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We discuss the case of Soleiman Faqiri, a 30-yr-old Canadian-Muslim refugee suffering from schizophrenia who died in an Ontario prison after he was pepper-sprayed and beaten by correctional officers. Soleiman sustained 50 bruises and a blow to the head before being returned to solitary confinement.

Yusuf Faqiri speaks about his brother, what he knows about the circumstances surrounding his death, and the Justice For Soli Campaign.

Dolores Chew and carceral lawyer Bianka Savard-Lafrenière discuss the broader systemic issues regarding mental health in the criminal justice system.

Nina Segalowitz of the First Peoples Justice Centre speaks to the relationship between Indigenous peoples and city space, police, and the court system, and the importance of adopting a culturally-based restorative justice model that moves beyond the colonial carceral system.

Ensuite nous entendons Michèle Audette, Commissiaire de l’Enquête nationale sur les femmes et les filles autochtones disparues.

Julie Michaud of the Centre for Gender Advocacy speaks about the trial in Québec's Superior Court which is seeking to dismantle the immense barriers for trans & non-binary adults, non-citizens & children to change or remove the gender marker from IDs.

We discuss the gender identity rights bill, Bill C-16, with transfeminine activist and LLM candidate Florence Ashley.

A federal prison policy introduced last year has allowed transgender inmates to be housed according to their self-identified gender for the very first time. What have these changes meant for trans prisoners in Canada? We speak with Jennifer Metcalfe, Executive Director of Prisoners’ Legal Services, a project of the West Coast Prison Justice Society.

Music by Skylar Kergil, Be Steadwell, and Rae Spoon.

*Image by Holly Li

On this month’s show we take some in depth looks at prison justice issues in Canada.

Nous entendons Lucie Lemonde, professeure en droit carcéral basée à Montréal et porte-parole de la Coalition d'action et de surveillance sur l'incarcération des femmes au Québec, qui retrace l’histoire du droit carcéral et de la lutte des prisonniers au Canada, ainsi que la situation des femmes, le travail et l’isolement dans le système carcéral actuel.

We then play an interview with Toronto based criminal, immigration lawyer and prison justice organizer Asaf Rashid in which we discuss the right of prisoners to unionize.

*Correction: In his interview, Asaf Rashid states that Canadian law has never recognized the right of inmates to unionize. While this is true in the context of federal inmate workers, a group of inmates at the Guelph Correctional Centre became unionized alongside non-inmate labour at a meat cutting shop In 1977. There have been no examples since then.

Music by Leyla McCalla, Pete Seeger, and Neneh Cherry.

Photo © Marie-Eve Shaffer/Métro: Prison Leclerc in Laval, QC.

To honour the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, our December episode sheds light on the current sex work laws in Canada, sex work decriminalization, and the movement to make sex work safer led for and by sex workers here in Tio’tia:ke (Montréal) and across Turtle Island.

Interviews with Stella l'amie de Maimie's Jenn Clamen, organizer Anna-Aude, and writer and lawyer Naomi Sayers.

Music by Moe Clark, Amai Kuda et Les Bois, and Yuna.

In this show we turn to Toronto, where human rights lawyer Saron Gebresellassi is running for mayor, challenging the mainstream candidates failures to address issues like affordable housing and transit affordability and police brutality.

Our second feature is an interview with Didier Chelin, a law student at McGill University who is filing a human rights complaint against the university for failing to accommodate his disability

We cover the largest national prisoner strike in US history that recently ended on September 9th, following 4 weeks of work stoppages, hunger strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, and other forms of peaceful protest that took place in at least 34 prisons across Turtle Island.

We feature an interview with Jailhouse Lawyers Speak prisoner organizer Tony, who discusses prison slavery, racist workings of sentencing, non-inclusion of rehabilitation services in the US penal system, prison abolition, and more.

We then turn to the strike at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility, known as the Burnside prison, with organizer and poet El Jones. El discusses prison conditions, prisoner organizing, and how the label criminal perpetuates an unjust, brutal system.

✧ To support Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, donate here: https://bit.ly/2MFesd2 & sign their petition : bit.ly/2xd3qHe

You can donate to [email protected] to directly support prisoners and their families at the Burnside prison. ✧

We break down immigration detention and civil liberties as we discuss the case of Ebrahim Toure, Canada's longest-serving immigration detainee, and Bill C-59 (a follow-up to Bill C-51), "An Act respecting national security matters," as it is being debated in the Senate.

Gwen speaks with Mac Scott, a member of No One Is Illegal Toronto and the Caranza LLP Law firm, about his work on Toure's case and the immigration detention regime in Canada.

We hear from Tim McSorley, National Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, who spoke with Amelia about Bill C-59, how it grants over-broad surveillance powers to CSIS, and other concerning powers it gives to the Canadian state.

*Image by Tings Chak, "Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention"

First we hear from Andy Crosby, co-author of Policing Indigenous Movements, a book that takes up t talks with Beth Friesen about how the the Canadian security state views and targets Indigenous Peoples for surveillance as national security threats.

Next, in the wake of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies approval of a draft statute to legalize abortion (Senate approval is still needed) on June 14th, after months of intense mobilization and a far-reaching national awareness campaign, we discuss the forthcoming challenges that may arise in the implementation of this new regime with Dr. Vanessa Molina, who wrote about the prevalent use of freedom of conscience/religion objections in Colombian hospitals, in the April edition of À Bâbord!, entitled "Justice pour toutes!" (This interview is in French/ cette entretien est en français)

This month we interviewed Dr. Cindy Blackstock, member of the Gitksan First Nation and Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada about her decade-long battle with the Canadian government for the rights of First Nations children and their families to have equal opportunities to succeed. In a landmark ruling in January 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal held that government is racially discriminating against 163,000 First Nations children and their families by providing flawed and inequitable child welfare services and failing to implement Jordan's Principle to ensure equitable access to government services available to other children. Over two years later, Canada has yet to satisfy the orders issued by the tribunal, and just this past February, the tribunal issued a fourth non-compliance order against Canada.

In light of Canada's decision to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan and spend untold billions in taxpayer dollars carrying out the expansion project, we also feature a segment from the mediaINDIGENA podcast hosted by Rick Harp with guests Brock Pitawanakwat and Ken Williams. In this segment they discuss how “mutual benefit agreements" (MBAs) are used to force the Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansions through indigenous territory, and whether the terms in these documents are actually representative of the Indigenous parties’ “free prior and informed consent.” You can subscribe to mediaINDIGENA via iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, among other podcast platforms, and you can learn more about their work on mediaindigena.com.