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...
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You Will Not Kill Our Imagination: Author Saeed Teebi on Palestine, writing and imagination
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In episode five, we are pleased to welcome award-winning author Saeed Teebi who speaks to us about his powerful new book, You Will Not Kill Our Imagination: A Memoir of Palestine and Writing in Dark Times. In our annual focus on the power of storytelling, we discuss what it means to be a Palestinian writer in these times, the challenges of writing against dehumanizing narratives, complicity in the attempted erasure of Palestinian life, identity and art through both violence and silence and how imagination, story and writing become profound acts of resistance in a time of genocide. On the...
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Bills C-2 and C-12: How Canada’s border security acts endanger refugee rights
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In episode four, we welcome co-executive director of the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change, Karen Cocq, advocacy and media relations coordinator at The Refugee Centre in Montreal, Alina Murad and President of the Canadian Association of Refugee Lawyers, Aisling Bondy. We discuss the Carney Government’s new border security acts, Bill C-2 and its questionable make-over with the recently tabled Bill C-12, how they effectively rewrite Canada’s approach to refugee rights and protections, whether this new security regime is a response to the Trump tariff demands or an opportunity to continue...
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Crisis or scandal? The deliberate dismantling of Ontario's public college system
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In our third episode we welcome support staff president for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union Local 418 at St.Lawrence College. Amanda Shaw, second vice president of OPSEU Local 415 at Algonquin College, Martin Lee and from George Brown College, member of OPSEU's part-time and sessional divisional executive, Ben McCarthy. We discuss the mass layoffs and program and campus closures across Ontario's 24 publicly funded colleges, impacts on college workers, students, and wider communities, what this means for the future of public post-secondary education and how what has been publicized...
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On September 20: Draw the line for people, for peace, for planet
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In this episode we welcome, climate justice and Indigenous rights organizer from Stellat’en First Nation and senior advisor at the David Suzuki Foundation, Janelle Lapointe; member services and movement building manager with Climate Action Network Canada, Lauren Latour and Canada organizer for World Beyond War, Rachel Small. We discuss the Draw the Line National Day of Action taking place across Canada on September 20, the reasons for this historic cross-movement coalition and the urgency of drawing the line now in this moment of converging and overwhelming crises, for people, for peace and...
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Lawless: The complete decriminalization of abortion… only in Canada
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In our season nine premiere, we welcome Martha Paynter, nurse, scholar and author of . We discuss Canada’s complete decriminalization of abortion (the only country to do so), the fascinating and often fraught history that brought us to this point, abortion as a public good, the influence of the anti-choice lobby here and the overturning of Roe vs. Wade in the US, and what it takes to make abortion truly equitable when decriminalization is not enough. Reflecting on the need to understand abortion as a public good, Paynter says: “We have these major cultural forces that just reiterate...
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Palestine and the weaponizing of hunger and the climate crisis
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In episode nine of the Courage My Friends series, we welcome visiting professor and dean of the faculty of agriculture and veterinary medicine at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University, Dr. Ahmed Abu Shaban. We discuss the weaponization of already fragile food systems in Gaza, the acceleration of the climate crisis through conflict and Palestinian resilience under occupation. Reflecting on the nexus of food, climate and occupation, Abu Shaban shares: “My father passed away in 2021 and we had a farm in Gaza. This farm was destroyed several times. And this farm is an olive trees farm. And...
info_outlineIn episode three, researcher Dr. Rahul Kumar and political economist Dr. Tanner Mirrlees discuss the rise of education technology and artificial intelligence across colleges and universities, how they impact and disrupt teaching and learning, and how public post secondary education has become an incredibly lucrative business for privately owned EdTech corporations.
Reflecting on the impacts of EdTech companies on education, Mirrlees says:
“The very same business model that these corporations have developed and advanced in all facets of social life are now being advanced throughout the context of public education. Whereby platform capitalism is becoming the classroom. Surveillance capitalism is becoming the classroom. Data is being aggregated about all of the users of these services, teachers, learners, administrators, everyone.”
Describing the interminable cycle of EdTech and AI, Kumar says:
“Imagine a triangle where we have pedagogy, privacy and privatization. … pedagogy, we need to teach these things. Oh my goodness, we need graduates to be well versed in it. And that becomes the entry point. Well, you buy this piece of software, which is the private part. And it is going to lead to providing solutions. Meanwhile the tool is being used for surveillance, which allows for better improvements … which leads to that idea of more technology begets more technology.”
About today’s guests:
Rahul Kumar is an assistant professor at the Department of Educational Studies at Brock University. His current scholarship contributes to the discourse of AI’s role in higher education and K-12 system. He is an active contributor to several prestigious journals and a recipient of several internal and external grants for his research work. Prior to his academic post, Kumar worked in the IT industry and brings his theoretical and practical knowledge to understanding, promoting, and critiquing technology within education.
Tanner Mirrlees is a political economist of the communication, media and tech industries, and teaches in the Communication and Digital Media Studies program at Ontario Tech University. Mirrlees is the author or co-author of numerous publications, including Work in the Digital Media and Entertainment Industries: A Critical Introduction (Routledge, 2024), Global Entertainment Media: Between Cultural Imperialism and Cultural Globalization (Routledge, 2013), Hearts and Mines: The US Empire's Cultural Industry (UBC Press, 2016), and EdTech Inc.: Selling, Automating and Globalizing Higher Education in the Digital Age (Routledge, 2019). Mirrlees is also the co-editor of Media Imperialism: Continuity and Change (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), Media, Technology, and the Culture of Militarism (Democratic Communiqué, 2014), and The Television Reader (Oxford University Press, 2012).
Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute
Image: Tanner Mirrlees, Rahul Kumar / Used with permission.
Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.
Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)
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.