CivNews Ryan Banfield

Content warning: suicide



CivNews host Ryan Banfield discusses what he has learned from creating an article for The Fulcrum meant to explain undergraduate tuition policy in Ontario.



Edit: The Fulcrum eventually abandoned the project and the article was eventually posted on December 24th, 2020 to Medium. It can be read at https://ryanbanfield.medium.com/the-recent-history-of-uottawa-undergraduate-tuition-7f3475276fa5



Topics covered include:

-The findings of the project itself.

-The limited nature of political rhetoric.

-The aid-based vs tuition-based approaches to university policy.

-Discovering the depth of the issue.

-The usefulness of online communication.

-The nature of public speech by the Civil Service.

-Complicated figures and unintended consequences.

-A potentially useful set of policies.

Our top story is about most of Ontario moving into Stage 3 of the provincial reopening plan.

Abraham Litwin-Logan is one of the hosts of the Pseudointellectuals podcast.

We discussed policies that we believe would make the most substantial impact in fighting climate change while also serving the economy. Policies were discussed through the lens of many different approaches to climate policy including emissions reductions, transitioning to green energy and last-resort heat reduction. Much of this was discussed from the perspective of libertarian conservatism.

Later, we discuss the current state of climate activism and whether or not it is effective.

Recorded on June 11, 2020.

CivNews is joined by Councillor's assistant Avia Amon and Ontario Liberal Party member Kennedy Onyechie, who are both political science students, to discuss the current state of youth interest in politics.

We discuss a variety of topics such as their personal stories of becoming interested in government affairs, how the Canadian Gen Z became interested in politics, how to encourage youth political engagement and what this all means for the next generation of government staff.

Later, the discussion with Kennedy shifts focus, bringing the 2020 US federal election to the fore.

Recorded on May 5, 2020.

In this interview with accomplished researcher and bio-engineering student Kayley Ting, we discuss the present and future regarding how technology is changing healthcare. We discuss these topics in the context of large-scale public health issues such as COVID-19 and more specialized healthcare efforts such as treating Autism and Parkinson's. Near the end of the interview we branch off topic and discuss how the mainstream media has approached talking about COVID-19 and how that will impact the next generation of young people.

Recorded on May 7, 2020.

Charley Dutil is the Editor in Chief at The Fulcrum. In this interview, we discuss how COVID-19 has changed the behaviour of politicians and the media. We also touch on other topics such as post-pandemic international relations and the role of the Canadian Radio-Telecommunications Commission in Canadian society.