Jim and Jeremy interview Michael Janz, councillor for Edmonton's Ward Papastew, about his election campaign, the value of fighting to change public opinion, whether political parties at the muni level are good, and more.

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For more from the Janz campaign, see the councillor's site at michaeljanz.ca.

Press Progress's Stephen Magusiak joins Jim and Jeremy to talk about this week's G7 conference—and not about the unimportant parts, like global geopolitics, but about what really matters: what Albertans were doing. Who was organizing around G7 locally and were they successful? The fellas get into it.

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Stephen writes for Press Progress, which you can find at pressprogress.ca

Jim and Jeremy speak with participants in an ongoing 40-day fast for Gaza about the present situation in Palestine, organizing back here in Edmonton, and the difficult task of grappling with power from a disempowered position.

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The 20-year president of the Alberta Federation of Labour is up for re-election this Sunday. Jim and Jeremy take a look at the present situation, check out some Gil McGowan campaign literature, and speak to the AFL leadership candidate who didn't ignore our interview request.

2025's federal election is set to up-end politics in Western Canada and yet at the same time the campaign period has been both short and uneventful. So we tapped a couple of smart guys to un-boring it: first Dave Cournoyer, one of Alberta's most knowledgeable political commentators. Then we talk to Blake Desjarlais, one of the rare electeds worthy of our rascal respect. More of Dave's work is available at www.daveberta.ca.

Through projects including the national business coalition Each+Every and his publication Drug Data Decoded (www.drugdatadecoded.ca), Euan Thomson has put his heart and soul into combatting the ongoing drug poisoning crisis, and he joins us on this episode of the Progress Report to bring everyone up to date with the crisis's current status.

But Euan of late has also been an ally to the Palestinian solidarity movement and it's in that capacity that he took a beating from police during last year's violent crackdown on demonstrators at the University of Calgary. In this episode Euan and Jeremy also discuss the crackdown, and why one Calgary Liberal candidate in particular is implicated in the story in a bad way.

Full show notes and our other content is available at www.theprogressreport.ca.

Jeremy's article for The Maple on the U of C situation, mentioned in the episode:

https://www.readthemaple.com/liberal-star-candidate-helped-shut-down-pro-palestine-encampment/

Journalist Susan Thompson joins us on the pod with the latest from Valleyview, where the local library is under political siege from a batch of odd characters including a UCP VP of comms and a white nationalist who worked for the local MLA.

Full show notes at https://www.theprogressreport.ca/pod_the_battle_for_the_valleyview_library

Support the Progress Report by donation at https://www.theprogressreport.ca/patrons

Read Susan Thompson on Medium: https://medium.com/@susanvhthompson/valleyview-library-board-rocked-by-controversy-cuts-weekly-staff-budget-c2baab48fde2

Dr. Wing Li from Support our Students and Chris Gallaway from Friends of Medicare join us to analyze Alberta's weird, complicated, anti-worker 2025 budget.

Full show notes at https://www.theprogressreport.ca/pod-analyzing-the-2025-budget

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Labour journalist Kim Siever (The Alberta Worker) joins Jim and Jeremy on the pod today to chat about the AHS procurement scandal, the province's ongoing education strike, and his experience working the labour beat here in Alberta.

Links and full show notes for this episode available at https://www.theprogressreport.ca/kim-siever-alberta-worker

After nine years as Progress Alberta's executive director and the editor of the Progress Report, Duncan Kinney is moving on to stabler, more raise-a-family-able things. Join us as we reminisce about some of our greatest hits during Duncan's tenure and talk frankly about the issue of 'activist journalism.'