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Over the past two days, a major health care summit has taken place in Ottawa at the Chateau Laurier Hotel. The summit, titled "A New Health Accord for All Canadians," is a partnership between the Canada 2020 think tank and the Canadian Medical Association (CMA). This summit featured a variety of stakeholders and speakers including Senator Chantal Peticlerc, Dr. Granger Avery, the president of the CMA, Dr. Gaétan Barrette, the Quebec Minister of Health and Social Services, and Dr. Jane Philpott, Canada's minister of health. This summit comes at a pivotal point in the history of medicare with a new health accord being negotiated in coming months and an urgent need for national pharmacare (among many pressing topics).

"All the rights and freedoms recognized herein are equally guaranteed to male and female Indigenous individuals."

Constructing Change speaks to people working in communities to be the change, to build projects, to make a difference.  The interviews and profiles are meant to share information about how to get involved to support and amplify the changemakers' work and/or to share how you can organize a similar project in your community.  The Constructing Change series is a collaboration between the Lynn Williams Activist Toolkit and Rabble Podcast Network.

By now you have agreed and consented to countless Terms of Use and Privacy/Data Policies within the expansive social media ecosystem. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, What's App, Snapchat, Yik Yak and many more share one major theme in common -- they all need your consent, for surveillance, data collection, intellectual property seizure -- and they find ways of getting it. Your consent is typically accounted for by two things: one, by scrolling rapidly to the bottom of these documents and clicking "agree"; or, two, your daily, continued, sustained usage of the social media platform. Your consent is important. And it's a legal necessity. By doing these two tasks, you are allowing them to do things that may entail consequences at the end of the day.

Goldcorp founder Rob McEwen has called them "the payday loans of the mining industry" and they're introducing a new, intense pressure on an industry already reviled for Indigenous land theft, dangerous working conditions and environmental infractions.

Two weeks ago, nearly 100 people gathered outside of the Toronto Stock Exchange and marched through downtown Toronto to protest the North Dakota Access Pipeline and express solidarity with the blockade at the ancestral lands of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The police were there from the get-go, corralling the group and blocking traffic. Led by a group of five Indigenous women, we waded through the streets, chanting, drumming and singing. The media, on the other hand, showed up only after we proved newsworthy: when the rally collided with the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). It started with a CP24 reporter. She showed up with a cameraperson at King and Duncan, demanding TIFF guards let us continue marching down King Street.  

Media coverage of world affairs mostly focuses on Ottawa's and Washington's perspectives. While the dominant media is blatant in its subservience to Canadian and Western power, even independent media is often afraid to challenge the foreign policy status quo. A recent Canadaland podcast simultaneously highlighted anti-Palestinian media bias and the fear liberal journalists face in discussing one of the foremost social justice issues of our time. The media watchdog's discussion of the Green Party's recent resolutions supporting Palestinian rights started strong with Canadaland publisher Jesse Brown laying out three claims: