Guelph Politicast

GUELPH POLITICAST #306 – Taking the System Out of Systemic Racism

With all things COVID back on the front burner, it’s easy to temporarily forget everything that happened in the last few years around fighting systemic racism and embracing social justice. The City of Guelph is trying to make progress towards a more equitable and representative system seriously, but let’s ask the person who knows best: Is the City of Guelph making real progress on tackling issues of systemic racism?
This week, we talk to  Sara Sayyed, the senior advisor of Equity, Anti-Racism and Indigenous Initiatives at the City of Guelph. Her job is to look at ways to dismantle systemic racism and promote racial equity in all manners of City business from policy, to planning, to the delivery services. No one wants to think that they’re a participant in a racist system, but understanding how our systems might influence society's lack of equity is an important step forward.
For a job this big, you need someone plugged into the community, someone like Sara Sayyed. She's been the community services director of the Guelph Muslim Society, and she’s served on a number of local boards including the Guelph General Hospital Board, and the Guelph Community Foundation. She’s had her finger in a lot of proverbial pies, which is why she was able to hit the ground running since being hired by the City of Guelph last summer.
Now, Sayyed joins us on the podcast to talk about what systemic racism looks like in Guelph, and whether the City of Guelph is keeping up with the pace of demand for change. Then, she discusses the 2022 Municipal Election and getting more People of Colour into local politics and running for local office. Sayyed also talks about issues of trust, the importance of having uncomfortable conversations, and how she's made the transition from being a community activist to being part of the proverbial machine.
So let's talk about the mission to end systemic racism on this edition of the Guelph Politicast!
You can see the latest corporate update on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the November 26 council information report, and the next update will be coming up this June. The City is also in the process of updating the Community Plan to include a community standard for the elimination of systemic racism, and you can follow along with updates here.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

Open Sources Guelph #359 - January 6, 2022

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're back after a holiday break. Did we miss anything? I know, we'll tell you. Let's see, we took a sudden U-turn back to lockdown this week in Ontario, but we did make some some progress on Truth and Reconciliation. On the other hand, it's the first anniversary of that time a bunch of people tried to overthrow America for a game show host, and has anyone heard from Putin lately?
This Thursday, January 6, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Ford Have Mercy. Well, he said it wasn't going to happen again, but what a difference a couple of weeks make. On Monday, after being largely missing for nearly three weeks, Premier Doug Ford announced a soft and time limited lockdown for Ontario to make it through the Omicron surge. So was it the right call, and could have any of this been avoided if there had been some different leadership at Queen's Park?
Care Tactics. On Tuesday, the Federal government announced that they had reached a deal with Canada's First Nations people to provide compensation for the inadequacies of the childcare system. The deal was a bit more generous than the one originally mandated in the original human rights challenge. So why did the government work so hard to avoid paying the original tab if they ended up paying more?
The 6th. Exactly one week ago today, a mob of over 3,000 people invaded Capitol Hill in Washington in the name of an alternative reality where Donald Trump had won a stolen election and they were going to "fight like hell" to get their country back. But looking back 365 days later we see that the danger has not passed, and that this coup was likely a dress rehearsal for the next. We'll ask again: Can America be saved?
Ukraine, You Saw, You Conquered? Half a world away, the man that Trump admires the most, Russian President Vladimir Putin, is looking like he's going to unleash his military might on the Ukraine. Almost eight years after seizing the Crimea, Putin's forces have descended on the Ukrainian border, so is he getting ready to invade, and if he's not, just what the heck is he doing and what does he hope to get out of it?
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #229 - January 5, 2022 (James Bond Ranking)

This week on End Credits we welcome you to the new year. Technically, we're still on a little post-holiday break, but this is also still technically a new episode of the show. So start off 2022 with a new/old journey through the decades and adventures of Britain's greatest super spy, from Dr. No to No Time to Die, this week is the perfect time to catch up with the 007. It's a licence to thrill! 
This Wednesday, January 5, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Bond. James Bond Movies. This year is the 60th birthday of James Bond, the movie version anyway. By coincidence, the most recent Bond adventure has hit home video and video on demand, and in the lead up to its theatrical release last fall, End Credits ran a ranking of the first 24 Bond movies. So for our first show of 2022, we will not only run the complete ranking of the first two-dozen Bond movies, we will also have a brief review of the latest hit No Time to Die.  This week's episode comes complete with some James Bond musical cues, so get ready to be shaken, and stirred.
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #305 - ...The Rest of the Year at Council

City council gets back to business next week, but before we open the book on 2022 we need to sign off on what happened in 2021. Picking up where we left off in episode #286 of the Guelph Politicast, and the last meeting of council before summer break, we start in September and follow the blow-by-blow of every fight around the horseshoe. There were even some non-fights.
What will the last four months of 2021 be known for? There was a big decision to invest millions of dollars in new transit services over the next decade, which was really great. Council also reaffirmed its commitment to fighting climate change with 10 recommendations to accelerate the Race to Zero, and they passed the draft update to the Comprehensive Zoning Bylaw as well as the draft secondary plan for Clair-Maltby.
But there was a dark side too. Some of the debates around the 2022-2023 Guelph Budget were pretty contentious. There was a call to review the governance of the Downtown Business Improvement Area, but a lot of the debate seemed to be built around misunderstandings. Speaking of misunderstandings, there was a solid week there in October where council was stuck on the demolition of an old farmhouse.
So this week on the podcast, the first of 2022, we will dive into the last four months of city council and take you through them meeting by meeting, subject by subject, touching on all decisions from the major to the minor. From an optimistic view of the pandemic landscape in the late summer, to being confronted with the pessimism of Guelph's young people when it comes to climate change, these were the last moves around the virtual horseshoe in 2021.
So let's recap September, October, November and December at city council on this week's Guelph Politicast!
You can check out the previews, recaps, and post-views for all of last year’s council meetings under the city council tab, and you can also get Politico’s city council post-views sent directly to your inbox by subscribing to the Tip Sheet. The next meeting of city council is the Committee of the Whole on Monday January 10 at 2 pm, and you can click here to see the preview of the meeting.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

Open Sources Guelph #358 - December 30, 2021

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we will leave behind a year that introduced us to this guy, the Q Shaman, who broke into the U.S. Capitol with a few thousand of his friends, and then complained about not getting served organic food while in prison post-break-in. The Q Shaman was the mascot for an otherwise terrible 52 weeks of high-octane political and pandemic drama. As usual, we end the year with some awards.
This Thursday, December 30, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Worst Politician of 2021. Sadly, the number of candidates for this category were overwhelming this year. Sadly, we don't have Donald Trump to kick around anymore, but he's left an awful lot of bad actors in his wake to take up the cause. But don't think we're any better up here in Canada, because we've got a lot of duds on this side of the border too. From pandemic inaction to bad messaging, who is the worst of the worst in 2021?
Good News Story of the Year. You may be surprised to learn that there was good news in 2021. There were some diamonds in the rough, even though that roughness was very extra this year, but we did the hard work to dig deep and find that good news we so desperately need. For the most part, it's about people. The ones whose hard work and perseverance gave us hope, and reminded us that we can still do great things.
Dumpster Fire of the Year. Like the Worst Politician of the Year, this category offered an embarrassment of riches, emphasis on the "embarrassment." From the deluge of anti-lockdown/ant-mask/anti-COVID political action, to an election that no one wanted and fewer seemed to care about, to that mess in the U.S. Capitol on January 6 that now half the country wants ignore. We're going to need a bigger dumpster!
Best Politician of 2021. Yes, the arc of the universe bent towards awfulness this year, but all that darkness did make the few candidates that shine appear brighter in comparison. As usual, we will end the year end awards show by highlighting the ones who are doing good works, and usually not making a lot of noise about it, but as we enter 2022, we will note again for the record that "Politician" is not always a four-letter word.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #228 - December 29, 2021 (Top 5 of 2021)

This week on End Credits is the last week of the year, and you know what that means... New Year's Party!!! For our show, the party takes the form of a list, a Best Movies of the Year list. Once again, the whole gang has come together with their carefully considered lists, and as a group we will all reveal the nearly 20 movies that sum up the cinematic story of 2021.
This Wednesday, December 29, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson, Tim Phillips, Candice Lepage, and Peter Salmon will discuss:
The Best of 2021. It's the most wonderful time of the year, the week after Christmas when we release out Top 5 lists for what we think are the best movies released in the last 12 months. This year's line-up offers a diverse slate of some excellent musicals, plus an epic journey across the desert for a space chosen one. There's also a weird gender-bending French horror movie, and a weird genre-bending tribute to the lost art of magazine writing. But wait, there's also some powerful dramas, and at least one tale about a stolen pig. Spider-men? Maybe next  year.
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #304 - Guelph Stuff (2021 Year in Review)

This is the last episode of the podcast for 2021, and in the spirit of the season we’re going to access our memories from the last 12 months. This was a long hard year, nothing went the way it was supposed to, and it threw a lot of roadblocks in our way, but now, at the end of the year, we will take stock of all that’s happened, and how it might affect us in the new year.
Where do we begin talking about the news in 2021, and what’s the number one story of the past year? Is there anyway that it isn’t COVID-19? Guelph may be one of the most vaccinated communities in the country, but we've been feeling the heat from a new COVID variant these last few weeks and we’re ending the year with the same feeling that we had at the beginning of the year: Will this ever be over?
But the pandemic was not the only story this year. Social justice issues were still in the news with multiple marches in the summer. There was also a Federal Election this year, not that it changed much of anything. Housing was a big issue, we finally sold the Guelph Innovation District lands, and then there was that one-week period where Guelph City Council couldn’t decide if they actually approved the action they thought they did.
Richard Vivian, the city hall reporter at Guelph Today, joins us this week to review this year of Guelph Stuff. We will discuss what the number one news story of the year is, and how we practically come full circle in fighting COVID. We will also talk about what’s coming in the new year, including election talk and whether, at this point, Cam Guthrie is mayor for life. And finally, we will remember some of the local political leaders we lost in 2021, and if we have any new year’s resolutions.
So let's talk about a year in Guelph Stuff on this week’s Guelph Politicast!
You can check out Richard Vivians' news and politics coverage over on GuelphToday.com, and you can check out some year end insights here on Guelph Politico, and in this past Saturday’s Market Squared column on Guelph Today as well.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.

Open Sources Guelph #357 - December 23, 2021

This week on Open Sources Guelph, it's the most wonderful time of the year... Time for our year end specials!! As our Christmas gift to you, we're sharing our annual political movie picks in the seventh annual round of this not-festive, but definitely fun holiday tradition. This year's slate features a probing documentary, two true-life stories, and a silly drama that thinks it's a serious social commentary. Hang up your stockings, and then sit back with some hot coco as we talk about the movies. And politics.
This Thursday, December 23, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Adam's Pick #1: Falling Down (1993). "A middle-aged man dealing with both unemployment and divorce, William Foster is having a bad day. When his car breaks down on a Los Angeles highway, he leaves his vehicle and begins a trek across the city to attend his daughter's birthday party. As he makes his way through the urban landscape, William's frustration and bitterness become more evident, resulting in violent encounters with various people, including a vengeful gang and a dutiful veteran cop."
Scotty's Pick #1: On the Basis of Sex (2018). "Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a struggling attorney and new mother who faces adversity and numerous obstacles in her fight for equal rights. When Ruth takes on a groundbreaking tax case with her husband, attorney Martin Ginsburg, she knows it could change the direction of her career and the way the courts view gender discrimination."
Adam's Pick #2: White Squall (1996). "In 1960, a hardy group of prep school students boards an old-fashioned sailing ship. With Capt. Christopher Sheldon at the helm, the oceangoing voyage is intended to teach the boys fortitude and discipline. But the youthful crew -- among them confident Chuck Gieg, timid Gil Martin and self-satisfied Frank Beaumont - are about to get some unexpected instruction in survival when they get caught in the clutches of a white squall storm."
Scotty's Pick #2: What is Democracy? (2018). "This reflection on democracy spans millennia and continents, from ancient Athens' groundbreaking experiment in self-government to capitalism's roots in medieval Italy, and from modern-day Greece grappling the with its financial collapse and mounting refugee crisis to the United States reckoning with its past and the growing gap between rich and poor."
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits Holiday Special - December 22, 202

This week on End Credits, it’s Christmas. Or nearly Christmas, we suppose. There’s a lot of holiday doings going down, and some of you may still be able to go to the store and do some Christmas shopping, so why not get in the car, tune the radio to CFRU and dig some movie-related Christmas tunes, while making those trivia points that will come in handy after holiday dinner.
This Wednesday, December 22, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Sounds of the Season. It’s two days before Christmas, and all through the house, no one’s watching the movies, because it’s less than 48 hours till Christmas, yo!!!! So why bother with something new this week? Let’s just flip on the radio and enjoy some holiday music from the movies, complete with some colour commentary about the origins of the music, and how they’re used in the movies they’re found in. So tune in, drop out, and bring on the egg nog!
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #303 - Christmas With Mike

In less than two weeks, we enter the year 2022, and that’s an election year in Ontario. In the spring, Premier Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives will aim to make a case that they should be re-elected for a second term, but the knives will almost certainly be out for them. But what about the one Green MPP in the legislature? What kind of year will 2022 be for him?
Three-and-a-half years ago, Mike Schreiner made history winning a remarkable 46 per cent stake of the vote and becoming the first sitting member of the Green Party in the Ontario Legislature. Some saw it as a sign of the Green Party’s growing relevance in Canada’s political picture; others saw Guelph voters sending a caucus of one to the provincial parliament, but even the most cynical would have a tough time saying that Schreiner hasn't been effective.
Re-election though many not be easy. The Liberals have been seriously rebuilding themselves for the last few years to be back in fighting shape, and the NDP will be looking to breakthrough and seize government power for the first time since 1995. Meanwhile, the PCs will be playing defense, but Ford himself has made repeated visits to Guelph this year, and has said out loud that he thinks he can win Guelph in 2022. In a way, this is going to be a tougher election for Schreiner than 2018.
On this holiday edition of the podcast, Schreiner will talk about this term at the Ontario Legislature, and whether he thinks that he’s silenced the doubters who thought one person couldn’t make a difference at Queen’s Park. He will also talk about how the pandemic changed things politically, and the unique challenges of running for re-election next year, plus the weight of expectations to create a bigger footprint for the Greens in the legislature. And does Schreiner have any regrets this Christmas?
So let's have a nice holiday visit with Guelph's MPP on this week's Guelph Politicast!
You can find Mike Schreiner’s constituency website here, and you can learn more about Green Party policy and direction here. He is also active on social media, and you can find him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Bookmark this for later, but the Ontario Provincial Election will happen on or before Thursday June 2, 2022.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at Apple, Stitcher, Google, TuneIn and Spotify .
Also, when you subscribe to the Guelph Politicast channel and you will also get an episode of Open Sources Guelph every Monday, and an episode of End Credits every Friday.