The Big Ideas Issue

November/December 2021 Issue

From the Editor

Big ideas to kick at the darkness

Self accountability is the first step in creating a broader language and landscape in which transformative justice can thrive.

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In this Issue

Affordable housing, homelessness and the upcoming federal budget

Nick Falvo

Behind the Numbers

Land back: Unsettling the original injustice

Andrée Forest

Land back. Two words simple in premise and profound in meaning.

Monitor Print Indigenous Rights

Oppression will try to steal your ability to dream. Don’t let it.

Anthony Morgan

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionately high impact on Black communities. It’s exceptionally difficult to produce a vision of freedom in such rough times. But we must keep freedom dreaming.

COVID-19 Monitor Print Racial Equity

Access after COVID-19: How disability culture can transform life and work

Carla Rice / Eliza Chandler / Elisabeth Harrison / Lacey Croft

The COVID-19 crisis has revealed the necessity of changing people’s taken-for-granted understandings of disability, to provoke a transformation in how people perceive living with disability and difference.

The zero-carbon suburb

Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood

It’s not just heat pumps and electric cars. To truly decarbonize, we need to reimagine how we live, starting with urban sprawl.

Canada’s crisis of democracy

Sandy Hudson

What is the point of a political system that ignores the needs of its people during a crisis?
We need bold action.

COVID-19 didn’t kill neoliberalism; we must do it ourselves

Ricardo Tranjan

It is becoming increasingly clear that our 40-year nightmare is not over. It's up to us, argues Tranjan, to end it once and for all.

A well-being approach to governance

Lindsay McLaren

The COVID-19 pandemic has made clear the strong connections between health and broader social, economic and political circumstances. It's time for a well-being approach to governance that is capable of addressing these connections.

Settler Work: Understanding the Gustafsen Lake Standoff

Róisín West

Twenty-six years later, Gustafsen Lake remains unexamined and governments unaccountable for the largest show of military force against Indigenous land defenders in Canadian history.

Big change

Alex Himelfarb

Five readings to help us understand what’s needed and what it will take

Contributors

Authors appearing in this issue

Róisín West

Róisín (they/she) is the Senior Editor of the Monitor and Behind the Numbers. They write about disability and accessibility, civic engagement, and media. Find them on Twitter at @RoisinWest.

Anthony Morgan

Anthony N. Morgan is a Toronto-based human rights lawyer, policy consultant and community educator.

Andrée Forest

Andrée Forest (elle/she/her) is francophone Métis from Red River and is engaging in her history through beading, writing and building community. She is the project coordinator for the Manitoba Research Alliance at CCPA-MB.

Eliza Chandler

Eliza Chandler (she/her) is an assistant professor in the School of Disability Studies in Toronto where she teaches and researches in the areas of disability arts, critical access, social movements, and crip necropolitics.

Lacey Croft

Lacey Croft (she/her) is completing her PhD in Sociology at York University while working as a research assistant at Re·Vision Centre for Art and Social Justice. Her research focuses on the invisible labour of displaced, disabled, and other vulnerable workers. Find her on twitter at @LaceyCroft

Elisabeth Harrison

Elisabeth Harrison (she/her, they/them) is a research associate at the Re·Vision Centre at the University of Guelph. She is completing her PhD in Critical Disability Studies at York University. Find them on twitter at @elisabethalicee.

Carla Rice

Carla Rice (she/her, they/them) is a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Feminist Studies and Social Practice at the University of Guelph. Her research focuses on disability and non-normative embodiments, feminist intersectionality studies, and arts-based methodologies. Rice founded Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice, a research creation centre that explores how communities can mobilize the arts to deepen public dialogue and advance social justice.

Ricardo Tranjan

Ricardo Tranjan (he/him) is a political economist and senior researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Ontario office. He is the author of The Tenant Class. Find him on Twitter at @ricardo_tranjan.

Sandy Hudson

Sandy Hudson (she/her) is an activist, multidisciplinary creative and writer with a talent for inspiring others to imagine just futures. The founder of the Black Lives Matter movement presence in Canada andBlack Lives Matter – Toronto, Sandy also co-founded theBlack Legal Action Centre, a specialty legal aid clinic, which provides direct legal services and test case litigation for Black communities in Ontario, Canada. Sandy is currently based in Los Angeles and serves as an international organizer for Black Lives Matter – Grassroots and the Director of Strategic Planning for the Wildseed Centre for Art & Activism. Find her on twitter at @sandela

Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood

Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood (he/him) is a senior researcher at the CCPA, where he focuses on international trade and climate change policy in Canada. Follow Hadrian on Twitter at @hadrianmk. He runs the Shift Storm newsletter about work and climate change—sign up for it here.

Lindsay McLaren

Lindsay MacLaren (she/her) is a Professor at the University of Calgary and a Research Associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives National Office.

Alex Himelfarb

Alex Himelfarb (he/him) is the chair of the CCPA national office board, former Clerk of the Privy Council and academic, and chair or member of several voluntary sector organizations.