Guelph Politicast

GUELPH POLITICAST #224 - It's Been a Long School Year...

Last September at the Labour Day Picnic in Riverside Park, there were already signs that it was going to be a long year at the province’s schools. The contract with all four teachers’ unions in Ontario had expired, and the Ontario government was in no mood to approve new spending or pay raises for teachers and other school workers employed at our Catholic and separate public schools. That was only the beginning.
This week on the podcast, we're going to talk about the end with two leaders of the local branches of our teachers' unions. What began with an expired contract on August 31, exacerbated by legislation limiting raises by one per cent in October, and accelerated with rotating strikes in the winter, ended rather anticlimactically once schools closed because of COVID-19. With weeks, all four teachers' unions secured a new contract in March. So what are the leaders of the unions thinking now?
This week we're joined by Mark Berardine, the president of Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association (OECTA) Wellington, and Jennifer Hesch, the president of the Upper Grand Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario (ETFO). In separate interviews, they talk about the process, the negotiations, and the eventual deals. They also talk about the various tactics employed by the teachers’ unions, and how they were able to hang on to the support of parents. And they’ll discuss what the unions have learned from dealing with the Ford government, and whether or not they would still be striking now if it weren't for COVID-19.
So let's recap this year of labour strife at school on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!
Note: Paul Rawlinson, the president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation District 18 was invited to take part in this podcast, but he did not respond before press time.
You can stay up to date with the latest developments on any subject concerning your local school boards, be it teachers contracts or COVID-19 developments, by connecting to their websites. Click here for the Upper Grand District School Board, and click here for the Wellington Catholic District School Board.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, 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 - May 28, 2020

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we have the silly, we have the serious, and we have an in-depth discussion with a politician about the issues. This might be one of the most normal episodes we've done in a while, but we've still got COVID-19 concerns, especially in long term care homes. We'll also head to Parliament Hill and we'll talk to a local politician (for the East Coast) about his Canada-wide concerns for all cities.
This Thursday, May 28, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Disgrace. A report from Canadian Forces, who respond to a call for help in Ontario's long-term care home, outlined a terrible series of abuses observed in these facilities that have nothing to do with COVID-19. Premier Doug Ford has pledged that he will now pursue a public inquiry, and referrals will be made to the police, but we're once again forced to confront how little we've done for our seniors who we claim to cherish. Will anyone pay a political price though?
The Commons Struggle. Meanwhile in the House of Commons, MPs are debating about whether or not the time has come to return to regular order. The Conservatives want to, the Liberals aren't so sure, and they might have the support of the NDP if the government makes sick pay a reality. Meanwhile, all three major parties have been dipping into wage subsidies to help their staffs. We'll catch up with all the latest from Ottawa.
A Country of Cities. Municipalities across the country are struggling with bloated bottom lines, and many of them are barred by law from running red ink. Cities are in trouble, and they've been reaching out to higher levels of government for help with increasing concern, but is help going to come from the Federal and provincial governments? Bill Karsten, a Halifax city councillor and president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, will offer an answer.
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits - May 27, 2020 (Honey Boy)

This week on End Credits, get ready for some childhood trauma! Not ours, of course, but the cinematic life based on the real-life family drama of a well-known and controversial Hollywood actor. Plus, we will have some doc talk with one of the people responsible for North America's biggest documentary film festival!
This Wednesday, May 27, at 2 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Tim Phillips will discuss:
All Things Digital. It's the end of the May, and in a typical year, the annual Hot Docs documentary film festival would be long since over, but in the age of COVID-19 it's actually just getting starting. We will talk to Shane Smith, the director of programming at Hot Docs, about making changes to this year's festival, and how the pandemic will change things forever moving forward.
REVIEW: Honey Boy (2019). The life of a child actor can be difficult, and it can be made even more so by a reckless parent. Just ask Shia LaBeouf, or, better still, watch the new movie he stars in and wrote about it. Honey Boy began as a therapeutic exercise for LaBeouf while in rehab, his life story and struggles told on celluloid with the author playing his own father warts and all. But is Honey Boy more than just good therapy for its wannabe auteur star?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 2 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #223 - The Coming of the Curbside Library

The library is the ideal paradox for the present pandemic: we’re all stuck at home looking for new stuff to read and watch, which is a situation ideally suited for the library, but because of the public health emergency, it is wildly irresponsible to have people visit the library and handle various books, and other things. But good news, we will soon be able to borrow from the library again. How will they do it?
Like most City of Guelph facilities, the Guelph Public Library closed its doors to the public on March 15. That was right on the brink of March Break, which is a time when the library rolls out all sorts of programs and activities, but there are people all over Royal City who make the library part of their daily or weekly routine, whether they're using the computers, reading the paper, or using it as a place to study quietly. And then there are the thousands of items borrowed every year...
Even though the library is still, essentially, in business with a variety of online resources, people have had to get by without the library's vast collection of books, DVDs, and periodicals, but that will soon change. The Ontario government has loosened restrictions, and the Guelph Library system is currently in the process of preparing for curbside pick-up of physical books and media, but how will life at the library change as we continue to recover from COVID? 
That’s one of the many questions that Steve Kraft, the CEO of the Guelph Public Library, will answer on this week’s podcast. He will talk about how the library has handled the demand for digital materials during the pandemic, how they're preparing for curbside pick-up, and the intricacies involved in creating an entirely new way of borrowing. He also talks about what a physically distant library might look like when it re-opens, and whether or not libraries will see more visits once the state of emergency is lifted. Plus, he will talk directly about whether or not the fiscal developments from COVID-19 at city hall might have an effect on the construction of the new main library on Baker Street. 
So let's talk about pandemic life at the Guelph Public Library on this week's Guelph Politicast!
The Guelph Public Library is looking to have curbside pick-up ready to implement on June 1, and if you are presently in possession of library materials, you can now return them to any of the library’s branches with the exception of the bookmobile, and the West End Rec Centre branch. To keep up to date with everything happening at the library, visit their 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 iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, 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 - May 21, 2020

This week on Open Sources Guelph we start with dessert. The Premier of Ontario hasn't told us to eat cake, but he showed us how to make one, which could be just as bad as the other thing once austerity sets in. That's just one of the topics we'll explore on this week's show along with matters of inquiry in Nova Scotia, the latest attack against a free press, and the messed up labour market being created by Amazon, and its "trillionaire" CEO.
This Thursday, May 21, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Let Them Eat Cheesecake. Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced that the province would start its gradual re-open, and then showed everyone how to make Mama Ford's cheesecake, but what we really need is assurance. With a ballooning deficit, and the PC government's previous willingness to play with the numbers to justify government cuts, how do we know that the Ford government won't use the pandemic as an excuse for austerity once the emergency has passed?
Inquiry of a Wimpy Kid. So much has been happening on a daily basis that its passed the collective memory that just a month ago there was a gunman that went on a rampage across Nova Scotia. Things have gone quiet in terms of the investigation into how and why, but many questions linger about how this gunman was able to arm himself, why no one seemed to see it coming, and why authorities seemed to respond so poorly. Should there be a public inquiry into what happened?
Beat the Press. It seems bizarre that in a public health emergency there should be so much distrust of authority, but once again accusations of fake news are being made against reporters just going their job. U.S. President Donald Trump shared a tweet of a New York reporter being yelled at by screaming conspiracy theorists and other MAGA folks, a way for him to endorse the actions and attack what he considers a dishonest press. Is there a way to combat such blatantly hostility?
Amazon Shiver. The pandemic has revealed the character of a lot of different people and companies, and none are perhaps as revealing as Amazon and Jeff Bezos. Shortly after it was announced that Amazon would be rolling back pandemic pay at the end of the month, it was reported that the company's head, Bezos, might be the world's first trillionaire before the decade's out. What will it take to change Amazon's culture, and should there be such a thing as a trillionaire?
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits - May 20, 2020 (Blood Quantum)

This week on End Credits, it's time to get dead again! Just in time for the unofficial start of summer, we'll review the new socially conscious zombie hit Blood Quantum, and, before that, we'll finish up the list of the Top 40 Comic Book Movies of the Last 40 Years. Yup, this one's going to be a nerdy episode.
This Wednesday, May 20, at 2 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Candice Lepage will discuss:
The Top 40 Comic Book Movies of the Last 40 years PART 4. In 1978, Superman the Movie was released in theatres everywhere, and since then everyone’s chased that big box office money from superhero movies. For the next four weeks, we’re going to countdown the 40 greatest of the genre in the last 40 (or make that 42 years). This week, we’re doing 1 to 10.
REVIEW: Blood Quantum (2020). The toast of the Toronto International Film Festival's Midnight Madness program last year is now available on VOD. Just another zombie movie? Hardly. Filmmaker Jeff Barnaby supposes an outbreak of undead near a community of First Nations people, but the gimmick is that Indigenous people seem unaffected by zombie bites. Like all great zombie movies, this one's got a social message, but does Blood Quantum stand with the best of the living dead?
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 2 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #222 - The [No] Transit Pass [Needed]

We normally do a quarterly discussion of transit matters with a couple of our friends from the Transit Action Alliance of Guelph, or TAAG, but there’s been a lot going on lately, and it’s been really hard for friends to get together like we usually do. Getting people to take the bus in the best of times is hard, but during a pandemic? It’s time for another edition of the Transit Pass, even though these days you don’t need one.
Thousands of people take Guelph Transit every month, especially when school’s in sessions, and while Transit hasn’t released any official numbers, most transit systems are reporting a loss in ridership of 90 per cent or more. Almost all transit systems have cut schedules, or rolled back service, but in the wake of the pandemic they've still been deemed an essential service so that people still have the means to get to work or the grocery store.
It’s a perfect storm: cities have to run a transit service in some capacity, but many of them depend on the revenue from the fare box in order to cover the cost. Some transit systems, like Guelph Transit, have made services free as a way to encourage social distancing, but that means there’s currently no revenue being collected at all. There are pressures now on upper levels of government to give transit some bailout money, otherwise they might need to start charging fares again. It’s a conundrum, so let’s see what one of our friends from TAAG might have to say about it.
So this week on the podcast, Steve Petric, the chair of TAAG, will talk about what it’s like to take the bus these days, and how Transit is managing the health and safety of both passengers and operators during the pandemic. He also talks about the current financial needs of transit, and what role TAAG serves in promoting transit while everyone’s in lockdown. And finally, he will also talk about how the pandemic can promote new, radical approaches to the way we plan and fund transit.
So let's talk about transit during our pandemic age on this week's Guelph Politicast!
To learn more about the Transit Action Alliance of Guelph, and its advocacy, you can go to their website here, and to keep up to date with the latest from Guelph Transit itself, go to their website here. Remember, Transit is free in Guelph until July 1, and presently only 10 people are allowed on the bus at a time.
The host for the Guelph Politicast is Podbean. Find more episodes of the Politicast here, or download them on your favourite podcast app at iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, 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 - May 14, 2020

This week on Open Sources Guelph, we're getting ready for the long weekend, and that means stoking some controversy. We're going to re-visit the non-stop state of weirdness, ignorance, and conspiracy in the American executive, and then we're going to discuss some controversial comments from a Canadian politician who is no stranger to controversial comments. Before that though, we'll hear from Guelph's mayor and get the latest about the local response to COVID-19.
This Thursday, May 14, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
Cam on COVID. Scotty interviewed Mayor Cam Guthrie back in March just a few days into the pandemic lockdown, and this week we're going to check back in with the mayor about how Guelph is doing now just a few months later. Guthrie will talk to us this week about the long plateau of lockdown and keeping people engaged, the work of his economic task force, his advocacy through LUMCO, and the things he's learning about what it takes to be mayor in a crisis.
It's Coming From Inside the [White] House. U.S. President Donald Trump is not having a good week. He's got key White House staff contracting COVID-19, a desperate desire to re-open the economy, a new conspiracy theory that makes even less sense than usual, and his scientific advisors told the senate about all the worse case scenarios they're not allowed to say to his face. We'll look at all that, and some casual racism during a press conference on this week's edition of the Trump Show.
"Oil is Dead"? In a National Observer op-ed, former Green Party leader Elizabeth May doubled down on a comment she made in a press conference, "Oil is dead." This made more than a few politicians, business people and even journalists apoplectic; why does May hate jobs, money, stimulus, economic freedom, etc? We'll look at May's arguments, and consider that maybe, just maybe, she might be on to something...
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.

End Credits - May 13, 2020 (Cats)

This week on End Credits, we're going to get out our dancing shoes, and that's probably going to end horribly... Like the release of Cats! The adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is now available to watch at home, and we watched it, and there might be regrets. In other news, we'll continue with out list of the best comic book movies in the last four decades.
This Wednesday, May 13, at 2 pm, Adam A. Donaldson and Peter Salmon will discuss:
The Top 40 Comic Book Movies of the Last 40 years PART 3. In 1978, Superman the Movie was released in theatres everywhere, and since then everyone’s chased that big box office money from superhero movies. For the next four weeks, we’re going to countdown the 40 greatest of the genre in the last 40 (or make that 42 years). This week, we’re doing 11 to 20.
REVIEW: Cats (2019). We finally did it. Cats may not be the biggest bomb of the last year, or even the last 10 years, but it's definitely one of the most infamous box office disasters in recent memory. From the visual effects controversy, to the overemphasis on making successful actors act cat-like, to the deathly serious way director Tom Hooper treats this campiest of Broadway musicals, we'll watch Cats this week so you don't have to.
End Credits is on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca Wednesday at 2 pm.

GUELPH POLITICAST #221 - Old Marcolongo's Farm

The detailed Clair-Maltby Secondary Plan was going to be one of the biggest issues before city council this year, and it still might be, but in the almost literal centre of the debate is the Marcolongo Farm property. With council returning to some kind of regular order in the next few weeks, look for the planning of Clair-Maltby to pick-up again, and there is almost no one that has as much invested in that plan both personally and professionally than Mike Marcolongo.
This week on the podcast, Marcolongo is going to take us back to the beginning, and then come with us back to where we left off with the Clair-Maltby debate in March with the Committee of the Whole meeting. Before that meeting, staff proposed to establish a community park by using, in part, 35 acres of the Marcolongo property meant for what can be most simply described as affordable housing. It was the latest hoop that the Marcolongo family had to jump through to make their vision for their property a reality.
What was that reality? Marcolongo's father had a vision to turn a portion of the property, including the over 100 year old farmhouse and barn, into a medical training facility, as well as giving several acres of the property back to the City as new, protected open space. There's also the aforementioned housing, which will be built by Options for Homes, who offers financial tools to make it easier for people to buy homes even at market value. So what are the odds that the Marcolongos will see that vision realized?
Marcolongo will provide an answer to that question, and others. He'll talk about the process, the struggles, dealing with other developers and the City staff, and whether he’s felt besieged through the process. He'll discuss whether he’s been surprised at how political the process has become, whether he thinks all the politicking might be over, and his advice for the next person with a bold plan for a big piece of land in Guelph. And finally, Marcolongo will talk about the memories, and the lessons that he’s taking with him.  
So let's head down to Old Marcolongo's Farm on this week's edition of the Guelph Politicast!
The approved plan for the Open Spaces Strategy for the Clair-Maltby Secondary Plan will be ratified by city council at some point now that regular meetings of council are resuming, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, you can see all the Clair-Maltby documents at the City’s 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 iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, 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.