Open to Debate with David Moscrop

In June, Olivia Chow was elected mayor of Toronto. She faces an all-too-often complacent city with a hefty budget shortfall and a series of longstanding policy challenges, and failures. Affordable housing, transit, public safety, taxes, and parks spring to mind, but there’s plenty more. 

Chow’s performance may be evaluated on its own merits or demerits and against her predecessor’s; but her time as mayor will also stand as a test of left-wing governance. Fairly or unfairly, her mayoralty is a part that will be taken by some as typifying the whole. 

Can Olivia Chow remake Toronto?

On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Saman Tabasinejad, Acting Executive Director at Progress Toronto.

Canada’s housing crisis is persistent and brutal. In August, the average rent was nearly $2,100 a month – and much higher in cities including Vancouver and Toronto. The average cost to buy a home was about $670,000 – and, again, much higher in Vancouver, at $1.2 million, and Toronto at $1.1 million. The Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation says the country must build 5.8 million units by 2030 to hit affordable rates; we are on track for about half of that.

Tackling this problem is going to take a multitude of policy efforts across orders of government – efforts that may benefit some people at the expense of others. And yet, what choice do we have? We must ensure everyone has a safe, affordable place to live. So, how do we solve the housing crisis?

On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Carolyn Whitzman, housing policy expert, adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa, and author of Clara at the Door with a Revolver.

In June, this year became the worst wildfire season in Canadian history. Fires burned throughout the country. And there’s almost surely more to come. So far, over 10 million hectares have burned, sending toxic smoke from province to province and into the United States, where tens of millions of people were put under air quality advisories. The smoke caused some of the worst – on some days the worst – air quality in the world in major North American cities including New York and Toronto.

The 2023 wildfire season, driven by what’s known as “fire weather,” may be a window into our future. As climate change runs amok and hotter, drier temperatures make wildfires more common and harder to control, we risk having to endure a brutal, deadly, and ecologically destructive new normal. So, what does fire weather mean for our future?

On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with John Vaillant, journalist and author of Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast.

The United States of America is a polarized country marked by toxic partisan politics. The state of American politics comes from somewhere. And it might have been otherwise. It has been shaped by powerful interests, technologies, and contingent forces. One of those – one of the most important – is cable television.  

A new book traces the history of cable television and the changing political and cultural landscape in the United States. In the background of the book looms an absolute bruiser of a question: Did cable television break America?

On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Kathryn Cramer Brownell, an assistant professor of history in the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University and the author of  24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News.

There are all kinds of euphemisms for fat bodies. They capture and obscure a persistent social discomfort and prejudice that appears across fields and settings, from pop culture, to airlines, to medicine and beyond. Weight is also a marker for constant abuse, online and offline. When it comes to weight, we have normalized prejudice, moral panic, and shaming, even as we have made such treatment socially unacceptable in relation to other markers.

Where does the pathologizing of fat bodies come from? Who benefits from it and at whose expense? And how can we do better? We explore those questions and others as we ask: How should we think about fat bodies?

On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with May Friedman, professor in the School of Social Work at Toronto Metropolitan University and the author of several books, among them the recently released co-edited volume, Fat Studies in Canada: (Re)Mapping the Field.

For years, private interests have encroached upon public spaces. As time goes on, there are fewer and fewer places that belong to each of us regardless of our socioeconomic status–places where we can congregate or simply exist without needing to bend to the will of the market or worry about being surveilled. 

But what if our cities themselves were to fall to privatization? Imagine a city run, for instance, by a big tech company. Proprietary roads and sewers and sidewalks; data collection and surveillance here, there, and everywhere. The notion isn’t so far-fetched. A recent struggle in Toronto over Google’s attempt to pilot a “smart city” is a reminder that we can’t take anything for granted. So, who owns the future of public spaces?

On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Josh O’Kane, an award-winning reporter with the Globe and Mail and author of Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy.

Last week in Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party held on to government in a race that was much closer than the 49-38 seat count suggests. Indeed, a small shift in votes in a handful of ridings in Calgary would have tipped the contest in favour of the New Democratic Party. But that didn’t happen. NDP leader Rachel Notley says she will stay on as leader after losing to Smith, whose ministry and campaign were marked by gaffes, scandals, and utter absurdity. 

If you’re wondering how Smith managed to perform as well as she did after comparing those who received a Covid vaccine to followers of Hitler, and what she’ll do next as she takes aim at the federal government and climate policy, you have come to the right place as we ask: What just happened in Alberta–and what comes next?

On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Alberta politics writer Dave Cournoyer.

This is the first episode in our three-piece series on the past, present, and future of public spaces in Canada. In these episodes we’ll cover nature, cities, and big national undertakings – things we do, have done, or might do together in spaces meant for all of us. We’ll also discuss threats to public spaces, of which there are many, and what is being done to address them. 

Now, nature is the ultimate public space. There is something fundamental about it. Something essential. Nature pre-existed the built world and in one form or another it will outlast it, too. But not everyone has equal access to nature, and some communities and groups are less likely to have that access. In that way, it’s very much like other spaces, the ones we have created.

There are a number of reasons people ought to have both a right and an ability to access public spaces in nature. Among them are physical health, mental health, education, and pure, simple joy. One organization is fighting to secure that access, especially for youth from low-income households and BIPOC communities. To understand their work, and the battle for green public spaces, we ask: Who gets to spend time in nature?

On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Andrew Young, the executive director of Outward Bound Canada.

We spend an awful lot of time talking about housing and development—and we should. But often lost in the conversation is how we manage rural land and housing. The vast majority of Canada is urbanized, but in case you were thinking what happens “out there” has nothing to do with you, think again. Rural areas are home to plenty of houses and residential developments of their own, but they are also the site of the country’s farmland. In the face of geopolitical shifts, climate change, and the ever present concern of food security, rural development is an important issue. The bad news? Things are…not going well, particularly in Canada’s most populous province, Ontario.

To understand the state of rural development, where things are headed, and how we might do better, we ask the fundamental question: Who should care about rural development?

On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Jeff Wheeldon, a municipal councillor in Brighton, Ontario, a real estate agent, and a housing advocate.

At Carleton University, a union local is fighting for a fair deal for its workers–and getting ready for a strike. Across Ontario and Canada, unionized workplaces are fighting similar battles, even while the balance of power continues to favour employers by default.

Democratized workplaces produce better results for employees, and everyone down the line, too. Recent gains in Canada and the United States might point to a new dawn for unions as people struggle with the cost of living crisis and unfavourable working conditions. But the future, as it tends to be, is uncertain. We can, however, follow the clues and ask: What does a campus labour struggle tell us about unions in Canada?

On this episode of Open to Debate, David Moscrop talks with Noreen Cauley-Le Fevre, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) local 4600 and a PhD Candidate in Geography at Carleton University; and Graham Cox, a research representative at CUPE.