Alberta Advantage Podcast

Support this podcast ! Documentary filmmakers Marc Serpa Francoeur and Robinder Uppal rejoin Team Advantage to discuss their theatrical-length exploration of the deeply troubled Calgary Police Service: No Visible Trauma . Recent years have seen the Calgary Police Service shoot and kill more people than officers in any other Canadian city, and more than either the New York or Chicago police departm...

Support this podcast ! Monuments in Canada memorializing Ukrainian Nazi SS divisions have raised questions about the nature of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and their history in Canada. Writer and researcher Moss Robeson joins Team Advantage to explore a range of questions: who was Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera, and what is the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists? What role have Ukrainian...

Support this podcast ! Tyler Shipley, author of Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination , joins Team Advantage to discuss his latest book. How does the violence of colonization become Canada's "first foreign policy?" How amenable was the Canadian state to Hitler's fascism in the lead-up to the Second World War? What was the extent of Canada's involvement in the Korean...

Support this podcast ! Alberta is the only province in the country that allows charter schools, and Jason Kenney's United Conservative Party has now removed the cap that had limited their expansion. Joel French, Executive Director of Public Interest Alberta, joins Team Advantage to discuss the first new charter school in Alberta in 13 years, opening about 50km from Edmonton. Why a new charter scho...

What does horror tell us about our fears and anxieties under capitalism? What do reanimated bodies, vampires, and zombies tell us about what is monstrous about our world? Team Advantage discusses David McNally's book, Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global Capitalism .

Support this podcast ! What's a strike? Why do they happen? What's a picket line? How can I support a strike? What is the mass media likely to say about a strike? What role do the courts and labour board play? What dirty tricks might be expected from employers? Team Advantage addresses all this and more in our overview of labour action basics.

Support this podcast ! At the opening ceremony for Calgary's southwest ring road, seth cardinal dodginghorse interrupted the proceedings —in the presence of Jason Kenney, Ric McIver, Tsuu'tina Chief Roy Whitney, and Mayor Naheed Nenshi— and told his story. We're pleased to have seth join us to discuss the context behind his action, the history of Tsuu'tina and Calgary, the legacy of colonization,...

Support this podcast ! In 1961, Saskatchewan CCF Premier Tommy Douglas moved to fulfill a campaign promise to provide universal medical care insurance— an effort that would produce fierce opposition from Saskatchewan's doctors, culminating in a 23-day doctors' strike in July of 1962. The program's success resulted Canada-wide medicare coverage in 1968. What can be learned from this example, where...

Support this podcast Andre Goulet of the newly-launched Harbinger Media Network joins Team Advantage to talk about the problem of reactionary podcasts that unfortunately top the charts. How might we expand the reach of fledgling left-wing podcasts and help get our ideas into the mainstream? To learn more about Harbinger, visit harbingermedianetwork.com and follow @harbingertweets . Follow Andre Go...

Support this podcast During the Second World War, Canada shifted to full employment, remaking its economy, retooling factories, and transforming the workforce to mobilize against an existential threat. What would it look like to mobilize against today's existential threat: climate catastrophe? Seth Klein joins Team Advantage to discuss his new book, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Em...

Support this podcast As the pandemic hits budgets hard, Kenney's UCP is continuing to push towards "performance-based funding" for Alberta's universities, colleges, and post-secondary institutions. How does this contribute to the already ongoing corporate influence and profit-making trends we've seen in post-secondary education, and how do these changes contribute to the UCP's broader assault on o...

Support this podcast Chrystia Freeland did indeed have a Nazi-collaborator grandfather, Michael Chomiak. Why is this relevant, and why is it worth talking about? Davide Mastracci joins Team Advantage to discuss his recent article in Passage , Chrystia Freeland Must Account For Her Nazi Collaborator Grandfather . Who was Freeland's grandfather, Michael Chomiak, and what did he do while editor-in-ch...

Support this podcast Western Alienation! Wexit! Separation! Are these merely tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? Team Advantage convenes to discuss the phenomenon of western alienation, examining its long history, how it obscures capitalist alienation and reconstructs it to defend regional capitalist interests, and shapes an explicitly right-wing collective identity f...

Meryam Haddad, leadership candidate for the Green Party of Canada, joins Team Advantage to discuss ecosocialism, decarbonization and energy transition, and her positive vision for workers while avoiding ecological catastrophe. Check out Meryam's campaign at meryam2020.ca. For information on the GPC Leadership Contest, visit greenparty.ca/en/leadership-contest .

Today, August 31, 2020, is International Overdose Awareness Day. Team Advantage is rebroadcasting this episode of CRACKDOWN, featuring an interview between host Garth Mullins and Tim Slaney, a harm reduction worker at the Lethbridge supervised consumption site (that shut down today). Listen to more and subscribe at crackdownpod.com . /// Today is International Overdose Awareness Day, but so what?...

Support this podcast Dimitri Lascaris, leadership candidate for the Green Party of Canada, joins Team Advantage to discuss socialism, the state of the Canadian media ecosystem, proposals to increase the power of workers in our economy, and how to challenge the establishment — both within political parties and in the media landscape. Check out Dimitri's campaign at teamdimitri.ca . To vote in the G...

Support this podcast Jason Kenney's attacks on public education continue. Politicized attacks on Alberta's curriculum review, farcical comments by government spokespeople, and poor planning for the return to classes mid-pandemic are all eroding trust in public education. Medeana Moussa and Barb Silva from Support Our Students join Team Advantage to discuss what awaits students as they return to sc...

Support this podcast As the Black Lives Matter movement continues to make its presence known in Canada and the United States, racist and colonial statues are increasingly being subject to the intense gravitational pull of the Earth. What kinds of statues and monuments are objectionable in Canada? What's being done about it? And what do statues have to do with how we remember history? Team Advantag...

Support this podcast Alberta's UCP Environment and Parks Minister Jason Nixon is planning on partially closing 20 parks, and handing over management of 164 parks to private companies— and internal disclosures suggest a further sell-off of Alberta's parks is in the works. Alberta has also rescinded the 1976 Coal Development Policy, raising the possibility of open-pit coal mines in Alberta's rockies...

Support this podcast In 1972, the B.C. New Democrats led by the charismatic Dave Barrett won an upset victory in British Columbia, defeating the 20-year reign of Social Credit's W.A.C. Bennett. In a stunning "legislation by thunderbolt," Barrett's government passed 367 bills in three years, introducing a wide range of progressive reforms. Join Team Advantage as we survey what the Barrett governmen...

Support this podcast Kenney's UCP government has used the pandemic to their advantage, passing a number of outrageous laws that accelerate handouts to Alberta's most profitable corporations, while cracking down hard on the rights of citizens to protest. Team Advantage convenes to discuss Alberta's Job Creation Tax Cut , Bill 1: Critical Infrastructure Defence Act , and Bill 32: Restoring Balance i...

Support this podcast Are Calgary's police officers being held to account when they abuse their power? Calgary-born filmmakers Marc Serpa Francoeur and Robinder Uppal join Team Advantage to discuss their recent CBC documentary, Above the Law , an eye-opening investigation into police brutality and the lack of accountability in the Calgary Police Service. Find out more about the documentary here: ht...

Support this podcast Remember when the Liberals campaigned on expanding national child care, but eviscerated the welfare state instead? Oh, the 90s! Doug Nesbitt, founding editor of rankandfile.ca, joins Team Advantage to discuss the reign of Canada's Liberal Party through the 1990s. How did austerity and double-digit unemployment become normalized? What happened to Canada's social programs? How d...

Support this podcast What happens when a community depends on fossil fuel extraction and the industry always calls the shots? Team Advantage digs into the history of coal mining in Nova Scotia, examining the role of the labour movement, deindustrialization and attempts at nationalization, the history of mining disasters, and the long-term effects of regional decline. What might Alberta glean from...

Support this podcast What if we started taxing the accumulated wealth of billionaires? Alex Hemingway, Economist and Public Finance Policy Analyst at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, joins Team Advantage to discuss his recent piece, A wealth tax on the super rich is within reach . How might we tax wealth, and what do the proposals to do so look like? What are the effects of massive wea...