2030 goals

On this episode, we dive into the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion file for the Canadian Beef Advisors and how it relates to the National Beef Strategy 2030 goal around people, health, and safety.

Brenna Grant, Executive Director of Canfax, joins us to provide an overview of this file and how it will allow the industry to work together to achieves its goals.

This Special Edition of the show was recorded at the Canadian Beef Industry Conference in Penticton, British Columbia. Stay tuned for more from the conference!

Have ideas for future shows? Drop us a note, on social media or via email.

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The Ashurst 30 for Net Zero 30 podcast series is all about speaking to climate action champions across the globe about real steps to take now in order to reach 2030 goals.

Anna-Marie Slot, Global Sustainability Partner at Ashurst and creator and host of the series, discusses the key takeaways from the first ten episodes.

Anna-Marie also touches upon the prominent themes that have been highlighted so far; awareness, behavioural and systemic change, communication, sustainable finance and the impact of individuals.

To listen to the podcasts mentioned and to make sure you never miss an episode, find out more on Ashurst.com/podcasts

The information provided is not intended to be a comprehensive review of all developments in the law and practice, or to cover all aspects of those referred to. Listeners should take legal advice before applying it to specific issues or transactions.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the Arctic, warming temperatures are threatening Inuit communities’ food security, health and livelihoods.In the latest episode of No Little Plans, we spoke to Inuit climate leader Siila Watt-Cloutier about how to correct Canada’s course. 

Show Notes

When it comes to climate change, Canada has a colossal role to play: among G20 countries, we’re one of the largest producers of greenhouse gas emissions per capita. At the same time, we’re home to some of the people most affected by the Earth’s warming climate. In Canada’s Arctic, temperatures are heating up at twice the global rate, thinning the sea ice that Inuit communities use for transportation and hunting. Permafrost is rapidly thawing, transforming the northern ecosystem and threatening infrastructure. And last year, Canada’s last fully intact sea-ice shelf collapsed, losing more than 40 per cent of its area in two days. 

“These toxins, a by-product of industry and pesticides, were showing up in our food chain and in our bodies and in our nursing milk” —Siila Watt-Cloutier

Siila Watt-Cloutier is a respected Inuit leader and the author of the bestselling memoir The Right to Be Cold, which was shortlisted for Canada Reads in 2017. In this episode, No Little Plans host Tokunbo Adegbuyi speaks to Watt-Cloutier about why we need to look at the Arctic’s past to create a path toward a sustainable future. She describes her early life in a former Hudson’s Bay trading post in Kuujjuaq. “[It was a] very traditional way of life, travelling only by dog team for the first 10 years. We were hunting and fishing and gathering,” she says. 

Environmental changes in the south have long affected the ecosystem in Canada’s Arctic. In the 1970s and ’80s, animals like seal, caribou and Arctic char were ingesting high levels of persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, commonly used in pesticides. Because Inuit rely on these animals for sustenance, the same toxins were showing up in their bodies and nursing milk. As chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council—which now represents some 180,000 Inuit in Canada, the U.S., Greenland and Russia—Watt-Cloutier was able to negotiate at five UN conventions. These led to the signing of the Stockholm Convention in 2001, an agreement that restricted the use of POPs in pesticides. “This issue was a daunting task because it was a chemical story and environmental story. For us, it was first and foremost a health story….a human issue,” she says. “And so we were able to get people to see it from that perspective.”

“This isn't just about polar bears. This is about our families and our children who we're trying to keep strong so they can embrace life and not take it.” —Siila Watt-Cloutier

In Watt-Cloutier’s book, The Right to Be Cold, she describes how the traditional Inuit way of life gave way to modernity in a single generation. In the mid-20th century, the government encroached on Inuit land, forcing communities to resettle and sending children to residential schools. “It was about trying to get us off the land and into communities so that [they could have] better control over our lives,” she says.

This was the first time their access to transportation and hunting was curtailed. Siila describes the killing of Qimmit, or Inuit sled dogs, by the RCMP and other government officials, known as the “dog slaughter.” This was all revealed in the early 2000s, when 350 Inuit who survived the traumas of the 1950s and ’60s testified before the Qikiqtani Truth Commission. As a child, Watt-Cloutier herself spent several years in residential school in southern Canada. “When I arrived home after five years for Christmas, the dogs were gone and in their place were these noisy machines,” she says, referring to the trucks and snowmobiles that replaced the sled dogs. “I was quite terrified of them, to be honest.” 

Generations after the calamities that transformed their way of life, Watt-Cloutier says, Inuit are now experiencing a new seismic threat in the form of climate change. “It’s because we are a people who still depend upon the healthiness of our climate and our environment for our food sources and for teaching our young people the remarkable life skills out on the land,” she says.

“We have to go back to the basics and reconnect. Indigenous wisdom is the medicine we seek in healing our planet.” —Siila Watt Cloutier

Toward the end of the interview, Adegbuyi and Watt-Cloutier discuss the power of traditional Inuit knowledge in the battle against climate change. Watt-Cloutier describes, for example, what young Inuit learn from hunting:  “As a young person, you're waiting for the animals to surface and the winds to die and the snow to fall and the ice to form—you're being taught patience. You're being taught insurance and courage, and how to be bold under pressure, how to build resiliency in your coping skills,” she says. “And you're ultimately developing your sound judgment and your wisdom. And wisdom is the hallmark of Inuit teachings and culture.”

One way to combat climate change, she suggests, is building conservation economies, in which the community gets the jobs and resources they need to invest in the environment and build local wealth. “There would be no disconnect between their culture and the way in which they would work every day—and they'd be paid for it,” she explains. Watt-Cloutier points to a recent agreement negotiated by P.J. Akeeagok, leader of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association, to protect more than 427,000 square kilometres on Baffin Island—a deal that will help preserve the area’s sea ice, waters and marine mammal populations. Not only will this kind of Indigenous-led conservation help protect Arctic ecosystems, but it will also give Inuit agency over their land and livelihood. “In terms of our economies, we're not just victims of globalization, nor do we wish to be,” Watt-Cloutier says. “We want to be at the same tables—equal tables with those who are trying to negotiate a new world order of doing things differently.”

No Little Plans is hosted by Tokunbo Adegbuyi and produced by Vocal Fry Studios. This podcast was created by Strategic Content Labs for Community Foundations of Canada. Subscribe or listen to us via the outlets above, and follow us at @nolittlepodcast on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

CREDITS:

Host: Tokunbo Adegbuyi 

Producer: Ellen Payne Smith

Associate Producer: Sabrina Brathwaite

Executive Producer: Katie Jensen

Music: L CON

Rihanna sang it and we are going to talk about it: work work work. The good news is that lots of people in Canada are working. In December , we hit a record low in unemployment, and it’s stayed low. As for the economy, there are lots of ways to measure that, but suffice it to say, it’s growing. Here’s the catch though: the figures are good, but the work? Not necessarily. From the rise of apps like Uber, Fiverr and Foodora to the increase in AI and automation, workers in 2019 are dealing with a totally new landscape. 

This statistic has been flirting with historic lows since last autumn, as the number of jobless Canadian adults has ranged between 5.4 and 5.8 percent over the past 12 months. 

However, much of the change has been attributed to increases in self-employment—a trend that economists tend to regard with skepticism. 

“Meh. Looking past the new record low in the unemployment rate, this report was a bit on the soft side,” TD Bank senior economist Brian DePratto told CBC News in May, as the jobless rate dipped to 5.4. “All of the job gains (and then some) are down to self-employment, and the drop in the unemployment rate was driven by fewer Canadians engaging with labour markets, notably among the under-55 population.” 

The Workers Action Centre, a labour organization that supports non-union workers, helps Ontario employees know their rights in English, Chinese, Spanish, Tamil, Somali, Punjabi and Bengali. 

In 2015, a consortium of poverty advocates, healthcare researchers and community groups launched the Ontario chapter of what’s become a North American movement: the fight for a minimum wage of $15/hour and “fair” working conditions for all. 

So far, Alberta is the lone Canadian province or territory to reach that payment threshold. (Follow this link for more information about Alberta’s official wage standards.) Saskatchewan has the country’s lowest minimum wage, clocking in at $11.32/hour. 

However, there’s more to it than just money. At 15andfairness.org, the full list of demands for workers includes: 

• Equal pay for equal work 
• Decent hours 
• Paid leave 
• Protections for migrant workers 
• Rules that protect everyone 
• Job security and respect at work 
• Right to organize and unionize 

The precarious employment conditions described in this episode are not limited to just Toronto’s Pearson Airport—although Canada’s largest airport, with its legions of food service workers, is an unsurprising place for “contract flipping” to happen on a massive scale. 

“It’s an issue for thousands of workers not just at airports, but at colleges, universities and corporations where outside contractors provide food services,” _The Tyee_’s Andrew MacLeod reported earlier this year. 

Flips commonly happen after contracted workers pull together and unionize. Employers respond by replacing their service providers’ contracts with rival, cheaper—and non-unionized—alternatives. Sometimes, the new provider will hire the same workers back to fulfill their same duties (absent union protections). Most times, if not all, any benefits accrued during the previous contract are stopped, and do not carry over to the new deal. 

“It gets brutal,” is how one unnamed Amazon worker describes the global retailer’s labour conditions in this sprawling exposé by Business Insider. None of the 20-plus anonymous employees who went on record for this piece is located in Canada—but there is no shortage of Canadian concerns about how Amazon and its subsidiaries treat their employees. For example, this past January, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Canada Local 175 filed a complaint against Amazon Canada Fulfillment Services Inc. for creating a “chilling effect” that stymied worker efforts to unionize. 

Sara Mojtehezadeh, the Toronto Star’s award-winning work and wealth reporter, has written extensively about “precarious work, labour issues, migrant workers, workplace health and safety, workers’ compensation and inequality.” Recent clippings from her beat include: 

• Protesters charged after occupying Doug Ford’s constituency office to demand stronger protections for temp workers (October 16, 2019) 
• The life and death of Fiera Foods temp worker Enrico Miranda (October 4, 2019) 
• Future of gig economy workers at stake in Foodora couriers’ unionization battle (September 10, 2019) 
• Labour ministry to reduce number of inspectors probing workplace abuse, union memo reveals (June 6, 2019) 

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) tracks standards of employment protection—”synthetic indicators of the strictness of regulation on dismissals and the use of temporary contracts”—for its dozens of member countries, including Canada. Here is its overview of Canadian statistics; here is its dataset specific to temporary contracts. And below is a video that defines what OECD considers decent work. 

“Foodora workers say they’re not robots” (August 18, 2019): In which one of Canada’s few remaining alt-weeklies, Toronto’s NOW Magazine, spells out the pertinent details of what figures to become a common labour fight, particularly within the so-called gig economy: non-unionized delivery workers vs. service industry disruptors. 

“You see some crazy shit everyday, and the way the actual wage structure is set up, you are incentivized to [ride] way faster than you should,” Christopher Williams tells NOW. The Foodora rider is an organizer of Foodsters United, an offshoot of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. This summer, CUPW filed an unfair labour practice complaint on Foodsters’ behalf. Meanwhile, Foodora’s position is that the union effort failed to reach a threshold of 40 percent participation, and therefore cannot be considered valid. 

CREDITS: No Little Plans is hosted by Vicky Mochama. This episode was produced by Dorsa Eslami, Jay Cockburn, and Matthew McKinnon, with executive production by Katie Jensen. Special thanks to Ausma Malik and the Atkinson Foundation. This podcast was created by Strategic Content Labs by Vocal Fry Studios for Community Foundations of Canada. Subscribe or listen to us via the outlets above, and follow us at @nolittlepodcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Meanwhile, like Daniel Burnham said: “Make big plans; aim high in hope and work.”

The health of our oceans and seas affects everything from human health to food security to global climate and international economics. The seas and oceans provide work to 3 billion people around the world—and they need help from all of us. 

Water is a very big deal. Here’s some proof: 

• Water covers about 71 percent of the Earth’s surface (USGS Water Science School) 
• Oceans represent 99 percent of the planet’s living space when measured by volume (United Nations) 
• The livelihoods of more than three billion people are reliant on marine and coastal biodiversity; similarly, oceans are the primary source of protein for three billion people (United Nations) 

And here is Vice’s Motherboard asking a very good question: Why Haven’t We Explored the Ocean[s] Like Outer Space?  

The purpose of SDG 14 is to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.” Learn more about its targets and indicators, and track their progress, directly from the UN. 

Canada has the world’s longest coastline—202,080 kilometres spanning the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. The gap between us and number two is massive: That’s Norway, at a mere 58,133 kilometres. 

Canada has committed to conserving “at least 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas, consistent with national and international law and based on the best available scientific information” by 2020. According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada, by 2017, our efforts had covered close to 8 percent. 

Alia Dharssi is a Vancouver-based journalist whose work focuses on sustainability, global development and Canada’s policies on plastic pollution. She’s been reporting on the SDGs for the Discourse, and has published articles including: 

• “Plastic pollution pileup on Canada’s beaches exposes environmental policy gaps” 
• “How microplastics get into the food system” 
• “What you can do about plastic pollution” 

You can follow more of her work on her own website. 

Josh Laughren is the executive director of Oceana Canada, an offshoot of an American organization founded to address a deficit in spending on ocean advocacy by environmental advocacy groups. He has spent two decades focusing on conservation and climate change, helping to establish marine protected areas across Canada’s coasts and leading our first Earth Hour. 

Much of his interview for this episode relates to this 2016 article he wrote for iPolitics: “What is Ottawa hiding in our oceans?” 

It concludes with this challenge to the federal government: 

The government of Prime Minister Trudeau was elected on a platform of openness and change. This transparency is needed in the management of our fisheries and oceans and it can be created by taking such actions as making public a list of Canada’s fisheries and their status, and releasing the fisheries checklist that is used to conduct stock assessments. 

By delivering on their election promise to increase transparency, the Trudeau government and Fisheries Minister Hunter Tootoo have an historic opportunity to restore our oceans to their healthiest potential, for now and for generations to come. 

You can help reduce marine debris by joining the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup, a conservation partnership by WWF and Ocean Wise. It began in 1994, when employees and volunteers from the Vancouver Aquarium worked together to remove debris from a beach in Stanley Park. The effort has since gone national, with well over 20,000 cleanups removing more than 1.3 million kg of trash from Canadian shorelines. 

CREDITS: No Little Plans is hosted by Vicky Mochama. This episode was produced by Katie Jensen, Sajae Elder and Matthew McKinnon. This podcast was created by Strategic Content Labs by Vocal Fry Studios for Community Foundations of Canada. Subscribe or listen to us via the outlets above, and follow us at @nolittlepodcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Meanwhile, like Daniel Burnham said: “Make big plans; aim high in hope and work.”

In Canada, women represent a little over 50% of our population. How did we get so bad at addressing problems that affect half of us? And what do we need to do to improve the lives of girls who will be women in 2030? 

According to the Canadian Women’s Foundation: 

• 1.9 million Canadian women live on “low income,” which means they struggle to cover basic needs like food, winter clothing and housing
• Some groups of females are likelier than others to be poor. The prevalance of poverty is highest—34.3%—among First Nations women and girls

Dubravka Šimonovic is the UN’s Special Rapporteur on violence against women. When she visited Canada in the spring of 2018, she pointed out that we still don’t have a specific federal law that addresses gender-based violence and domestic violence. 

Canada, Šimonovic said, needs both a national action plan and a separate plan that specifically focuses on violence against Indigenous women. Her end-of-mission statement (full text) is a tour de force: 

During my visit, I noted with concern that the services providers and other interlocutors I met unanimously denounced the dire shortage of shelters for women and children escaping violence and a general lack of affordable public housing, including transitional housing and second stage accommodation and employment opportunities. 

In official UN verbiage: 

While some forms of discrimination against women and girls are diminishing, gender inequality continues to hold women back and deprives them of basic rights and opportunities. Empowering women requires addressing structural issues such as unfair social norms and attitudes as well as developing progressive legal frameworks that promote equality between women and men. 

Paulette Senior, president and CEO of the Canadian Women’s Foundation, has advocated to every level of government about things that really matter: poverty, violence against women, housing, social justice and immigration. She credits the experience of immigrating to Canada from Jamaica as a young girl with inspiring a career that’s all about, as CWF puts it, “empowering women and girls to overcome barriers and reach their full potential.” 

From Status of Women Canada: 

1982: Gender equality is enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms 

1995: At the UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, Canada commits to using gender-based analysis (more on that below) to advance gender equality 

2015: The Government of Canada renews its commitment to GBA 

2016: Year one of the Government’s four-year “Action Plan on Gender-based Analysis“ 

The Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability tracks national incidents of femicide, which describes the killing of women and girls precisely because they are women and girls. Follow this link to read the September 2018 report in full, or use this one for just the lowlights: 

On average…one woman or girl is killed every other day in this country, a consistent trend during the past four decades. 

Harriet McLachlan, deputy director (interim) of Canada Without Poverty, has the lived experiences of childhood violence and sexual abuse, almost 35 years of poverty, and 19 years as a single parent. She is the immediate past-president (2011–2017) of the CWP’s board of directors, and has worked in several community organizations over her 25-year career. 

• In 2016, Canada placed 35th in the World Economic Forum’s gender equality rankings
• As reported by Macleans, the combined earnings of Canadian women are 31% less than the combined earnings of Canadian men. Women of colour earn 37.5% less than men, and Indigenous women earn 54% less than men
• As reported by Statistics Canada: “Women earn $0.87 for every dollar earned by men, largely as a result of wage inequality between women and men within occupations.” Also, more women than men work part-time, because they’re busy caring for kids. Worse, the gender employment gap is largest in the cities with highest day‑care fees

Facts about women and education in Canada: 

• Even though women are outperforming men when it comes to completing college and university degrees (source) 
• They are still much less likely to get those degrees in engineering or computer sciences—which are the highest-earning STEM fields (source) 
• It’s also harder for women to crawl out of educational debt. Women hold the majority of Canada’s student debt, and they take longer than men to pay it off (source) 

According to a 2016 report, the so-called “pink tax” on personal care products sees Canadian women paying 43% more than Canadian men for things like soap. Although the federal government eliminated GST on tampons and other menstrual products in 2015, it has kept earning from them in the form of import tariffs: $4 million that year, to be precise. 

CREDITS: No Little Plans is hosted by Vicky Mochama. This episode was produced by Katie Jensen, Elena Hudgins Lyle, and Matthew McKinnon. This podcast was created by Strategic Content Labs by Vocal Fry Studios for Community Foundations of Canada. Subscribe or listen to us via the outlets above, and follow us at @nolittlepodcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Meanwhile, like Daniel Burnham said: “Make big plans; aim high in hope and work.”

When we think of a homeless person, we tend to see the stereotypical image: an older single guy who is sleeping on the streets. But the reality is way more complicated. Nearly a third of people experiencing homelessness are women. Almost one in five are young people. Families stay in shelters for twice as long as individuals, and Indigenous populations are overrepresented. But how do we fix it? Meet Erin Dej and Jesse Thistle, two experts with big ideas on how to eradicate homelessness in Canada. 

Erin Dej has a PhD in criminology from the University of Ottawa and an MA in legal studies from Carleton University. She previously held a postdoctoral fellowship with York University’s Canadian Observatory on Homelessness—a “non-partisan research and policy partnership between academics, policy and decision makers, service providers and people with lived experience of homelessness.” She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. 

At COH’s Homeless Hub, Erin worked on A New Direction, a framework for homelessness prevention that draws on lessons learned from Wales, Scotland, Australia and Germany—countries that have tried, and succeeded with, thoughtful, effective strategies to improve the lives of their neediest citizens. 

Jesse Thistle previously had what he has called “a long career as a homeless drug addict.” He is now a Trudeau and Vanier Scholar, a Governor General medalist, the resident scholar of Indigenous homelessness at COH and an advocate for the rights of Indigenous homeless people across Canada. His life story and academic works have been widely reported: 

• “He was once a homeless drug addict. Now he’s one of York’s top students” (Toronto Star, 2016)
• “From street to scholar: Jesse Thistle creates new definition of Indigenous homelessness” (CBC Radio, 2017) 

Jesse has created “an Indigenous definition for homelessness” that expands far beyond the mere fact of not having a roof to sleep under. His broader understanding of the experience includes a dozen “dimensions” that better explain it. 

For the full definition of Indigenous homelessness in Canada, visit homelesshub.ca/IndigenousHomelessness. 

CREDITS: No Little Plans is hosted by Vicky Mochama. This episode was produced by Katie Jensen, Elena Hudgins Lyle, and Matthew McKinnon. This podcast was created by Strategic Content Labs by Vocal Fry Studios for Community Foundations of Canada. Subscribe or listen to us via the outlets above, and follow us at @nolittlepodcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Meanwhile, like Daniel Burnham said: “Make big plans; aim high in hope and work.” 

The United Nations created the Sustainable Development Goals to help make the world a (much) better place by 2030. Meet three of the experts—Joseph Wong, John McArthur, and Deborah Glaser—who are already pursuing the goals, and hear why the tremendous effort it will take to achieve them is worth it. 

Dr. Joseph Wong leads The Reach Project, a research initiative based in the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. His work focuses on those who are hardest to reach—which is a massive barrier to help. “In the Reach Project, teams of students from diverse backgrounds spend months researching programs that have proven successful in combatting poverty in developing countries,” Wong has said. “Their exhaustive final reports are like how-to manuals, enabling others around the world to learn from and adapt these initiatives. Local successes are thus shared as viable global solutions, potentially benefiting millions.”  

John McArthur is a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution, a senior adviser to the United Nations Foundation, and a board governor for the International Development Research Centre. You can hear more from him in the video below, or follow this link to catch his 2017 appearance on TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin, in which McArthur discussed Canada’s early pursuits of the SDGs. 

Our third guest, Deborah Glaser, is a senior policy analyst for the BC Council for International Cooperation. This year, BCCIC completed a voluntary review of Canada’s Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. The comprehensive, must-read document opens with this pledge from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: 

The Sustainable Development Goals are as meaningful in Canada as they are around the world, and we are committed to their implementation. Our priorities at home align with our priorities abroad: building economic growth that works for everyone, advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, taking action on climate change, and narrowing persistent socioeconomic gaps that hold too many people back. No one country can solve these problems alone—but by working together, we can create a better future for all our citizens. 

CREDITS: No Little Plans is hosted by Vicky Mochama of Vocal Fry Studios and produced by Katie Jensen. This podcast was created by Strategic Content Labs by Vocal Fry Studios for Community Foundations of Canada. Subscribe or listen to us via the outlets above, and follow us at @nolittlepodcast on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Meanwhile, like Daniel Burnham said: “Make big plans; aim high in hope and work.”