Radio — Grassroots organizing by Métis people in Winnipeg

Posted on December 21, 2021 by Scott

Breanne Lavallee-Heckert, Chantale Garand, and Kianna Durston are Métis people based in Winnipeg. They are also members of Red River Echoes, a collective of Métis people that is focused on grassroots organizing, land back, and the active reclamation of Métis sovereignty in Winnipeg. Scott Neigh interviews them about their work.

The group got its start in the spring of 2021. The catalyst was David Chartrand, president of the Manitoba Métis Federation – which is the Métis government in Manitoba – placing a full-page ad in the Winnipeg Free Press in support of the Winnipeg Police Service. This was around the one-year anniversary of the Winnipeg police shooting and killing 16 year-old Anishinaabe girl Eisha Hudson. Lavallee-Heckert said many Métis people felt “pure shock and anger” at the ad. The group came together to issue an open letter giving voice to this anger and to broader objections to the very presence of colonial police on Métis lands.

This happened in the context of longer-standing dissatisfactions with the MMF and its current leadership. The MMF is, according to Garand, “replicating colonial governments,” thereby manifesting an approach to governance very different than traditional Métis ways of doing things, and also doing harm to their First Nations relatives and to their relations with them. Lavallee-Heckert added that the MMF is “structurally set up as a corporation, and that’s not democracy. … It takes Métis people out of our government system, out of the way that we we own ourselves and the way that we decide for ourselves.” The level of support the open letter received made it an easy choice to make Red River Echoes into an ongoing group.

The collective’s actions have included, for instance, participating as a contingent in the July 1st walk in Winnipeg in the wake of the discovery of unmarked graves at residential school sites. When a First Nations man was violently arrested during the walk, members of Red River Echoes and other people successfully took action to de-arrest him. They subsequently arrived at the Manitoba legislature just as people were toppling statues of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II. Garand described the legislature grounds in that moment as a “euphoric space” to be in. Lavallee-Heckert elaborated, “It was a moment of feeling, like, this is our land and we’re sovereign here and we can pull down statues of colonial figureheads. And that’s our right to do that.” The collective knew immediately that they wanted to support their relatives who had taken that action, and so they started a fund to put towards bail and legal expenses. (The Crown has not yet made a decision about whether to lay charges.)

Next, they set their sights on the Winnipeg neighbourhood of Wolsley. It is named after colonial military official Sir Garnet Wolsley, who led British troops that came to the Red River territory in 1870 to put down the Métis rebellion – a “violent colonial figure who came to came to our lands with the intent to eradicate us,” in Garand’s words. Initially, they blanketed the neighbourhood with posters, calling for it to be renamed. Then they organized a gathering that brought Métis people together in traditional ways to discuss the issue.

An ongoing goal is to obtain what they describe as a “land back bus,” for Métis and First Nations people in Winnipeg to use in reconnecting with their territories beyond the city. Their fundraising for the bus will include sale of a t-shirt celebrating all of the colonial statues toppled across Turtle Island in the last couple of years. Even without having a bus yet, this past summer they organized a trip by Métis people to Batoche, the site of the military defeat of Métis and allied peoples by colonial forces in 1885, and have plans to do so again next year.

Other plans include setting up a Patreon to make it easier for people to financially support the collective’s work. And in the new year, they will be hosting a teach-in on police and prison abolition specifically focused on its relevance to Métis people in the Red River territory.

The collective sees their actions as part of enacting a vision of governance and sovereignty that they say is much more in line with traditional Métis practices. In the spirit of the characterization of the Métis as “the people who own themselves,” it is a sort of decentralized, embodied sovereignty that resolutely rejects colonial ways of doing things and that is grounded in being in good relation with each other, with the land, with their First Nations kin, and with Black and racialized relatives.

Lavallee-Heckert said, “Our ancestors were the last people to lead an armed resistance against the Canadian state. What a powerful legacy for us to live up to.”

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Used with permission of Red River Echoes.

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

Posted in Episode, Radio | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Radio — Mobilizing against anti-trans politics

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Scott

Natalie Jackett is a fourth year undergraduate student in Legal Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. They are also the trans event coordinator for Rainbow Ottawa Student Experience (or ROSE), which was known until recently as Rainbow Carleton. Scott Neigh interviews Jackett about transphobia in Canada, about a successful recent collective action that shut down an instance of anti-trans politics, and about what it looks like to be in solidarity with trans people.

The group began as a Discord channel organized by Carleton’s official LGBTQ+ student group early in the COVID-19 pandemic, as a way for queer and trans students to connect while in-person campus services were shut down. It soon became an independent group, and in November extended its mandate to include students throughout the city. One of the group’s concerns has been the increase in transphobia in recent years.

Struggles by trans people and their allies have won some ground over the last decade in terms of things like public visibility and understanding of trans issues, formal human rights protections, access to gender-affirming health care, and the reduction of certain kinds of administrative barriers in some jurisdictions.

However, the impacts of those victories remain modest in scope and unevenly experienced. In most places in Canada, for instance, trans people still face significant barriers in accessing gender-affirming health care. Almost half of white trans people and 94% of Black trans people worry about harassment from police and security. Research in one Ontario region in 2019 found trans people were more than eight times as likely as cis people to be unemployed and looking for work, and it has been broadly found that trans people are much more likely to be low income and to face employment discrimination. A 2021 report found that about one-fifth of trans people have experienced a transphobic physical or sexual assault in the last five years, more than one-third have experienced physical intimidation or threats, and more than two-thirds have experienced verbal harassment, while 64% of trans people report avoiding certain kinds of public spaces to avoid being harassed or outed.

As well, in the last few years there has been a dramatic resurgence of virulent anti-trans politics around the world, notably including in the US and the UK. At least so far, this has been somewhat less present in Canada, but there are signs that it is growing – Jackett cites a marked increase in attacks on trans people in the Ottawa community, and renewed efforts by anti-trans campaigners to frame trans people as a threat to women and children and to deny people (especially young people) gender-affirming health care. There has also been an alarming increase in anti-trans content in the Canadian mainstream media in the second half of 2021.

According to Jackett, the increase in attacks on trans people in Ottawa has catalyzed significant organizing in response within trans and broader LGBTQ+ communities in the city, including a major public forum in early October which resulted in a call for city hall to take action against transphobic hate. They said, “We as members of the community have been both experiencing this and then have been seeing the need to organize and fight back against it.”

About a week after that forum, members of ROSE noticed via social media that British Columbia-based insurance salesman and anti-trans agitator “Billboard” Chris Elston was in the city, and using his sandwich board and other means to spread anti-trans misinformation and hate. Initially, he seemed to be sticking to standard protest spots – Parliament Hill, the ByWard Market, and so on – and members of ROSE were content to keep an eye on him but let him be. Then he moved to a residential neighbourhood known for having lots of diverse families, and specifically to an area with several schools, thereby essentially targeting trans kids and their families. So they decided to act.

The plan was simple – they would mobilize their members together with flags, blankets, banners, and other obstructions, and they would block all view of Elston and his message. Around 50 of their members responded, and their action was successful. When he returned in the afternoon to try again with a gaggle of far-right hangers-on, not only were there even more ROSE members present, but they were unexpectedly joined by dozens of high schoolers mobilized by the Gay-Straight Alliance clubs in the nearby high schools. In this instance, at least, community members defended themselves and collective action shut down transphobic hate.

Jackett said, “It was really kind of inspiring to see … the support from the community at large and the political leaders within the city…. But then also to see, you know, parents from the community show this outpouring of, ‘Thank-you!'”

Beyond supporting this kind of action, Jacket says that cis people need to act in solidarity when it comes to things like dismantling the medical gatekeeping that prevents trans people from accessing the gender-affirming health care that they need, and when it comes to very basic questions of safe access by trans people to public spaces.

They said, “People who are cis or people who are straight don’t realize all of these little things that affect trans people. And so it’s, like, just seriously be conscious in your everyday lives of the way transphobia presents itself and the way that it permeates within our society. Our world is heavily heteronormative and, like, black and white when it comes to issues of sex and gender, and all of that. And very, very seldom are trans lives taken into account when we create the structures that, you know, we all have to abide by.”

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Ted Eytan / Flickr

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

Posted in Episode, Radio | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Radio — Research in the service of struggle

Posted on December 7, 2021 by Scott

Jen Gobby lives in Abenaki territory in rural Quebec and works as a postdoctoral researcher at Concordia University in Montreal. She is the founder of Research for the Front Lines, a new organization that fosters collaboration between climate and environmental justice movements in Canada and people in universities with the time and skills to do the research that movements need. Molly Murphy lives in Coast Salish territory on the west coast. She is active on the front lines of Indigenous-led land defence struggles, most recently the forest-protection blockades at Fairy Creek in Pacheedaht territory on Vancouver Island, and has been part of a collaboration with Research for the Front Lines that unearthed important new information about the Community-Industry Response Group, an RCMP unit that polices land defence struggles in the unceded territories on the west coast.

Gobby has been active in grassroots movements for the last 20 years – particularly, in the last ten, climate justice and solidarity with a range of Indigenous struggles. Over that decade, as she has pursued postsecondary education, it has been an important priority for her to figure out ways to use her research skills to support movements. Much of her work during her PhD and since has involved collaborating with climate justice and Indigenous land defence movements. In fact, her PhD research resulted in a book, More Powerful Together: Conversations with Climate Activists and Indigenous Land Defenders (Fernwood 2020). And more recently, she has been working with the organization Indigenous Climate Action on research related to decolonizing climate policy in Canada, and her postdoc has focused on community responses to COVID.

The work of research can be tremendously important to movements. It can help them develop their arguments, plan their actions, understand their opponents, and otherwise inform their decisions about intervening in the world. In movements and communities, research happens all the time, often in informal ways that don’t get recognized or named as such. But research can take a lot of time, and often folks who are on the front lines of struggle don’t have much time, because of all of the other urgent demands that they face.

Through her own experiences and conversations with collaborators in both movements and academic settings, Gobby came to recognize that that not only was there this great need for research in the context of front line struggles, but there were plenty of people in university settings with relevant skills, supportive politics, and time. But these two groups are often unable to connect. So Gobby founded Research for the Front Lines to serve as a sort of “matchmaker” and “support infrastructure” to enable such collaborations. Gobby understands this as “a form of redistribution.” In particular, because “a lot of people in universities have access to resources, have access to time to sit down and do research that others might not have” she sees it as a “redistribution of time.”

The response from both sides has been enthusiastic. Despite the fact that the organization is in its infancy, she already has a sizeable list of willing researchers, and numerous grassroots movements and communities-in-struggle have been in touch with research questions. Around eight projects are completed or ongoing, with more in the planning stages. The work so far has included supporting an Indigenous land defender involved at Fairy Creek in putting together a report for the United Nations about police violence during that struggle. At the request of people involved in the 1492 Land Back Lane land reclamation at Six Nations in Haudenosaunee territory, they put together a report on how to set up a co-operative. They are working with some Algonquin people to do a study on moose populations in their territory, to support that nation’s call for a moratorium on sport moose hunting in Quebec. And lots more.

Molly Murphy, in the course of her involvement in the land defence struggles at Fairy Creek, has both witnessed and directly experienced extensive violence enacted by the RCMP. For her, that has raised a lot of questions about the role of the RCMP in facilitating resource extraction and therefore also climate collapse. Moreover, she began to hear people talking about something called the Community-Industry Response Group (or C-IRG), but noone seemed to know much about it. One day, she posted some of her questions to social media. Gobby happened to see them, got in touch, and they decided to work together.

The team Gobby put together at Research for the Front Lines, under Murphy’s direction, has uncovered a great deal about the C-IRG, an RCMP unit that is at the forefront of repressing multiple Indigenous land defence struggles. Based on this research, Murphy has been able to circulate important new knowledge directly relevant to the struggle among land defenders she works with at Fairy Creek, in Wet’suwet’en territory, and elsewhere on the west coast. And she and the participants from Research for the Front Lines have written the organization’s first public-facing publication, an article for the movement magazine Briarpatch, and they have more planned.

In the long history of relationships between university-based researchers and grassroots communities and movements, things have often been fraught, to say the least. But in contrast with how this has often happened, Research for the Front Lines is very explicit that the researchers are not in charge. In fact, it is not even seen as an equal partnership. In the questions asked, the approaches taken, and the outputs produced, it is the front line community or movement that calls the shots.

Murphy encourages other people involved in climate and environmental justice and Indigenous-led land defence to get in touch with Research for the Front Lines if they have questions whose answers would advance their struggles. She said that as someone who has “had the firsthand experience of what it’s like to be a receiver of the research” that “the experience has been overwhelmingly positive and overwhelmingly empowering.”

And Gobby encourages any researchers with skills they think might be useful and time to give to be in touch and get on the organization’s roster. For people involved in struggle, she echoed Murphy’s encouragement, saying, “We can put a small army of researchers together to work on your project in whatever way you thinks is going to be most useful.”

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: YeshaiMishal / Wikimedia

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

Posted in Episode, Radio | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Radio — Pushing museums to take action on the climate crisis

Posted on November 30, 2021 by Scott

Robert Janes has worked in and around museums for more than 45 years, including as a chief curator and museum director, and he is the founder of the Coalition of Museums for Climate Justice. Scott Neigh interviews him about the climate crisis, about the role he envisions museums playing in responding to it, and about the work of the coalition.

Janes recognizes the complicated history of museums – a history in which they have overwhelmingly functioned as institutions of the status quo. As he put it, most “are deeply entrenched in broader histories of colonialism, globalization, and capitalism. And as such, they’re closely bound up with many of the forces that have now led the planet to the brink of ecological collapse, to the separation of human and nonhuman life, to the marginalization and oppression of Indigenous peoples, and the celebration of narratives which are dependent on unlimited economic growth. In other words, museums are mainstream as institutions and we’re as responsible for this as any other institution.”

Beyond that, he sees lots of immediate barriers to museums doing what he thinks they need to do in terms of the climate crisis. They are generally reluctant to ask big questions about their mission and values. Museum governance often reflects the status quo, and needs to be broadened and made more inclusive. Museums are often very hierarchical, and uncritically reproduce corporate forms of organization and leadership. They are generally reluctant to engage in advocacy around critical issues, and lack responsiveness to the interests and concerns of ordinary people in their communities. And they often present themselves as neutral authorities, above the fray of social and political life, rather than recognizing that they are just as integrated, implicated, and obligated to figure out how to deal with all of that responsibly as any other institution.

Nonetheless, as someone who has devoted his life to museums, Janes is also a strong believer in their capacity to be a positive force in society. He sees them as “key intellectual and civic resources that really have a large role to play in enhancing community wellbeing” and that are “uniquely qualified to work on this issue.” At their best, he said, museums have strong historical consciousness, strong grounding in community and place, a commitment to knowledge and public access to knowledge, and substantial trust from the general public.

When he circulated the founding callout for the coalition in 2016, around 70 other museum workers expressed interest in being involved, and the network has grown to something like 1400 people in the years since.

The coalition aims to mobilize and support Canadian museum workers and museums in addressing the climate crisis. To do this, they aim to build awareness of the issue within the museum community, support museums in strengthening public understanding of and response to the crisis, get museums active in public conversations on the issue, and empower museums to lead by their example.

Not surprisingly, given what museums do, much of the coalition’s work so far has been educational in focus. They have a website which they use as a hub for relevant information, and an active presence on social media. They regularly conduct sessions at museum-related conferences, and Janes does several keynote addresses a year on the topic. They put out a video series designed to help museum workers get more comfortable with the idea of confronting the climate crisis and with initiating conversation about it with museum attendees. Members of the coalition have also done lots of writing on the topic, both lay and scholarly. And a couple of years ago they issued a call to Museum Studies departments to make changes in the education of future museum workers that would take the climate crisis into account.

Janes said that, on the whole, he is not aware of any major Canadian museum that is really taking the lead when it comes to addressing the climate crisis. There are some good, small-scale efforts – some museums are working on making their buildings more energy efficient and their preservation methods less resource intensive, and some have put together exhibits about the issue. But he and the coalition are calling for much more. They want museums to ask themselves the big questions they would need to ask and make the internal changes they would need to make to be able to really start playing a leading role in actively catalyzing and nurturing both conversation and action around the climate crisis.

Museums, he argued, “need to create the context and the environment in a situation where these conversations can happen in a sort of nonthreatening and constructive environment. But for the most part, museums haven’t gone that far yet. They’re still talking about doing exhibitions, rather than dealing with people directly. And I think that’s got to change.”

The coalition is busy and active, but Janes remains concerned that most of the participants are early- and mid-career museum professionals, with very little regular involvement from the senior leadership at Canadian museums. But as the climate crisis deepens and all of us – including mainstream institutions – are increasingly forced to confront it, he remains confident that there will be an important role for museums.

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Wojciech Dittwald / Wikimedia

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

Posted in Episode, Radio | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Radio — Police and prison abolitionist organizing in Vancouver

Posted on November 23, 2021 by Scott

Tonye Aganaba and Chantelle Spicer live in the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people, in what is colonially known as Vancouver. They are active in the Defund 604 Network, a collective that organizes around police and prison abolition. Scott Neigh interviews them about that work.

As most listeners will no doubt recall, the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis in May 2020 sparked an uprising against anti-Black racism and police violence that swept across North America and around the world. While not the first such uprising on this continent even in just the last decade, the momentum that it generated under the banner of “defund the police” changed mainstream conversations about policing in an unprecedented way. While that upsurge of highly visible mobilizations has long since ebbed, as is inevitable with that kind of spontaneous uprising, and some of the mainstream space that it opened has been recouped by defenders of the status quo, it would be a serious mistake to underestimate the currents of grassroots police and prison abolitionist work catalyzed and amplified by that uprising that are very much ongoing.

The Defund 604 Network got its start during last year’s uprising. A few well-known community organizers in Vancouver reached out through their networks to bring together people they knew to be committed to, as Spicer put it, “abolitionist work and transformative futures” to seize this new moment by working collectively in new ways.

Notwithstanding oft-heard claims that all of this is a US thing, the call to push back against anti-Black (and anti-Indigenous) racism and police violence resonated deeply in impacted communities in Canada precisely because of what such communities face every day. As one of the most expensive cities in the world in which to live, people in Vancouver experience ongoing mass criminalization and violent displacement by police – particularly people who are drug users, unhoused, poor, Indigenous, Black or otherwise racialized, or some combination.

The work of the Defund 604 Network has gone in a few directions. A key part of that has, of course, been ongoing organizing to defund the Vancouver Police Department. This year, that has looked like a substantial and sustained grassroots intervention into the city’s budget process – an intervention the network is calling the “People’s Budget.” From May until September, the network focused on engaging particularly with people and communities most impacted by police violence and most marginalized from the official city budget processes around their needs, demands, and already-existing visions for a safer and more just community. The demands include peer-led nonviolent mental health supports, accessible non-market housing, safer drug supply, return of land to Indigenous peoples, and participatory budgeting. More recently, they have begun putting pressure on city hall around those demands.

However, abolitionist politics are not only, and in fact are not even primarily, about making demands on the state.

Aganaba put it like this: “There’s a lot of people who think about abolition, and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s so destructive, you just want to get rid of all the police and get rid of the military.’ And I’m like, yes, yes I do want to get rid of the police and I do want to get rid of the military. But that doesn’t mean that I want to leave a vacuum where they used to be. What it means is that the things that we’ve been using up to, up until this point – violence, harm, sexual violence, all of these different tools that have been used by the hegemonic ruling system that we’re living under – we want to remove those, but we want to make sure that we have the services, the programs, the institutions, the networks, the communities that will operate and act in the way that we want them to act. I think that there’s [a] quote by [US-based abolitionist] Ruth Wilson Gilmore where she says abolition means not just the closing of prisons, but the presence instead of vital systems of support that many communities lack.”

In other words, a central part of abolitionist organizing is building alternative institutions that reduce harms, meet needs, defend communities, and facilitate thriving. So even in the engagement around the city budget, the primary focus is not just on reducing how much money goes to the cops but on how best to support the things that marginalized communities are already doing to keep themselves safe, and have already imagined as part of their better futures. As examples, today’s guests talked about the way that the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU) mounts counter-patrols when the police and city workers are sweeping homeless people off the streets. They also talked about the long-term vision held by many sex workers of a peer-led, indoor, safer space for them to work, which is also one of the network’s core demands in the People’s Budget. Notably, none of this means just shunting money into mainstream social services, which themselves often cause harm to marginalized communities.

Along with the work around the city budget, the group is engaged in organizing and supporting a number of other campaigns. This includes supporting the movement for a safer drug supply, a range of mutual aid initiatives, efforts to get police out of wellness checks, solidarity with Wet’suwet’en land defenders, and the campaign to get justice for Jared Lowndes, a Wet’suwet’en man murdered by the RCMP in July. At the moment, they are also part of a coalition calling for decarceration in the midst of BC’s flooding emergency.

While it can be frustrating to have deal with hostile governments – governments that really don’t care about the harms that police do, or about what communities really need to be safe and healthy – today’s guests argue that the key is to remember that building abolitionist futures happens not primarily through convincing politicians but through care work, creation, experimentation, mobilization, and organizing with each other in our communities.

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Used with permission of the Defund 604 Network.

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

Posted in Episode, Radio | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Radio: A struggle over the future of Montreal’s transit system

Posted on November 16, 2021 by Scott

Laurel Thompson is a retired teacher based in Montreal and an environmental activist with a particular interest in sustainable transportation. She is also a member of the group Trainsparence. Scott Neigh interviews her about the REM, a major new addition to Montreal’s transit system, and the group’s opposition to it.

The transit system in Montreal regularly ranks third or fourth in North America for rapid transit ridership, depending on how you measure. But the city also has an ongoing problem with traffic congestion, specific persistent deficiencies in its transit system, and until recently there hadn’t been a major new addition to the system in a few decades.

Now, it might sound a bit peculiar for someone with Thompson’s politics to be talking about organizing in opposition to the largest investment in Montreal’s transit system in many, many years, but that is what this episode is about. Trainsparence formed in 2015 or 2016 in opposition to a train-based mass rapid transit project called the Réseau express métropolitain (or REM) that was originally proposed to service western areas of Montreal. Ultimately, despite the opposition from Trainsparence and others, the REM was approved and is now well on its way to being built. However, Thompson speaks about that struggle today in the spirit of supporting the emerging resistance in the eastern part of the city to a proposed new phase of the REM.

There are a number of reasons why grassroots activists opposed this project.

One objection is that the REM is being built as a public private partnership (or P3). That term covers a range of approaches, favoured by many neoliberal governments, that involve saving money in the short term by getting a profit-seeking investor to put up some of the capital for a particular project, and then allowing them to profit from it over the long term. This not only makes the project more expensive for governments in the long term, because the private sector partner must extract profit in addition to the actual cost, but it also means that the project cannot be just focused on the public good and must in some way be oriented towards making money. In the case of the REM, the Quebec government has guaranteed the investor an 8% rate of return, and opponents of the project have calculated that to meet that rate will require hundreds of millions of dollars a year from public coffers.

In this project, the investor is the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (also known as the CDPQ or the Caisse), which exists to manage public sector pensions funds in the province. It is a quasi-public organization, but its mandate is to make a profit – it is an investment fund, and it behaves like one.

For the REM, the agreement between the province and the Caisse gave the latter extraordinary leeway to expedite the project. It was exempted from certain kinds of public consultations and approvals. Despite the fact that the Caisse is an investment fund, it was given extensive power over transit planning in Montreal, to the extent that other aspects of the existing system have been forced to adapt to its decisions, and the municipal transit authority can do very little about it. Moreover, the Caisse is being allowed to profit from this role in other ways – it owns extensive real estate holdings in Montreal, the value of which will be significantly impacted by its decisions around the REM.

As well, when the independent provincial agency in charge of environmental assessments – abbreviated as the BAPE in French – refused to approve the project, the province just overruled them, arguing they had exceeded their authority. In line with the BAPE’s report, however, critics argue that multiple aspects of the REM project are, at heart, just not good transit policy, and are not at all what a more open and consultative approach run by an actual transit organization would do. Some critics have argued that this model opens the door to greater privatization of transit infrastructure in Quebec.

Trainsparence waged their ultimately unsuccessful opposition to the REM through a mix of mainstream media interventions, social media, lobbying, delegating as part of relevant governmental processes, a certain amount of grassroots public education and outreach, and a lawsuit.

Thompson thinks that one of the difficulties in opposing the REM was the fact that the investor was the Caisse, and politicians were reluctant to criticize a project involving the pension fund that millions of Quebeckers depend on. But she is encouraged by what she is seeing in the opposition in east Montreal to the new phase of the REM, saying, “The current resistance is wonderful. They are great.” She argues that the opponents in east Montreal have been much more able than Trainsparence and other opponents in the west to do things like direct outreach in neighbourhoods and on or near the transit system itself, and have had much more success in spawning neighbourhood-specific groups opposed to this new phase of the REM. (See here, here, and here to learn more about groups opposing the REM de l’est.)

She hypothesizes that the different form of the project in the east may be part of the reason for this more widespread resistance, as in the west it primarily used rights of way that already existed, whereas “in the east part of Montreal, it’s being built in their backyards, because they don’t have the right of way.” And she wonders if perhaps culture is also a factor – east Montreal is primarily francophone, whereas the western part of the city is more anglophone.

Thompson argues that however things proceed in the short term, in the longer term power over transit planning in Montreal needs to be returned to the local transit authority. She says all future transit projects must prioritize the public good and democratic accountability, and be subject to substantive consultation with the residents that would be impacted.

She said, “I just urge people to get out there and fight. Because these P3s are coming down fast.”

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Wikimedia / Hugothepinkcat

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

Posted in Episode, Radio | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Radio — The fight for universal dental care in Canada

Posted on November 9, 2021 by Scott

Brandon Doucet is a dentist in Nova Scotia and a founding member of the Coalition for Dentalcare, an organization that brings together dentists, hygienists, dental students, other health care professionals, and members of the public to advocate for universal dental care in Canada. Scott Neigh interviews him about how dental care currently works in this country, and about the fight to make it universally accessible.

In his practice, Doucet has a particular interest in dental surgery and in public health. It was his involvement in surgery that first helped him realize how many people in Canada lack access to dental care. People who get dental surgery are generally people whose dental problems are severe, and often their problems are severe because they’ve been struggling to access basic dental care. In this country, the vast majority of dental care is provided in a privatized way, meaning it is paid for through dental benefits, most often associated with employment, or out-of-pocket. So lacking access to care is most often because you can’t afford it.

Over one-third of Canadians lack any form of dental coverage. In 2018, around 6.8 million people in this country avoided going to the dentist because of the cost. Not being able to get dental care when you need it can of course be really painful. It can also lead to long-term deterioration of your oral health – approximately 1.8 million Canadians are unable to chew, largely for dental reasons, with a prevalence that is 3.3 times higher for people in the lowest income bracket. Poor oral health is not only bad in its own right but is associated with a whole host of other health conditions, from strokes to osteoporosis to cardiovascular disease and many more. In addition, lack of access to dental care also burdens the non-dental health care system because lots of people seek treatment for dental pain from physicians.

So things are already bad, and Doucet said, “The trend of access to dental care is getting worse.” The increase of precarious, low-wage, and generally lousy employment means fewer and fewer people have dental benefits. And difficulties in accessing dental care due to affordability also appear to be getting worse due to the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When Doucet first started working on this issue, he was on his own – he wrote some articles and gave some talks, but was pretty limited in his capacity to go beyond that sort of thing. In January 2019, he did a presentation at a conference for dental students at McGill University in Montreal. A number of the students in attendance were interested, and together they became the initial nucleus for the Coalition for Dentalcare. Since then, their membership has grown and spread, as has their capacity to take on different projects.

A lot of their work so far has focused on public education, and also lobbying. They have done numerous webinars, some targeted at dental or other health care professionals and some focused on the general public, and they make extensive use of social media. Doucet and other members have, of course, continued to write and speak publically about the issue. They are close to finishing a book on the topic, and hope to begin working soon on a documentary film project.

As the pandemic recedes, they want to organize in-person events, actions, and even protests. They have been building alliances with other groups representing people who experience disproportionate barriers to dental care – seniors, disabled people, people living in poverty, and more – and they are keen to strengthen these collaborations.

Doucet said that there are a number of ways that Canada could begin moving towards universally accessible dental coverage. The federal NDP (with whom the Coalition has been working on the issue) has proposed as a starting point a public dental insurance plan for families making less than $70,000 a year. Doucet agrees this would be an important step forward.

Personally, however, rather than a system that would reimburse dentists in privately-owned clinics in a piece-work manner, he favours an approach in which dental care is delivered in clinics that are publically owned, and that directly employ dental professionals. The system could start in institutional settings – schools, long-term care facilities, prisons, community health centres – and expand from there. He particularly supports the idea of such a system making use not just of dentists but of dental therapists, a now-rare allied profession that is able to deliver basic aspects of dental care at lower costs. (He said dental therapists play a role in relation to dentists that is comparable to what nurse-practitioners do in relation to physicians.)

Doucet argues, “I think focusing more on the public ownership model and the dental therapy model is a more efficient way of using resources. But that being said, I’m still very happy that the NDP are taking on this issue and trying to bring this to a national stage.”

As was true decades ago with the introduction of socialized medical care in Canada, none of this will happen without a fight. The Liberals and Conservatives don’t seem terribly interested in the issue, and many dentists themselves – much like physicians in the pre-medicare days – are opposed.

Doucet said that dentists, for the most part, have “benefited very well from the existing system. It has made them very well off.” He continued, “Dentistry has always operated outside of any sort of social contract. So it’s really been a vessel for accumulating wealth for people, really. Whether that be the private health insurance companies, dentists themselves, and what we’re seeing now is increasingly a trend towards corporate ownership of dental clinics.”

But he argued, this makes it even more important for dentists, hygienists, students, and other health care professionals who have a commitment to justice – as well as the general public – to speak up in favour of universal dental care, and to get involved.

Talking Radical Radio brings you grassroots voices from across Canada, giving you the chance to hear many different people that are facing many different struggles talk about what they do, why they do it, and how they do it, in the belief that such listening is a crucial step in strengthening all of our efforts to change the world. To learn more about the show check out our website here. You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter, or contact [email protected] to join our weekly email update list.

Talking Radical Radio is brought to you by Scott Neigh, a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

Image: Wikimedia / senivpetro

Theme music: “It Is the Hour (Get Up)” by Snowflake, via CCMixter

Posted in Episode, Radio | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment