PressProgress Sources

As education workers in Ontario experience unprecedented levels of violence in the workplace, staff shortages and burnout, experts say education is in crisis under Doug Ford.

Educational assistants, custodians, secretaries, lunch supervisors, maintenance staff overwhelmingly agree there is not enough personnel in schools to do jobs properly and many now find themselves doing the work of multiple staff members.

But there could be a simple solution to the compounding issues affecting education in Ontario: Funding education properly.

On this episode of Sources, Joe Tigani, president of the Ontario School Board Council of Unions, joins PressProgress‘ Ontario Reporter Eric Wickham to talk about the compounding crises in Ontario’s education system.

Discussed on this episode

Ford government’s chronic underfunding of education is creating compounding issues for staff and students

Doug Ford Claims He’s Made the Biggest Healthcare Investments in the ‘History of the Country’. Nurses Say That’s ‘Misleading’.

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Canada and the United States walked back from the brink of a full-blown trade war after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on products from Canada.

While Trump has granted Canada a temporary 30-day "pause" on his threatened trade war, if he makes good on his threats, Canada's economy could be facing an apocalyptic scenario with food and gas prices skyrocketing, hundreds of thousands of job losses and communities across Canada getting hollowed out as key industries shut down.

On this episode of Sources, DT Cochrane, Senior Economist with the Canadian Labour Congress, joins PressProgress Editor Luke LeBrun to explain how serious Trump's tariff threats would be on Canadian workers and why Canadian labour unions are calling on Canada to stand its ground and "hit back hard."

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While Ontario is gearing up for Doug Ford’s early election, many Ontarians are struggling to make ends meet.

With one-in-three residents struggling to put food on their table, Kingston, Ontario just declared a food insecurity emergency — the third city in Ontario to recently declare this kind of emergency, following Toronto and Mississauga.

In their announcements, all three cities asked the provincial government to increase the amount of money the province gives recipients of social assistance. These calls were echoed in separate motions in Hamilton, Waterloo, Goderich, Owen Sound and Orangeville over the last two years.

On this episode of Sources, Tim Li, the Research Program Coordinator at PROOF, a group of academic researchers that investigate policy solutions to reduce food insecurity in Canada, talks to PressProgress Ontario Reporter Eric Wickham about Ontario’s growing food insecurity problem.

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Duncan Kinney is an Edmonton-based journalist and editor of a digital publication focused on Alberta politics called The Progress Report.

From scrutinizing police budgets, shining a light on how police handle the city's unhoused population or drug poisoning crisis and exposing partisan connections between senior officers and Alberta's governing United Conservative Party, it's undeniable Kinney plays a role as a critical watchdog of Edmonton Police.

But Kinney has also been a thorn in the side of Edmonton Police Chief Dale McFee. In recent years, McFee has publicly butted heads with Kinney and Kinney accuses Edmonton Police of "arbitrarily" revoking his media accreditation.

Then in 2022, following a massive police surveillance operation involving over a dozen officers watching him and his family for seven months, Kinney was criminally charged with vandalizing a “monument to honour persons who were killed or died in consequence of a war” after the words "actual Nazi" were found spray painted on a statue honouring World War Two Nazi collaborator Roman Shukhevych.

Kinney, who pleads not guilty to the charges, could face up to 10 years in prison if an Alberta court convicts him of vandalizing a statue honouring a leader of a military unit that massacred Jews in Ukraine.

On this episode of Sources, Stephen Magusiak speaks with Progress Report Editor Duncan Kinney (not to be confused with PressProgress, which is a separate news organization) to explain his ongoing saga with Edmonton Police.

Kinney is currently raising funds for his legal defence.

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Residents of Jasper Alberta are finally returning to the town that made international headlines after it was devastated by a monster wildfire in July.

Nearly a third of the town was damaged or destroyed, and the spot is currently closed to tourists for the foreseeable future.

How do we prevent climate change disasters in the future? It’s complicated, according former Alberta Firefighter Matt Rieger, who spent years on the front lines battling blazes while stationed at bases across the province.

Rieger joins host Stephen Magusiak to talk about the cost, the manpower problems, and the scale of effort it would take to meaningfully mitigate the risk as these fires get worse and more frequent.

We also discuss misconceptions online about the causes and the response effort following the disaster.

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Canada’s expert on the rising costs at the grocery store (no, not that one) joins host Stephen Magusiak to discuss his latest project, the Grocery Tracker, which monitors the price of food staples

Eric Wickham is a data journalist for the Toronto-based Hoser. He co-hosts and produces the Big Shiny Takes podcast.

Wickham recently wrote about the Loblaws boycott. He also produces Sources.

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PressProgress is an award-winning non-profit news organization focused on uncovering and unpacking the news through original investigative and explanatory journalism.

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The foreign interference commission published its preliminary report — but the Sikh community in Canada says the inquiry largely overlooked India despite their role as a major threat of foreign interference in Canada. 

In the foreign interference commission’s final report it was revealed that "India directed foreign interference activities related to the 2019 & 2021 general elections.”

The commission also revealed that CSIS considered India a “clear second to (China) in terms of the level of (foreign interference) threat” and that Indian foreign interference was an “area of focus for more than one regional office.”

Following the arrests of Hardeep Singh Nijjar's killers and the release of the report, we speak with lawyer Prabjot Singh, legal counsel for the Sikh coalition, about what questions still need answers.

Prabjot Singh is a lawyer and the Founding Editor of the Panth-Punjab Project. His articles on Sikh political theory, public policy, and law have been published in a number of platforms including The Guardian, Baaz News, and the Manitoba Law Journal. He is participating in Canada's Foreign Interference Commission as Legal Counsel for a coalition of Sikh organizations.

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Canada has been seeing an unusual wave of anti-LGBTQ+ protests over the last year. These rallies and marches targeted drag storytime events at libraries, they targeted local school board meetings – in fact, they even targeted high schools and elementary schools in residential neighborhoods.

This organized wave of hate climaxed with a so-called “one million march for children” which took place in cities across Canada last September.

Now the pendulum is swinging the other way, and 2SLGBTQIA community groups are getting organized. Along with labour unions and civil society groups, they’re planning their own marches to protest against this recent wave of hate targeting queer and trans Canadians.

On this episode of Sources, Fae Johnstone, Executive Director of the Society of Queer Momentum, talks with PressProgress Editor Luke LeBrun about why she is organizing a Rainbow Week of Action across Canada this week.

For the full list of rallies and events taking during the Rainbow Week of Action, visit their website for more information: RainbowEquality.ca

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PressProgress is an award-winning non-profit news organization focused on uncovering and unpacking the news through original investigative and explanatory journalism.

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Capital gains – what are they and why is everyone talking about them?

This year’s federal budget, released on April 16, is rolling out changes to the way capital gains are taxed in order to make wealthy Canadians “pay their fair share.”

According to Finance Canada, these changes are targeted at the wealthiest of the wealthy – Canada’s top 0.13%, a group of approximately 40,000 Canadians with average incomes of 1.4 million dollars.

As one can imagine, the capital gains tax changes are already generating pushback from business lobby groups and right-wing think tanks who want to maintain the status quo and say the changes will damage the economy and disincentivize investment.

But it’s also undeniable that the current capital gains tax rules disproportionately benefit people like CEOs and corporate executives, people who play the stock market or flip houses, because the way capital gains are taxed represents, if not a lucrative tax loophole, certainly a double-standard in how the tax code works.

DT Cochrane, Senior Economist with the Canadian Labour Congress, speaks with PressProgress Editor Luke LeBrun on this episode of sources to explain what capital gains taxes are and what these new changes mean.

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Author and journalist Jeremy Appel joins host Stephen Magusiak to discuss (almost) all things Jason Kenney: his quest for power, his influence in building the Conservative Party of Canada, his undoing, and, most recently, the conclusion of a massive 5-year RCMP investigation surrounding his campaign to take over Alberta's United Conservatives.

Once a key figure in building Stephen Harper's conservatives, in the end Kenney failed to win over the grassroots in Canada's conservative heartland.

We discuss why there were no charges laid in the investigation into voter fraud and identity theft that plagued the 2019 election campaign, what happened with the infamous "kamikaze campaign," and also consult the crystal ball to speculate on what might be next for Alberta's former Premier.

Appel's recent book "Kenneysism: Jason Kenney's Pursuit of Power," published through Dundurn Press is available here. 

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PressProgress is an award-winning non-profit news organization focused on uncovering and unpacking the news through original investigative and explanatory journalism.

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