COMMONS

This week, the city of Thunder Bay, ON, agreed to implement the recommendations of an inquest that looked into the deaths of seven Indigenous students. This, despite the fact that no one from city council appeared to have attended said inquest. The case of a Halifax-area cab driver accused of sexually assaulting a heavily intoxicated female passenger was dismissed by a provincial court judge after...

Welcome back to CANADALAND Commons! New hosts Hadiya Roderique , Ryan McMahon , and Ashley Csanady spend their first episode looking into the mostly manufactured controversy behind M103 - a motion to denounce Islamophobia and racism and a push for the Canadian government to set up a committee to look into the rise of discrimination in the country. Also, refugees from countries on U.S. President Do...

Meet the new hosts of CANADALAND COMMONS:  Hadiya Roderique , Ashley Csanady , and Ryan McMahon . New episode available Tuesday February 21 and every two weeks thereafter.   Follow the show on Twitter . Support COMMONS: http://commonspodcast.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're looking for new hosts. Please send demos (less than 4 minutes long) to: info@canadalandshow.com Support COMMONS: http://commonspodcast.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Supriya, Vicky and publisher Jesse Brown deliver a message about the future of COMMONS. Follow @cndlndcmns  for developments. Support COMMONS: http://commonspodcast.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, we go behind the scenes in Canadian politics. How do the backroom dealings in Ottawa stack up to the kind of power games we see on shows like House of Cards or the West Wing? Warren Kinsella brought the American war room model to Jean Chrétien's campaign, making it his mission to drive rival politicians crazy and throw them off their game. Lisa Kinsella has also worked in Liberal war rooms,...

The Trudeau government made a lot of commitments in the last election, including improving relations with Indigenous people, fighting climate change and investing in infrastructure. Those commitments are starting to come to a head. This past week, they approved a massive liquified natural gas (LNG) project on Lelu Island, near Prince Rupert, BC. We check in with Indigenous communities, where suppo...

Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch really wants to talk about her proposal to screen out immigrants over anti-Canadian values, but takes issue with "specific questions" on the matter. But first, Bloomberg reporter Josh Wingrove drops in for a lookahead to the upcoming year in Parliament. What's gonna happen, who will start the first brawl and what would it take to end Trudeau's popula...

It's week two of our Conservative leader-a-thon. Today we bring you our conversations with leadership contenders Tony Clement and Maxime Bernier. Both men were longtime members of Stephen Harper's cabinet. Tony Clement says the Conservatives need to communicate better with young people and is now pushing tough-on-terror policies. Maxime Bernier is often called the Libertarian candidate. In additio...

A bunch of people want to succeed Harper as leader of the Conservative Party. Whoever gets the vote won't just be gunning to be the next Prime Minister; they'll be leading the Opposition, with an aim towards keeping the government in check. Over the summer, we took some time to figure out who all these people are. We'll share those interviews over the next two weeks. Today, we hear from Michael Ch...

What do you do if you think a city councillor is exploiting his public platform to make money on the side? Listener Matt Alexander emailed us with this quandary. He points out that Greater Sudbury Councillor Robert Kirwan takes money from local businesses to write promotional posts for a Facebook group he runs. This raises a lot of questions for Matt, but he doesn't know what to do about it. We lo...

Earlier this summer, we spoke to Monia Mazigh about CSIS agents making unannounced visits to Muslims. Now, one of those men joins us. After studying and teaching English in Egypt, Juned Moid* was visited by CSIS agents, denied entry into the US and had his passport renewal delayed. He doesn't know why. We also speak to Ken Stone, an activist and political commentator, who launched a complaint agai...

We check in with Maggie Cywink about the upcoming inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women. Maggie’s sister Sonya Cywink was murdered over 20 years ago and the case remains unsolved. Maggie says the announcement felt like a photo op for the Liberals.   She first spoke to us back in December when the inquiry was announced:   http://www.canadalandshow.com/podcast/families-mmiw-what-can-we-...

Abdirahman Abdi, a Somali man in Ottawa, is dead after witnesses say he was beaten by cops.   There’s been a lot of attention on police violence against Black people in the U.S. lately. But Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, says Canada’s policing style has a lot of the same problems as the American system when it comes to dealing with racialized an...

Muslim men have been telling Monia Mazigh about getting unannounced visits from CSIS agents at home or the workplace. The intelligence agency says the conversations are voluntary, but some people are accusing them of intimidation.  Monia is the national coordinator for the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. She tells Supriya and Vicky about these visits and discusses Bill C-22, the le...

Supriya and Vicky want to know what the Brexit means for us. Does a vote for the United Kingdom to leave the EU change our lives across the ocean?   Armine Yalnizyan, senior economist for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, talks about why shifting global markets matter for everyone.   Freelance journalist Steven Zhou gives some social context to the vote. Support COMMONS: http://commonsp...

The government’s declared that ISIS is committing a genocide against the Yazidi people. So what are we doing about it?   Yazidi-Canadian Dalal Abdi talks about her journey to Canada and her family's life back in Iraq and Turkey.   Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith talks about voting against the majority of his party to declare a genocide earlier in the week.   Stephanie Carvin, assistant professo...

Toronto MPP Cheri DiNovo thinks the NDP needs to return to its roots: unabashedly socialist and anti-capitalist, with an eye towards social justice and the environment. So now she's launched an unofficial leadership campaign, choosing not to pay the $30,000 fee required to enter the race. DiNovo was the first person within the NDP to speak out against the Party after their collapse during the 2015...

“Are these… 18th century working conditions?” Gabriel Allahdua asks. Gabriel came from St. Lucia to work on a farm as part of the Temporary Foreign Worker program.  He describes the long hours, difficult working conditions and his disappointment over speaking to a Parliamentary committee that’s reviewing the TFW program. Justicia for Migrant Workers put us in touch with Gabriel.   Are Canadian pol...

We sent the Syrup Trap's Winnie Code to the Conservative Convention in Vancouver. She explains how the convention was a bit like an informercial and gets the official party line on whether or not Justin Trudeau is handsome. Plus, a discussion about whether the Conservative Party can build credibility when it comes to environmental policy. Featuring Mark Cameron of Canadians for Clean Prosperity an...

Matt Bufton is a proud Libertarian who does not want to be lumped in with Conservatives.   With the Conservative leadership race picking up steam, Matt, executive director of the Institute for Liberal Studies, tells us why the Conservatives don’t represent his values… and why he has to look to the past for political role models.   Tannara Yelland tells the story of 21-year old Breanna Kannick, who...

People lost their minds when the long form census came back, after being replaced by the voluntary National Household Survey. But why does it matter?   David Hulchanski, a professor at University of Toronto, tells us how the NHS made Canada look more equal than it was.   Dillon Black from the group Queering613 talks about issues for trans and gender non-binary people in the census.   Plus, why is...

Conservatives may finally decide toembrace gay marriage at a policy convention later this month. Ormaybe not. More than a decade after same-sex marriage was legalisedin Canada, the party still defines it as a union between one manand one woman.   BC’s Premier is under attack forconflict-of-interest, relating to over $300,000 in salary top-upsand a bunch of expensive fundraisers. The Tyee’s legisla...

A Conservative MP’s op-ed aboutthe sexism in Parliament got a lot of praise. But Sarah Beuhler sawit as hypocritical and an attempt to gain favour for a possibleleadership bid. She debates with Supriya and guest co-host JaneLytvenenko whether a Conservative MP can be a feminist. Mike Duffy’s cleared of all chargesin the Senate expense scandal. We hear from protestors who wereliving inside the offi...

Guest co-host Vicky Mochama went out to the Hill to interview women about what it’s like to work in a space built for 19th century gentlemen.   In the wake of the NDP convention, the big question is whether Canada can stomach a party that’s a centimetre off centre.    A powerful listener calls in with opinions on the Senate.    Subscribe to Vicky’s newsletter, NOT SORRY. Support COMMONS: http://co...