Beyond the Headlines

Every minute the equivalent of a garbage truck full of plastic enters the oceans. This is a worsening crisis that has drawn calls to action from activists, policymakers, and politicians. On this episode of Beyond the Headlines, we sit down with plastic policy experts to get a better understanding of the severity of the plastics crisis and behavioural change required for sustainability. We also spend some time debunking common myths about plastic and discussing the potential for Canada to transition to a low-waste, circular economy.

Dr. Vito Buonsante is an environmental health lawyer with over 10 years of international experience designing, analyzing and implementing environmental legislation. He is also the Plastics Program Manager at Environmental Defence and a Sessional Lecture at McMaster University’s Department of Health Aging & Society. 

Dr. John Robinson is a Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and the School of the Environment, at the University of Toronto. He is also UofT's Presidential Advisor on the Environment, Climate Change and Sustainability.

Sonja Wegge is leading the Plastics Pacts programme at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a global network of Pacts bringing together businesses, governments, NGOs and others in a country or region to drive collective action towards the circular economy for plastics. 

Music Credits"Suburbs" by Arcade Fire "Fallingwater" by Maggie Rogers 

Episode CreditsErin Christensen - Producer Duncan Cooper - Producer Thea Koper - Producer With guidance from: Alex Gold-Apel and Vienna Vendittelli - Executive Directors

Housing in Toronto has reached crisis levels, with rents and house prices increasing every year and showing no signs of slowing down. In today’s episode, our guests discuss the ways that the City is trying to address the issue, and what more can or should be done to bring prices down.

Ash Navabi is a senior Economist for Housing Matters, a Toronto not-for-profit which advocates for increasing the housing supply via the changing of zoning regulations, as well as a lecturer at Ryerson University.  

Natasha Cheong is a PhD urban planning student at the University of Toronto, examining municipal scale responses to high-cost North American housing markets. Before attending graduate school, she worked in the non-profit housing sector and for the City of Vancouver’s Homelessness Services department providing community and housing supports to vulnerable populations on the Downtown Eastside.

Jennifer Keesmaat is passionate about creating places where people flourish, and was named one of the “most powerful people in Canada” by Macleans, one of the “most influential” by Toronto Life, and one of the top Women of Influence in Canada. Jennifer is a Distinguished Visitor in Residence Emeritus at the University of Toronto, and continues to share her vision for cities of the future and her belief in the importance of public sector leadership through a variety of publications including The Guardian, Macleans, The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and on her podcasts, Invisible City and Within Reach. Keesmaat serves on the Advisory Board of the Urban Land Institute, Toronto and the International Panel of Experts, Singapore Urban Redevelopment Authority.

Special thanks to Senior Producer Erin Anderson-Birmingham, Junior Producers Hongyu Xiao and Duncan Cooper, and Executive Director Vienna Vendittelli for producing this episode.

Music Credits:

1. ‘Marry Me Archie’ by Alvvays

It has been nearly a year and a half since recreational cannabis was legalized in Canada in October 2018. The government said that legalization was primarily intended to keep cannabis out of the hands of youth and to fight back against organized crime.

Today on BTH, we look back at cannabis legalization - can we look at this effort as a success? How have the different provinces decided to set up their systems?

We were joined by Senator Tony Dean, and Professor Michael J Armstrong from Brock University to discuss how legalization has unfolded and what still needs to be done to improve the system.

Tony Dean was appointed to the Senate of Canada as an Independent Senator in November 2016. He was formerly a professor at the graduate School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto, and is now a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Dean has advised governments in Canada, and internationally, on public administration and public service reform and has chaired several expert panels at the federal and provincial levels. In 2017-2018 Dean sponsored Bill C-45, the Cannabis Legalization Bill, in the Senate of Canada.

Michael J. Armstrong is an associate professor of operations research in the Goodman School of Business at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. He frequently writes about Canada’s cannabis legalization efforts, especially how government regulations interact with business practices to support or undermine policy goals.

Special thanks to Senior Producers Aryeh Ansel and Erin Anderson-Birmingham, Junior Producer Haobo Chen, and Executive Director Vienna Vendittelli for producing this episode.

As university and college tuition rates in Canada increase every year, questions of affordability are becoming more pertinent. Changes to OSAP and student funding are hitting students harder than ever before, yet having an undergraduate degree (and even a master's degree) remains the prerequisite for most well-paying jobs. On this week’s episode of Beyond the Headlines, we unpack the question on everyone’s mind: “Is post-secondary education accessible in Canada?” We investigate the sociocultural and economic barriers which prevent students from attending university and college, and which prevent parents from saving for their children’s education in the first place. We also look at the policies and programs which can make higher education more accessible in the long-run. Joining us in the conversation to provide their insights and perspectives are guests Luke Connell, André Côté and Andrew Parkin.

Luke Connell is a leader in the field of social innovation. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the nonprofit initiative SmartSAVER, based out of the Omega Foundation here in Toronto.

Andrew Parkin is the Executive Director of the Environics Institute for Survey Research, a not-for-profit agency created in 2006 to promote relevant and original public opinion and social research on important issues of public policy and social change.

André Côté is the Principal Consultant at Côté and Company Strategies and an alumnus of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. CreditsAnna Millar (Senior Producer) Geneviève Tallmeister (Producer) Fatemah Ebrahim (Junior Producer) Alex Gold-Apel (Executive Producer) Music: "Ways" by Dave Simpson

Administrative Segregation. Special Handling Unit (SHU). The Hole. “The prison within the prison.” Though there is a wide array of names and phrases, solitary confinement has become a major human rights issue within Canada’s correctional landscape. Lawsuits in British Columbia and Ontario spurred the federal government to amend the Correction and Conditional Release Act (aka Bill C-83) to create certain changes to administrative and disciplinary segregation in federal correctional facilities. One of the major changes was the creation of “structured intervention units” and a placement review process overseen by a “commission.” 

In Ontario, as a result of the lawsuit brought by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association on behalf of Adam Capay, the Ontario Court of Appeal capped the number of days an individual can be placed in solitary confinement to 15 days. Justice John Fregau called Adam Capay’s 1647 days in solitary confinement as “prolonged, egregious and intolerable” that violated protections covered under the Charter of Rights of Freedoms. Recent changes to Ontario’s Class Proceedings Act have the potential to reverse or even remove the imposed cap set by Adam Capay’s appeal. The amendments to the Act were enacted to prevent people from suing the government over policy or spending decisions and can be retroactively apply to tried cases.

Today’s guest is Senator Kim Pate. Kim Pate was appointed to the Senate of Canada on November 10, 2016. She is a nationally renowned advocate who has spent the last 35 years working in and around the legal and penal systems of Canada, with and on behalf of some of the most marginalized, victimized, criminalized and institutionalized — particularly imprisoned youth, men and women. Kim Pate is widely credited as the driving force behind the Inquiry into Certain Events at the Prison for Women in Kingston, headed by Justice Louise Arbour. Senator Pate has been instrumental in building coalitions across the country with other equality-seeking women’s, anti-racism, anti-poverty and human rights groups and organizations. 

Special thanks to Senior Producer Robert Giannetta and Junior Producer Daniella Marciano and Executive Director Vienna Vendittelli for producing this episode.

Music:

Girls Like You by Denny

Plimsoil Punks by Alvvays

In 2018, the Government of Canada released the first multi-year immigration levels plan, which sets targets for the amount of immigrants that Canada will admit from 2019 to 2021. According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, the plan is designed to contribute to an immigration system that supports the middle class through economic growth, supports diversity, and helps build vibrant, dynamic and inclusive communities while maintaining border integrity to ensure the safety of Canadians. The plan is made up of Canada’s federal immigration programs, with economic class immigration, family class migration, as well as refugees and humanitarian claims. In total, Canada plans to admit over 1 million immigrants in this three year time span, an increase from the previous 2017 levels plan.

In this episode, we discuss increasing Canada’s population, economic migration, refugee policy and settlement and integration policy. 

We are joined by Doug Saunders from the Globe and Mail, Parisa Mahboubi from the CD Howe Institute, Audrey Macklin from the University of Toronto and John Shields from Ryerson University. 

Credits Daniella Marciano Thea Koper Alex Gold-Apel

While immigrants arrive in Canada often healthier than their Canadian-born counterparts, data shows that over time and generations, immigrant health tends to decline faster than the average Canadian. Health outcomes in immigrant populations are often affected by various factors, including but not exclusive to language proficiency, ethnicity, immigrant classification, and education. To better understand this phenomenon, our guests Dr. Naomi Lightman, Dr. Edward Ng, and Abtin Parnia provide their insights. 

Naomi Lightman is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Calgary. Her areas of research expertise include migration, care work, gender, aging and quantitative research methodology. To date, her academic work has been published in numerous journals including the European Sociological Review, Journal of European Social Policy, International Migration Review and the Journal of Aging and Social Policy. In addition, she is the co-author of the second edition of the textbook Social Policy in Canada. In addition, she has collaborated on research focused on immigration and aging with various social agencies and government bodies including Social Planning Toronto, the Wellesley Institute, and the Calgary Local Immigration Partnership.  

Edward Ng PhD is a senior analyst with the Health Analysis Division at Statistics Canada.  His research interests at Statistics Canada are on immigrant health and the use of record linkage to develop new policy-relevant data. He had conducted analyses using national population health surveys in Canada cross-sectionally, and longitudinally to understand factors underlying the healthy immigrant effect.  In the past 10 years, he pioneered the use of large-scale national Census and immigrant landing files link to hospital discharge data or mortality to understand the heterogeneity within the immigrant population. He recently completed a project that focused on tuberculosis among recent immigrants, as well as produced an updated article on data development in immigrant health research at Statistics Canada. 

Abtin Parnia is a Research and Policy Analyst at the University of Toronto. They’re also a graduate of the Master of Public Health Prog ram at the Dalla Lanna School of Public Health, specializing in Epidemiology and was a recipient of the Gordon Cressy Award. They’ve worked at the Hospital for Sick Children, conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses on social assistance programs and is well-versed in quantitative analyses and modeling. Furthermore, Parnia reviewed Colorectal Cancer in indigenous populations, looked at community-based integrated knowledge translation, and researched environmental causes of cancer in indigenous communities. Their current research areas include immigration, racialization, and socioeconomic disparities in health.

Special thanks to Junior Producers Fatemah Ebrahim, Diana Lu, and Executive Director Vienna Vendittelli for producing this episode.

Music:

Complicated by Avril Lavigne

How Far I’ll Go by Alessia Cara

In this week's episode of Beyond the Headlines, we explore the implications of the repeal of the Green Energy Act and the future of energy policy in Ontario. Was the Green Energy Act forging a new future for Ontario's Energy sector? Or, will the decision to repeal the act be the saving grace for Ontario's ratepayers? Featured guests include Bruce Pardy, Law Professor at Queen's University, and Mike Schreiner, leader of the Green Party of Ontario. 

Credits

Aryeh Ansel (Senior Producer) Brody Longmuir (Junior Producer) Haobo Chen (Junior Producer) Robert Giannetta (Social Media Director)Alex Gold-Apel (Executive Director)  

Music

"If I Can't Have You" - Shawn Mendes

Inclusive Economic Growth, Innovative Technologies and Open Governance

The Young Diplomats of Canada (YDC) provided five Canadian youth from across the country with the opportunity to attend the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (WB/IMF) Annual Meetings in Washington DC. This podcast provides a behind the scenes look into the exciting meetings they held with stakeholders, the eye opening sessions they attended around key topics in development and the personal and professional growth they experienced. Three key themes were developed by the delegation to guide discussions and advocacy activities at the meetings: inclusive economic growth; FinTech and innovative technologies; and open governance.

The delegation had the opportunity to participate in a panel in collaboration with Global Voices, an Australian organization with a very similar mandate to YDC, to talk about the future of work. They also met with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to discuss their current efforts to bypass barriers to development such as lack of infrastructure to provide marginalized and isolated populations with access to their basic needs. The delegation also had the opportunity to meet with the Canadian ambassadors to the IMF, World Bank and the Organization of American States to gain insights into their experiences and thoughts on how Canada leverages multilateral partnerships to promote peace, exchange of knowledge and sustainability. It was an exciting week filled with great discussions, sightseeing and food! 

YDC DelegatesMenad Sekhi – Head DelegateKaren Lamola – Director of CommunicationsRachel Padillo – AmbassadorLakshmi Ganesan – AmbassadorKyle MacDonald – Ambassador

GuestsAnna Daly – Global Voices, Australian Youth Delegate to WB/IMF Annual MeetingsYasmine Hassen – Global Voices, Australian Youth Delegate to WB/IMF Annual MeetingsGiulia Carneiro – Instituto Global Attitude, Brazilian Youth Delegate to WB/IMF Annual Meetings

ProductionDiana Lu – Junior Producer, BTH

Additional CreditsAlexander Gold-Apel – BTH Executive ProducerVienna Vendittelli – BTH Executive ProducerCeline Caira – YDC/BTH Production Liaison Macarena Diab – YDC Program Lead Sarah Bérubé – YDC Program Coordinator Ross Linden-Fraser – YDC Program Coordinator 

Music CreditsK’naan – Wavin’ FlagK’os – CrabbuckitGreat Big Sea – Ordinary Day

This is a special collaborative episode and partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation. Two of the David Suzuki Foundation’s ecological economists, Yannick Beaudoin and Michelle Molnar, join us in studio. Our conversation steps outside the realm of traditional economic thinking and challenges conventional indicators of economic prosperity. Yannick and Michelle share powerful stories and insights about the current national agenda which is fixated on converting nature into monetary value, and the transition beyond GDP to a well-being-focused national purpose. They emphasize that economic decision making is negotiable, but planetary limits are not. We also talk about creating spaces for conversations about well-being, cross-cultural truths of living a meaningful life, and potent youth and global indigenous leadership in the climate conversation.

Yannick Beaudoin is the Director General, Ontario and Northern Canada at the David Suzuki Foundation. He holds an MA in Economics for Transition, Ph.D. in Marine Geology; M.Sc. in Marine & Economic Geology, B.Sc. Geology. Yannick’s expertise is in the economics for transition to socially and ecologically sustainable societies; social innovation processes and transformational leadership; as well as marine and economic geology.

Michelle Molnar is an Environmental Economist and Policy Analyst at the David Suzuki Foundation. She holds a BA economics & philosophy, a MA public policy, and a MA philosophy. Michelle’s expertise is in ecological economics and eco-assets, policy analysis, public outreach, and natural capital.

 

 

Special thanks to Junior Producer Erin Christensen and Executive Director Vienna Vendittelli for producing this episode.

 

Music Credits: Desdemona by The Beaches and Hand Me Downs by the Arkells