This week, we discuss Ontario’s newly proposed anti-SLAPP legislation with Ramani Nadarajah, Council for the Canadian Environmental Law Association. SLAPP or “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation” are when costly lawsuits are employed not to achieve justice, but instead to scare the public away from participating in the discussion of public policy issues with intimidation and threats. Ramani joins us to explore what this legislation is, how it works, and how this might affect national environmental battles on everything from public planning to resource extraction. You can read more and learn about CELA here: http://www.cela.ca/blog/2014-12-17/ontario-government-introduces-anti-slapp-bill
With the theme of money and public participation this week, we also spend a fair bit of time talking about the ongoing secret back room deals surrounding the proposed TPP or Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP has been described as “NAFTA on Steroids” and is essentially a massive giveaway of power from governments to giant global corporations. Before you form an opinion on this issue, think about if this is a fair deal that helps regular citizens, why it would be happening in secret? Why lawmakers can’t even read the entire bill or take it out of the building much less share what it says with their constituents? The TPP is being drafted behind closed doors with an attempt to ceed power away from citizens. They didn’t even want you to know it was happening at all, much less the details of the agreement. Please read this: Why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement is a Pending Disaster and you can find out what the Council of Canadian’s think here: http://canadians.org/tpp.
Finally, we started and ended the show with a talk about the “Stop Harper” campaign currently underway across the country… Our hosts were somewhat split on this issue, what do you think? Is simply making the next federal campaign a referendum on Harper good enough to get better governance in Canada? Or will it guarantee another split left vote that sees Harper back for another round? You tell us! Please leave a comment below if you have something you’d like to say about this, especially if you think we got something wrong! Furthermore, I’m not interested in stopping freedom of expression. If you think I got this wrong, you can buy your “Stop Harper Stickers” here.
We were going to talk about these stories but didn’t get to them… Have a great week!
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