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The season’s third episode takes us back to George Brown College’s 32nd annual Labour Fair in Toronto, ‘Corporate Power vs. Labour Power: It’s Our Work!!’ 
Professor Benjamin McCarthy facilitates a discussion featuring Lauren Ravon, executive director of Oxfam Canada and Jared Ong, organizer and case worker with the Workers’ Action Centre. Together, they discuss how this new age of corporate-driven inequality impacts workers on the ground and the hope that lies within working peoples’ solidarity.
Reflecting on how government should be investing in work, Ravon says:
“ …When we think of what the government can invest in, when we talk about a Green Transition, the care economy is a great one. We have an aging population. Care services provide huge value to communities and also just create happier and healthier communities and they're low emissions. One of our alternatives is saying tax windfall profits, tax the super wealthy and invest in the care economy. This is also a sector that employs mostly women and racialized folks. You're creating employment opportunities. They're seen as less desirable jobs, not because they're inherently less interesting jobs than working in mining ... It's because they're not well paid. But we really see investments in the care economy as actually one of the solutions to the inequality crisis today and the climate crisis.” 
On the necessity of being politically engaged, Ong says:
“..when we talk about how we organize, sometimes people say we have the power to vote. But I would say voting is just one piece that people do every four years or less that actually changes the government. We can do things in between to actually make changes happen. I used to have hair, and then I became an activist and look at me. So sometimes I think, you know, all that work and why did I do it? But people have been winning. When I first started out, people were like $15 minimum wage, it's never going to happen. And today, a couple of years later, people are like $15, hell no, that's not enough ... So I do tangibly feel on the street that things are changing.”
About the guests:
Lauren Ravon, executive director of Oxfam Canada, is a committed feminist and social justice advocate with more than 15 years of international development experience. Ravon has been with Oxfam Canada since 2011, holding a number of roles – including director of Policy and Campaigns – and working tirelessly to put women’s rights at the heart of the global Oxfam confederation. Before joining Oxfam, Ravon worked at the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (Rights & Democracy), where she was program manager for the Americas and oversaw the Centre’s office and human rights programming in Haiti. She has also worked on programs to tackle gender-based violence and promote sexual and reproductive rights with Planned Parenthood Global and the International Rescue Committee. Lauren sits on the board of directors of the Humanitarian Coalition.
Jared Ong is an organizer and case worker with the Workers Action Centre. He empowers workers with the tools and community to stand up against bad bosses and protect themselves at work. But he also knows that systemic changes must happen Ontario-wide to raise the bar for all our workers because our minimum labour standards are not enough.
Panel Moderator, Benjamin McCarthy is a faculty with the School of Labour at George Brown College and an organizer with the College Annual Labour Fair.
Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute. 
Image: Lauren Ravon, Jared Ong  / Used with permission.
Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased. 
Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy); Grace Taruc-Almeda, Karin Maier and Jim Cheung (Street Voices)  
Courage My Friends Podcast Organizing Committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu. 
Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Ins

The season’s second episode focuses on George Brown College’s 32nd annual Labour Fair in Toronto and the opening keynote discussion with president of OPSEU/SEFPO JP Hornick on this year’s theme  ‘Corporate Power vs. Labour Power: It’s Our Work!!’
Opening a week of labour focused events, and speaking to George Brown College students and faculty, our conversation focuses on labour power and union organizing in this era of corporate driven inequality, privatization and the erosion of the rights of working peoples.
According to Hornick::
“So everybody remember a year ago with CUPE, the education workers, OSBCU had organized themselves to the point where the government was like, ‘We are going to preemptively remove your right to strike.’ In other words, remove your Charter Right to withdraw your labour, because we're scared of what you're asking for. They did the same thing with Bill 124, where they imposed a three year moratorium on your ability to actually argue for a wage increase that was commensurate with inflation … Now, these attacks on workers happen constantly right. Whether you're a migrant worker, whether you're an international student, whether you're unorganized or organized. But what we are seeing right now, is that workers are fed up ... I think that we've hit a tipping point culturally, where people can see it in their neighbors, in their kids, in their friends, that the impact of income inequality, that corporate greed, that corrupt governments, actually are as bad as we thought. And it's adding up. So workers are kind of pushing back and saying enough! And then all of labour jumps in … Because we know that a fight with this government, a fight for what's happening right now, is not a fight for someone else, it's a fight for all of us together.” 
About JP Hornick:
Prior to being elected president of OPSEU/SEFPO (Ontario Public Service Employees Union), JP Hornick was chief steward for more than a decade within the College Faculty Division, representing instructors at Ontario’s 24 public colleges. They chaired the College Faculty bargaining teams in 2017 and 2021-22. 
JP grew up in a family of public service workers – educators, correctional workers and many more. They are a labour educator and previously served as the coordinator of the School of Labour at George Brown College. They have served as chair, treasurer and director on several community boards and has been on the front lines of activism to advance issues of equity, women’s rights, 2SLGBTQIA+ rights, anti-racism and decolonization.  
JP was elected OPSEU/SEFPO president in April 2022 on a platform that includes strengthening union democracy, building bargaining power, ensuring financial responsibility, fostering an inclusive union culture, and deepening connections to the labour movement and community. 
Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here. 
Image: JP Hornick  / Used with permission.
Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased. 
Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy); Grace Taruc-Almeda, Karin Maier and Jim Cheung (Street Voices)  
Courage My Friends Podcast Organizing Committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu. 
Produced by: Resh Budhu, Tommy Douglas Institute and Breanne Doyle, rabble.ca. 
Host: Resh Budhu. 

We launch our sixth season with Tamara Lorincz, environmental and feminist peace activist and Linda Thyer, founding member of Doctors for Planetary Health - West Coast and a discussion on the interconnected impacts of war and occupation on both people and planet, the costs of Canadian militarism and our involvement in NATO and the possibilities for global cooperation, peace, and climate justice in times of conflict. 
Reflecting on the twin impacts of conflict on climate in Gaza and Ukraine, Lorincz says:
“The Middle Eastern region has suffered from drought and from excessive heat. This genocide in Gaza is just horrendous for the people and it's exacerbating the climate emergency as well. These fossil fuel powered weapon systems that Israel is using, not just fighter jets, but attack helicopters and tanks.And the fact that Canada took over two and a half months for us finally to support a ceasefire, but we've been continuing to send weapons … we're prolonging the genocide and we are contributing to a climate emergency. Canada is doing the same thing in Eastern Europe by continuing to send arms to Ukraine. We're prolonging a conflict instead of calling for a ceasefire …We are contributing to human suffering, to a lot of death and destruction and contributing to the  environmental harms.” 
Thyer says of our military spending:
“Canadian military spending around $36 billion per year recently. So this is a massive amount of money, could certainly be much better … used to mitigate climate problems, used in new technology ... And could be used to help recoveries internationally as well as locally from these extreme weather events that we're seeing. In some of these war zones, people are being conscripted against their will to fighting. In Canada, our conscription is through our taxes that we are paying for this militarism, for the harms that are being done to the planet and to other people through our taxes every year.”
About today’s guests: 
Tamara Lorincz is a PhD candidate in Global Governance at the Balsillie School for International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University. She has a Masters in International Politics & Security Studies from the University of Bradford and a Law degree and MBA specializing in environmental law and management from Dalhousie University. Her research is on the climate and environmental impacts of the military. She’s a member of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom-Canada. Tamara is also on the advisory committee of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, and the No to NATO Network. She’s a long-time environmentalist, feminist and peace activist and a mother with two teenage boys.
Linda Thyer is a mother of 3 youth, practicing family and sport medicine on traditional Coast Salish territories. She is a founding member of Doctors for Planetary Health - West Coast and active member of several community and medical organizations working towards peace and a healthy living home. She is grateful for the many healing and nourishing gifts of Mother Earth and works towards restoring health and peace for all.
Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here. 
Image: Tamara Lorincz, Linda Thyer  / Used with permission.
Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased. 
Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy); Grace Taruc-Almeda, Karin Maier and Jim Cheung (Street Voices) 

For our sixth episode, Lauren Ravon, executive director of Oxfam Canada and Michéle Biss, national director of the National Right to Housing Network, discuss Oxfam's latest report, Inequality, Inc.on the growing power of corporate monopolies, the unprecedented rise in global inequality and the urgent need for public action. 
Speaking to Oxfam’s latest report on global inequality, Ravon says:
“This has been a decade so far that has been full of pain for most people around the world. The decade of a pandemic, of rampant inflation, food prices going up, war, climate chaos, climate emergencies … But this is also the decade where the wealth of the five richest men doubled. 5 billion people became poorer. So this report that Oxfam released Inequality Inc., is really painting this picture of a decade of division where you have huge wealth concentration in very, very few hands and more and more people on the planet struggling to get by. And this is not a coincidence that wealth is ballooning on one end and people are seeing the bottom fall out on the other end. Inequality is by design. It's not an accident. It's not inevitable. The super, super rich and their corporations are funneling wealth towards the top and robbing the rest of humanity of the very resources they need to survive.” 
Biss reflects on the role of communities in pushing back against corporate power and inequality:
“I think about this context as well in terms of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals agenda, right? We have a goal of no poverty by 2030. And as the Oxfam report said, 230 years away from no poverty, right? It's a long way to go. And it can really seem overwhelming in the face of this vast inequality.But if we want to get involved, if we want to push our governments to make better choices around regulation, around taxation, around investment in our social safety net and away from the private sector, a lot of that takes community engagement..And remembering that economic, social, and cultural rights, the right to housing, the right to food, the right to health, those aren't just words, they're actual human rights ..And so finding ways within communities, within the national context to exercise those rights is going to be really key to being able to turn the tide.” 
Read the latest Oxfam 2024 Report, Inequality, Inc.
About today’s guests:
Lauren Ravon, executive director of Oxfam Canada, is a committed feminist and social justice advocate with more than 15 years of international development experience. Ravon has been with Oxfam Canada since 2011, holding a number of roles – including director of Policy and Campaigns – and working tirelessly to put women’s rights at the heart of the global Oxfam confederation. Before joining Oxfam, Ravon worked at the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (Rights & Democracy), where she was program manager for the Americas and oversaw the Centre’s office and human rights programming in Haiti. She has also worked on programs to tackle gender-based violence and promote sexual and reproductive rights with Planned Parenthood Global and the International Rescue Committee. Lauren sits on the board of directors of the Humanitarian Coalition. 
Michèle Biss is the national director of the National Right to Housing Network. As an expert in economic and social rights, she has presented at several United Nations treaty body reviews and at Canadian parliamentary committees. Prior to her work at the NRHN, Michèle was the policy director and human rights lawyer at Canada Without Poverty. In 2016, she graduated from the Advanced Course on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights at Åbo Akademi University in Finland. She has extensive professional experience working for marginalized groups, particularly women, persons with disabilities, newcomers, and Indigenous persons through casework, research, and community legal education. In her local Ottawa community, she sits on the boar

Crushing fatigue, hot flashes (or should we say hot flushes), burning, itching, mood swings, heart palpitations, brain fog, anxiety, loss of self. What’s happening to me? Who can I talk to? How do I work? Sound familiar?
After a bit of an extended pause, we begin the new year with the Menopause Foundation of Canada’s latest report: Menopause and Work in Canada.
Foundation co-founders Janet Ko and Trish Barbato discuss the complex issues impacting a quarter of Canada’s working population as they embark on an important milestone in the prime of every woman’s life; yet one that is still subject to the heavy silences surrounding women’s health, in policy, in healthcare and in the workplace. 
Reflecting on women’s experiences as well as her own, Barbato says:
“[I]t's almost shocking to think that every woman is going to go through this and yet it's so misunderstood  and not understood and feared … When I think about all of the stories that we've heard and even my own experience, we don't connect the dots and certainly a supervisor, male or female, may not connect the dots on how the symptoms are showing up at a workplace … brain fog, anxiety, all of these things are going to have an impact … think of my experience of going through really horrific, extreme symptoms while at work and just not being able to perform. I think I was probably way worse on myself than maybe I let on to my colleagues where I hid a lot of my symptoms and managed them as best as I could.”
According to Ko, we need to dispel the negativity and silences around menopause:
“Menopause is overwhelmingly viewed as negative in our society. And because of that, there's a lot of silence associated with it, stigma and shame … most women do not want to be associated with that negative image of the menopausal woman. And then there's this notion that there's nothing you can do about it, so why bother having the conversation? And we know that our healthcare providers received almost zero education on something that's going to happen to half of the population. So we're at this really exciting place in time where we're changing that conversation and it's a great opportunity for women to really focus on themselves and their health. There's preventative care, there's lifestyle changes, and there's safe and effective treatments that are available. Women should not suffer through this period of time. Menopause is natural, suffering is not.”
Read the Menopause Foundation of Canada’s latest report Menopause and Work in Canada
You can also find out about the Menopause Works Here Campaign and check out the Menopause Inclusive Playbook for Employers
About today’s guests:
Janet Ko is president and co-founder of The Menopause Foundation of Canada, a national non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to breaking the silence and the stigma of menopause. Janet had looked forward to menopause as an exciting second act in life. Instead, she was blindsided by a host of symptoms that she did not understand  were part of the menopause transition. She realized that women – like her – were struggling to find answers and to get help. Together with co-founder Trish Barbato and a medical advisory board of the country’s top menopause specialists, she launched the Menopause Foundation of Canada. Ko has held numerous senior leadership positions in the pharmaceutical, global life sciences and senior living sectors. She has served on the management teams of leading Canadian companies as senior vice president, Communications and has led marketing and organizational development functions throughout her career. Ko is dedicated to helping women thrive through their menopausal years and is a passionate speaker and menopause advocate. She is honoured to be one of the top 25 Women of Influence Award recipients for 2023. 
Trish Barbato is the co-founder of the Menopause Foundation of Canada. She has been a vocal advocate for the rights of menopausal wome

In our fourth episode Dalia Al-Awqati, head of humanitarian affairs for Save the Children Canada and Lauren Ravon, executive director of Oxfam Canada discuss the humanitarian crisis taking place in the Gaza Strip. 
How do we understand the devastating toll of death, displacement and destruction upon the largely civilian Palestinian population, almost half of them children? What of the impossible choices facing aid workers and colleagues on the ground as they are caught within the turmoil of Gaza? Why are humanitarian pauses not enough? And why is a ceasefire the only answer?
Describing the crisis facing the children of Gaza, Al-Awqati says: 
“In the first three weeks of the conflict, more children were killed than the annual total of children killed in conflict zones across the world since 2019. That alone gives you a scale of how horrific this has been, and particularly for children. We see and we hear from our staff, and we see through the news, through social media as well, the impact that this is having, in terms of mental health, but also in terms of people's ability to access their basic needs. We know that children are not able to access clean drinking water. This is a population, 80 per cent of which already depended on humanitarian aid prior to this latest escalation. There's 1,350 children that are missing in Gaza. Many of them feared to be under the rubble.”
According to Ravon, the only answer is a ceasefire: 
“Oxfam and Save the Children and many other organizations around the world are calling for a ceasefire rather than a humanitarian pause or humanitarian corridors because the reality is that in these circumstances, in the way this attack is being carried out, there is no way to keep civilians safe. No corridor, no pause will guarantee safety, because people are deprived of resources. So even if you had a pause where you're safe from immediate bombing, that doesn't answer all the other immediate needs that people are facing … Depriving civilians of the means for survival is a violation of human rights; and a ceasefire is the only way to ensure that the physical violence stops and that humanitarian aid can enter in.” 
About today’s guests:
Dalia Al-Awqati, head of humanitarian affairs for Save the Children Canada. Al-Awqati is the head of Humanitarian Affairs for Save the Children Canada. She has over twenty years of experience in the non-profit sector, with a specialization in emergency response and management in complex crises. Prior to joining Save the Children Canada, Al-Awqati has worked with various international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) including the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Mercy Corps, and Danish Refugee Council (DRC). As an emergency responder, Dalia has responded to crises in Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Libya, South Sudan, and Syria, amongst others. Al-Awqati grew up in the Middle East. She is a native Arabic speaker of Iraqi and Palestinian origins. 
Lauren Ravon, executive director of Oxfam Canada, is a committed feminist and social justice advocate with more than 15 years of international development experience. Ravon has been with Oxfam Canada since 2011, holding a number of roles – including director of Policy and Campaigns – and working tirelessly to put women’s rights at the heart of the global Oxfam confederation. Before joining Oxfam, Ravon worked at the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (Rights & Democracy), where she was program manager for the Americas and oversaw the Centre’s office and human rights programming in Haiti. She has also worked on programs to tackle gender-based violence and promote sexual and reproductive rights with Planned Parenthood Global and the International Rescue Committee. Lauren sits on the board of directors of the Humanitarian Coalition.
You can donate to the Humanitarian Coalition by visiting their Donation page.
Transcript of this episode can be a