Guelph Politicast

GUELPH POLITICAST #276 - Paramedics and the Pandemic

We’ve kind of forgotten about paramedics, haven’t we? We’ve venerated the doctors and nurses in our hospitals, hailed the overworked and underpaid staff at long-term care homes, and made celebrities out of medical officers of health. In those terms, our paramedics have been the forgotten spoke in the wheel of healthcare this pandemic, so it’s a good thing that they have a whole week dedicated to their work.
Technically, Paramedic Services Week just wrapped up this past Saturday, but under the theory that it’s never too late to pay tribute to our heroes, we're going to talk to Chief Stephen Dewar from Guelph Wellington Paramedic Services on this week's podcast. In a time of pandemic, who else voluntarily walks into multiple homes and residential settings to perform medical services with the knowledge that they might be exposing themselves to a deadly virus?
Next week at Committee of the Whole, council will receive the 2020 performance statistics and information for Paramedic Services, and it turns out that they managed to meet their targets and even exceeded them in a couple of categories last year. That’s not surprising news, but it might be more surprising when you consider all the additional work that paramedics have been called upon to perform during the pandemic, not to mention the demands of the pandemic itself.
On this podcast, Chief Dewar will talk about how the service has maintained its response times, their new procedures because of COVID, and the mental health stresses caused by the pandemic. He will also talk about servicing a rapidly growing community like ours, and whether Paramedic Services is getting all the help it needs. And finally, he will talk about how the pandemic might have changed the delivery of emergency services forever, and what Dewar has learned about his job in the last year.
So let's talk about delivering emergency services on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!
Next week’s Committee of the Whole will receive the updated performance statistics for Paramedic Services. You can learn more about Guelph Wellington Pandemic Services at their page on the City’s website, and you can visit some of the great information from Paramedic Services Week at the Ontario Association of Paramedic Chiefs website.
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 Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, 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 #328 - May 27, 2021

This week on Open Sources Guelph, you mark some momentous events. On the one hand, there's the first anniversary of the event that kicked off the greatest shift in Civil Rights in 50 years, and on the other there's Schrödinger's Summer Olympics, will they happen or won't they? In the back half of the show, we will mark the achievement of a tepid peace by hearing about the issues from those who know them best.
This Thursday, May 27, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
9 Minutes, 29 Seconds, and 1 Year Later. On Tuesday, it was the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. There's been a lot of protest, a lot of promises made, and while Chauvin was convicted, it still seems like there's a new story every week about police brutality against someone who's BIPOC. So what kind of year has it been since George Floyd died?
No-lympics? The countdown is on for the delayed Summer Olympics in Tokyo, but there's a growing sense among many Japanese people that this is a very bad idea. In the middle of a fourth wave of COVID-19, lagging in vaccine distribution, and forced to preemptively cancel in-person events, there's sufficient reason to rethink the start of the games in July, but is anyone going to listen to the voices of caution?
Voices for Palestine. Things are quiet in the Middle East now, a ceasefire has been arrange between Israel and Hamas, but things are still incendiary and the long-standing issues that led to the recent outburst of violence remain unsolved. A few weeks ago, a group of Guelphites gathered in Market Square to talk about some of those issues and concerns, and this week, we will lend our platform to those voices.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #200 Show - May 26, 2021 (Top 5 of the First 199)

This week on End Credits, it's a cause for celebration. As you may have noticed above, this is the 200th episode of the show, a momentous event almost four years in the making. There have been a lot of changes on the show, some people have come and gone over the years, but the draw has always been the movies, and this week we remember the best of the best.
This Wednesday, May 26, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson, Tim Phillips, Candice Lepage, and Peter Salmon will discuss:
Top Five of the First 199. Congratulations, you lived long enough to hear the 200th episode of End Credits! It's all down hill from here. Before moving on to the future, we will stop and take account of the first 199 episodes with our Top 5 of the show so far. Each panelist, choosing only from the movies they've reviewed on the show, will reveal their Top 5 of End Credits. From Adam Sandler's Oscar-worthy acting to a killer clown in the sewer, from art and romance in 17th century France to art and romance in 20th century Atlantic Canada, let's toast our favourites from the first four years of the show!
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #275 - 100 Years After the Meeting on Metcalfe Street

On Monday May 23, 1921, a small group of people gathered in a barn on the outskirts of Guelph to found the Communist Party of Canada. It was three years after the Russian Revolution, and there was already widespread concern about the spread of Marxist ideas, but economic stagnation, a global pandemic, and societal disillusionment post World War I made people hungry for some kind of change to the status quo. Sound familiar?
True, some things have not changed in the last century, but a hundred years ago 257 Metcalfe Street was the boonies, instead of the heart of Ward 2. On that day, lot of the people that came to Guelph for the founding of the Communist Party were already accustomed to being targeted by police and arrested for their political activism, but locals like Alderman Lorne Cunningham and Guelph Workingman’s Association member Fred Farley were there as well.
In the last century,  it’s been hard to separate communism from the atrocities of Stalin, the anti-democratic actions of Castro in Cuba, and the still growing authoritarian tendencies in modern China. It makes running as the Communist Party candidate hard in the handful of ridings their candidates try to represent in Federal and Provincial elections, including Guelph. One person who knows that all too well is Tristan Dineen, a community activist, and the Communist Party candidate for Guelph in the 2015 election.
Dineen joins us this week to talk about why working with the Communist Party of Canada appealed to him, and why he’s running again in the next Federal Election. He will also talk about the misconceptions of the Communist Party, and how people currently working with the party have to answer for history. Plus, Dineen will discuss Guelph’s place in the history of the Communist Party, and whether there should be some form of official commemoration on this, the 100th anniversary of the party’s founding.
So let's talk about Guelph’s communist past, present and future (?) on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!
The Communist Party of Canada will mark their 100th birthday in a virtual event they’re live streaming online at 1:30 pm on Sunday May 30 at their YouTube channel. You can read Terry Pender’s article about the founding of the Communist Party in Guelph at the Waterloo Region Record’s website.
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 Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, 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 #327 - May 20, 2021

This week on Open Sources Guelph we've got repeats. We have some new developments on previously covered stories from conflict in the Middle East to conflict inside our own Canadian Forces that keeps getting more concerning. In the back half of the show, we're going to cover transportation, housing, and municipal budgeting in a tight 22 minutes with our guest from Guelph City Hall.
This Thursday, May 20, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Something's Gaza Give. The violence in Israel and the occupied territories has not gotten better since we talked about it last week. On Saturday, a building housing foreign media was bombed to get at a supposed Hamas hideout inside, but in front of the eyes of the world, it was another example of the disproportional power dynamic that's seen hundreds of Palestinians killed, injured or displaced. So what now?
Fortin the Road. The twin crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and misconduct in the Canadian Forces combined this week as Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin, the head of Canada's vaccine rollout, stepped aside aside after the media uncovered an allegation of sexual misconduct against Fortin, and it turns out that he might have a long history of misconduct that the Forces was sitting on. Is their no bottom to the debauchery?
Mike & Volley. It's been a busy time at Guelph City Council, and there's a lot to catch up on. Helping us sort out current events this week is Ward 4 City Councillor Mike Salisbury, who will join us to talk about the City's latest efforts to address homelessness in our community, Monday's workshop about the move to multi-year budgeting, and the meeting coming up next week about Guelph's new Transportation Master Plan.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #199 - May 19, 2021 (Love & Monsters)

This week on End Credits, we're getting excited! Look at the top line to see why, but next week is going to be a pretty big episode of the show. In the meantime, we've got something big for this week's show, monsters! We're going to review the post-apocalyptic romance fantasy Love & Monsters, and we're going to rewind to the very busy summer of 1985 in our wayback segment.
This Wednesday, May 19, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss:
Summer Lovin’ Part 3: 1985. In our revisit of great summer movie seasons of the past, we've made it to the middle of the 80s. The blockbuster mentality has been firmly established, and in 1985, a common theme involved young kids going on big adventures to space, with robots, with pirate ships buried under their town. It was the summer of the Future, and it was the Day of the Dead plus so much more. Let us revisit the jam-packed movie season from the summer of '85!
REVIEW: Love & Monsters (2020). We all know what it's like to spend a lot of time inside. We know what's like to be locked down, stuck with the same people, and getting uncomfortably close because of some existential threat outside. But what if instead of COVID-19, it was mutated monsters? That's kind of the gist behind Love & Monsters, a new Netflix hit about a nebbish young man willing to cross a monster-filled Earth to find the girlfriend he thought he lost, and do some personal growth in the process. But is it any good as a movie?
Programming Note: Next week is End Credits' 200th episode spectacular! Join the whole panel as we tackle the Top 5 movies we've review during the first 199 episodes of the show!!!
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #274 – Still COVID [Spring Edition] with Dr. Tenenbaum

The last time that Dr. Nicola Mercer was on the show, we were on the downward slide from the second wave, the vaccine rollout was moving slowly, and there was a vague hopefulness for a brighter spring. Now, it’s almost summer, the third wave is still strong, but progress is being made to get more people shots, but even that move has had very public hiccups that are crying out for an in-depth discussion.
When it comes to the vaccine rollout, Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health has done very well. As of this week, more than half of the region has received one dose of the three distributed vaccines, which, depending on the day, is either keeping pace with the provincial and national vaccine rollout, or exceeding it. But even when things are running smoothly with the vaccines, there are problems, and last week there was a big one.
When Ontario decided to discontinue the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine as a first dose, the Government of Ontario said it was done out of an abundance of caution due to vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia, or VITT, but the price of caution was concern. People were concerned about the efficacy of the vaccines, and concerned about the advice of public health. We need to talk to a doctor, so we got one for this week's episode of the podcast.
Associate medical officer of health for Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health Dr. Matthew Tenenbaum joins us this week to talk about the issues around AstraZeneca’s vaccine, and how you know that you’re having a normal reaction to it. Dr. Tenenbaum will also debunk some of the talking points from the vaccine hesitancy file, talk about what the COVID case numbers tell us, and how sure he is that we will have a semi-normal fall. Plus, we'll talk about the future, and lessons learned from the pandemic.
So let's catch-up about COVID-19 with Dr. Tenenbaum on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!
You can see Dr. Tenenbaum’s statement about the discontinued use of the AstraZeneca vaccine for the first dose on the WDG Public Health website, and while you're there, you can also get all the latest data about COVID-19 and the vaccine rollout. And it should go without saying, but if it doesn’t, if you’re 12 years old or over, you can pre-register to receive a COVID-19 vaccine right now!!
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 Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, 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 #326 - May 13, 2021

This week on Open Sources Guelph, things get complicated. At home, we're going to try and unwind the complex string of motivations behind new government regs for tech companies, and the even more complex political and religious motivations behind the last violence in the Middle East. In the back half of the show, our local MPP will stop by to talk about the intricate random web of the provincial fight against COVID-19.
This Thursday, May 13, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
C-10ic Panic. You may have heard about Bill C-10, and have been confused by some of the discourse. Is the Federal government trying to regulate the YouTube page where you review frozen pizza? Not directly. The intention was to bring steamers under the CRTC fold, but things have gotten so much more complicated than that, and there's not a lot of trust that the Federal government knows what it's doing. So what's next?
Rocket's Dread Glare. In the last week, tensions between Israelis and Palestinians in East Jerusalem have erupted in some of the worst violence seen in this part of the region in years. Dozens of people on both sides have been killed or injured as protests led to violence which led to an exchange of rocket fire, and all this as the current Israeli prime minister is still under a cloud of corruption. Can there be a resolution?
A Green Lantern. By this time next week we will definitely know if the stay-at-home order will be extended for another couple of weeks (as advised by the Science Table), but why not announce things before the last minute? That's one of the questions we'll ask Green Party of Ontario leader and Guelph MPP Mike Schreiner on this week's show as we talk about the ongoing issues with the Provincial government's pandemic response.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits #198 - May 12, 2021 (Mortal Kombat)

This week on End Credits, we're going to loosen up our thumbs and get out our controllers because we're digging up the ghosts of video games past with the newly rebooted Mortal Kombat movie. That sounds like a summer flick, but since we have no summer movie releases of our own, we will once again be forced to dip into the past with another 80s recap!
This Wednesday, May 12, at 3 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss:
Summer Lovin’ Part 2: 1984. In lieu of the latest summer movies, we again journey back to summer movie seasons of the past, and this week we will look back at the Summer of 1984. From baseball movies to Spock, from the return of the man with the hat to the receipt of both gremlins and ghosts on the same weekend, the Summer of '84 had something for everyone, and we'll remember it all. We may not have our summer movies, but we still have the 80s!
REVIEW: Mortal Kombat (2021). If you were a kid in the 90s, you probably spent hours at the arcade or in front of the TV playing a game featuring monsters and superhumans fighting for the fate of humanity in a martial arts tournament. That's Mortal Kombat in a nutshell, and it's already been realized well in what's arguably the best video game adaptation every made, the 1995 Paul W.S. Anderson film. But 25 years later, can the je ne sais quoi of Mortal Kombat be updated for modern times? In other words, does the remake deliver a "Flawless Victory"?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 3 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #273 - The Pandemic Arts

These days, more and more people have used the pandemic to discover new creative resources, while professional artists have struggled to earn a living without access to the live venues and events from which they usually collect the majority of their income. From new programs to virtual events, it’s been a long, hard road for the Guelph Arts Council for the last 15 months, and it’s not over yet.
The Guelph Arts Council has been around since 1975. It's reportedly one of the first institutions of its kind in Ontario, and if you’ve been to an artsy event in Guelph, then chances are that the GAC had a hand in it at some point. From helping artist groups to get established, to sponsoring new shows and festivals, to being a natural place for emerging artists to network with established colleagues, the GAC has been essential to the arts in Guelph, and that hasn't changed.
In the last year, the GAC had to establish an entirely new way of doing things. Signature events like Art on the Street had to move on line, their annual historical walks had to be limited to a few people masked and physically distant, and they had to hustle to ensure that money and support still flowed to artists whose various revenue streams dried up. The logistics are mind boggling, so let’s hear about the logistics from the person who knows about the balancing act, the GAC's executive director Patti Broughton.
In this week's podcast, Broughton will talk about the effect of the pandemic on the local arts scene, and whether the pandemic might be a net positive with so many people discovering new artistic talents. She will also talk about how the GAC had to adapt to the pandemic, and how programs and events might be changed forever once things go back to “normal.” And finally, Broughton will discuss the council's new online arts hub, and how it's still a busy time in Guelph's vibrant arts scene despite the lockdown.
So let's talk about the fine art of surviving the pandemic in this edition of the Guelph Politicast!
You can learn more about the Guelph Arts Council at their website, and all over social media. The new artist hub will be posted sometime later this summer, but in the meantime, you can check out the Collector’s Dilemma fundraiser here until May 20, and for all future virtual Arts Council events, visit the calendar page of their website 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 Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, 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.