass movement. A mass movement is when everybody has the skills and capacity, everybody is called upon to do what they can, everybody gives what they can, everybody is empowered and given the ability and resources to do that." Read Calugay-Casuga's full article on this subject here. If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. Or, if you have feedback for the show, get in touch anytime at editor@rabble.ca. Photo credit: Koshu Kunii https://unsplash.com/photos/ILpe0MpOYww

This week on the show, we're sharing an interview which is part of rabble's summer Boiling Point series. The Boiling Point examines the ways increasingly high temperatures due to the climate crisis are affecting our summers in Canada on a social, institutional, and ecological level. Today, national politics reporter Stephen Wentzell speaks to Dr. Melissa Lem to talk about how the recent wildfires, heat domes, and record-breaking hot temperatures are affecting the physical and mental health of Canadians. A clinic assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia, Dr. Lem also serves as the President-Elect for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (or CAPE). Lem first became a member of CAPE when she was still in medical school. Since then, she has worked on policy and advocacy campaigns around the climate crisis, including wildfires, active transportation, and the need to connect to nature for health. She and Wentzell dive into how climate change is a health issue and why it's so important for governments, at all levels, to put policies in place to protect people during extreme weather events. "If, as physicians [and] healthcare workers, we want to make sure that our patients have the best health status, we have to start looking beyond our offices and our hospitals," she explained. "We have to start looking at social determinants of health and ecological determinants of health, like making sure we have clean air to breathe, healthy temperatures, and have green space and trees to shade us and cool our cities to keep us healthy." - Dr. Lem. Read Wentzell's full article on this subject here. If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. Or, if you have feedback for the show, get in touch anytime at editor@rabble.ca. Photo credit: Landon Parenteau

The concept of a guaranteed basic income has gained a lot of attention over the past few years. And on rabble, the idea has been discussed, debated, and deliberated from a variety of angles. In May this year, MP Leah Gazan and Senator Kim Pate joined us as part of our Off the Hill political panel series, talking about their proposed bills, Bill S-233 and Bill C-223 which urge the government to implement guaranteed livable basic income. They believe in a guaranteed livable basic income as a tool, not as a final solution, to combat the growing inequality in Canada. However, there are others who believe a basic income isn't key in solving inequality in Canada. Some argue that a program like basic income cannot adequately address the many issues that contribute to poverty in our country, such as the cost of housing, poor labour standards, access to health care and child care, and so on. Basic income, or a guaranteed income, the term has many different names - and means different things to many different groups. This week on the show, Doreen Nicoll speaks to Ron Hikel, a political scientist who has spent decades studying the economics of a guaranteed minimum income. They discuss what it would actually take to make a basic income program work in Canada. If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. Or, if you have feedback for the show, get in touch anytime at editor@rabble.ca. Photo credit: Ilana Gotz on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/lqHhxCrG_JI

This week on rabble radio, we dive into the world of natural - or green, as it's sometimes called - burials. For many of us, talking about death isn't easy – let alone talking about what happens to your body once you've passed away. But what if there was a way to think of your burial as a way to help the environment? Since the 1990's, the natural burial movement has steadily gained interest as more and more people are exposed to the idea. With a natural burial, the body is not exposed to any chemical embalming. And instead of a traditional casket, the body is wrapped in a shroud or buried in a biodegradable casket. Rather than rows of tombstones on a manicured lawn, picture a meadow or woodland, restored and protected in its natural ecosystem. In place of tombstones, imagine graves marked with a small stone, a native plant, or a communal dedication. Some Canadians admire the spiritual connection to the earth that a natural burial grants. Many also find peace of mind knowing that their burial will have a very small ecological footprint. Yet despite the enthusiasm for the burial alternative, there are shockingly few places in Canada to be buried naturally. Susan Greer, the executive director of Natural Burial Association, speaks to Doreen Nicoll about the organization's mission to make natural burial more accessible in Canada. If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. Or, if you have feedback for the show, get in touch anytime at editor@rabble.ca.Photo credit: Kristine Cinate on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/QvjL4y7SF9k

This week on the show, Doreen Nicoll speaks to author and professor Dennis Raphael about the idea of "social murder" and how it applies to Doug Ford's government. The expression "social murder" was first introduced by Friedrich Engels, a German political economist in the 1840's. In his book, The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels describes the misery and class division he witnessed in day-to-day English life. His conclusion? Proletarian revolution was necessary. Then in 2007, the term was re-introduced by Canadian economists Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson. Their book called "Social Murder and Other Shortcomings of Conservative Economics" outlined how the influence and size of corporate power is shaping the world in a negative way - corporations are able to wreak social and environmental havoc with few serious consequences. Fast forward again to today and the term has gained popularity when referring to the recently re-elected Premier of Ontario Doug Ford and his government. And specifically - the cuts the Ford government has made to Ontario's healthcare system. Dennis Raphael explains why this term is being used, and what exactly it means in today's interview. Photo: Orfeas Green on Unsplash If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. Or, if you have feedback for the show, get in touch anytime at editor@rabble.ca.

It would be an understatement to say that COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed life in Canada. After two years since the pandemic came into our lives, we're still grappling with a "new normal" and grieving the experiences, time, and loved ones we lost during the worst waves of the pandemic. No one knows this grief better than our healthcare workers. Nurses and healthcare workers stepped up during the pandemic to face COVID first hand; working extended shifts with decreased or no time off; adapting to changes in the methods of delivering care; facing burnout, stress, anxiety, and sometimes contracting COVID themselves. All the while they were also encountering a small population of the public convinced that COVID-19 was something not to take seriously. Today, we give our healthcare heroes a voice. The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions and rabble.ca present: Nurses' Voices: Stories of courage and determination in the face of COVID-19. We interviewed over 25 healthcare professionals from across the country and asked them to share what they'd like our audience to know about their experiences working through this deadly virus. Today on rabble radio, we share snippets of those interviews. If you'd like to read Nurses' Voices: Stories of courage and determination in the face of COVID-19, you can find a digital copy here. If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. Or, if you have feedback for the show, get in touch anytime at editor@rabble.ca. Photo credit: Gunter Valda on Unsplash

This week on the site, rabble's national politics reporter Stephen Wentzell reviewed Martha Paynter's new book, Abortion to Abolition: Reproductive Health and Justice in Canada. This week, we're sharing an interview between the two where Paynter dives into the misconceptions people have about access to abortion in Canada and the other threats facing reproductive justice in the country. Paynter explains that Canadians generally view our country as the most progressive in the world with respect to abortion care. The truth, though, is that abortion access is poorly understood in our country, and so are the continual threats to reproductive justice in Canada such as sexual violence, gun violence, homophobia and transphobia, criminalization of sex work, reproductive oppression of Indigenous women and girls, privatization of fertility health services, and the racism and colonialism of policing and the prison system. Abortion to Abolition: Reproductive Health and Justice in Canada tells the empowering true stories behind the struggles for reproductive justice in Canada, celebrating past wins and revealing how prison abolitionism is key to the path forward. If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. Or, if you have feedback for the show, get in touch anytime at editor@rabble.ca. Photo credit: Alexandr Podvalny on Unsplash