Western Alienation! Wexit! Separation! Are these merely tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing? Team Advantage convenes to discuss the phenomenon of western alienation, examining its long history, how it obscures capitalist alienation and reconstructs it to defend regional capitalist interests, and shapes an explicitly right-wing collective identity for Alberta. How is it that western alienation coincidentally makes the concerns of oil millionaires “everyone’s problem?” Does blaming Ottawa for everything really distract from policy failures here in Alberta?

Visit LeftWexit.com for a real plan to guarantee Alberta’s independence.

A full transcript follows the break.

Meryam Haddad, leadership candidate for the Green Party of Canada, joins Team Advantage to discuss ecosocialism, decarbonization and energy transition, and her positive vision for workers while avoiding ecological catastrophe.

Check out Meryam’s campaign at meryam2020.ca.

For information on the GPC Leadership Contest, visit greenparty.ca/en/leadership-contest.

Today, August 31, 2020, is International Overdose Awareness Day. Team Advantage is rebroadcasting this episode of CRACKDOWN, featuring an interview between host Garth Mullins and Tim Slaney, a harm reduction worker at the Lethbridge supervised consumption site (that shut down today). Listen to more and subscribe at crackdownpod.com.

Today is International Overdose Awareness Day, but so what? Who needs to be made aware? Who among us can’t see the corpses piling up from this endless war?

And just when you think things can’t get much bleaker, they do.

On today’s show Garth interviews Tim Slaney. Tim is a harm reduction worker at the supervised consumption site in Lethbridge, Alberta – one of the busiest in the world. And the government is shutting it down.

Music from the Arches Mic Club featured in this episode:

“Dream Big” by Lonzo, Leland, and Doobyis

“Fully Beaded” by Lonzo, Doobyis, and Buck 

“Back at the Start” by Karley B 

“Speak These Words” by Lil Branden, Doobyis, Colicchie, and Lonzo

Dimitri Lascaris, leadership candidate for the Green Party of Canada, joins Team Advantage to discuss socialism, the state of the Canadian media ecosystem, proposals to increase the power of workers in our economy, and how to challenge the establishment — both within political parties and in the media landscape.

Check out Dimitri’s campaign at teamdimitri.ca.

To vote in the GPC leadership race, buy or renew your membership by September 3, 2020. For information on the GPC Leadership Contest, visit greenparty.ca/en/leadership-contest.

Jason Kenney’s attacks on public education continue. Politicized attacks on Alberta’s curriculum review, farcical comments by government spokespeople, and poor planning for the return to classes mid-pandemic are all eroding trust in public education. Medeana Moussa and Barb Silva from Support Our Students join Team Advantage to discuss what awaits students as they return to school.

Learn more about Support Our Students at https://www.supportourstudents.ca, on Twitter @SOSAlberta, on Facebook, and download their toolkit at https://www.supportourstudents.ca/constituents-toolkit.html.

A full transcript follows the break.

As the Black Lives Matter movement continues to make its presence known in Canada and the United States, racist and colonial statues are increasingly being subject to the intense gravitational pull of the Earth. What kinds of statues and monuments are objectionable in Canada? What’s being done about it? And what do statues have to do with how we remember history? Team Advantage is joined by Sean Carleton, Assistant Professor in the Departments of History and Native Studies at the University of Manitoba, to discuss Nazi monuments, colonizing nation-builders who do genocide, and why it’s good and cool that statues of these figures come crashing down.

A transcript follows the break.

Alberta’s UCP Environment and Parks Minister Jason Nixon is planning on partially closing 20 parks, and handing over management of 164 parks to private companies— and internal disclosures suggest a further sell-off of Alberta’s parks is in the works. Alberta has also rescinded the 1976 Coal Development Policy, raising the possibility of open-pit coal mines in Alberta’s Rockies and foothills. Join Team Advantage as we discuss the sell-off of parks, and work to imagine what parks could look like in an era of Land Back and climate change.

In 1972, the B.C. New Democrats led by the charismatic Dave Barrett won an upset victory in British Columbia, defeating the 20-year reign of Social Credit’s W.A.C. Bennett. In a stunning “legislation by thunderbolt,” Barrett’s government passed 367 bills in three years, introducing a wide range of progressive reforms. Join Team Advantage as we survey what the Barrett government accomplished, and consider more generally the possibilities and limitations of social democratic strategy within the Canadian context.

Further reading:
The Art of the Impossible: Dave Barrett and the NDP in Power, 1972-1975 – Geoff Meggs and Rod Mickleburgh
Barrett: A Passionate Political Life – Dave Barrett and William Miller
The 1200 Days: A Shattered Dream – Lorne J. Kavic and Gary Brian Nixon

Kenney’s UCP government has used the pandemic to their advantage, passing a number of outrageous laws that accelerate handouts to Alberta’s most profitable corporations, while cracking down hard on the rights of citizens to protest. Team Advantage convenes to discuss Alberta’s Job Creation Tax Cut, Bill 1: Critical Infrastructure Defence Act, and Bill 32: Restoring Balance in Alberta’s Workplaces Act.

Are Calgary’s police officers being held to account when they abuse their power? Calgary-born filmmakers Marc Serpa Francoeur and Robinder Uppal join Team Advantage to discuss their recent CBC documentary, Above the Law, an eye-opening investigation into police brutality and the lack of accountability in the Calgary Police Service.

Find out more about the documentary here:
https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/episodes/above-the-law

Follow updates from the film on twitter @losttimemedia and on Facebook.