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.
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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.
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Social Democrats of the North
In Social Democrats of the North: Canadian Visions for Justice & Equality from Confederation to the Quiet Revolution, Dave McGrane, Professor of Political Science at St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan, explores the life, times, and ideas of Canada’s most influential social democrats. From Confederation at 1867, to the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, discover the people who shaped social democracy in Canada, the movements that fought for the working-class, and the legacies they’ve left for the wellbeing of all Canadians. There are lessons for activists, and forgotten struggles that apply to today’s wins. After all, the best teacher for a better world tomorrow, is the past.
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Class & Climate
Class & Climate: Perspectives on a Green Economy is a new podcast series from Perspectives Journal and the Green Economy Network that explores how climate action can create good jobs, make life more affordable, and debunk the myth that workers and the environment are at odds. The Broadbent Institute is a member of the Green Economy Network. GEN brings together labour, environmental, faith, and social justice organizations. If you’re interested in getting involved, please get in touch.
Perspectives: A Canadian Journal of Political Economy and Social Democracy
Is Canada Falling Behind on Green Industrial Policy? with Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood
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To help make Canada into a “good society,” Ed Broadbent was a major proponent of “industrial strategy” throughout the 1970s and 80s as leader of Canada’s NDP, to use this policy vision for social democratic change and challenge the dominance of market mechanisms, ultimately to the working-class the tools to build a just and equal economic democracy.
Today, comprehensive policy plans in the United States, Europe and China have taken the form of industrial strategy to guide their economic transformation and development in the face of economic and climate crises. Canada, on the other hand, seems to have lagged behind on this front, despite Ed Broadbent’s urging to develop industrial strategy from decades ago. While Canada’s political discourse becomes embroiled in revisiting industrial-scale carbon pricing, the USA has unleashed the Inflation Reduction Act, and China has become a world-leading producer of electrified products such as electric vehicles and photovoltaic cells.
Why is Canada lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to industrial policy, and how can industrial strategy help Canada take serious climate action?
Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, senior researcher at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives focusing on international trade and climate change policy in Canada, sat down with the Perspectives Journal Podcast at the 2024 Progress Summit in April to discuss Canada’s industrial policy vision.
Subscribe to Shift Storm: Transforming Work in a Changing Climate—a newsletter on work and climate change by the CCPA’s Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood. In this newsletter, he breaks down all the latest research and news related to green jobs, a just transition and industrial policy from Canada and around the world.
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The 2024 Ellen Meiksins Wood Prize is awarded to economist Dr. Isabella Weber for critical research on economic shocks and inflation that equip Canadian progressives with alternatives that push back against anti-democratic policy choices and help to empower workers.
Each year’s prize recipient also delivers the Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture. We invite you to join us on Thursday, May 30 for the 2024 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture at Toronto Metropolitan University, at the Sears Atrium (3rd Floor, George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre), starting at 7pm EDT, followed by a reception with light refreshments.
Professor Isabella Weber is an economist and a leading voice against corporate profiteering, identifying economic shocks as the cover that the rich and powerful use to raise prices and put the working-class through an affordability crisis.
Her analysis has come to accurately illustrate the forces behind today’s price inflation, and why governments have not effectively addressed the affordability crisis
Weber has advised policy makers in the United States and Germany on questions of price stabilization, and is now a regular feature in the business papers. For her work on “Sellers’ Inflation,” she has been profiled in the New Yorker, Jacobin Magazine, and recognized as one of TIME100 Next by US Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Tickets to the 2024 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture are now available: 2024-ellen-meiksins-wood-lecture.eventbrite.ca
