Open Sources Guelph #527 - July 10, 2025

This week on Open Sources Guelph we're doing a Law & Order riff. With political barbecue season underway, we look to the police beat by talking about potential civil rights violations in a major Ontario prison and the province-wide chain of stores that apparently can sell an illegal product with (near) impunity. Don't worry, we've still got some political chat for you... local politics!

This Thursday, July 10, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

Prison Dilemma. A class action lawsuit brought on behalf of prisoners inside Maplehurst Correctional Complex in Milton has raised questions about the abuse, specifically a December 2023 incident where nearly 200 inmates in an entire unit were stripped, searched and forced to sit with their hands zip tied behind their back in the hallway for hours. With four-out-of-five inmates being people awaiting trail, and not yet convicted of a crime, are we ignoring civil rights violations because of a presumption of guilt?

'Shroom Boom! Have you seen these FunGuyz locations around Ontario? A mysterious entrepreneur is funding a chain of stores selling magic mushrooms, and while the government is more open now to the potential benefits of psilocybin, it's still a highly controlled substance in Canada and very illegal to sell. And yet, why are there storefronts all over the place selling mushrooms for cash, and why are police so wildly inconsistent in shutting them down?

On the Downtown. It's a busy month at Guelph city council as the members and staff count down to summer vacation, but there's a lot of business to get done between now and August and we're already seeing some of that work out. This week, council tackled massive construction coming to downtown and a Memorial Cup bid, and coming in a few weeks they will choose a new Ward 6 city councillor. This week, we go a little north to Ward 5 in order to ask Leanne Caron what she thinks about all these doings in the Royal City.

Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.