Oh man, how we long to go to the circus agin… Instead this week on Open Sources Guelph we resist the urge to talk about all those things zapping the oxygen south of the border, to tackle some serious issues. Terror has made the news again, but not because someone shot something up, or blew something up. Water is in the headlines, mostly the lack of it, but also the taking of it by big water bottling companies. Then we’ll follow the tracks to Churchill, because the train don’t run there anymore. And then we’ll wrap up with trip overseas to Britain where they’re still feeling the after effects from the Brexit.
This Thursday, August 4, at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:
1) The Trouble with Terror. While a certain orange-coloured candidate down south is trying to get people worked up into a lather over terrorists hiding behind every rock, meanwhile NDP public safety critic Randall Garrison is getting ready to push a private members bill through the House to repeal the law once known as Bill C-51, a piece of Conservative legislation that gave Canada’s spy agencies sweeping new powers. At almost the same time last week, the conviction of John Nuttall and Amanda Korody were overturned on appeal with the presiding judge saying that the RCMP entrapped them, and provoked them into planning a Canada Day attack in Vancouver. So in this era of heightened concern about terrorism – especially after Nice, Orlando, San Bernadino, and Paris – is Canada now underreacting, or toning down the original overreaction?
2) A Bottling Plant Runs Through It. It’s been a long dry summer for our region, with water use levels in Guelph having been on red alert for over a month now. It makes you wonder about the limits of our water resources, and whether it’s a bright move on the part of the stewards of those resources to allow almost unilateral control over the most precious resource we have. Local advocates are pushing hard against Nestle in particular, as the company itself has admitted that their on the lookout for more wells to tap, all for the low, low price of about $5 a day for millions of litres of irreplaceable fresh water resources. Are we doing enough to protect our water, and why does the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change seem unresponsive to community concerns?
3) Back ‘Trax. A controversy in northern Manitoba this week has seen the shuttering of the Port of Churchill with the company OmniTrax unilaterally closing down Canada’s only rail-accessible deepwater Arctic port leaving conditions in the local economy turbulent at best. Manitoba’s new Premier, Brian Pallister, has said that OmniTrax is trying to get more money out of the provincial government, but the short term concern is that a lot of people in Churchill are out of work and thedifficulty in getting food and supplies to northern communities has increased. Is this a case of the limitations of corporate welfare, and what can/should Manitoba do now?
4) After Brexit? Way back on June 23, a slim majority of U.K. citizens voted to break away from the European Union, several political leaders quit their jobs after that, including Prime Minister David Cameron, and all was well in the land of Great Britain. Except not really. Dark economic clouds have been forming on the horizon, and the number of anti-immigrant hate crimes has increased. So now what? It’s an excellent question that the North American press seems to have dropped since the immediate aftermath of the vote. So we’ll check in with the post-Brexit world. What is the economic outlook for the U.K.? Is there a chance that Britain might come through this okay, and what are the odds it won’t?
Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 5 pm on Thursday.
Open Sources Guelph 