Open Sources Guelph - November 22, 2018

This Open Sources Guelph is going to be a dire one. We're going to talk about Brexit, which is going about as well as everyone expected. We're going to talk about sex abuse, which seemed to have been baked into the culture of a prestigious Toronto school. We're going to talk about the lack of support for trans rights in the governing PC Party. And we're going to talk about our country's environmental failures. Hold on to your butts.

This Thursday, November 22 at 5 pm, Scotty Hertz and Adam A. Donaldson will discuss:

Brexit Bad. Things went from bad to worse for the U.K. last week when the draft of the Brexit deal was released, and it satisfied absolutely no one. The hardcore Brexiteers were the most unsatisfied saying that the deal doesn't go far enough to separate the U.K. from the European Union, while the remaining Remainers are trying to convince the government that a new referendum is the way to go now that the full extent of the effects of Brexit are understood. Either way, it looks likely that Theresa May is the one that's going to lose. Can May stand even as Brexit falls apart around her?

School Busted. St. Michael's College, a prestigious private Catholic School in Toronto, has been embroiled in scandal the last week after journalists broke a story about hazing and sex abuse in the ranks of the athletic programs at the all-boys school. It was only after those initial media reports that the police got involved and charges were laid, but there are big questions about why it took the mainstream media to get involved to prompt St. Mike's to tackle the problem. There are also concerns that despite the attention, the school is working from the inside to mitigate the damage. Did the system fail the students here?

Trans Fights. Tanya Granic Allen returned to the news last week by bringing forth a successful resolution to have the PC Party debate on whether gender identity is a liberal conspiracy that shouldn't be taught in schools. Cool. Doug Ford tried to clean it up Monday, saying that the debate is "Done", but how can it be "Done" when a majority of the party voted overwhelmingly for having the debate? What are trans people supposed to think when the governing party thinks their existence is a liberal conspiracy? How genuine should we then take Lisa MacLeod's statement of support on Trans Day of Remembrance?

Green Look. It's brutal news for the environment on a near daily basis, but for Canada specifically, it seems that we're lagging behind in meeting our climate change targets set by the Paris Accord, 90 per cent our plastic is not being recycled, Ontario just canned the environment commissioner, and there's pressure to get more help to the oil patch as prices have hit rock bottom. Despite the warnings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there's been no renewed effort to address the issue even as the experts say we're running out of time. What can we do as the clock ticks down to oblivion?

Open Sources is live on CFRU 93.3 fm and cfru.ca at 6 pm on Thursday.