.jpg)
Perspectives: A Canadian Journal of Political Economy and Social Democracy
The Perspectives Journal Podcast complements the journal and opinions content of Perspectives: A Canadian Journal of Political Economy and Social Democracy, to bring out left-wing ideas and strategy in a new and ever-evolving format. The podcast features interviews with policy experts, to dig deeper into the progressive angles of the issues affecting working-class, ordinary Canadians.
Hosted by editor-in-chief, Clement Nocos, the Perspectives Journal Podcast aims to bring forward timely analysis on issues from the multiple crises of the economy, cost-of-living and the environment, to the labour movement, as well as the state of Canadian democracy. The wide reaching breadth of this show aims to help inform policymakers and the public about approaches to today’s pressing problems that are rooted in Ed Broadbent’s Principles for Canadian Social Democracy.
Perspectives Journal also produces and features shows hosted by the Broadbent Institute’s friends and affiliates, providing a progressive platform for limited and irregular conversations that are still necessary to enliven Canada’s political discourse. The Perspectives Journal Podcast is a proud members of the Harbinger Media Network, Canada’s progressive podcast community.
Activists Make History
Activists Make History with Peggy Nash is a new podcast series from Perspectives Journal that finds the political underdogs and asks how they got started, against the odds, to fight for progressive change. Policymakers, activists and experts from underrepresented communities and backgrounds, that are typically pushed to the margins of Canadian political life, are front and centre in conversation with Peggy Nash, who has been a union activist, a feminist advocate, and a Member of Parliament in Canada’s House of Commons for nearly a decade.
Reflecting on these experiences as a political outsider, and in conversation with other like-minded outsiders that take our struggles into the halls of power, Activists Make History aims to show how we can win a better world through elected office. Activists Make History is only made possible by the generous contribution of Unifor.
Perspectives: A Canadian Journal of Political Economy and Social Democracy
What Progressives Are Getting Wrong (and Right!) About Affordable Housing with Professor Carolyn Whitzman
Perspectives Journal sat down with Professor Carolyn Whitzman to dive deeper into her Globe and Mail article published last August entitled Canada’s progressive parties have lost the plot on the housing crisis. This was a response to Prime Minister Trudeau’s earlier blunt statement that “housing is not federal responsibility” while ordinary Canadians experience an unprecedented housing crisis.
In her piece, she asked:
What’s with the silence from allegedly more progressive parties on the doubling of the quantum of non-market housing, a policy that has been recommended by everyone from the industry body for community housing to one of Canada’s big banks?
Why not talk about housing in terms of industrial strategy (something we love to talk about here at Perspectives Journal) and the role of government in building more housing supply, instead of trying to outflank Pierre Poilievre’s inconsistent policy slogans from the right wing?
Since then, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has stated that “governments should get out of home building,” even after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau already confirmed that, so clearly that hasn’t solved anything.
And meanwhile, progressives have yet to propose big plans to get government back into housing while 2/3rds of Canadians surveyed by Leger in early December wanted the federal government to spend more money on its Housing Strategy.
But in recent months, a number of new spending announcements and policy changes have come from social democratic administrations in BC and Toronto, talking about big spends and policy changes to jump start building out the supply for decommodified, non-market housing.
Is this even close to enough, and what exactly are progressives getting wrong, and right, about housing affordability?
From Singapore to Sweden, and British Columbia to Toronto, we talk about what other countries have been doing to build non-market housing, and how governments can get back into the business of home building.
Carolyn Whitzman is a housing and social policy consultant, expert adviser to the Housing Assessment Resource Tools (HART) project at the University of British Columbia, and adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa.
Show note links:
The Globe and Mail - 'Canada’s progressive parties have lost the plot on the housing crisis', by Carolyn Whitzman, 18 August 2023.
Housing Assessment Resource Tools project at the University of British Columbia.
YouTube explainer by Uytae Lee - 'The Non-capitalist Solution to the Housing Crisis'
