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
On Fascism with Jon Weier
In September 2025 the Broadbent Institute joined left–wing think tanks from Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay and Spain to support the establishment of a global network of think tanks that produce rigorous analysis, foster data-driven debate, and contribute to the search for proposals in defense of democracy.
In the declarative agreement behind the establishment of the new Red Internacional de Pensamiento Democratico or International Network of Democratic Thought, progressive civil society groups acknowledged that although the new radical right is heterogeneous and shifting at the local level, it is rapidly expanding its ideas elsewhere, undermining the institutional foundations of representative democracy.
While viewing the democratic regime as an obstacle to progress, the far-right promotes climate and pandemic denialism, delegitimizes the struggle for women’s equality, fosters rejection of and hatred for immigration and asylum seekers, and upholds economic nationalism as a supreme value.
This far-right surge has politically taken the form of fascism: an authoritarian and nationalist political ideology that has undermined democracy around the world.
But what is fascism exactly?
Here’s Broadbent Research Fellow and Labour Historian, Jon Weier, of George Brown College, to help us define fascist ideology and what this means for Canada .
Notes
- Joining Progressive Think Tanks and Governments in Defense of Democracy, Broadbent Institute, September 25, 2025.
- Genuine Democracy in an Age of Hyper-Individualism – 2025 Ellen Meiksins Wood Lecture, by Grace Blakeley.
- 'Canada goose-stepping: When the ‘Canadian Führer’ brought his blueshirts to Toronto,' by Jamie Bradburn, TVO, March 2, 2022.
