rabble radio

To tip or not to tip? 

Tipping culture has become a large conversation in Canada over the past few years, as both customers and service workers across the country struggle to meet the demands of the cost-of-living crisis. Receiving tips to supplement a small paycheque becomes all the more necessary. Meanwhile, giving generous tips feels all the more harder. 

So how would you react to knowing that a portion of the tips you’re giving are not even being collected by the people who are serving you – but rather, upper management. 

This is called tip theft, and in one Atlantic province it’s perfectly legal. 

Nova Scotia is one of the only provinces in Canada without anti-tip theft legislation, and organizers at the Halifax Workers’ Action Centre are trying to change that. 

This week on the show, rabble labour reporter Gabriela Calugay-Casuga sits down with community organizer Syd Blum to talk about their work organizing workers in Nova Scotia and trying to bring the issue of anti-tip theft to the attention of the provincial government. 

Syd Blum (she/they) is a community, political, and union organizer living in Mi’kma’ki / Nova Scotia. They are the organizer for the Halifax Workers’ Action Centre, a community legal worker at Dalhousie Legal Aid, and the vice-president of IASTE Local B-778. 

They were previously a head organizer with the ACORN Tenant Union, where they led successful campaigns for a rent cap and anti-eviction policies in Atlantic Canada, and a union-cooperative developer. They have a profound commitment to building a strong labour movement in Nova Scotia, fighting for a union at home, at work, and in our communities.

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This week, rabble editor Nick Seebruch sits down with Alistair Hepburn, executive director of ACTRA Toronto. The two discuss the do-not-work notice placed on Mr. Beast’s Beast Games in Toronto and other actions ACTRA is taking to protect Canadian performers. 

Alistair Hepburn is the executive director of ACTRA Toronto, the largest branch of ACTRA (the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists), the union representing performers in the film, radio, television, and new media industries.

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This week, rabble editor Nick Seebruch sits down with Off the Hill co-hosts to review how rabble’s monthly panel series came to be and where we hope to go in the future. 

Robin Browne is Off the Hill’s co-host. Robin is a communications professional and founder of the 613-819 Black Hub, living in Ottawa. His blog is The “True” North.

Libby Davies is Off the Hill’s co-host and author of Outside In: a Political Memoir. She served as the MP for Vancouver East from 1997-2015, and is former NDP Deputy Leader and House Leader.

If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. 

This week on rabble radio, we share a clip from the first episode of the new season of the Courage My Friends podcast: Climate and the city: Are we ready?

In this episode, host Resh Budhu sits down with former mayor of Toronto, David Miller to discuss the crucial role of cities in “fixing” the climate crisis and what we can learn in building sustainable and equitable urban communities. Miller and Budhu also explore the question of just how prepared Canadian cities are to meet the challenges of this crisis.

Miller was Mayor of Toronto from 2003 to 2010 and served as Chair of C40 Cities from 2008 until 2010. Under his leadership, Toronto became widely admired internationally for its environmental leadership, economic strength and social integration. He is a leading advocate for the creation of sustainable urban economies.  

Miller has held a variety of public and private positions and served as Future of Cities Global Fellow at Polytechnic Institute of New York University from 2011 to 2014. He has an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Waterloo in Environmental Studies, an Honorary Doctor of Laws from York University and is currently executive in residence at the University of Victoria.

David Miller is a Harvard trained economist and professionally is a lawyer. He and his wife, lawyer Jill Arthur, are the parents of two children.

The Courage My Friends podcast is presented by rabble.ca and the Tommy Douglas Institute, with the support of the Douglas Coldwell Layton Foundation.

If you’d like to hear more from the Courage My Friends podcast, please subscribe to Needs No Introduction - a podcast by rabble which presents a series of speeches and lectures from the finest minds of our time. Available on rabble.ca, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. 

If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. 

Earlier this month, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) launched a campaign this month highlighting how the fossil fuel industry in British Columbia is increasing healthcare system costs and reducing access to care. The campaign shared billboards and transit ads, held a press conference in front of Vancouver General Hospital and shared an open letter from over 300 doctors and nurses calling for immediate action to protect communities and the healthcare system.

Today on rabble radio, Dr. Melissa Lem, the president of CAPE, joins rabble labour reporter Gabriela Calugay-Casuga to discuss in more detail about this campaign, and how CAPE works with other healthcare organizations and unions to create a healthier planet and population. 

Lem last joined us on rabble radio in 2022 as part of our Boiling Point series. She and Stephen Wentzell explored the many ways in which climate change is a health issue and why it’s so important for governments, at all levels, to put policies in place to protect people during extreme weather events.

Dr. Melissa Lem is a Vancouver family physician who also works in rural and northern communities within Canada. President of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, she is an internationally recognized leader in the field of nature, biodiversity and health. Lem has also engaged in advocacy and policy work on a broad range of other issues ranging from extreme heat and hydraulic fracturing to sustainable health care and low-carbon transportation. A widely published writer, climate change panelist on CBC Radio's Early Edition, in-house medical columnist for CBC TV Vancouver and clinical assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, one of her major priorities is knowledge translation.

If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca.

This week on rabble radio, labour reporter Gabriela Calugay-Casuga sits down with Mahendra Pandey. Mahendra shares his experience as a former migrant worker in Saudi Arabia, as well as his work organizing migrant workers today.

Mahendra Pandey is the senior manager of forced labor and human trafficking at Humanity United. Through this role, he focuses on the human trafficking in labor migration portfolio. Before getting involved in advocacy work, Pandey worked in Saudi Arabia as a migrant worker and experienced first-hand the poor working conditions that many Nepali migrant workers face. 

While in Saudi Arabia, he developed a Nepali migrant rights network, Pravasi Nepali Coordination Committee (PNCC). Pandey holds a master’s degree in digital media and storytelling from American University at Washington D.C. and recently completed a leadership organizing and action course at Harvard University. 

To learn more about Humanity United, visit this link. 

If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. 

Nick Seebruch sits down with Joyce Arthur, founder and executive director of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada to talk about belief-based denial of care and the state of abortion rights in Canada.

Joyce Arthur is the founder and executive director of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. 

The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) is a broad-based national feminist organization consisting of groups and individuals who support ARCC’s vision and mandate. It recognizes and respects the cultural and political diversity of our country and its provinces and territories, works to represent as many women and communities as possible, and operates in both official languages. 

ARCC acts as a “voice for choice.” Its primary mandate is to undertake political and educational work on reproductive rights and health issues.

If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. 

Being an activist brings an emotional burden. 

The issues we deal with are intense, difficult and sometimes without any immediate solution. And often, we try to deal with these issues through logically planning a strategy and communicating issues using words. It’s an intellectual process, but with a lot of underlying emotional baggage.

Elisa Lee has some thoughts about how to get under the intellect to connect with ourselves and people in our communities on a deeper level. She, and many other people involved in grief work, think that it’s important to deal with the full range of emotions ranging from anger and fear to hope and joy.

Today on rabble radio, we’re re-releasing an episode from May 2020, in which former rabble radio host Victoria Fenner sat down with Elisa Lee to talk about climate grief and how activists can better take care of themselves. This interview was originally a part of rabble’s series on Climate Hope in the Time of the Pandemic. To listen to the original episode, please click here. 

For the past 15 years, Elisa Lee has been promoting personal development in collaboration with nature as a specialist teacher in ecological education, a self-care facilitator and a rite of passage guide. She holds a masters degree in environmental education with a focus on women’s rites of passage and is the founder of Fire & Flower, a rite of passage organization for girls. 

Lee’s current activism focuses on community grief rituals and nature-based rites of passage for girls and adults. A big part of that sense of being is getting beyond the intellectual processes which help us explain the world to ourselves and others, but does not get to the root of our reactions to the complex issues that we all face in these difficult times.

If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca.

In January last year, rabble’s parliamentary reporter Karl Nerenberg shared a piece calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh to revive the idea of electoral reform for Canada – and on the podcast, he joined Réal Lavergne, former president of Fair Vote Canada, to dissect Canada’s current voting system and discuss how a fairer way to vote might be accomplished in the future.  

Today, we’re revisiting the topic of proportional representation and electoral reform in Canada. 

Next year is an election year in Canada, and with a decline in popularity for current Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and with far-right extremism on the rise (and apparently influencing certain Conservative leaders across the country), many Canadians are already wondering how they might cast their vote. 

Joining us on rabble radio this week is Ted Cragg, a spokesperson for Fair Vote Canada. 

Ted Cragg has been involved with Fair Vote Canada since 2009, during the British Columbia referendum on electoral reform of that year. He previously served as president of the organization's national capital region chapter. He currently lives in Saint-Léonard-d'Aston, Québec, a province showing promising signs of being the first to adopt proportional representation in Canada.

Fair Vote Canada seeks broad, multi-partisan support to embody in new legislation the basic principle of democratic representative government and ultimate safeguard of a free society: the right of each citizen to equal treatment under election laws and equal representation in legislatures.

If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. 

On July 8, workers at the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa (CASO) walked off the job after contract negotiations broke down with their employer over issues of funding and a strained workforce for essential child care services. On Tuesday OPSEU/SEFPO, the union representing CASO, took to X (formally Twitter) to announce a tentative agreement had been reached with their employer. 

"Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa workers, members of OPSEU/SEFPO Local 454, reached a tentative agreement last night after braving 24 days on strike. Further details to follow once the ratification vote concludes this afternoon – solidarity!"

On Wednesday, it was announced the deal had been ratified. However, as Michele Thorn, president of OPSEU/SEFPO Local 454 and adoption worker at CASO, says: the fight is far from over. Michele Thorn has worked at the Children's Aid Society of Ottawa since 1995 and was a child protection worker for 20 years. She is currently working as an adoption worker. She has been the president of OPSEU/SEFPO Local 454 since 2017 and has now been on the bargaining team six times since 2009. If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca.