rabble radio

We're hearing a lot about the benefits of 5G wireless networks, the next generation of broadband which will give us faster speeds on our wireless devices, but the downside of the technology isn't getting near as much press. Among its benefits: it will make self-driving cars possible, enable robotics in factories which are managed from remote servers, and improve the delivery of remote medical care. In Canada, the rollout is beginning this year. 5G has the potential to drastically improve internet performance in rural areas where there is no access to wired infrastructure. Anybody who's out in a rural area and who has to go to a webinar or online meeting understands why that's a good thing. But despite the benefits that 5G will bring, there are voices that are saying "not so fast." Today's two guests are among those who are cautioning that the evidence is not clear that 5G wireless technology is safe. There is a wide range of studies which go between extremes. On one extreme there are some who say it's perfectly safe, while others raise fears of the coming 5G apocalypse. For non-scientists, it's hard to know what to believe. In the middle are voices which are not anti-technology, but are raising the caution flag. Today's rabble radio guests are in that category. We'll hear from Frank Clegg, a former president of Microsoft Canada. With 40 years experience in IT, he is now CEO of Canadians for Safe Technology. This interview was done by Michael Welch of the Global Research News Hour in September of 2019. In our second interview Victoria Fenner talks to Mark Gildenhaar of Kingstonians for Safe Technology about organizing at the local level. Image: Alistair McIntyre/Pixabay

Finding care for a loved one with a serious ongoing medical condition is heartwrenching for families. When long-term care or homecare is needed, it's also frustrating and confusing. There are few options, and the standards of care can vary significantly from one provider to another. And most of the time, there are few choices. Though the provinces are supposed to fund this kind of medical care, it's not funded very well. This is a complex subject that labour beat intern Zaid Noorsumar has been delving into while he's been with with us here at rabble.ca. His research focuses on Ontario, but he says similar conditions exist in other provinces too. He talks to Victoria Fenner about the challenges that health-care workers and their patients face, and why their needs are not being met. Zaid is our sixth labour beat intern. He is a journalist who has contributed to CBC, The Canadian Press and Rankandfile.ca, among other news outlets. He's covered issues spanning labour, politics, social justice and sports. You can read his other stories written during his internship here. And, rabble.ca welcomes Alex Cosh to his new position as opinions editor. He says hello to our listeners and talks about what he brings to the job from his home office in Powell River, B.C. Image: truthseeker08/Pixabay

Many people were frustrated and angry when the federal Liberals broke their 2015 campaign promise that electoral reform would happen before the next election. Dave Meslin, community activist and organizer from Toronto, decided that it was only a setback. He's continued doing his research and organizing people to fight for proportional representation. On December 1, he launched a Kickstarter campaign with Unlock Democracy Canada, a non-partisan organization for democratic renewal and political transformation. Called "Time to Topple," the goal of the new project is to create a roadmap to reform municipal electoral processes and reclaim city halls across the country. The campaign exceeded its goal of $15,000. The research will draw from lessons learned in London, Ontario, which is the first municipality in Canada to adopt a ranked balloting system in its city elections. Meslin is a longtime proportional representation advocate. Among his many activities, he founded the Ranked Ballot Initiative of Toronto. In 2019, he released the book Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up, which covers his accumulated experience to date around his three main themes of concern "billboards, bicycles and ballots," especially advocating for an intelligent redesign of our governance systems. Dave Meslin spoke to Victoria Fenner, rabble's executive producer of podcasts. Image: "Time to Topple" campaign graphic. Used with permission.

Anybody with a family who has to rent will tell you that a lot of landlords don't like to rent to families. This is especially true if the head of the family is a teenager with very small children. Today's guest is Melissa Tremblay, a University of Alberta assistant professor in educational psychology. She has received a Mitacs Award for Outstanding Innovation in the Indigenous category, presented on November 26, 2019. The Mitacs Award for Outstanding Innovation — Indigenous is presented to an Indigenous student or post-doctoral fellow who has made a significant achievement in research and development innovation during their Mitacs-funded research. Mitacs is a national, not-for-profit organization that has designed and delivered research and training programs in Canada for 20 years. It works with 70 universities, 6,000 companies, and federal and provincial governments to build partnerships that support industrial and social innovation in Canada. Melissa Tremblay received the award for her innovative work to develop and evaluate a housing support program for pregnant teens and teen moms and dads. She talked to Victoria Fenner about what her research told her about the challenges of being a teenager with children, especially in this very difficult housing market, and some of the innovative research techniques she used to get teenagers to open up about their lives. Image: sathyatripodi/Pixabay

COP 25, this year's United Nations Climate Change Conference, was scheduled in Madrid from December 2-13. It went into overtime and didn't end until two days later on December 15. Simon Chambers, today's rabble radio guest, was at COP 25 in his capacity as communications director for the ACT Alliance. The ACT Alliance is a global organization of more than 145 churches and related organizations working together in over 120 countries. The organization's mandate is to create positive and sustainable change in the lives of poor and marginalized people. It's an international organization, and Chambers is a Canadian living in Toronto. He joins Victoria Fenner today to talk about his impressions of this year's proceedings. They talked about Canada's performance and also about protest actions which happened because activists were frustrated with the slow pace of change from the official government delegations who were negotiating. Image: Simon Chambers/ACT Alliance

Now that the holiday season is upon us, you're maybe thinking about what kind of gifts to give that doesn't add to the amount to the stacks of stuff that so many people already have too much of. Here's a gift idea — you can give a piece of land to the people of your community. Or, if you don't have land to give, you can make a financial gift to your local land trust, if you have one. Or you can volunteer your time. Today's guest on rabble radio is Sheila Ziman, one of the founding members of the Haliburton Highlands Land Trust. The Haliburton Highlands is a small rural district about two and a half hours northeast of Toronto. It's cottage country, and a place where preserving the environment is a high priority among some of its residents. Sheila Ziman joins Victoria Fenner to talk about what a land trust is, and how land trusts work. There are land trusts all over the country. The Ontario Land Trust Association has a list of them here. Image: Haliburton Highlands Land Trust. Used with permission.

Here in Canada, we like to believe that we are a welcoming people, kind and generous to anyone who shows up on our doorstep. Today's guest challenges that assumption. Graeme Truelove's book Un-Canadian: Islamophobia in the True North looks specifically at our treatment and attitudes towards Muslims. The book looks further back, and demonstrates that our treatment of Muslims isn't all that different than our treatment of other people of non-white heritage throughout our history. He talked with Victoria Fenner about what those myths are, and also a couple of excerpts from the book, with permission of the publisher, Nightwood Editions. Thank you to Edward Moll for reading. Read another excerpt from UnCanadian: Islamophobia in the True North on rabble.ca. Image: Pixabay/Alfred Dielman

As the nation down south tucks into turkey dinners this year, there is bound to be a lot of interesting and even volatile conversations around the dinner table. Because, with the American presidential election just a little under a year away, not to mention the impeachments proceedings happening right now, dinner time could get a little fractious. Good luck with that! To recognize American Thanksgiving, our interview today is our contribution towards building democracy. Our advice to Americans living in Canada: register to vote! Today's first guest is David Mivasair. He's been living in Canada for many years but he's still very connected to his American roots. So much so that he's working hard to get other Americans living in Canada involved in helping determine the outcome for his country in November 2020. Today you'll be hearing about his organizing efforts with Democrats Abroad and why he's working hard to get fellow Americans living in Canada registered to vote. If you're a citizen of the U.S. and you want to register, go to either Democrats Abroad or Americans Abroad to find out how. And second, it's not just American Thanksgiving this week. It's Black Friday, that post-Thanksgiving celebration of consumerist excess about buying. And buying. And buying. Campbell McClintock is a writer and artist committed to social change who lives in Halifax. He's also an American citizen living in Canada. He shares his thoughts about how to burst the consumerist bubble this season. Image: David Mivasair

In Montreal, there are currently numerous Guinean asylum seekers facing deportation from Canada. Some of them, along with other community activists, have come together to protest the Canadian government's moves to deport refugees to West Africa. In the last year, stories of numerous cases of Guinean refugees have been shared widely on social media in Montreal and also discussed in the mainstream media. A grassroots campaign against the deportation of Guinean refugees was launched a couple years ago with a press conference, supported by the Immigrant Workers Centre, in Côte-Des-Neiges. Since that time, a series of protests and actions have been taking place across the city. Asylum seekers directly impacted by deportations, the wider Guinean, as well as broader West African community networks have been working steadily to convince the federal government to halt the deportations. Stefan Christoff, Montreal musician, community activist and radio host, produced this report for rabble radio. To highlight this community campaign against deportations he spoke with Mostafa Henaway from the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal and also Guinean asylum seeker Mohamed Barry who has been campaigning against the forced deportations. Editor's note, November 22, 2019: An earlier version of this story was incorrectly posted with an image of the Guinea-Bissau flag. The accompanying image has been changed to the flag of Guinea. Image: jorono/Pixabay

Over the past year, we've brought you stories on rabble about Edwin Espinel, a political prisoner in Honduras who was arrested in January 2018 following anti-government protests and held in a maximum security prison in deplorable conditions. It was the best of news when he was released on bail just this past August, after 18 months behind bars. But he's far from out of danger because his bail could be revoked at any time before the trial scheduled for next May. Edwin is married to Karen Spring who grew up in Elmvale, Ontario, and works with the Honduras Solidarity Network in Tegucigalpa. Janet Spring is Edwin's mother-in-law who still lives in Elmvale. She has been tirelessly campaigning to get the Canadian government to put pressure on the Honduran government to drop all charges against him. Janet has started a local support group in the small town Elmvale, the small central Ontario town where she lives. It's called Simcoe County Honduras Rights Monitor, and she now fears that recent events surrounding the president in Honduras could have repercussions for Edwin, other political prisoners, and everyone who works for social justice in the country. Janet Spring dropped by Victoria Fenner's studio in nearby Barrie and talked to her on November 5, just last week, about the current situation that Edwin and her daughter Karen are dealing with in Honduras. For more information on the situation as it evolves, you can go to the Honduras Solidarity Network, a network of approximately 30 organizations from across Canada and the United States that are committed to demonstrating and advocating for solidarity with the Honduran social movement. Image: Janet Spring/Edwin Espinel and Karen Spring in Honduras.