The Voice - Public Interest Alberta with Brad LaFortune

Join Brad as he answers questions about PIA and how they work with the community.  

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Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

Welcome to the voice of Alberta's with Disabilities podcast for January 2025. I'm Teresa Makarewich, your host and Vad’s program service manager. Thank you for joining us today. Voice of Albertans with disabilities gratefully acknowledges that what we call Alberta is the traditional and ancestral territories and gathering place for diverse indigenous peoples whose histories, languages and cultures continue to influence our vibrant community. We make this acknowledgement as an act of reconciliation and gratitude to the many First Nations,  Metis settlements and the six regions of the Metis nation of Alberta and the Inuit who have lived in and cared for these lands for generations. Hy. Hy.

Brad L, PIA

Hy. Hy Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

VAD has been talking with local agencies to learn about the resources that are available to disability community and in today’s podcast  I'll be talking to Brad Lafortune from Public Interest Alberta. Hello Brad.

Brad L, PIA

Hi, Teresa.

Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

OK. So public interest Alberta is a nonprofit nonpartisan province wide organization focused on education and advocacy on public interest issues. PIA exists to foster an understanding of importance of public spaces, services and institutions in Alberta's lives and to build a network of people and organizations to committed to advancing the public interest. Thanks for coming on the podcast today. It's been a year since we last talked and I'm excited to hear what's new with your organization.

Brad L, PIA

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. Can't believe it's been a year.

Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

It has been! so for the people listening, can you tell us about yourself and your role in the organization?

Brad L, PIA

Sure. First of all, I want to say thanks so much for having me and for the folks who are tuning in, i Am Bradley LaFortune, I use he/them pronouns, and I am situated in so-called Edmonton on Treaty 6 territory. I was born in Edmonton. Been back now for over 20 years after living in Saskatoon for a long time. And I consider myself to be, you know, a true-blue Alberta boy. I love this place and what really brought me to advocacy is just a sense of fairness and justice that I Learned from my mom and my dad. Always standing up for the little guy and also realizing that where we live, we have a lot of privilege Generally speaking, it's a very wealthy place. A relatively safe place. We have clean water, and you know, it just makes sense to me that if there's enough to go around, we should be supporting every single person in this province. And I was just lucky enough to land at public interest Alberta. It’s been around for 20 years. I've been with the organization for about 3 1/2 years now and before that I had worked for different political and labor union organizations. Essentially, fighting for better solutions to healthcare, education and social services. And it's really been my life's mission to take those values of, you know, standing up for the little guy and supporting  Our entire community and trying to make the case to the powers that be that there is a better way than what we often see from governments when it comes to funding and programs and services and so. Yeah, I'm lucky enough to call this place home,  Public Interest Alberta for my work and I get up every day and I get to fight the good fight. So, what could be better?

Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

That's awesome. You guys do a great job and, on that note, can you tell us what your organization does?

Brad L, PIA

So, we have a few different priority areas that we focus on. There's seven of them, so we focus on early learning and and childcare, education, post-secondary education, Human Services and poverty issues, democracy, environment and seniors issues and under all of those issues, we're guided by a mission to promote and protect and strengthen the public interest and Public services. And so generally that means that we believe that there is enough for all and that we need to develop programs and services that are administered by the provincial government and other levels of government that support all Albertans. And So, what we do specifically with that mission in mind is  We provide education and training opportunities for people to self-advocate. We have an annual conference that's actually coming up in two months and a few days, which I'll talk a little bit more about later hopefully. And we also have opportunities. For people to get engaged at our committees so that we can convene and bring together different voices from across the province, so we work a lot with nonprofits like VAD. But we also work with labor unions like Aupe and Una and ATA. We work with. Teachers, nurses and government workers, social Workers and what I find is really beneficial is that it's sort of a mirror, I guess to the organizations that we see that are more business minded or profit motivated and we bring together those common voices to build power And to collectively raise our voice on issues that matter to our communities, but at the end of the day, we're all about preserving and strengthening public services and public spaces for all Albertans.

Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

If I was to phone as a client, what kind of advocacy would you do for me?

Brad L, PIA

For sure. So we would probably, you know, first of all just. Have a conversation about what your issue is and then we would help you set up meetings with you know, organizations that might be able to help you from a service perspective. We Don't do client services directly, but we do have a lot of partners that we work with who do provide direct services for people. And then we'd also this is where we really kind of get our, our value from, is providing supports for people to advocate to the government. So, we provide lobby training, so, How to talk to your MLA? How to set up meetings with your MLA and then how to really be persuasive. And have good facts  and a strong message when you're meeting with those decision makers to hopefully and in some cases, convince them to, you know, not cut funding for services as an example. We do lobby day training. We do lobby days at the legislature as well. We do media training. So, for a lot of people, you know, talking to the media might be the  kind of one of the scariest things you could imagine. Iknow  For me, it's not really natural, but I've learned to do it. We also provide. Educational resources on privatization. We do an alternative budget so people can use that when they meet with decision makers to talk about what we really should see when it comes to PDD and AISH and other supports that are funded by the provincial government. So, we provide education, material supports and also training for people to advocate for themselves. So, if someone came through our front door, we probably encourage them to become a member and then we would work with them to develop maybe a campaign, or you know Tactics and strategies to approach decision makers  Who have the power to make change through government?

Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

You kind of covered what you do in the community. So, what are some of the projects that you've done in the last year? 

Brad L, PIA

In the last year, we've been really focused on pension and retirement security. So for people who have ever, you know, seen some payroll deductions on their paycheck, one of the big ones is CPP. And that's the Canada Pension Plan. It's something that every single Canadian has access to, there’s also, a disability benefit that comes with CPP. And it's something that has been threatened by Daniel Smith and the UCP government. They have said that they're interested in Pulling Alberta out of the CPP and starting our own pension plan. We've been working with community members across the province. We've gone on a town hall tour and had a lot of meetings about saving the Canada Pension Plan because our perspective is that it's safe. It's secure. It’s Reliable. It's not enough for people to Retire on, but it is part of, you know, a really important foundation of retirement security for Albertans and Canadians. We've been focusing on that. We’ve also been really focused on our minimum wage campaign as well. So Albertas minimum wage has been frozen since 2018. We're now one of the lowest in Canada. Whereas in 2018 we were the highest in Canada, but it's been frozen since then. So, we're advocating to the provincial government to raise the cap on minimum wage and make it closer to a living wage because our perspective is that if people Are living in this province. They deserve to be able to make ends meet, whether they're working in, you know, a service job or whether they're on income supports. We Need to make sure that all those Services and wages keep up with inflation. The cost of living keeps going up and up and. So been fighting for minimum wage and the last thing that I want to mention is that generally what we're trying to do is bring people together in I would call  You know this a pretty perilous and challenging time for people in community. We're hearing from seniors in particular and our community members in general that people feel isolated, pretty lonely and sometimes without hope when it comes to  Their concerns about being able to make ends meet and access, you know, public services that they rely. So, our past year has been really focused on member engagement as well and we have our annual conference coming up on March 27th and 28th this year that's called Community advocacy protecting the public good in perilous times. Which is gonna bring together First Nations and indigenous leadership people from the community here in the disabilities community, Labour leaders, we have the deputy Mayor of Toronto coming. We're all gonna talk about where advocacy starts and gets its strength from, which is community, and that means people coming together, sharing their stories, supporting one another. Emotionally and through friendship and bonds. And then from there coming up with common cause to advocate on our own behalf to governments. So we're really gonna be focused on community building. We have been for the past year and that's gonna be a big focus, especially as we see kind of the  Those safety Nets really kind of fraying and not catching people. I think it's more and more important that that we're there for each other at a community level. We're really focused on that as well.

Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

Great. You mentioned your conference on March 27th and 28th. You tell me about that.

Brad L, PIA

Yeah, for sure. We're very excited. So it's gonna be a 2 day conference. We're gonna really focus on education and workshops and training on day one, so we're gonna have workshops on healthcare and healthcare advocacy. We're going to have workshops on how to talk to your MLA. We're going to have workshops on how to have difficult conversations with your neighbors or friends about politics. We're also going to have legal observer training, so for people who might be out at protests and there's some things that they want to be watching for when there are protests That might get a little bit hectic. There might be some action there. We Do legal observer. We're also gonna have really amazing plenary talks from people who are gonna talk about their experience. The mayor, the deputy mayor of Toronto, is coming. She is an incredible leader, relatively young for a politician. She's the 1st  Elected politician in Canada anywhere who wears a hijab. So, she's gone through the ringer. She gets a lot of blowback, but she's a very progressive voice of Toronto City Council, and we're gonna bring people together to also talk about Joy and music and creativity. So, we're gonna have a workshop on. You know song and protest and what it means to come together to make music and just be together. Be lots of good food. It's fully accessible, so if people can't come in person, we're going to record the conference and share that with people. We also want to make it cost barrier free. So, if people have any concerns about. They can get in contact with us and just let us know that they're interested in coming and we'll make sure to accommodate that and we're really excited. We expect 2 to 300 people and we're gonna talk about building in Alberta for everyone. So, it's gonna great. OK.

Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

I love that idea. You should send me some information and I'll pop it in the newsletter.

Brad L, PIA

Thank you. Will.

Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

OK, what does membership cost for PIA?

Brad L, PIA

General membership is an annual membership for $50. We have a low-income membership for $25 a year and then like I said, you know, our values are really that we don't want anybody to be excluded based on accessibility issues at any level, so if cost is a concern, then we always welcome members at no cost with open arms. So. Yeah.

Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

Please tell us how to get a hold of someone at PIA.

Brad L, PIA

Yeah. So the best way to get a hold of us is while there's several best ways, so you can always visit our website its pialberta.org. You can check us out on social media. If you're up on any of the social media channels, we're on there as well, just Type in public interest  Alberta and you will find us there. You can also call our office. I'm looking around, here it is. It is our main office line. Is 780-420-0471 sometimes the best way to get a hold of us is just by e-mail as well, so check out our website and our emails are are there too for our staff and We're always happy to hear from folks if you have any questions or if you need any help with any advocacy issues.

Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

Just a off the top question. How are pia different than the office of The Advocate?

Brad L, PIA

So, the office of the Advocate and PIA are different in a really, really critical way. The Office of The Advocate is funded by the Legislative Assembly, and it's an independent office. Their mandate actually comes from the legislature, So the MLAs. Our mandate is not part of the government of the legislature, so we're independent of government. And so, you know, while the office of the Advocate is kind of independent in title, they don’t, they’re Not beholden to any political party  Or government. They do report to the legislature, So to all the politicians. We report to our community members and those people who are elected to our Board and we're not funded by the legislature. We're supported by individuals through our memberships, and we're supported by other organizations as well. So those are kind of the big ways that we're different. And I'd say in terms of our approach and what we talk about, if we talk about more, we have more of a broad scope. We have a pretty, I would say, progressive point of view on how services should be delivered and so it allows us our independence from the legislature, allows us to be very direct in our advocacy and what we're calling for, which is really nice.

Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

Perfect. Thank you for that. What's an interesting fact about public interest Alberta that everyone should know?

Brad L, PIA

Yes, I got stumped on this question last year too. OK. An interesting question that everyone at public or everyone should know about public interest Alberta well. Oh, I mean, there's so many things that are interesting. I'm trying to dig down and say like, well, you know what I would say the most interesting and exciting thing in terms of, you know, our success story is that we were able to meet with the federal minister, who is responsible for childcare about Four years ago now, three to four years ago, about how Alberta didn't want to join the childcare agreement. And from that meeting, we put together a campaign and we dragged  Jason Kenney kicking and screaming  To sign that agreement, and it turned out to lead to, you know, $4.5 billion in childcare funding, which brought in $10 a day childcare and, you know, not to toot our own horn too much, but we were really involved in those conversations. And I think it Was a really big testament to the value of PIA and kind of an interesting feather in our Cap at least as far as I . See.

Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

Yeah, that's a great initiative you guys did there. Well, thank you for your time and energy today, Brad. Your Support of the community is of value to all. Is there anything else you want to say today that I haven't asked you?

Brad L, PIA

I just want to finish by saying I appreciate every single person who's out there in the disabilities community and what you are doing to advocate for yourselves and your peers. Without your efforts, though, it might seem hard sometimes and lonely, we wouldn't be where we are, and we are with you and we're looking forward to continuing to work with you on  Advocacy and we hope to see you at our conference.

Teresa M, VAD Program & Service Manager

Awesome. Well, thank you again for joining Vad's podcast, Voice of Albertans with Disabilities is a cross disability, nonprofit organization of and for people with disabilities. We are guided by the principles of accessibility, equity and inclusion. Learn about our services on our website at www.vadsociety.ca or call the office at 780-488-9088 for information. If you have a topic you'd like to hear more about a new podcast, please e-mail teresa@vadsociety.ca with topic ideas, speaker suggestions, or your feedback. Signing off for the day together, we hold the power.