Episode 12 - Still Waters - Prepared to Drown: Deep Dives into an Expansive Faith

Episode Transcript
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Bill (00:05):
We are back, everybody, and Season 2 starts right here,
right now, Around this table.
We're going to talk about God,not the tidy, polished version,
but the God whose love is wideenough to hold our stress and
our striving, our setbacks andour joy.
And we are going to do it, asalways, in real time, with no
edits and no do-overs.
Our first dive of Season two iscalled Still Waters.

(00:25):
The stats tell us what wealready feel in our bones that
we are all headed toward burnout, personally and professionally.
Tonight, we are talking aboutwhat it means to stop, about
Sabbath and solidarity, aboutthe connections between work and
housing, and dignity and rest,because here's the truth you do
not owe your life to yourproductivity.

(00:46):
I'm Bill Weaver and this isPrepared to Drown.
Let's get started, and welcometo the start of our second
season of Prepared to Drown herein the basement of MacDougall
United Church in Calgary,alberta.
We are going to be talking thisevening about rest as we begin
our season, because these days,everybody is talking about

(01:07):
burnout, mental health,work-life balance, boundaries.
You hear it in HR emails andyou see it constantly across
Instagram reels Take a break,drink water, breathe deep.
But the reality of it is thatin March of this year there was
a survey done that indicatedthat almost half of Canadian

(01:27):
professionals 47% say they arecurrently burned out and about a
third of those said that it isworse this year than it was a
year ago.
Ricardo is already raising hishand and we haven't even
introduced him yet.
There was also in October of2024, a Polaris Strategic
Insights poll that reported thatnearly 70% of Canadian workers

(01:49):
have experienced the kinds ofsymptoms that lead to burnout,
including things like fatigue,headaches and irritability.
And just this week our localnews reported that nearly one in
every five Calgary policeofficers are currently on leave
or modified duties because ofmental and physical strain.
So when people say take a break, yes, absolutely that helps,

(02:13):
but it's not enough Becausebetter self-care doesn't shift
the conditions that are grindingso many people down.
So in this opening episode ofour second season, we are going

(02:37):
to drift into the deep end ofwork and rest and talk tonight
about what we're actually beingground down for and exploring a
God who built rest right intothe routine from the very
beginning.
Now I'm just going to get it outthere.
Most people will call me ahypocrite for even hosting on
this topic, which is why I don'tneed to be the expert in the
room.
We've got Reverend JoanneAnquist and Ricardo de Menezes,
who are here returning regulars.
You all know who they are.
But we also brought in someexperts with us tonight, or at
least expert adjacent tonight.

(03:00):
So with us we have Gian CarloCarra, who is Calgary's Ward 9
City Councillor for just alittle bit longer; under 30 days
, correct.
You may remember, if you'velistened to our podcast, that he
was actually our very firstguest on this podcast back in
season one.
He has spent the last 15 yearsat City Hall championing

(03:21):
neighborhood-based planning,walkable cities, civic systems
that make life more humane andlivable, equity and diversity.
And, Gian Carlo, we are so gladthat you are willing to be back
here with us tonight.
Thanks for being here.

Gian Carlo (03:34):
I'm delighted to be here.

Bill (03:35):
I'm a big fan of the podcast, and I also get the
privilege tonight of introducingyou to Carolyn Krahn, who is
the Executive Director ofCalgary's Workers' Resource
Center.
Carolyn leads a team of peoplethat make sure that Alberta's
workers know their rights andare supported when their
workplaces fail them, whetherit's job loss or pay disputes,
or discrimination or injury.
Her work combines advocacy andcompassion and practical help

(03:57):
for some of the most vulnerablepeople in our city.
So, Carolyn, thank you forbeing willing to join us here
tonight.
We are looking forward tolearning from you and to hearing
your perspective on all of this.

Carolyn (04:06):
Thank you so much.

Bill (04:08):
So let's start right where the stats leave us, and I'm
going to actually start withCarolyn, because that's just how
I tend to do this.
In your work at the Workers'Resource Center, you see the
human cost of burnout up closeevery single day.

Carolyn (04:18):
Oh, it's so funny because I think we took the same
stats that I also have writtendown.

Bill (04:28):
So I'll skip that part.
All right, fair enough.

Carolyn (04:29):
So my question to you is what does it look like on the
ground for workers in Albertaright now?
To put it bluntly, not great.
Our calls have increased byabout 23%.
We get 11,000 calls a year fromCalgary workers and Alberta
workers.
We serve all of Alberta.
But there's a lot ofcontributing factors to this and
I think the biggest thing isburnout is different than tired.

(04:52):
Burnout correlates withbasically, like emotional
exhaustion, a cynicism aroundthe work they're doing and the
value they have, which leads toa reduced sense of
accomplishment.
So by the time burnout hits thetable, we're not talking about
I need a break.
We're talking about I'm used up, I don't feel worthy, I can't

(05:14):
give my best to my work or mypersonal life and the cards are
falling.

Bill (05:18):
Yeah, I'm not okay.

Carolyn (05:19):
I'm not okay, and so you know.
It's nice that companies haveHR policies and say things like
take a break, but in ourexperience I'm a little jaded
because I see when that doesn'thappen, they don't actually want
you to, and that's because totake a full amount of rest that

(05:40):
would be required to be able toshow up that way is substantial.
It's not a wellness day, it'san extended period of time once
it hits that point, and socompanies will often
systematically try to get rid ofemployees who take stress leave
, because they see them then asweaker then and not contributing
.
The same way, that workloadoften gets piled onto another

(06:03):
staff member, so the dominoeffect happens.
So, and rather than blame thecompany that's not adequately
supporting that, they blame theperson on stress leave.
So there's a huge differencebetween what companies like to
say versus what they actually do, and a lot of our insurance
plans are not equipped tosupport this mental health I

(06:25):
would say crisis that we'recurrently in.

Bill (06:29):
So, Gian Carlo, big fan of yours, obviously, and knowing
you for a while, I've been ableto hear you speak a number of
times and one of the things thatI've always appreciated about
the way you speak aboutneighborhood planning is that,
from your perspective, the verysystems of the city that we
build into our urban design,into the way that we develop our
communities, and the city thatwe build into our urban design,
into the way that we develop ourcommunities and the way that we
establish ourselves inrelationship with our
communities Everything from ourcommutes to our housing to our

(06:52):
access to services all of it caneither make it easier or harder
for us to live well and be okayin the midst of our living,
personally and professionally.
Do you want to say a bit aboutthat?
Well, yeah, I've got a lot tosay?

Gian Carlo (07:09):
The first thing I just want to say is that Calgary
is a remarkable outlier.
So if you look at the statistics, like, Calgary consistently
comes in number one in the mostdrivable city of 100 world
cities that are frequently sortof studied, and we have built a
city for the car in a remarkableway, and what we've learned

(07:31):
across North America is the moretime you spend driving, the
less time you volunteer andgenerally the less healthy
you're going to be, particularlyfrom a cardiovascular
perspective, because we've inmany ways in modern society and
due to the proliferation ofcities built for cars, we've

(07:53):
engineered movement out of ourexistence, and it's having
significant impacts on ourability to connect in community
because we're spending too muchtime driving, and it's having
significant impact on our actualphysical health because we
don't walk around to get thingsthat we need on a daily basis.
We drive or we sit in front of acomputer screen, stuff like

(08:13):
that.
Having said all of that,calgary is an outlier.
We are much, much morecommunity-minded than your
average bear and way more thanwe should be, given our
connection to automobiledependency, and we're also a lot
fitter than we are, and so Ialways look at Calgary as a
remarkable sort of tale of twocities.

Ricardo (08:34):
I'm the outlier there.

Gian Carlo (08:40):
But I mean, the fact is that, you know, we have an
incredible park system thatpeople love to use, we have an
incredible community associationnetwork, we have incredible
service organizations, we haveincredible faith communities,
many of which are sort ofbucking the trends in terms of

(09:00):
attendance and all of thosethings.
So, you know, I think thebaseline for Calgary is
generally better than everywhereelse.
Having said that, we are, youknow, I think, in a Western
crisis-wide, a Western cultureor Western civilization-wide
crisis of systems that are justgrinding us down.

(09:23):
You know, a lot of people talkabout end us down.
A lot of people talk about endstate capitalism.
A lot of people point to extremeinequality.
We've declared in the city ofCalgary a housing crisis because
people are moving here from allover the world.
We had 100,000 people come lastyear.
We're on track for 85,000people to come to Calgary this
year and just housing peoplewhen that many people come

(09:44):
becomes a significant challenge.
And we've seen what happens tocities in Canada where their
housing supply does not keeppace with their population
growth and you reach this pointof complete unaffordability.
And Toronto and Vancouver arethe shining examples that we
uphold of what we don't want tobecome examples that we uphold

(10:07):
of what we don't want to become.
And so, you know, Calgaryremains a remarkable tale of two
cities where we spend too muchtime in our automobiles and yet
we volunteer a lot.
We are increasingly sociallyisolated by, you know, the
design of our city, by thedesign of our work structure, by
the design of our housing andthings like that, and yet, at

(10:28):
the same time, we are incrediblymore connected to community
than we should be in an absolutesense and definitely,
definitely in a relative sense.
So I think you know, and I youknow, speaking about this sort
of in a broader sense, I had theopportunity to serve on
Calgary's Metropolitan RegionBoard and we hired one of the

(10:50):
top regional planners in theworld, a guy named Peter
Calthorpe, to come in and he wasamazed that we were doing
regional planning with ourneighbors in the Calgary region.
And he said you know, I usuallyget brought in around the world
and he's planned all over theworld.
When air quality becomes a hugeproblem because of smog, when

(11:13):
housing affordability goes outthe window and when mobility
grinds to a halt, and you guyshave none of these problems.
So, like for the first time inmy life, and you guys have none
of these problems.
So, like for the first time inmy life, I'm doing regional
planning not to fix problemsthat are intractable but to

(11:33):
inoculate against them.
So I mean, I guess the hopefulthing that I'd like to throw
onto the table is that, asproblematic as the moment we
find ourselves is, we're doingpretty good relative to other
places and we can use that as apath forward into a better
future.

Bill (11:48):
I do also feel like I am morally obligated to throw into
the mix of the things that youlisted.
The bike pathway network inCalgary is top-notch, and I say
that primarily because theyconnected me to the rest of my
route to work just this summerme to the rest of my route to
work.

Gian Carlo (12:03):
just this summer, I spent my entire day-to-day
visiting constituentsbike-mounted and I put over 30
kilometers on almost exclusivelyon cycle-protected
infrastructure, and I was veryproud to have been part of that.

Bill (12:17):
Yep, yep, absolutely.
I think we are the largestnetwork of bike paths in North
America.

Gian Carlo (12:33):
Right, yeah.
Well, if you look at ourgreenway, our bike path, our
river parkway system, there's noplace in the world that has
this level of interconnectivity.
And then when you start addingactual last mile destination to
school and to rec centers and towork, we're doing good.
But it is also under threatbecause bike lanes are now .
.
.
Someone said that bike lanesare the urban infrastructure
equivalent of trans rights rightnow.

Carolyn (12:56):
Wow what.

Bill (12:59):
That is a all right, that is an interesting.

Joanne (13:02):
That is a very loaded statement there.

Gian Carlo (13:05):
Well, 3% of people bike every day in Calgary right
now, which is a very smallnumber, and it seems to be the
politics of the moment to goafter the small number that most
people don't do.

Bill (13:20):
Absolutely Yep.
So, Ricardo, unions have beenfighting for decades, right
Shorter hours, weekends,benefits, safety, all those
kinds of things.
We just passed Labor Day rightwe are.
We're back into the grind oflife now that we celebrate
post-Labor Day with the rest isdone.

Joanne (13:40):
Yay, labor, yay.

Bill (13:42):
Let's go do stuff.
That's right.
So how do you see collectivebargaining is not just about the
wages, right, because the wagesare certainly important, but
we're talking about obviouslymuch deeper things here than
just the wages themselves, right?

Ricardo (13:54):
Mental health is the biggest thing, no matter what
spectrum you're in, unionized ornot.
You know we have seen stats ofalmost a 300% increase in
violent and aggressive incidentsin retail, grocery stores,
environments, right, people whoare burnt out, pissed off at
life, just take it out onwhoever's in front of them and
they shop daily, buy daily,every week, whatever, and they

(14:17):
go to a grocery store and theprices are going up and up and
up and grocery storebillionaires are making more and
more money and they take it outon the people right in front of
them who are making just overor above minimum wage, right.
So the rippling effect.
But I mean, I want to cast awide net on this topic to say,
like we're still living in theworld where our children now

(14:38):
aren't doing worse than ourparents, right or us?
And how do we fix that problemen masse when now it's not just
about money, like you said,doing worse than our parents,
right or us?
And um, how do we fix thatproblem on mass when now it's
not just about money, like yousaid, it's about the ability to
even wrap your head around themagnitude of challenge ahead of
us?

Bill (14:53):
for in the world at work.
So so I want to actuallyencourage you, because I think
that's an important statementyou're making.
So can you quantify for peoplea bit more

Ricardo (15:10):
Well, wages haven't kept up with the cost of living
in general.
Forget food.
Forget insurance, because youknow Alberta now pays the
highest insurance rates in thecountry.

Joanne (15:16):
Housing prices and university costs.

Ricardo (15:18):
University costs, right .
So not only you know, we allgrew up in the time and the age
where, if you get a degree,you'll have the best jobs, and
that's not the case anymoreeither.
You go to the Haskins School ofBusiness and you walk off the
stage.
You could have top marks butstill never find a job that
would pay what you think youneed to make.
Right 10% requirements for downpayments on houses.

(15:39):
Now we're down payments onhouses now, but when houses are
a million dollars a pop, howlong will it take for you to
save $100,000 when the cost of ajug of milk is $8 each?
One of the biggest complaintsnot complaints arguments we had
when we were negotiating alittle bit with Safeway was
someone got up and said a tub ofyour margarine costs $14.

(16:01):
That's one hour's or less thanan hour's pay for me, but like I
have to work 45 minutes toafford a tub of margarine,
that's not even including theloaf of bread that I'm putting
the margarine on, right, that'snot including my rent.
And, god forbid, I can watchsome TV and pay for a Netflix
subscription, right.
So rest is almost a privilegebecause people are working

(16:26):
multiple jobs and parents areworking multiple jobs and it's a
culminating effect, really, andlet's not bring in the world
around us and the politics thatwe exist in that we were faced
with on a daily basis in thenews.
Right, the affordability crisisis real and this is why we're

(16:52):
seeing strikes like crazy inunionized workplaces.
Right, air Canada just finishedtheirs and all they wanted was
pay for work that they weredoing.
Right, and I liked the quotethat somebody used where
snowstorms have shut down AirCanada longer than it took for
the government of Canada to putin Section 107 and force them

(17:12):
back to work.
Right, but they tore it up.
This is where workers are atnow.
Right, we have an unprecedentedincrease in calls at our union
office for organizing leads, butwe don't have the capacity
either to bargain every single.
Like small 15 employeeworkplaces are calling us to
unionize.
Yeah, I could unionize that intwo days.

Carolyn (17:33):
I have some thoughts on that for you.
Right, I'm a bargaining unit ofone.
That's why I say that.

Ricardo (17:38):
I could unionize them in two days, but then try to get
a collective agreement right.
That's when the governmentworks against you.
And we have the government inpower that every single step of
the way oh, minimum wage is notgoing to go up, oh, we're not
going to do this, we're notgoing to do that, and it's just.
It has a cumulative effect oneverybody, especially when you
see other conservativejurisdictions, like even the

(18:00):
province of Ontario, raisingtheir minimum wage and in here
they're like no, sorry, right,it's hard.
And then, going back to what wejust talked about, how do you
then provide for your childrenor offer them hope, right?

Carolyn (18:12):
I think it is hope.
I think you know all the thingsyou're blowing down about with
our kids are doing worse off isthey don't have any hope, they
don't see themselves in thatfuture, right.
And then you couple it in withworking two jobs to try and pay
your student loan interest, andthen it's like when do they have
time to actually negotiate thefiner points of like political
parties or things they want to,you know, show up for?

(18:34):
And I, and I do think that someof that is a systemic approach.
It's like if you keep peopletired, um, then you keep people
complicit and, and in thatexhaustion they can't question,
or don't have the capacity toquestion, the nuances of how
those things are acting or howthose systems are acting on them
.
And so, from a you know I hateto have this be so pessimistic

(18:55):
on a Friday night, but likethere is hope, I think, and the
sun's still shining.

Bill (19:00):
Yeah, exactly, we usually try to save the hope for the
second half.
Oh good, okay, so we'll do abit of a sandwich thing.

Carolyn (19:06):
Okay, I got you, but it's absolutely that, and I
think that's why people are soisolated.
People don't have hope rightnow because they can't see an
end separate from how they feel,and that is where a lot of that
mental health crisis is, Ithink, really coming to burn a
lot of people out.

Ricardo (19:26):
Let's talk about the cumulative effect of community
economics.
If people can't affordgroceries or even rent, they're
not putting money in thecollection plate at the church
or donating to the places thatmay have helped them in the past
, right, like the food bank isseeing an unprecedented increase
in people using the food bank,but they're not seeing the same
increase of people donating tothe food bank, right?

(19:46):
So not-for-profit is in and outin that sense, right.

Carolyn (19:52):
Well, and they're burning out of nonprofits too.
That's the problem as well.

Joanne (19:57):
It's really interesting because, as we're talking, part
of me is saying we need anadjustment of expectations.
But I think that's a two-sidedsword here, because, you know,
part of in the Christiantradition, part of our job as
ministry and as communities isto develop this idea of we carry

(20:23):
each other right, you know?
I mean, I say that very oftenon Sunday we get the privilege
of carrying each other and thatwe are the hands and feet of
Christ, and what that means isthat we don't buy into the
empire's expectations.
We set our own expectations,but I think we have a population
of folks who have, who live inthe expectations that the empire

(20:48):
has set.
Okay, so, for instance, if youwork hard enough, um, and it's
not true anymore but if you workhard enough, you will be able
to achieve things.
And if you can't achieve thosethings, then either you're not
educated enough, or you're notsmart enough, or you haven't
worked hard enough.

Ricardo (21:06):
You pull up your bootstraps right.

Bill (21:07):
Right has that ever actually been true.

Joanne (21:11):
Well, so here's the thing.
There was a time where youcould have a regular job, you
know, one that didn't require auniversity degree, and you'd be
able to buy a house, take avacation and support your
children.

Carolyn (21:22):
That's what minimum wage was was to support a
minimum standard of living.

Joanne (21:26):
And you know my kids will often say to me, you know,
because I will not anymore, butthere was a time I would argue
for a kind of capitalism, mixedmarket capitalism, which Canada
has historically had, and theywould say like why, why?
And I said because you know.
You know, for my generationcapitalism was pretty good, like

(21:48):
the burgeoning middle class.
If you even Ford said, for allhis problems, I want my workers

(22:08):
to be able to afford to buy mycar, there was an understanding
that um, a strong middle classwas necessary in order to
support a culture and all thekind of uh, morality that um
went along with that.
What has happened, I think, isthat the empire has set
expectations Like, for instance,there's this real sense in

(22:33):
banking.
You know, people will pay theirmortgage if they can and
sacrifice all of their things.
If they stop doing that, ifthey say it's not worth for me
to own a house, I'm going tostop.
It's like moral hazard.
It's not worth for me to own ahouse, I'm going to stop.
It's like moral hazard.
Right, we got to convince thesepeople.
It's their obligation to buyinto the system, right?
So I don't think we should buyinto the expectations of the

(22:56):
empire at all, and we need topoint out that the expectations
of the empire are not onlyflawed but they're harmful.
But I do think that you know, inbeing a church practitioner,
that the expectations that youcan make it on your own or that
you should be able to make itare also flawed.
There is not the same sense ofwe carry each other in the

(23:21):
culture that is required if weactually are going to band
together and make big change,and so maybe we don't.
You know, like, if your goal isI'm going to buy a house in the
suburbs, maybe that is anadjusted expectation that has to
happen, not because you're notdeserving of that, but the
culture cannot persist in the.

(23:42):
My biggest investment is myhouse and I'm going to get a
house and that's the biggestachievement of my life.
You know that's the empire'sexpectations.
We need to adjust them, not sothat we diminish our lives, but
that we enhance them, that weare more community minded, that
we are able to exist in asimpler way of being, rather

(24:03):
than the complexity that ourculture is throwing at us, that
exhausts us all.

Carolyn (24:12):
I think there might be some privilege in there.
I'm going to be totally honestwith you.

Joanne (24:17):
You'll never invite me back again, but that's fine.
Point it out absolutely.
Here's the issue, though.

Carolyn (24:22):
If you look at the rules around renting and
scarcity of renting and thevolatility of said market.
So I agree with the propositionthat you're making in terms of
like, the theory of it, but whenwe look at the application of
that like we look at whathappens.
So if all these people arecoming to the city, as Juan
Carlos already said, or GianCarlos sorry we have to look at

(24:42):
it in terms of like, well, rentsare going to go up.
We've seen it already.
Right, there's all of a suddenimmediate volatility.
People can't have pets.
There is an expectation thatyou know, if you make noise
about the safety or the thequality of your housing, that
you're going to get like.
So I I know what you're saying,but at least with an asset that
you can own, it's moredifficult for someone to tell

(25:05):
you that, whereas, if you lookat it, maybe you're not pointing
to rent as the alternative, butwhat I will say is it can't be
to just put it into anothersystem.
That is equallydisenfranchising, absolutely.

Bill (25:19):
So I would say from personal experience and I'm
actually going to have to relyon Giancarlo and I'm probably
going to put him on the spot, soI'm hoping he actually can
answer some of it but we rentedfor a long time, my wife and I,
like a two bedroom house.
We had three kids.
We got to the point where itwas like this is no longer, you
know, actually an option.
We were again anytime.

(25:39):
We complained about the factthat like the furnace was
breaking.
You know middle of December andyou know we're at like minus
two on the thermostat and youcan see your breath in the house
and like landlord, very angry,like if this is going to be a
problem, then we're going toneed to talk about whether or
not you can still be here.
We finally kind of did the math,worked through some things and
found Attainable Homes Calgary,which is a city of Calgary, not

(26:02):
for profit.
That did a.
I mean, it's the only reasonthat we are where we are now.
In all honesty, right, the downpayment becomes part of the
mortgages alone and we were ableto move into a fantastic
townhouse that had just beenbuilt as a part of like an
infill community and we pay lessnow on that mortgage than we

(26:29):
were paying in rent to alandlord that consistently
didn't have enough gas in thecar.
Rent goes up 100 bucks the nextmonth, right.
And there was no checks orbalances or safety or anything
in the middle of it for anybody.
That was just devastating, right.
And you feel hopeless whenyou're infested with mice and

(26:52):
your landlord won't even call anexterminator, right.
So there is a whole kind ofchallenge around what is the
alternative when none of theoptions on the table seem to be.
So, again, I love the beauty ofthe idea of like we all carry
each other, and I think there'sbeen like I've been lucky enough

(27:12):
to find, like in the case ofAttain Alohom's, calgary.
There are places where you findthese opportunities to kind of
buck the trend right, the buck,the trend right.
But the phrase I use a lotacross many facets of my life
right now is so much of this isdependent on everybody involved
surrendering to their betterangels in order to make it work.

(27:33):
Right.
And all it takes is oneopportunist to bring the entire
house of cards down.
And there's got to be a betterway.
Right got to be a better way.

Joanne (27:44):
Right, when I say we shouldn't be relying on sort of
the single family household asthe way that we gain wealth, I'm
not saying that people shouldnot have regulated rentals, for
instance.
The issue also becomespolitical because you have a
government that likes the sortof laissez-faire capitalist

(28:07):
model and does not want toregulate property owners.
Right, and I get that.
But I saw this I think it wasprobably a TikTok or something.
That seems to be where I getmost of my information now.
But talking about how the ideaof as soon as you get a certain
age, you move out and get yourown place is a capitalistic idea

(28:32):
to fragment families andcommunities and that you know
there's lots of cultures whereyou will live in the same house.
Now, that does have itsproblems.
When I was in Guatemala, theyhave these things called the
love motel and what you you knowfor people who live with their

(28:53):
parents, and so you just rent aroom in the hotel, you drive the
car in the garage, go down, noone knows you're there, you rent
it for an hour and you're gone.
Like they have a wholeinfrastructure to get privacy
and intimacy outside your familyhome right Business idea.

Ricardo (29:05):
What Business?

Joanne (29:06):
idea.

Bill (29:07):
We should have it here too .

Carolyn (29:08):
I'm pretty sure they do have it here.

Joanne (29:10):
They call them the love motels and they have like signs.
So you know that that's whatthis is for.
But anyway, you know, like wehappen to have a household where
our children live with us, andthey're adult children like 30,
in their 30s.
They don't always want to livewith us.
And they're adult children like30, in their 30s they don't
always want to live with us.
But our thing was like if youneed to save for a home, if you
need to have some, either youcan buy in with us or you can

(29:33):
have cheaper rent so that youcan also have something.
Like I think that there are waysthat we can adjust these empire
expectations where we can allown things.
You know, like there's.
I have a niece who lives out inChilliwack and for the longest
time she and her their bestfriends bought a house together
and they lived for like 10 yearsthat way.

(29:53):
Then they sold it and hadenough to buy their own place
when they adopted a child.
Like I think that's what I'mtrying to say about adjusting
expectations.
Not that we shouldn't ownproperty, but we can do it
differently, in a way whereeveryone has access and not just
privileged people like me and Iadmit 100% privilege.

(30:13):
That I have, you know, 100%educated.
My dad was a doctor,middle-class, all those things,
and I recognize how that.
But I also see how thatprivilege is a trap as well.
It's a thought trap, I think,and sorry if that came out wrong

(30:37):
, sorry.

Gian Carlo (30:38):
I'm going to jump in here because we've touched on a
number of things that are sortof in the wheelhouse of my
expertise, so I'm going to dosome mansplaining Great start.
The first thing I want to sayis that, connecting to the theme
that we're talking about here,about rest right, we know that

(31:00):
the stability of a roof overyour head is fundamental to
being rested, to be mentallywell.
We know that the crisis ofunhoused people on our streets
is not fixed until they have thestability of a roof over their
head.
I remember 15 years ago when Istarted my beginning of my

(31:24):
public service.
I remember a long-time socialwork advocate in the city of
Calgary saying you know, Tenyears ago, if you told me that
housing was the answer tohomelessness, I wouldn't have
believed you.
Like as wild as that statementis right, and I mean I think

(31:44):
what we've seen over the last 20years is an understanding that
unless people so let'sdeconstruct the term
homelessness right, Homelessness.
People now say unhoused right,and it's sort of like you can go
onto TikTok and have peoplemake fun of that Like no, it's
unhoused.
But what homelessness refers tois the fact that people believe

(32:09):
that you lose your home longbefore you lose your house,
right, and you know things gosideways in your life and stuff
like that.
And then you're on the streetand so people are the first
generation of people who weretrying to correct the growing

(32:30):
unhoused situation were like,well, we got to get people back
into a home and we got toaddress, you know, whatever
mental health crises they're in,whatever poverty issues, but
without the stability of a home,like that.
The antithesis to that thesiswas that, well, actually, if
you've lost your house, youcan't even have a home.

(32:51):
And and the other argument, ofcourse, is that people who are
unhoused have a home in the citybecause this is all of our home
.
So, anyway, I think thesynthesis of that thesis
antithesis is that, yeah, youneed a roof over your head, but
you also need the roof in thecontext of that supportive
community, out of our citiesbecause of the commodification

(33:18):
of housing, because of the dreamof the single family house, and
we spread ourselves further andfurther out and we have to
drive out there to get to it andall of a sudden there's no
community and we can't evenafford the school.
It's a vacant lot for 20 yearsand the kids have all moved out
by the time there's funding fora school and et cetera, et
cetera, et cetera.
So I think the first thing thatwe have to understand is that if

(33:40):
we are going to be well rested,which is to say mentally well,
you, everybody deserves thestability of a roof over their
head, and then, ideally, thatstability comes in the context
of not just a four walls and aroof, but a community of support
to belong to.
Now I want to just call outBill you talked about the

(34:04):
attainable housing model thatyou have found stability in as
someone who slaves away as adedicated servant community, as
a reverend.
Attainable housing is anancient model right Like I'm
looking at my father here in theaudience and in the 1940s his

(34:30):
mother moved his family out ofthe tenements of the Lower East
Side of Manhattan into anattainable housing project built
by the United Garment Workersof America, the Women's United
Garment Workers of America, andthe basic idea Look for the
union label.

Ricardo (34:49):
Just look for.

Gian Carlo (34:53):
We're both unionized we're like yes, we get that and
the basic idea, right, is thatthere is a profit motive that
often drives the construction ofhousing, and if you're not
going to make some return onthat investment, why the heck
are you going to build it?
I mean, some of the mostdyed-in-the-wool capitalists
I've ever met.
When someone is building ahouse next to them, they're just

(35:13):
doing it to make money.
It's like how do you think mostof the housing gets built?
But with models like attainablehousing, you say, well, why
don't we take that profit motiveand collectivize it within a
beneficial, a benefits-focusedorganization?
And unions were amongst thefirst groups to step up and sort

(35:36):
of address housing crisesthrough that.
Attainable Homes Calgary wasestablished by the previous
mayor, dave Brancanier, when hestarted to understand that we
were potentially heading towardsa housing crisis and he
understood that there was anopportunity to do that, and I'm
delighted that that works.
But I think I want to just backout one more second and sort of

(35:58):
address the fight betweenwhether we're privileged to own
or whether we're slaves to rentor
whatever and say that you know.
I think that a city of onepoint, almost 6 million people
now, is big enough and complexenough to sort of accommodate a
multitude across a spectrum ofhousing.
And so I think what we need tobe focused on, as Calgarians, is

(36:20):
say it's okay, everyone shouldbe able to get into the property
game if they want to, but atthe same time, if you can't, or
you don't want to or you won't,there also has to be a fallback
position, and I think we have tolook at the housing market as a
or the housing spectrum as afull spectrum.

(36:42):
And there's a market side that,in Calgary, is remarkably
robust and it's, you know, themarket is responding by adding
more supply and that is keepingour housing costs low.
But then there's the non-marketside and Calgary is way behind
on the non-market side.
Most Canadian cities of any size, 6% of their housing market is

(37:04):
non-market and built by unionsor not-for-profits or civic
organizations or government.
In Calgary it's 3% and it'sshrinking because we're building
way more market housing thannon-market housing.
So I think, collectively, whatwe have to just say is we're a
big enough and complex enoughcity to allow for a multitude of

(37:28):
different housing, tenures,types, styles.
But what we really need to dois we need to roll up our
sleeves and bring that 3% andshrinking up to 15, 20% within a
generation or two, if we'regoing to all be able to just
rest.

Carolyn (37:47):
Well, and from a nonprofit point of view just to
kind of echo that sentiment toois like, you know, those
agencies that do that work, likeCalgary Housing and other
groups that work basically inthat sphere, right.
So our agency, the WorkersResource Center, help people
apply for assured income for theseverely handicapped,
counterpension plan, disability,which gives people a stable

(38:08):
income that allows them, youknow, hypothetically to
participate in housing and achance of reprieve.
But what I will say is I don'tknow how many of you are
familiar, but one of the recentchanges to the legislation under
Bill 39 was that the provincialgovernment got to approve every

(38:28):
funding grant over $250,000from the Alberta Law Foundation.
That's not public money.
The Alberta Law Foundationexists by the interest earned on
the lawyers' pooled trustaccounts and they use that money
to distribute grants againstjustice sectors in Alberta, and
not just legal aid clinics butother agencies such as mine.
So two-thirds of our funding isfrom them.

(38:50):
Now, despite that not beingpublic funds, all that approval
over $250,000 grants annuallyhave to go before the justice
minister.
So it's a way of skewing thegame.
So there are experts in thissector in Calgary housing in
supporting, you know, rest andopportunity for rights and

(39:11):
equity, rights and equity, butthey are also being severely
compromised by this sort ofempire system.
Because if you don't go alongkind of with the will, what will
the consequence be and it's notyour consequence for survival
of your own agency, it's.
You know the very high stakesthat happen to your clients when

(39:34):
these things happen, and so Ithink you know it becomes this
really systemic silencing eventwhere we can't say the things
that we would want to say aboutthe system we are.
Also, the nonprofit sector isin collapse, like you know.
Coming out, covid was awful fornonprofit sectors.

(39:56):
There was never.
We helped people fileemployment insurance.
So you can imagine when CERBhit, those were some very
interesting days, working yourkitchen table, wondering what's
happening.
News changes by the day andyou've got thousands of people
calling you looking for theseanswers.
Like so a lot of nonprofitswent through that to some degree
in COVID and we were like wewill just get through this,
things are going to be okay.

(40:18):
So you know we summoned all ofour bandwidth we could to patch
through this time and then whathappened was coming out of COVID
is the mental health crisisdidn't stop, affordability went
out of control, furtherpolarization of politics
happened and all of thatresulted in an increase in

(40:38):
complex needs of our mostvulnerable people, and at a
reduced funding rate, becausethey threw money at us for COVID
and then it peeled back right.
So all of a sudden you havenonprofits trying to close this
gap, calgary Housing the foodbank.
With less money, more complexneeds.

(40:59):
Well, then we have to pay ourpeople less.
Then you know they can'tsupport the mental health that
they need.
The clients are so difficult.
Making sure that you can stillexist is difficult, and at this
point I will tell you, assomeone who runs a nonprofit, it
feels like you're rolling aboulder up a mountain and you
don't actually see the end insight, and I think that's a
common feeling for our clients.

(41:20):
But my biggest thing is that Idon't want that to fail for our
clients.
But the other thing is my staffare unionized as well, so we
have a legal obligation and welive our values as an
organization.
We don't have burnout.
We honor your space.
I say you don't owe me yourwhole life at the expense of the

(41:42):
job that you do.
I ask that you perform the jobto the best of your ability when
you're here and that you takeyour time to restore yourself.
When it's done, I give them alarge degree of freedom and
choice and I let them conducttheir work the way that's
meaningful to them, in a waythat makes sense.
We can do that because of acollective agreement.

(42:04):
Because of that layer, I haveto say to my funders this is
what we pay, we are legallyobligated to do it, we are
legally obligated to providethese and there isn't really
much they can say about it.
And so just to kind of tootunion's horn along with Ricardo
is that, like I will tell you,right now, the nonprofit sector

(42:25):
is ripe for unionization 100%.
And that's not the be all end,all solution, I will say.
But what I will say is we areall in this together.
Everybody feels the same.
Like everybody feels a certaindegree of a lack of hope.
People feel alienation,isolation, you know, a less
sense of belonging.
So where you can find thosecollective spaces to have this

(42:49):
experience?
Or invite us to a podcast, eventhough I'll probably never get
invited back again because Ithrow privilege at it Over and
over again.

Joanne (42:55):
You will be invited Never again.

Carolyn (42:57):
But we need these collective spaces to talk about
these creative solutions,because if I just sit in my
office, you know, withexistential dread about the
system, it does nothing.
But when I go to union eventsand I sit on the Alberta
Federation of Labour ExecutiveCouncil, it gives us a chance to
bring some hope back.

(43:19):
Because you know what, when youhave community, that's a shared
responsibility and it's thebest place to collectivize, to
bring forward a different typeof institutional model or a
different empire, for lack ofbetter words.
Right, people always say thesystem is broke and I said no,
it's not.
The system's operating exactlyas it should.
The question is, for who?

(43:40):
so I think we really right thereyeah, so I always, but I always
like to echo it back the thespirit of this city in the 2013
floods.
That's what I always think ofwhen I think about the potential
for people in this city.
That's what I think about.
I think about millionaires andmy dad and having more
volunteers.
They know what to do is showingup to clean out people's homes
that weren't even theirs.

(44:01):
Where is that heart?
Because that's where we have tobe if we're going to
collectivize and implementchange and give people the
permission to have humanity andto have rest.
That is what we need.

Ricardo (44:12):
It's interesting.
You say like it's notinteresting at all.
The way you treat your staff isa model, not just because of
the fact that you're legallyobligated to do so with a
collective agreement.
It's just the right thing to do, Right?
So I mean, in thenot-for-profit and even in the
social work I don't want to sayindustry, but the social work
field it's the right thing to do, right thing to do.

(44:37):
And the fact that we, that wehave to.
You know, a wise man was toldonce told me that every company
or or business or ororganization deserves the union
that that comes into thatworkplace because, uh, and every
union deserves the company thatthey are representing.
Right.
And so we do represent somenot-for-profits at UFCW, and one
being a school for specialneeds children and and uh,
people who provide, uh, peoplewho provide in-house services to

(44:59):
disabled people as well.
And the thing we always hear atthe bargaining table, especially
in long-term care and assistedand seniors living, think about
the clients.
What about the clients?
Okay, well, that's great, butyou're asking me to work 16-hour
days and you're asking me towork more with less, and
somebody goes and gets injuredthemselves in wcb.
We don't get more help with aninjured person.
We just get the same amount ofhours with an injured person and

(45:22):
so my workload doubles, likeit's just non-stop.
And you know, when we havethese models especially in
alberta and uh, where you havefor-profit companies running
these operations and saying,well, think about the clients.
Well, you're not thinking aboutthe clients, right?
Because in long-term carethere's a company, Aged Care and
Medicine Hat that I bargainedfor just last year, this year,

(45:43):
and the clients buy their ownsoap and shampoo and toiletries,
right?
And you know people will havediabetes and they still get big
pieces of cake with icing on itbecause this is what the budget
allows for, right?
When we talk about housing andyou know, Giancarlo, you talked
about the level, the amount ofimmigration we've had come into

(46:04):
the city we can't forget theopportunity and the fight for
rest and how it's affected inthe context and lens of racism,
because immigrant families cometo this province with less.
They generally and historicallyand currently earn less than

(46:24):
people who were born here in StLouis and other Tim Hortons.
So Staffs, all that, but is theprovince of Alberta really the
right, the right body to tomanage immigration and new
Canadians?
You know, there's three thingsI can think of off the bat that
we can do in Alberta to fix thelives of people here right now.
Energy rates, electricity, water, heat right, that's taking up

(46:49):
like $300 a month for somepeople when you're earning $15
an hour, is not you know?
Insurance rates okay, Insurancerates are going up for
everybody, or some people whenyou're earning $15 an hour, is
not you know?
Insurance rates Okay, Insurancerates are going up for
everybody.
Buses pay insurance, you know,and I think ATU had said that
the cost of a bus fare is stillonly covering about 60% of the

(47:11):
cost of actually operatingtransit in Calgary.
Right, and so.

Gian Carlo (47:13):
It's actually probably around 40%.
Oh shit, oh shit.

Joanne (47:17):
Oh shit.

Carolyn (47:20):
I wasn't the first one.
I'm so excited.

Ricardo (47:23):
So these costs keep going up and so we have this
conundrum where we need to keeptransit affordable so people who
can't afford a car can stillafford to get to work right.
And the third thing is whatwe've been talking about when it
comes to housing is obviousrent control.
Right, like the province ofOntario has rent control, but
only grandfathered for housesbuilt in a certain so all these

(47:44):
massive condos that are beingbuilt and being rented out, they
have no rent control on them.
So you force people with lowerincomes to go into less safe and
maintain housing because therent control.
People are saying, well, wecan't afford to fix it because
we can't afford to raise therent to cover the cost.

Gian Carlo (48:01):
So let me jump in on rent control, because this is
sort of a political third railconversation, and I will say
that I think when you starttalking about rent control, you
have to be very clear about whatgeneration of rent control
you're talking about, becauseyou're going to find a group of
people who want to have a veryblack and white conversation,

(48:24):
and so the black and whiteconversation.
And again I'm looking at myparents here in the audience,
who spent six months of theiryear in the Upper West Side of
Manhattan in the apartment thatthey moved into 59 years ago
when they got married, andthey're in a rent-stabilized
environment.
Rent stabilization is a secondor third generation of rent
control.
But what happens when you haverent control in places like New

(48:46):
York City had rent control forgenerations is it was short-term
gain for the people who got toenjoy rent control, but it was
long-term pain for thesubsequent generations.
And I think about the UpperWest Side of Manhattan, which
was a bastion of middle classand now it is hyper-gentrified

(49:06):
and, except for elderly folkswho are holding on to a rent
stabilized situation, the rentsare fantastically out of control
.
I'll just speak in roundnumbers.
My parents pay around $2,000 amonth for their apartment and
the apartment Three now.
Three now because of rentstabilization, but on the open

(49:29):
market tenants who have left andapartments that have opened up
to total market forces they'repaying $8,000 to $9,000 a month.
Right, and so like who canafford that?
But the reality is that if thefirst generations of rent
control and there are stories ofpeople who, like, lived in

(49:51):
20-room apartments overlookingCentral Park West and we're
paying 300 bucks, you know,period was that if developers
can't make money building houses, they won't build houses, and
if you just implement a blanketrent control, they're not going
to be able to afford to do that.

(50:11):
So I think when we talk about,and when you're talking to
conservatives, I mean we triedto talk as part of our
conversation about the housingcrisis in the city of Calgary.
We wanted to have an adultconversation about rent control
and it was very clear that youknow more conservative forces

(50:32):
and the province were veryinterested in shutting that down
and having a very black andwhite conversation.
And the reality is that ifprices are going up, there is a
balance to be struck between thecost that the landlord is
facing, the cost that the tenantis facing and the fact that the

(50:55):
landlord gets increased equity,because as prices go up,
arguably the cost of their assetis going up, and so there has
to be some way to shield thetenant from the total cost and
bite into the asset growth toshield cost.

Carolyn (51:15):
Raise wages.
I think that's what you do,okay.

Gian Carlo (51:18):
But that's the other side of the equation, right?
So I mean, I think the answerto affordability, which is
ultimately the answer to rest,is there is no one answer.
It's we have to do everythingand we have to have very
thoughtful and nuancedconversations about every
element.

(51:38):
Every arrow in the quiver hasto be thoughtfully drawn and
shot.
I think you're right.

Ricardo (51:42):
We have to do everything, but I also think
that we're far behind.
We have to catch up.
We have to do the simple smallthings to catch up.
Jim Stanford, who was theeconomist for Unifor for many
years, told us at UFCW thatbecause, remember, safeway
rolled back everyone's wages6.5%, they need 5% and 5 and 5

(52:04):
retroactively just to keep upwith the cost of inflation now,
let alone what we're able tonegotiate going forward.
So I mean it's nice for PremierSmith to get up on a stand and
say, oh, we're offering teachers12% over three years.
Cool, what happened to theeight years they got?

Gian Carlo (52:17):
nothing Right and what happened to the class size
and all the other things thatare contributing to?

Carolyn (52:24):
So we have to catch up and yeah, but who's the we right
Like this is my always question, right?

Ricardo (52:29):
Like who's?

Bill (52:30):
the we.

Carolyn (52:30):
And what are those driving forces that are going to
do that?

Bill (52:34):
So I am aware of time.
I'm actually going to giveJoanne the last word here, but
first I just want to two things.
When we come back, I want us totalk about the hopeful side of
this conversation.
Okay, you painted the bleakpicture.
But I do want to flag 300%increase was what you flagged
right at the beginning, Ricardo.

(52:54):
20% increase in calls 11,000calls a year was what you
flagged at the beginning.
Again, a research study from2024 that showed that over 50%
of people experience burnout andthat two-thirds of them are
more burnt out that year thanthey were the year before.

(53:14):
Right that it is getting worse,not better.
We've talked a lot about marketfactors and wages and all that
kind of stuff.
Carolyn, you also mentionedthat in a lot of cases, even the
support structures that existwithin benefits and insurance
and that kind of stuff thatpeople are offered as a part of
their compensation for the workthat they do is inadequate and

(53:37):
unable to actually weather thedemand in order to help keep
people well.
So before we go to intermission, I will have one more question,
actually before we do that.
But first off, Joanne, talkabout the spiritual toll of all
of this, because that is a hugepart of really what it comes
down to, right, when all of themoney and everything is taken

(54:00):
out of the equation and we justtalk about the spiritual toll.

Joanne (54:04):
You know, as Christians we believe that God set a
blueprint for life and I wasthinking at the very beginning,
like the 23rd Psalm, you know,the Lord is my shepherd.
I shall not want he leadeth mebeside.
He makes me to lie down ingreen pastures, he leads me to
side still waters.
He restores my soul.
Sorry for the gendered languagearound God, but built into the

(54:31):
human code is true rest, truerest, which is spiritual rest.
We don't have those avenues.
I was thinking in all thisconversation that you know the
Hebrew people, the code that Godgave them included a reset.

(54:55):
Right Every seven years therewould be kind of a reset.
Fields were fallow.
And then there was the year ofthe Jubilee, which unfortunately
there's no evidence it was everpracticed.
But the idea at the year of theJubilee was everything goes
back to the way it was at thebeginning.
If you were a slave, you werefree.
If you bought land from anothertribe, all the lands went back.

(55:18):
There was a great reset and inthat reset was the hope that you
could begin again.
I think after COVID we needed areset that we never got and we
needed space to say this is ourfallow year and we never took it
.
The spiritual life says therhythms of existence around

(55:40):
seasons, for instance, whichhappens to be Sunday's sermon,
but the rhythm of existencearound seasons always has a
wintertime where you don't haveto put out the same as you do
other seasons.
We need that time, we need thatspace, but we also need that

(56:01):
orientation.
Again, the empire says all youhave to sell me is your labor
and your body, and what are yougoing to do for that?
And the spiritual life says weare first and foremost humans
who are worthy and deserving ofdignity, and that is the ground

(56:21):
level that we work from All ourhousing policies.
Everything we do should be howcan we promote human flourishing
?
And if there's money to be madein that, you know, god bless,
you Make some money, but thebaseline is human flourishing,
our housing policies, ourpolitics, our labor practices.

(56:43):
Human flourishing, and not justfor the privileged, for
everyone.
That's the spiritual responseto these kinds of questions.

Bill (56:59):
Wow, we silenced the panel with that.

Joanne (57:01):
Well, they know that's pretty cool, All right.

Bill (57:03):
So my question I thought that was the last word, I was
sure someone was going to havesome kind of like an amen or
something coming up.
So easy question, we're justgoing to.
I'll start with Ricardo, we'llwork our way down and then we'll
go straight into theintermission.
Um, and it's easy question,we're just going to.
I'll start with Ricardo, we'llwork our way down and then we'll
go straight into theintermission.
And it's just a more kind of apersonal thing, because I'm
curious anytime you get peoplearound the table, what's one way

(57:24):
that you personally resist thegrind in your own life?
What's one thing you do thathelps you reclaim Real rest?

Ricardo (57:34):
I don't have, I don't know, I always say to myself how
did you enjoy your vacation?
No, I slept a lot, I slept.
I enjoy reading, but I found,like even post COVID, when you
stared at a screen so much thatI couldn't, the burnout was
setting in where I couldn'tfocus on reading a book.
I couldn't even get through apage without my brain starting

(57:57):
to jumble.
So audio books has been mything, and podcasts too, right.
I always enjoy when I get thenotice from Patreon saying Brad
Drown has released the podcastepisode.
I get to listen to myself.
But like podcasts and audiobooks for sure right now aside
from my music, right, becausemusic is back and I'm happy with
that.

Carolyn (58:18):
I force myself too.
So I'm very ethically pluggedinto the work I do and I have a
great degree of freedom, whichwe can talk about.
Hope in the next one.
I I have some thoughts on.
I have thoughts on everything,but, um, what I've actually had
to do is I take days off and Imake my staff know that I'm
taking days off to do nothing.
Um, I'm like i'm'm taking awellness day.
I'm just not up for things.

(58:38):
So I forced myself to do thatbecause I need to normalize to
my team that it's okay if youcan't operate at your entire
capacity in a time that doesn'tallow us to it's an interesting
question to ask because I thinkwhen you're an elected official,

(59:01):
you are in a term of serviceand it's very hard to not be
working Like.

Gian Carlo (59:07):
when I'm standing in the checkout counter, I'm
talking about politics to myneighbors.
When I'm walking my dog at thedog park, I'm talking about
politics to my neighbors.
When I'm walking my dog at thedog park, I'm talking about
politics to my neighbors.
I would say for me right now mymoments of rest are the creative
act of preparing food for myfamily.
And I sort of find and I camefrom a design background and for

(59:28):
the last 15 years I haven'tdesigned anything, I've just
blabbed at people about theirdesigns and their work, just
blabbed at people about theirdesigns and their work.
And so cooking is a bigcreative outlet for me and
preparing food for the family.

(59:49):
And then I'd say the other thingis I like to incorporate disc
golf into my dog walks to getout into the forest and enjoy
nature time, forest bathe, whilechasing plastic discs.

Joanne (01:00:02):
My son's a big disc-o, his partner.
I allow frivolity to enter mylife to do frivolous things and
that's important to me.
I like binge-watching Britisheverybody knows this by now
British procedurals and thingslike that and I there's so many

(01:00:27):
People I find that even in theirdowntime they find a way to
promote their occupation Do youknow what I mean.
They're always working towards.
How can I do this?
And I try to allow myself tojust not think about being a
minister and just being a realperson.
That's really important.

Ricardo (01:00:48):
Ministers are real people too, Joanne.

Joanne (01:00:50):
Yeah important.

Gian Carlo (01:00:59):
I imagine being a minister is a lot like being an
elected official.

Joanne (01:01:00):
You're always working when you're in community.
I live on the other end of thecity from the churches that I
serve, so I don't run into themin the grocery store.

Carolyn (01:01:05):
Was that a strategic decision?

Joanne (01:01:07):
It was a decision made during COVID and now with
Glenmore Trail, I'm regrettingit every day.
It's under construction always.
But the other thing for me isand I haven't had my radium
experience yet this year, radiumbeing radium, hot springs, not
the you know, mineral orwhatever that will make me sick.

It's radon, yeah, radon, is there also radium?

Carolyn (01:01:33):
Oh sorry.

Joanne (01:01:34):
I'm tired.
Oh, I'm burnt out, but holidaysare really important.
Went to Newfoundland right andjust being in St John's and you
know enjoying that space Like Ican put things on the shelf.
I have practiced putting thingson the shelf so that they don't
preoccupy my life and that'show I stay sane.

(01:01:57):
What about you, bill?
Speak into the mic clearly.

Bill (01:02:05):
I feel so judged All right .
So I mean, in all honesty, forme, running, and I would say
that there are two sort of.
I would not say that trainingfor running would be my rest,
because training for running hasalways been and will continue
to be for a long time, work inthe true sense of the word.

(01:02:28):
But, like tomorrow morning, Iwill get up at 6 am, I will go
to the Calgary Police Classicthat is happening over at Shaw
Millennium Park and I will runand it will be like it will be
the race and I am a runner, nota racer.
But I will still start, I willfinish, you'll face whatever it
is you face on the track, on theway there, on the track, on the

(01:02:54):
way there, and the moments ofactually getting to the start
line and running are kind of themoments that I build up all of
the work towards.
So that's when I am running.
It is restful, it islife-giving, it is refilling and
renewing and always leads to asense of having done something
right.
For me, the greatest exhaustionis in the unfinished work.

(01:03:16):
So to be able to say I startedand I finished, there's a
profound amount of just like boxticked I can move on right, so
yeah, so with that, we are goingto take a brief intermission
and we will return for thehopeful half of the conversation

(01:03:37):
in just a short while here.
So don't go anywhere, we willbe right back and welcome back

(01:03:59):
to the second half of ourpodcast.
We need to be a little bit morehopeful, so I want to begin
right here.
The book of Genesis, first bookin the Hebrew Scriptures, tells
us that God rests right from thevery beginning, not out of
exhaustion, but to weave restinto creation itself.
And in Exodus and Deuteronomy,sabbath is commanded as an act
of justice.
Even servants and strangers andanimals are included in that

(01:04:23):
command.
So I wonder how Sabbath andJubilee and periods of reset and
fallowness and seasonsincluding the winter, how all of
that actually widens ourimagination of how we can change
our culture of the grind and Iwill open it to anyone who wants

(01:04:46):
to start with that but the ideathat rest can be mandated as a
part of the rhythm of life.

Well, I'm going to jump in.
And from a city buildingperspective, in the 1800s, as we
urbanized and moved intofactories and had no labor
standards and people weregetting ground up and spit out
and children were laboring andstuff like that, there was a

(01:05:17):
huge movement as we were packinginto cities to make cities more
beautiful.
The City Beautiful Movement anddirectly tied to the City
Beautiful Movement was the ideaof recreation being an essential
part, and that's where we see alot of the beginnings of a
parks and culture.
Parks and recreation culturestart to emerge as part of city
life.
And when you think about it,recreation is literally about

(01:05:38):
recreating yourself and therewas the belief that time spent
in parks, time spent playingsports time was essential.
And since the inception of thecity of Calgary we have had a
recreation department that hasprovided, at very good cost, a
whole suite of recreationopportunities to people.

(01:06:00):
And so I think that urban lifeis about, or life in, a
civilization, and the wordcivilization and the word city
are very etymologically linked.
It comes with a series of dealsand some of it is safety, some
of it is a roof over your headin community.

(01:06:20):
But I think an important partof that also is recreation and
the ability to breathe andrecreate yourself and commune
with nature and commune incommunity in leisurely pursuits.

Joanne (01:06:38):
I was in Mexico City once a long time ago and on.
Sunday I think it was, the parkwas completely full of people
blankets, picnics, everythingyou know.
The park was the place thatthey went um.
It really struck me that howimportant those green spaces are

(01:06:59):
, particularly in veryovercrowded cities where
everyone lives in small spaces.

So I appreciate that about calgary it's a tale of
two cities again.

Ricardo (01:07:17):
I could be the monosyllabic union thug that
slams his fist on the table andsays stronger rights for the
working class.
But I think it starts earlierthan that in our youth, and what
we invest in our youth,recreation and community and
beautiful cities is a greatthing, but I also think a strong

(01:07:37):
funding base for the arts isimportant as well, because in
order to find value in the restthat you receive, rest is more
than just sleep, like we've saidin the first half.
But if we can find music orpainting or even writing as a
means to escape reality and usethat imagination in our brains,

(01:08:01):
then it'll help a lot.
And I've seen over the years adecline in the amount of funding
and resource being allotted toschools for instrumentation and
for music and music programs andarts and the arts in general
right, and not only that, butit's resulted in a very and Anne

(01:08:27):
just told me you could watchmusic everyday here in the city
if you could afford it, butpeople aren't going because
people don't know and peopledon't have appreciation for
classical music and visiting artgalleries and putting into that
system.
And now we have a generation ofpeople that, like, don't even

(01:08:48):
know the arts and there's asmall group of them that are,
that are considered like, um,leftists, really right, when
they're just doing creativity.
So I I appreciate completelythat, uh, it's hopeful if we can
invest in in early ages, uh,for kids to understand, um, even
just the original concepts ofthe labor movement of eight,

(01:09:09):
eight and eight.
You know, eight hours of rest,eight hours of work and eight
hours of work and eight hours offree time, and hold that dear,
then we can survive.
I will say one last thing inthe sense of youth, especially
given the provincialgovernment's statement today
about ending the temporaryforeign worker program.
And you know, if they're takingcontrol of immigration, then

(01:09:29):
more youth people will have jobs.
There are recent statistics thatshow that young people, if they
are able to find work, are veryoften accepting lower salaries
or sacrificing lower salaries inexchange for a more robust
benefit plan, especially onethat supports mental health and
higher caps, or even unlimitedmental health supports, dental

(01:09:53):
plans, pension plans.
So we're seeing now aresurgence where we've had
pension plans diminished toalmost negligible.
With the advent of RRSPs anddefined contribution pension
plans, people are saying, well,I want to retire one day.
I don't want to work till I die, right.
So it's not going to be goodfor the government to just cut

(01:10:15):
immigration out and think thatthe youth are going to jump into
the jobs and not demand betterbecause they know better.
They've seen the mental tollthat has taken on on their
parents and I'm talking aboutthe youth that are coming
through junior, high and highschool right now.
Right, and in college they'veseen the total ticket on their
parents.
Their parents are working twojobs and lacking a family life.
So many kids don't know how tocook or clean or even budget a

(01:10:39):
book, and they will demandbetter and once again the doors
will open for immigration.
The immigrants will come andsay we want better too.
It's inevitable, really is whatit is, and we have to start
investing young and early.

Bill (01:10:54):
I do feel obliged to at least nuance one thing that you
did say, in that that the artsare not necessarily the means by
which you escape real life, butperhaps that you might be able
to reimagine real life as wellthrough the arts.
Ah, that's true.

Joanne (01:11:08):
Or process real life, or process real life through the
arts.
That's what creative arts.

Ricardo (01:11:12):
Are that's true?
Yeah, absolutely.

Bill (01:11:14):
Not as a means of escape or disengagement from it.
And again, like, I'll agreewith most of it.
We actually just went to.
My daughter just started highschool and we went to meet the
teacher last night and had afascinating conversation with
one teacher that we met whotalked a lot about the
expectations in the classroom.
If you miss the day that a labhappens, there is no opportunity

(01:11:37):
to catch up or redo or findanother time.
So the question was sort oflike what if you're sick?
Well, if you're sick and youmiss the lab too bad, you've
missed the opportunity.
You will not be able tocomplete that part of the
assessment.
I had a whole kind ofconversation right there in the
moment around, like, let me beclear, if my child is sick, the
only message I want them tounderstand is that you do not

(01:11:59):
owe your teacher your attendancein class for a lab.
Your health and your wellnessmatters more.
And the teacher said, fairenough, but there's a cost to
that.
And I went.
This is actually the problemright now.
Right, and certainly you know Igrew up with workaholic parents.
I learned well from them and atthe same time, like I had a

(01:12:22):
junior high kid stay home todayfor a mental health day, because
she's been 14 straight daysbetween camps and school and
everything else and we just kindof said, like who cares,
nothing's going to happen on aFriday anyway, stay home, right.
So there is still it's almost aclash, I think, right now of
the two cultures still happening.
And again, the idea even thateven the idea that kids in

(01:12:46):
junior, high and high school youknow, reaching that age of
being employable are hungeringfor like committed jobs, I think
is a bit of a stretch right now.

Carolyn (01:13:00):
Well, they want their employer to care about them the
way that they expect them tocare about the job and I think
that that's the bigger part ofit is that the message I always
say to my staff is you don't oweme your whole life for this job
.
The message I always say to mystaff is you don't owe me your
whole life for this job.
And I think to reorient it backto sort of rest is that rest
doesn't necessarily have to beprecluded by arts or picnics or

(01:13:21):
couch Rest can sometimes just bethat.

Bill (01:13:24):
Hey.

Carolyn (01:13:24):
I'm going to stay in bed until I'm ready to get out,
and that time could be, you know, anytime.

Ricardo (01:13:29):
Isn't that so nice?
I know, but I hate to do it.

Carolyn (01:13:31):
I wait till I do it too late, and then it's like it's a
need.
It's not a want.
But I think the bigger partabout it, too, is that rest and
resetting allows people to freetheir brain out of survival mode
and allows them to accesshigher faculties of thinking
when they're recharged to do so.

(01:13:56):
So I think there's a businesscase to be made here, if one has
to be made, but I think what itis is that giving people that
actual time to unplug from theircomputer at night and not
expect to answer emails, and tohave those days of rest, allow
your people to come back to theworkplace with the ability to
innovate, with the ability towork creatively with each other,
with the ability to manage sortof all the onslaught of things

(01:14:17):
that come at us at any givenpoint in the day.
But what it also does too is, Ithink, that when you invest in
your people, you care about yourpeople.
So many times I haveconversations I say now's not
the time for max output.
Life happens and we don't getto choose when that happens, and
so I get trust and as a resultof this trust, reciprocity that

(01:14:41):
we have together, people feelpermission to take rest and in
return, wow, do they give youthe best of themselves, in the
way that if you care andinvested in somebody.
They're going to care andinvest in what?
you're doing and so, at a verybase term, like you can talk
about terms of like practicalthings, like days, but what
we're really talking about islike giving people the

(01:15:04):
permission to be human, holdingthat space for them when they
need it, and then having thatreciprocity of trust and like I
can tell you with my team like,wow, that investment in people.
You know people say, oh, theyget so many benefits yeah, but I
get so many benefits from that.
Like it's not, you know, havingsomeone take one sick day

(01:15:24):
versus who cares, it'sirrelevant.
You want people to be well.
It's not predicated on a timeschedule and that's where trust,
innovation and real growthcomes from.

I think, certainly with my agency, that's been the
case is this a work hardenvironment or is this a take

(01:15:56):
care of yourself environment inthe context of school?
And I think that that's takingplace in a larger context
throughout society and I thinkCOVID brought a lot of this to
its head.
As I look out at the world, Iwas starting to freak out about
the advent of AI and increasedautomation and I'm thinking to
myself is there any way that jobcreation is going to outpace

(01:16:19):
job destruction in an age ofunfettered AI and automation?
And the answer is no.
And so what's the answer?
The answer has to be some kindof universal basic income.
And how are we going to getthere?
And I'm thinking this is 20years away.
And then when COVID came, all ofa sudden, it was like a preview
of coming attractions.
And, you know, government wentdigital very quickly and I was

(01:16:45):
sitting in the comfort of my youknow, well-appointed,
middle-class housing, working insafety.
And then there were people whowe came to very quickly
understand were essentialworkers, who were out on the
front lines keeping societygoing, whether they were
stocking grocery shelves orwhether they were building

(01:17:05):
things or fixing things andputting themselves very much in
harm's way.
And then there was an entireother portion of the society
that were just instantlyunemployed.

Bill (01:17:17):
Well, but even the one thing I will say, what I think
people learned very early aswell was that, after sort of
considering the needs of thosefrontline workers that were kind
of indispensable and couldn'tsit at home and be unemployed I
mean, my wife was one of theones that was in the childcare

(01:17:37):
center that had to stay open sothat the essential service
people could bring their kids tohave childcare, so that they
could go and do their essentialservices right, and the
interconnectedness of just howmany people were actually
involved in the mutuality ofeverybody being able to serve
well and work well and do it ina way that they were supported

(01:17:59):
and their needs were being metat the same time as trying to
meet the needs of others right.
There was such a web of peoplethat were involved in just sort
of holding even that baselinetogether to make it work right.

I think what COVID, the lesson of COVID, is that
life is fundamentally a teamsport, and I think what has
ensued since then is thecognitive dissidence of so many
people who believe that everyman's an island, and you're a
rugged individualist and you'repulling yourself up by your
bootstraps.
That did not fit well withCOVID, and so I think a lot of

(01:18:35):
the rejection of the collectiveaction that we needed to take to
keep each other safe was thecognitive dissonance of that
just not fitting with thatindividualistic worldview that
seems to dominate.
And I would say that we arestill very much engaged in that

(01:18:56):
battle right now, and I thinkeveryone who sits around this
podcast table is certainly onone side of that fight, but it
is something that we have toacknowledge is probably driving
so much of the polarization thatwe see today.

Carolyn (01:19:13):
I think it's survival.
Honestly, I really do.
I think when you're looking atsky-high costs and rollbacks of
wages and not resolving theissues that you know people lost
family members during COVID andcouldn't see them at the
hospital, like there's so manyafter effects of what happened
there, and so polarizationnaturally occurs when you can't
access the higher faculties ofyour thinking because you're

(01:19:33):
mired down in how you getthrough a day.
So I don't even.
I don't even.
I mean I think that cognitivedissonance does happen as a
result, but I actually thinkit's a more base element than
that.
I think it's.
I don't begrudge people fordoing the best they can at a
time when I don't have to befaced with the choice of how I

(01:19:55):
physically pay bills, like everysingle day, or make the
decision at the grocery storehow to feed my family of four,
like that's not a problem that Ihave, but it's a very real
problem for a lot of peopleright now, and so I don't know.
I think when people are stuckin survival mode and they have
no hope, um, that's when thosethings happen.

Joanne (01:20:17):
The thing is about that pressure, right.
Like when we talk aboutRiccardo.
You were talking about youngpeople and young people not
going to put up with that.
Um, let's see if that's thecase if they can't buy food,
let's see if that's the case ifthey can't buy food.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, the pressures of lifesometimes dictate what you are

(01:20:37):
willing to put up with, andthat's the sad thing.
Like, as much as we recognized,oh yeah, they're essential
workers and they're frontlineworkers.
We still pay the minimum wage.

Carolyn (01:20:47):
Well, and even look at, like the legislative systems
right, like we love to say, likepeople are like well, they
legally can't do that at work,it's like okay, but if they do,
like if you file a human rightscomplaint, they can't
technically file you, fire youfor it, but they'll find another
way.
The average human rightscomplaint takes two to three
years to resolve and the averagesettlement is like $7,000.
It does nothing to address thefact that if you're earning

(01:21:08):
$60,000 a year and then all of asudden you're on EI, if you're
lucky to get, they don't try tomake example out of you by
terminating with cause, like soyou know that's.
The thing is that there'sthere's very real situations
where people are forced to dothings that they don't want to
do because that system exists.
Now I I hope we can find a hope, a hopeful scenario out of this

(01:21:29):
the next little while.

Joanne (01:21:35):
I mean, isn't it a revolution hopefully not a
bloody one where people just saywe are in this together and we
have to in some way recognizethat this individualism that we
worship in our culture hasharmed us and that we are better
together if we work together,if we stand up for each other?
You know, if things like, forinstance, paternity leave for

(01:22:01):
new fathers wasn't seen as ablack mark, if you take it like,
if everyone insisted that thisis like, if we insist we need to
rest together, like this is theinteresting thing about Sundays
, right?
Because in many provincesSunday was called the Lord's Day
Act, including Alberta.
The case that went to theSupreme Court of Canada was from

(01:22:21):
Big M Drubmark in Alberta andit was struck down.
Because you can't make peoplerest on the seventh day, because
God told us to the Lord's DayAct, ontario's law was a labor
law, not a Lord's Day Act.
It was not struck down.
And when I went out to live inOntario and the stores were
still closed on Sunday, that wasan amazing thing to me.

(01:22:43):
Do you know the only thing thatcould be almost like garden
shops or tourist things?
Because it was a labor law,because they insisted that we
need to rest together and thereis value in mandating true rest
In us as a culture, saying weneed this as a culture and I'm

(01:23:06):
not going to get ahead byworking all the time so that the
person who doesn't work 60hours a week because of the
other things in their life isnot disadvantaged because of
that.
Do you know?
We need to say I'm going towork 40 hours even though I can
do 60, because I want you to beable to work 40 hours too.
Or I'm going to take the mentalhealth break that I need

(01:23:28):
because I want you to be able totake that break too.
We got to think of thiscollectively more.
It is not us against the world,it is or me against the world.
It's us creating the world inwhich we want to exist.

Bill (01:23:44):
Imagining reality or reimagining reality right.

Ricardo (01:23:47):
And I think that we talked in this hopeful part of
our podcast.

Joanne (01:23:52):
I hope you're getting that folks.
I hope that hope is reallycoming through About business
and operation and legislativebodies.

Ricardo (01:24:00):
And I think that the farce of trickle-down economics
has failed us and business hasessentially failed us in the
pursuit of profits.
Hopeful, and when we when Igrew up, at least going through
school in the sense that ifbusinesses were getting too out
of control in one way,legislative bodies would help us

(01:24:20):
in the other way to ensure thatthere was a balance in society.
But now we're getting to thepoint now where even legislative
bodies are starting to not workin our favor either.
And so I always think when Isay that the young people are
going to change, then that'swhere the change is going to
happen.
You know, I always think ofTommy Douglas.
And why vote in cats when youcan vote in mice?

(01:24:42):
Right.
And people are going to say tothemselves, like, how do I make
it better?
Right.
And if the government's notgoing to help me, and if the
person I work for or the peopleor the company that I work for,
like, where can I go?
And so if quitting your job isimpossible because you get to
pay a rent and pay it, and youknow, then the voting booth is
the next place to do it.

Carolyn (01:25:03):
But we have to show them that, like we can't just
say this is going to be on themThey've been saying that forever
.
Like the reality is is, thepeople that fight in this moment
, right now, are the ones thathave to show them how to do it
like if a kid doesn't know howto cook, they're not going to
figure out how to motivate agroup to vote, and they're like
the on, like president groupthat shows up.
So what I'm saying is like,show them, believe in them,

(01:25:26):
trust them and honor them.
It's the same with, and theywill show that to you because
they want to make you proud,because you're proud of what
they're doing.

Bill (01:25:37):
But I think I'm also going to say that at a foundational
level, because it was actuallyyou, carolyn, that pointed to
the floods right 2013, thefloods here in Calgary, right, I
would say as well, a lot of thelessons, at least through the
early stages of COVID, beforeyou know, whatever you want to
call the grand reemergence waslike.

(01:25:57):
We've seen instances where itisn't just young people who are
either learning or figuring itout, or relearning or
remembering even right right,that out of nowhere, suddenly
there are these glimpses, thesemoments of true humanity that
just emerge in the midst ofcrisis, right.
What actually needs to happen,I think, in my mind, is we need

(01:26:19):
to figure out how to start doingit before the crisis hits.
Right.
How can this just become thethe inoculation?

against crisis Right .

Bill (01:26:27):
So that it never gets there because spoiler alert.
If you do it before it happens,so that it never gets there,
because spoiler alert, if you doit before it happens, it won't
happen right.
If you do the humanity thingbefore the crisis hits, the
crisis will actually be avertedright, and that's not up to the
next generation to do that,because we already know how to
do that and we've demonstratedit.

Carolyn (01:26:52):
What we haven't demonstrated is long-term
capacity to sustain it as asociety.
Well, and to echo that too, Ithink what it actually is is
idealism.
We have to believe that there'sa better world for everybody
here, and we have to be bold andunapologetic in how we stand up
for that, and I think that'sthe answer I always like to use.
Union people and Ricardo willknow they love to say past
practice, right?
Oh well, let's do it this way.
Well, past practice.

(01:27:12):
And well, let's do it this way.
We'll pass practice.
And my response is well,thinking like that never put
anyone on the moon.
So, like do we actually want tocreate a system of idealism and
hope for everybody, or do wewant to use some watered down
version because we don't want torock the boat and take the risk
?

Bill (01:27:25):
yeah, that's not limited to union language.
In church we call that.
That's not how we've alwaysdone it.
Oh, okay, sure, yeah, I'm sure,I'm sure everybody here has
versions of that.

Carolyn (01:27:33):
But what I'm saying is like I my in motivating
movements, like that's what I'mabout.
I'm about long game andpromoting the motivation of
movements.
How do I do that?
I don't point to politicalideology, I point to an ideal
and I point to belief system inyou values, because what's the
alternative?
So, like, if we're not going tocreate a new space right now,
one's going to be created for usand and that's where you have

(01:27:54):
to decide, where you want toshow up in that and where you
can gift your most talents.
And and that's like what I'm,what I'm carrying right now is
that I'm here to build amovement.
I'm not here to to put my egointo it, and I think we got to
put our egos aside and thinkabout what's the longer term
humanity really of this?

Joanne (01:28:13):
You have to be able to cast a vision and then enroll
people in it.
That's what they tell us inchurch land you know, and the
problem with our time right nowis there's so much to point to
the fear you know, likeGiancarlo you were talking about
in the march towards fascism,we're like at box six or

(01:28:34):
something like that.

Six of seven, everybody, six of seven.

Joanne (01:28:38):
I think that was off of the podcast.

Oh, that was off the podcast, Okay, well maybe
that's another.

Carolyn (01:28:42):
Yeah, that was not on camera, but we only have 30 days
left.
Yeah, that's right.
So what does it matter?

Joanne (01:28:48):
So what I'm saying is that it's not enough to say bad
them Empire, bad, you know.
You have to be able to cast avision of a different world and
I think that's you know.
Like in Churchland we talkabout the new heaven and the new
earth and all the Hebrewprophets would talk about.
There will be a time where thelion will lie with the lamb and

(01:29:09):
you know we'll pound our swordsinto plowshares.
And keeping before you thathope of that, like there is a
vision of what the world couldbe, not just we don't like it,
the believe it and let go of thevalues of the empire which have

(01:29:34):
sort of served some people isis essential, essential.
Punching through with a youknow you were the one who
earlier said Jack Layton's.
You know hope is better thanfear.

Carolyn (01:29:48):
Yeah, Courage is better than yeah.

Joanne (01:29:50):
Yeah, and you know, like the Obama thing, right, Not
that I could vote for him, butit was.
I mean I could if I was acitizen.
Let me make that clear.

Bill (01:30:00):
I would have.

Joanne (01:30:02):
I would have.
But you know, the whole thingwas hope, right, hope, hope, yes
, we can Hope, yes, we can Hope,yes, we can.
Well, you know, there was somedisappointment in there, but
there was also this dream.
There was a dream.
For just a moment it got dashedwith the one whose name shall
not be spoken.

Carolyn (01:30:21):
But we just needed more messengers.
Like really.

Well, I think we also need action towards that
vision.
We need to identify that visionand then we need to identify
how you get there from here.
But it starts with the visionand you need that.
That's an essential part of theprocess.
But I do think that you know, Iagree with what you said
earlier, carolyn, when you werelike when you called BS on my
saying it's like this clash ofworldviews and it's just

(01:30:49):
day-to-day survival that'smotivating.
I think it can be both.
I think it absolutely can beboth.
And the story that people tellthemselves and the North Star
that they affix themselves to,you know, is very much in play,
and we can tell a story ofscarcity and we can tell a story
of othering people and we cantell a story of competition.

(01:31:12):
Or we can tell a story ofcollaboration and a march
towards a better world, and themore we can do to enunciate what
that better world looks likeand the more we can direct the
path of how we get there fromhere, the more compelling it's
going to be and the more it'sgoing to start to break down.
I think you know stories thatpeople tell themselves in their

(01:31:36):
minds that are counter to that.

Carolyn (01:31:40):
Well, and it's live your values Like really at the
core, it's live your values Like.
If you don't live your values,you can't profess to say it, and
I hold unions accountable,whether they want to hear it or
not.
Ricardo's heard my soapboxrants at union conversations
about this, but really,solidarity is all.
So do you mean it?
Or do you mean solidarity inyour respective context?
And I think that's the biggestthing that's required is you

(01:32:02):
have to put your ego aside.
You have to and you have toacknowledge that if we mean to
carry everybody, we mean toinclude everybody, and that we
have to.
We have to show a sharedcollective vision, and too many
people are quick to say thatthey care but they don't own
their own house in it, and it'slike you have to do that first.

Ricardo (01:32:22):
People will often say I mean about unions too is that?
You know?
It's so funny about pastpractice, because you know past
practice in union constitutionswas to exclude black people for
our conventions right.
But yet we have unions that arestruggling to figure out how to
introduce and incorporate andnegotiate trans rights into
collective agreements.
So we move forward a glacialpace on the left in many ways,

(01:32:44):
while the right is movingforward, thrusting themselves
forward into this, this land of,of hate.

Um, I'm not sure I'd define it as forward.

Ricardo (01:32:53):
Okay, whatever direction they want to go in,
they had a very clear visionProject 2025.
Exactly Right so and and we haveto figure out a way to not only
build sorry, dismantleindividualism towards
collectivism and community, butto work intersectionally as well

(01:33:15):
with many different groups.
I preach to the high hills atevery union convention that I
can to say that churches andunions are natural allies, and
in the labor movement in the USand right-to-work states we
organize side-by-side on thepulpits and in the union halls,
and it's just a vision thatwe've lost here in Canada and we
perhaps have become verycomfortable in our mindset of

(01:33:37):
kindness.

Carolyn (01:33:38):
It's like we like to think we're doing good work,
like that's the problem.

Ricardo (01:33:41):
And that we're very good people.
And we are.
We are good people compared toa lot of other countries and
places, but the pain and thedamage is seeping in in and
we're not wholly prepared for it.

Bill (01:33:56):
It's not as secure as we would like to think it is.

Carolyn (01:33:58):
But humans are like human.
Humanity is humanness.
It's like an exchange, like weneed to be in a collective.
We need to exist together.

Life is a team sport .

Carolyn (01:34:07):
Yeah, but AI, and I understand that I have a whole.
We have a whole nother thingabout ai and how that kind of
dismantles, like humans actuallyneed to belong to processes,
and when you mechanize thesethings, you think you can
commodify humans the same wayand it doesn't work that way.
Um, that's a whole notherconversation.
But like, really, I don't eventhink we have to work so hard to
dismantle individualism if wecall on a better good and I'm a

(01:34:29):
fatal optimist when I say thisbut when it works, wow, is it
powerful.
It is powerful and children.

Ricardo (01:34:36):
You need to teach our kids this from the start, and
what we teach our children wedon't.
They don't.
They're not born hating eachother, they're not born
individual.
In fact, we are born in thecollective need for to, to
depend on one another, and andthat's that's my hope, is that
you know.
I'll give you an example in2005, when we were unionizing
the, the at then called LakesidePackers under Tyson, it was a

(01:35:00):
very brutal, very violentorganizing campaign that we had
to organize those 2000 people inBrooks to the point where, uh,
doug O'Halloran, our president,was run off the road and
permanently put in a wheelchairfrom the strike.
Yeah, and there was such adivide between white and black
in that city and because we wereperceived as being and I won't

(01:35:23):
use the word they use the blackpeople union, they wouldn't rent
us offices, they wouldn't rentus hotel rooms.
We had to pull out money andjust buy a house in order to
have an office.
You go to Brooks now anddiversity is king in many ways,
even though that's Danielle.

Carolyn (01:35:39):
And queen.

Ricardo (01:35:40):
Yeah, sorry, and all Royalty, Royalty, even though
that's Danielle Smith's writing.
Yeah, square that circle.
Yeah, yeah, white children andblack children and Filipino
children and Latin children,they don't see that color, they
know all their parents work atthe plant.
They have commonality, they'refriends.

(01:36:01):
A better world is possible ifwe keep that momentum going.
But the minute we imply meversus them and add racist
rhetoric and discriminatoryrhetoric and put people in
classes and boxes and positions,then we find ourselves in the
world we are catapulting towardsright now dangerously.

(01:36:24):
So sorry, we've kept you.

Carolyn (01:36:26):
That's okay, I'm late for everything all the time.

Bill (01:36:29):
So I think we will just close it off here, sensitive to
the time.
But before we do that, I amgoing to shamelessly ask your
indulgence for a moment because,again, it's no secret that I
have deeply appreciated, johnCarlo, your time as Ward 9 City
Councillor.
So I just want to say toeverybody gathered here,
everybody listening, that,giancarlo, you started in 2010

(01:36:53):
as Wardline City Councilor.
Fifteen years.
And in the entire time that youhave been a city councilor in
this city, you have championedneighborhood-based planning.
You've championed walkable,livable communities, diversity,
equity, anti-racism.
You have reimagined civicsystems so that they serve
people better.
You have your Great Neighbors.

(01:37:16):
Great Neighborhood Initiative,rather, was a big vision of what
a thriving city could be forpeople belonging to community,
belonging to other people, andthis vision we talked about
tonight about a city thatactually carries each other and
invites each other to be in areal, meaningful relationship
with each other.
So I have appreciated, for overa decade, how you have asked us

(01:37:39):
to imagine and reimagine publiclife in a way that is more
humane and more just and moredeeply connected to one another.
So I just want to say thank youfor your service, because I
know that a month from now, Idon't even know what you're
going to do, and I'm not goingto ask you what you're going to
do, because he's going to rest.

Ricardo (01:37:57):
I am going to say thank you for your service.

Bill (01:38:01):
I am going to say thank you for your vision and the hope
that you have brought to thiscity, because I do believe that
you have brought hope to thiscity and in some cases in some
cases I think it's very muchsort of like the you know the
prophet Jeremiah not in yourlifetime 70 years, not seven
years that people will see thebenefit of the groundwork that
you've laid here.
But I do want to say thank youfor all your service and for

(01:38:23):
bringing that into ourconversations here tonight the
first time.
It has been a privilege to be apartner with you.

Well, that is high praise coming from you, bill,
and thank you so much, and ithas been the honor of my
lifetime to serve in this way,and I look forward to figuring
out how I will serve more andagain and in different ways
after some rest.

Bill (01:38:47):
So thank you, ricardo, thank you, joanne, special thank
you to you, carolyn, for beinghere tonight.
Really appreciate yourcontributions.
Last question is going toGiancarlo.
I'm not going to ask you whatit is that you're going to do
with yourself after you're doneas a city councilor, but I am
going to ask you what does restlook like for you at the end of
October?

Well, sadly, I think we're part of a grind.
I think we're part of a grind.
I will say that, having served15 years, I have a little bit of
a buffer and I need to figureout how I'm going to feed my
family and serve community andthankfully, because of the
benefits package from havingserved from 15 years, I'll have

(01:39:27):
a couple months to do that.
But thank you so much.

Bill (01:39:30):
And with that, we are checking out for tonight.
We will see you again nextmonth.
In the meantime, thanks fordiving in deep with us tonight.
Until next time, I invite allof you to go in peace to
wherever it is that the road isgoing to take you and whatever
else it is that you do, I inviteyou to rest in the process.
Good night, rest in the process, good night.

(01:39:55):
And that's a wrap on theopening of season two.
Thanks for listening and fordiving in with us.
Prepared to Drown is recordedlive each month at McDougal
United Church in Calgary,alberta, and if you're nearby,
we'd love to see you at thetable as you go, remember this
you are more than what youproduce.
You are more than what you canafford.
You are more than what youproduce.
You are more than what you canafford.
You are more than the pressuresthat weigh down on you.
You are beloved and you arecalled beloved by a God who asks

(01:40:19):
you to make room, to breatheand to rest and to remember who
you are and whose you are.
This world will demand all ofyou, if you let it so, find
those moments that connect youback to a God who loves you
beyond the affairs and hardshipsof the day and let's work to
build a world where all cantruly experience that kind of
rest.
I'm Bill Weaver.

(01:40:39):
See you next time.

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Episode 12 - Still Waters

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 12 - Still Waters