Open Sources Guelph is your voice for depressing news. Not always, of course, but definitely this week. For instance, we have to talk again about why Truth and Reconciliation with our Indigenous people seems just as far away as it's ever been. We also have to talk about why there seems to be no new help for Guelph's most vulnerable people. And to top it all off, we have to talk about why another beloved pipeline will never see the light of day. Okay, so that last topic is not so...
Open Sources Guelph is your voice for depressing news. Not always, of course, but definitely this week. For instance, we have to talk again about why Truth and Reconciliation with our Indigenous people seems just as far away as it's ever been. We also have to talk about why there seems to be no new help for Guelph's most vulnerable people. And to top it all off, we have to talk about why another beloved pipeline will never see the light of day. Okay, so that last topic is not so depressing to some, especially this week's guests who are two leaders of the Green Party.
This Thursday, October 12, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
1) Mike and May. You can feel it in the air if you're a member of the Green team in Guelph. Though the provincial election is still over 200 days away, Green Party of Ontario leader Mike Schreiner is open for business at his new campaign office on Suffolk Street. Schreiner's federal counterpart, Elizabeth May, came to town to help celebrate, and the recent result in British Columbia was foremost on their minds. Being green with ambition is one of the things we discuss with Schreiner and May in a joint interview with them, and back in studio we'll talk about how Liz Sandals deciding not to run for re-election is going to shake up the local race come next spring.
2) Boo Scoops. Back in the 1960s there was a thing called the "60s Scoop", and it sadly had nothing to do with ice cream. Starting in the 1960s, the government "scooped" up Aboriginal children, took them from their families, and placed them in foster care because, well, they needed to be made more white (basically). In the interest of Truth and Reconciliation, the Federal government has apologized for the practice, and has offered a settlement to all those affected except, notably, Métis people. We'll talk about what the Feds aren't doing for Truth and Reconciliation, and that includes more problems with the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
3) Doubly Homeless. There's been a lot of news about the new tenant at 40 Baker Street, but not a lot of discussion about the old tenant. The Out of Poverty Society was effectively made homeless after being evicted earlier this year when the anchor tenants of 40 Baker left, and in its homelessness, Edward Pickersgill has still tried to help Guelph's needy with a mobile version of his service. The poverty picture in Guelph remains sketchy after we discussed it earlier this year, but is there a new urgency now with winter coming? What isn't being done for Guelph's poorest residents, and is this going to be a major issues in the weeks and months to come?
4) Low Energy. Last week, Trans Canada announced that they will not be proceeding with the Energy East pipeline. The pipe would have connected Alberta's tar sands with the Atlantic coast, but it also connected pro-oil economic cheerleaders with anti-oil environmental activists. So naturally, when the project was announced done-zo, the reaction covered a range of perspectives from "We just economically hung ourselves" to "Huzzah, we just saved planet Earth!" The truth, as always, is probably somewhere in between, so we'll talk about the implications, both economic and environmental, of Energy East's cancellation, and we'll talk about whether or not the time has come to have a grand discussion of our fossil fuel future.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.
