The Progress Report

Sandra Azocar, the executive director of Friends of Medicare, joins us to analyze and breakdown Jason Kenney's new COVID restrictions as well as a recently passed bill that allows private, for-profit plasma farming operations to be set up in Alberta.  If you like this podcast and you want to support it go to  https://www.theprogressreport.ca/patrons  and become a monthly patron! Lin...

University of Calgary law professor Lorian Hardcastle joins us to talk about her controversial piece on Dr. Hinshaw and why Hinshaw needs to exercise her powers to stop the death and destruction that COVID is wreaking. We also talk about what the government of Alberta needs to do get this disaster under control  If you like this podcast and you want to support it go to  https://www.thepr...

Dave Cournoyer of Daveberta fame joins us to discuss Alberta's multiple overlapping crises. We talk COVID-19, Jason Kenney's $1.7 billion dollar whoopsie, conservative connected law firms making bank and how the smart money is on Joe Biden cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline.  If you like this podcast and you want to support it go to  https://www.theprogressreport.ca/patrons  and be...

We speak with Andre Goulet of the Harbinger Media Network about his plans to knock Ben Shapiro and Pod Save America off the Canadian political podcast charts. We also discuss Canadaland, the future of the CBC and what's next for the Progress Report. 

We speak with Courtney Walcott and LJ Parker about their work with the Defund2Fund coalition on defunding the police in Calgary as well as psychopathic challenge coins, why so many teachers and principals think it's ok to use the n-word in school, domestic violence in the Calgary Police Service and more.  If you like this podcast and you want to support it go to  https://www.theprogressr...

Elizabeth Simons is the co-author of a new piece published by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network on a group of young men in the Wexit movement, the Alberta Separatist Youth League, who have big political aspirations and are also extremely explicit in their anti semitic, racist, and authoritarian beliefs in leaked private chat logs. 

Yodit Tesfamicael, an organizer with Students4Change and Black Women United talks with us about the work she's a part of to help improve black lives at Norquest College. An important starting point has been getting that institution to collect race-based data. Turns out you can't be an anti-racist organization if you have no idea how black people are doing.  If you like this podcast and you wa...

We have returning champion Laura Kruse on to discuss her latest Red String column . There is a huge effort going on to whitewash a dangerous and extreme right wing conspiracy theory and tens of thousands of well meaning folks are getting sucked in. And it's using child sex trafficking as the entry point.  If you like this podcast and you want to support it go to  https://www.theprogressr...

We are joined by Oumar Salifou of the Is This For Real? podcast to talk about Edmonton Police's militarized hardware show and tell, the media's poor coverage of police and the upcoming Police Act review.  If you like this podcast and you want to support it go to  https://www.theprogressreport.ca/patrons  and become a monthly patron! Further reading: Edmonton Police show off their ne...

This is a re-run from September 11, 2019. We speak with Ricardo Acuna and Sandra Azocar, two Chilean refugees, to listen to their stories of the CIA-backed coup that installed brutal Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and overthrew a democratically elected socialist government on September 11, 1973.  Listen and subscribe on Spotify ,  Stitcher ,  Apple Podcasts  or just  su...

Progress Report host Duncan Kinney appears on the very good podcast 49th Parahell to talk about the NBA wildcat strike and what workers can learn from it, why Chrystia Freeland's Nazi collaborator grandfather matters in 2020, the Conservative Party of Canada's new leader Erin O'Toole and where the conservative movement in Canada is going. 

We speak with Inuk writer, professor and researcher Norma Dunning about her ultimately successful struggle to have the Edmonton CFL team change its racist and insulting team name. We also discuss Norma's powerful writing on Edmonton's actual historical relationship with the Inuit. Further reading: Edmonton’s historic relationship with the Inuit is one of death, loneliness and despair If you like t...

We continue our conversation with Laura Kruse on conspiracy theories and Alberta. We dive into Laura's story for the Progress Report blog, McKinsey, 🍞📈, the UCP’s incoming evisceration of Alberta’s post-secondary system , and our favourite conspiracy theories. Listen and subscribe on Spotify ,  Stitcher ,  Apple Podcasts  or just  subscribe to the RSS feed If you like this po...

We kick off the inaugural edition of the Red String, a monthly column from Laura Kruse on conspiracy theories and Alberta, with a bit of theory and history on conspiracy theories in Canada. From Freemasons to aliens to Q and everything in between. Also, please read Laura's story on one of our favourite conspiracy theories that isn't a conspiracy theory titled  McKinsey, 🍞📈, and the UCP’s in...

Our guest Abdul Malik makes the case for why the UCP's new union busting bill is actually good. Plus Duncan follows up on his story about the Ukrainian Nazi collaborator war criminal statue by going down the Ukrainian Nazi collaborator rabbit hole.  Listen and subscribe on Spotify ,  Stitcher ,  Apple Podcasts  or just  subscribe to the RSS feed If you like this podcast an...

The UCP have dramatically changed the rules around municipal elections in Alberta making it easier for conservatives to win and for big money to sway elections. We dissect the rule changes and the upcoming municipal horse races in Edmonton and Calgary with Romy Garrido. 

We discuss the the organizing and struggle to end police brutality in Calgary and rural Alberta with comedian, public speaker and organizer Adora Nwofor. 

What does society look like when community safety isn't handled by armed cops authorized to kill people? In part two of our conversation on disarming, defunding and dismantling the police with Reakash Walters and Molly Swain, we discuss the abolitionist position.

Edmonton and Calgary spend nine times more on the police than they spend on housing the homeless or social programs. Combined the two cities spend $750 million a year on cops. We talk with Reakash Walters and Molly Swain about how to divest from police and invest in the community. 

The UCP are trying to snatch away financial, social and education benefits from 2100 former foster kids. It's incredibly cruel and totally needless and A.C. and her lawyer Avnish Nanda have taken the government to court and won to keep these benefits – for now. We talk about this case with Nanda and Jenn Prosser an organizer and campaigner who grew up in foster care and kinship care during the aft...

We have friend of the pod Jeremy Appel on to talk about how his latest story for the Progress Report, The Manitok Manoeuvre , as well as the Sprawl getting shutout of the media bailout, the Herald caring more about "big beef days" than dead meatpacking workers and the Progress Report's transition to a full-time media organization. Show notes at www.theprogressreport.ca/jeremy_appel_manitok_meatpac...

Filipinos in Alberta are bearing the brunt of COVID-19 in Alberta as outbreaks in meatpacking plants and continuing care facilities hit our province. Around 60-80% of the workers in the Cargill meatpacking plant, the largest workplace outbreak in Canada, are Filipino. And now they're feeling unfairly blamed because of the government's and even Dr. Deena Hinshaw's statements on the matter. We talk...

Learn how Alberta's most incompetent pension fund manager, AIMCo, vapourized $4 billion of pensioner's and Heritage Trust Fund money and how they've shovelled more than $1.1 billion towards likely to fail oil and gas companies with more than $3 billion in environmental liabilities.  Our guest this week is Greg Meeker, former chair of the Alberta Teachers' Retirement Fund, and one of Alberta's...

Jason Kenney just committed the biggest mass layoff in Alberta's history in the middle of a pandemic. It's the kind of cruel and contemptible behaviour we've come to expect. To help us process and understand the fallout from the brutal decision to fire 26,000 education workers we have Edmonton Public School Board trustee Bridget Stirling on the pod.

The pandemic has only just begun but the folks working overnight to stock shelves and spending exhausting days on their feet dealing with panicky, frazzled customers are absolutely essential workers. They are keeping our society together. And yet the workers at your local Safeway in Alberta have been fighting for a fair contract for months with an employer that wants to roll back wages and cut ben...