Hands Off Our Education! Ontario Students Mobilize in Campus Walkout on Thursday, November 5th
Needs No Introduction
In our fourth episode of the season, we welcome Cyrielle Ngeleka, Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students - Ontario and Trudy Kuropatwa Trent, Chairperson of the Student Mobilization Committee - Toronto. We discuss the Hands Off Our Education Campaign and the province-wide campus walkout on Thursday November 5th and the Ford government’s Bill 33, cuts to student funding and erosion of public post-secondary education driving students to mobilize across Ontario. Speaking to Ontario’s government and students, Ngeleka says: “Keep your hands off our...
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Requiem for Gaza: In Conversation with Joe Sacco
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In our third episode of the season, we are very pleased to feature celebrated cartoonist, author and pioneer of cartoons journalism, Joe Sacco and his recently released Requiem for Gaza, a profound work of graphic reportage co-authored with journalist Chris Hedges. We discuss the experience of Palestinian families displaced by the ongoing genocide, the imprint of history on the current moment, the killing and chilling of journalism and the obligation to truth in a time of relentless and arrogant power. On the dedication of Requiem for Gaza to Palestinian journalists, Sacco...
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What Is Reconciliation Without Truth? Protecting Residential School Survivor Records
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Kimberly Murray and Connie Walker discuss the impending destruction of 38,000 residential school survival records and the project to preserve them. In our second episode of the season we are joined by co-leaders of the Indian Residential School Records Project, Pulitzer and Peabody award-winning journalist Connie Walker and former Executive Director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Kimberly Murray. We discuss the scheduled destruction of 38,000 records containing the testimonies of Indian Residential School survivors, the resilience and courage of survivors,...
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The carbon bootprint: How Canada’s war economy fuels the climate crisis
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In the season 11 premiere of the Courage My Friends podcast series, we are pleased to welcome environmentalist, feminist, peace activist and Senior Researcher with Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, Tamara Lorincz and climate policy researcher and advocate with Greenpeace Canada, Keith Stewart. As we head into the Global Week of Action for Peace and Climate Justice, we discuss Canada’s accelerating shift toward a militarized economy, what this looks like and how this is not only failing to address our true security needs, but is coming at considerable cost to our sovereignty, people...
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Diana Chan McNally: Bringing community work to Toronto’s City Council
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This week, we welcome and spotlight community worker, homelessness advocate, and candidate for Toronto City Council, Diana Chan McNally. We discuss Chan McNally’s run to become City Councillor for Toronto’s Ward 4, Parkdale-High Park, top-of-mind issues for the Ward and the city, provincial encroachment on municipal government and her vision of bringing community work to municipal politics. Chan McNally says: “Part of why I'm running too, I also very much do not appreciate the provincial encroachment on municipalities. I have a history of fighting Ford. I have won resources from...
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Labour Fair 2026 Keynote: New modes of organizing for a working peoples’ city
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Today’s episode of the Courage My Friends podcast series features the keynote discussion from the 34th annual Labour Fair at Toronto’s George Brown College. Founding representative of the Toronto Airport Workers’ Council Sean Smith and member of the Parkdale Housing Justice Network (PHJN) Matt Whitfield, discuss the crises of labour precarity and housing insecurity, how these are the outcomes of systems rigged against workers and communities and methods of effective grassroots and labour organizing toward the building of working peoples’ cities. On the housing “crisis”, Whitfield...
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From ecosystems to economics: How Canada’s conserved and protected areas contribute billions to the economy
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In episode six we welcome national director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Sandra Schwartz and CPAWS economic analyst, Jason Wong, lead author of the CPAWS white paper, . We discuss the first of its kind report that offers a new way of valuing conservation and the protection of our lands and waters, not as barriers to economic growth,but as long-term and essential green infrastructure that enriches our lives,our communities and our economy. Explaining the reasons for the report, Schwartz says: “The point was actually to have a different way to talk to...
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Labour Fair 2026: The radical labour of care
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This latest episode of the Courage My Friends podcast series features “The Radical Labour of Care” panel discussion with: Indigenous midwife, leader, and educator, Claire Dion Fletcher; crisis outreach worker, case manager, and advocate in Toronto’s Downtown East, Lorraine Lam; and program director of the Latinx Womyn’s Program at the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre/Multicultural Women Against Rape, Grissel Orellana. It is moderated by Eliza Chandler, associate professor in the School of Disability Studies and executive director of the Office of Social Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan...
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Mining, militarism and organizing against the march to war
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In the latest episode of the Courage My Friends series, we welcome organizer with the Mining Injustice Solidarity Network Kara Anderson and welcome back Canada organizer for World Beyond War and coordinator of the Arms Embargo Now Campaign, Rachel Small. We discuss Canada’s radical turn toward militarism and its ramping up of defence spending, the many and deep connections between militarism and mining in the mining capital of the world and solidarity organizing against the march to war. Reflecting on Canada’s increased defence spending, Small says: “ Canadian military spending...
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Pension divestment: From funding crises to a radical pension politics
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In our third episode of the season, Tom Fraser, a union researcher and author of Invested in Crisis: Public Sector Pensions Against the Future, and Becca Steckle, a research and policy analyst with Just Peace Advocates, join us to discuss how Canada’s public sector pensions are funding crises from housing to genocide, the restructuring of Canadian retirement security into capital funding for militarism and welfare erosion around the world and the urgent need for divestment toward a radical pension politics. According to Fraser: “What I see as specifically contradictory about the structure...
info_outlineIn the first episode of our fourth series, we welcome CLiFF (Canadian Labour International Film Festival board members, Lorene Oikawa and Derek Blackadder and George Brown College faculty and organizer with the Labour Fair, Kathryn Payne.
We discuss the importance of bringing labour education to post-secondary and wider communities through the 31st annual Labour Fair at Toronto’s George Brown College (organized by the School of Labour and the Tommy Douglas Institute) and its collaboration with the Canadian Labour International Film Festival (CLiFF). This episode sets the stage for the re-airing of major Labour Fair events on this podcast as well as on rabbleTV over the coming weeks.
Reflecting on the Labour Fair at George Brown College, Payne says:
“The Labour Fair initially was meant to make sure that working class students .. had some knowledge of the unions in their sectors so .. they could find folks who could help them out and who could represent them. And also teach them the basics of organizing. Right? I mean, the main thing that we are always teaching is that we are stronger as a collective.…Our theme this year is P3s, so Pandemic, Privatization, and Precarity. But in our conversations, both with teachers and amongst each other, we've also sort of added a fourth P, which is the Planet.”
Speaking to the importance of CLiFF in these times, Blackadder says:
“Its ongoing relevance is that it shows working people a mirror. .. it lets them look at a film that represents them in some way, shape or form.That will allow them to ..make that connection that in that bigger world, workers have a great deal more in common, than they do those things that divide us.”
Oikawa points to issues that demand attention:
“There's still that issue about workers' rights, workers' safety, having fair wages, safe workplaces for workers - ongoing, still needs scrutiny. Environmental issues… That's the brilliance of CLiFF. A number of issues will continue to be reflected in the films that we show at our labor Film Festival, but have been shown as well….There's never a point where, ‘oh, we're done. We don't need to know our history.’ We have to continue to know our history.”
About today’s guests:
Lorene Oikawa is on the board of the Canadian Labour International Film Festival and helps organize screenings in British Columbia. She started volunteering for CLiFF in its inaugural year, 15 years ago. She is past president on the board of the National Association of Japanese Canadians and a human rights activist. Lorene is a fourth generation Japanese Canadian and a descendant of survivors of the forced uprooting, dispossession, incarceration, and exile from 1942 to 1949. She is a co-editor of the book, Honouring Our People: Breaking the Silence. She was the first Asian Canadian executive vice president for the BC Government and Service Employees’ Union (BCGEU).
Derek Blackadder spent over 30 years working for several trade unions in a variety of roles. He currently volunteers with LabourStart, writes the Webwork column for Our Times Magazine, is Co-Chair of the Northumberland (ON) Coalition for Social Justice and is a contributor to RadioLabour. He combines his commitment to the labour movement and his love of film by serving on the board of the Canadian Labour International Film Festival (CLiFF).
Kathryn Payne is a full-time educator in the School of Labour at George Brown College in Toronto. Her areas of interest include labour and working class culture, women's work, diversity and sexuality studies, colonialism, and neoliberalism. Her work for the School of Labour is multifaceted: she designs curricula, liaises with union educators, teaches General Education courses at George Brown, and helps organize the annual George Brown Labour Fair. She has also been active in the sex worker rights movement, queer activism and was one of the founding members of George Brown's Positive Space Campaign.
Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.
Image: / Used with permission.
Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.
Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy); Injila Rajab Khan and Danesh Hanbury (Street Voices)
Courage My Friends Podcast Organizing Committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.
Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca.
Host: Resh Budhu.