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
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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...
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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
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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
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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_outlineWe launch our sixth season with Tamara Lorincz, environmental and feminist peace activist and Linda Thyer, founding member of Doctors for Planetary Health - West Coast and a discussion on the interconnected impacts of war and occupation on both people and planet, the costs of Canadian militarism and our involvement in NATO and the possibilities for global cooperation, peace, and climate justice in times of conflict.
Reflecting on the twin impacts of conflict on climate in Gaza and Ukraine, Lorincz says:
“The Middle Eastern region has suffered from drought and from excessive heat. This genocide in Gaza is just horrendous for the people and it's exacerbating the climate emergency as well. These fossil fuel powered weapon systems that Israel is using, not just fighter jets, but attack helicopters and tanks.And the fact that Canada took over two and a half months for us finally to support a ceasefire, but we've been continuing to send weapons … we're prolonging the genocide and we are contributing to a climate emergency. Canada is doing the same thing in Eastern Europe by continuing to send arms to Ukraine. We're prolonging a conflict instead of calling for a ceasefire …We are contributing to human suffering, to a lot of death and destruction and contributing to the environmental harms.”
Thyer says of our military spending:
“Canadian military spending around $36 billion per year recently. So this is a massive amount of money, could certainly be much better … used to mitigate climate problems, used in new technology ... And could be used to help recoveries internationally as well as locally from these extreme weather events that we're seeing. In some of these war zones, people are being conscripted against their will to fighting. In Canada, our conscription is through our taxes that we are paying for this militarism, for the harms that are being done to the planet and to other people through our taxes every year.”
About today’s guests:
Tamara Lorincz is a PhD candidate in Global Governance at the Balsillie School for International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University. She has a Masters in International Politics & Security Studies from the University of Bradford and a Law degree and MBA specializing in environmental law and management from Dalhousie University. Her research is on the climate and environmental impacts of the military. She’s a member of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-Canada. Tamara is also on the advisory committee of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, and the No to NATO Network. She’s a long-time environmentalist, feminist and peace activist and a mother with two teenage boys.
Linda Thyer is a mother of 3 youth, practicing family and sport medicine on traditional Coast Salish territories. She is a founding member of Doctors for Planetary Health - West Coast and active member of several community and medical organizations working towards peace and a healthy living home. She is grateful for the many healing and nourishing gifts of Mother Earth and works towards restoring health and peace for all.
Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.
Image: Tamara Lorincz, Linda Thyer / Used with permission.
Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.
Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy); Grace Taruc-Almeda, Karin Maier and Jim Cheung (Street Voices)