In July of this year, I began hosting monthly Fireside Film Nights, a free monthly online series featuring progressive films and panel discussions. My goal was to attract 100 viewers by July 2022. By two months later in September, the viewing audience had increased slightly faster than I had hoped to approximately 50, but still…
Category: human rights
September 30: A day for listening, learning and truth-telling
This coming Thursday, Sept. 30th, is Orange Shirt Day and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Although it is a statutory holiday for all federally regulated employees, it is unfortunately not a statutory holiday for provincially regulated employees. As the overwhelming majority of workers are employed in sectors that are provincially regulated, relatively very…
Why the Canada Disability Benefit should be a priority for everyone this election
The time is now for a Canada Disability Benefit. My good friend Al Etmanski has been hard at work for many years to reduce/eliminate the poverty experienced by 1.4 million disabled Canadians. We should never count our chickens before they hatch, but victory may be just around the corner. Most parties in the current federal…
Cuban solidarity is an example to the world
Last Monday, on a beautiful summer evening my partner Penny and I had the great honour of hosting Cuban Embassy officials David Aldama Pando, Third Secretary, and Areadna Quitana Castañeda, Press Attaché, as guests in our home. It was two hours of informative, intellectually stimulating discussion about a wide range of topics. The main topic…
The fight for human rights and the Green party’s soul
What do the recent developments in the federal Green party tell us? It would appear as though their leader, Annamie Paul, is holding on to her position, at least for the time being. On the evening of June 15, the party’s federal council met for almost four hours. It did so in the wake of…
The legacy of residential schools is not history
Content warning: This story has disturbing details about Indian residential schools. Survivors and their families can call the toll-free National Indian Residential School Crisis Hotline at 1-866-925-4419. On Thursday, May 27, Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation announced that they had located the unmarked burial sites of 215 children on the site…
Bring back Carter’s brilliant proposal for Israel/Palestine
Israel is not the Middle East’s only theocracy. It is arguably also not the Middle East’s only apartheid state. It is, however, the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed country. Not only is it the only nuclear-armed nation in the Middle East, but its military is by far larger and more powerful than that of all other…