Diana Chan McNally: Bringing community work to Toronto’s City Council
Needs No Introduction
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
Needs No Introduction
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
Needs No Introduction
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
Needs No Introduction
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
Needs No Introduction
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...
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Oxfam Inequality Report 2026: Resisting the rule of the rich and protecting freedom from billionaire power
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In our second episode of the season, executive director of Oxfam Canada, Lauren Ravon returns for our annual focus on the Oxfam Inequality Report and this year we are also joined by senior director of Strategy and Innovation at Family Service Toronto and national director of Campaign 2000, Leila Sarangi. We discuss Oxfam’s latest report on global inequality, Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power, the capture of political power by the billionaire class, the rise of authoritarianism and how this is being lived in Canada. Ravon says: “One of the...
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Venezuela, Canada and the “Donroe Doctrine”
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In the season 10 premiere of the Courage My Friends podcast series, we are pleased to welcome back journalist, author and director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, Vijay Prashad and professor of International Relations at St. Thomas University, Shaun Narine. We discuss the recent US military attack on Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy (the so-called “Donroe Doctrine”) and what this means for Canada, and how all of this is connected to the decline of US...
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December 10th Human Rights Day panel discussion: The ongoing struggle for rights in Canada
Needs No Introduction
Our final episode of this Courage My Friends season features a December 10th Human Rights Day Panel Discussion, the first of a series of events celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Community Worker Program at Toronto’s George Brown College. Community workers and human rights advocates, Brianna Olson Pitawanakwat, Samira Mohyeddin, Diana Gallego, Desmond Cole and Diana Chan McNally discuss the meaning of human rights in Canada 77 years after the UN adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, critical issues facing us today and the power of solidarity-driven, rights-based...
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The AI hype-machine: Canada’s ill-advised ‘national sprint’ on artificial intelligence
Needs No Introduction
In episode six of the Courage My Friends’ season nine, we welcome impact strategist with Animikii, Indigenous Technology, Jeff Doctor, technology and human rights lawyer with Tekhnos Law and senior fellow with The Citizen Lab, Cynthia Khoo, senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood. We discuss Canada’s accelerated approach to artificial intelligence and the mobilization of civil society groups against it, multiple impacts of largely unregulated AI on people, planet and democracy, Indigenous perspectives on data sovereignty and...
info_outlineIn the sixth episode, Linda McQuaig and Ian Thomson discuss the rising fortunes of the billionaire class amid shrinking incomes and opportunities for the vast majority before and during the pandemic.
In speaking about the impacts of billionaires on our democratic systems, McQuaig says, “this accumulation of wealth in the hands of billionaires... It’s not just that it’s tremendously unfair, which of course it is, it’s that it gives them so much political power that they get to effectively control the world… The wealthy corporate elite now has so much power that it can effectively block any kind of collective action. And that’s exactly what they’re doing. The reason that there isn’t progress on climate change isn’t that the public is resistant. The public would actually like there to be action on climate change. It’s the immensely powerful interests in the fossil fuel industries that are single-handedly blocking that.... it’s not just unfair they have all that money; it’s detrimental to the survival of the human race… So when I talk about a wealth tax, I’m not just talking about it so we can get money from them. I’m talking about a wealth tax that will curb their political power, economic and political power. So they can’t control things and prevent us from taking the collective action we need to take.”
According to Thomson, and the most recent Oxfam International report Inequality Kills “Whether it’s from the climate disasters that are taking lives. Whether it’s the vaccine inequality that means that COVID-19 is taking more lives - these are deaths that could be easily prevented if we had a more equitable vaccine distribution. And people are also being pushed to the brink of extreme hunger and actually are dying of starvation. These are the sorts of real-life impacts of this extreme wealth inequality, largely in the lowest income countries, but also lower income people in all countries are suffering from. And when you take the numbers, you just see that actually people are dying every four minutes due to inequality. The numbers are so staggering that it is hard to wrap your head around what kind of suffering this is bringing about.”
About today’s guests:
Award-winning journalist and activist Linda McQuaig is also the author of best-selling books, including: Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths; It’s the Crude, Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet; The Trouble with Billionaires (co-authored with Neil Brooks) and most recently The Sport and Prey of Capitalists: How the Rich Are Stealing Canada’s Public Wealth. A long-time and powerful voice of dissent against economic injustice and extremes of wealth, Linda has been described as “an indispensable public intellectual” and “an irritant to Canada’s 1%” one of whom, Conrad Black, even suggested that she be “horse-Whipped”.
Ian Thomson leads Oxfam Canada’s work on government relations, corporate engagement and feminist policy influencing in Canada and internationally. Prior to joining Oxfam, he coordinated the human rights and natural resources program of a national ecumenical coalition and chaired the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability. He is a board member of MiningWatch Canada and the Maquila Solidarity Network, and holds engineering degrees from Queen’s University and the University of Toronto.
The Courage My Friends podcast series is a co-production between The Tommy Douglas Institute (at George Brown College), rabble.ca, with the support of the Douglas Coldwell Layton Foundation.
Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute.
Image: Linda McQuaig and Ian Thomson / Used with permission.
Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased
Intro Voices: Chandra Budhu (Podcast Announcer), Nayocka Allen, Nicolas Echeverri Parra,
Doreen Kajumba (Street Voices); Bob Luker (Tommy Douglas quote)
Courage My Friends Podcast Organizing Committee: Resh Budhu, Breanne Doyle (for rabble.ca), Chandra Budhu and Ashley Booth.
Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca
Host: Resh Budhu