Prepared to Drown: Deep Dives into an Expansive Faith
A monthly podcast featuring informative and diverse voices exploring contemporary topics ranging from religious deconstruction, anti-racism, and sexuality to holy texts, labour unions, and artificial intelligence.
Prepared to Drown: Deep Dives into an Expansive Faith
Dam Good Neighbors: Small Breaches, Stronger Bonds
What does it mean to be a “dam good neighbour” in a world that seems determined to divide us? We're running as long as we can with this play on words. This conversation isn't about politeness or etiquette – it's about neighbourliness that disrupts, crosses lines, and binds us together when systems pull us apart.
Drawing from Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, our panel explores who we're willing to stop for, who counts as "our own," and how we build communities where no one gets left behind. We hear from Laura Istead of Two Wheel View about how youth find capability and connection through bike mechanics; Brian Thiessen on how housing-first approaches transform both individual lives and community economics; Jun from Action Dignity on the layered barriers faced by ethnocultural communities; and Ricardo De Menezes on how workers and marginalized groups create chosen family when traditional structures fail them.
Our conversation navigates the messy terrain of community resilience in Calgary – a city that has weathered floods, pandemics, and housing crises – revealing how crisis exposes inequity but also offers opportunities for transformation. “We are all in the same storm," one panelist observes, "but some of us are in boats that can hardly float."
The most powerful moments come when we examine where unlikely relationships become the starting point for healing. From former addicts working alongside police officers, to immigrants bringing untapped talents to their new communities, these connections demonstrate how breaking through isolation creates resilience that no government program or policy alone can achieve.
Ready to disrupt your definition of neighbourliness? Take a listen, then ask yourself: how might expanding your circle change not just your community, but you?
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All right, folks, here's the deal. This episode isn't about polite fence, post waves or community potlucks. It's about neighborliness that disrupts, that crosses lines, that binds us together when the systems around us seem hell-bent on pulling us apart. And here's how we do things on this podcast Once we turn on the microphones, we do not turn them off until we're done. No editing, no do-overs, just honest, unscripted conversation about faith and justice and the messy, beautiful world that we are all trying to navigate together. So today we are diving into what community resilience really looks like, especially in a city like ours, a city that has weathered floods and pandemics and housing crises and cultural divisions. And, just like Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, we are asking who are we willing to stop for, who counts as our own, and how do we build communities where no one is left behind? This isn't about charity. It's about solidarity, it's about systems and stories and the sacred work of building something stronger together.
Bill:I'm Bill Weaver and this is Prepared to Drown. Settle in and let's wade into the hard and holy work of being better neighbors. And we are here on a beautiful Friday evening in May in the basement of MacDooley United Church for our Prepare to Drown May segment called Damn Good Neighbors and that is not me cursing, it is a play on words, folks. This podcast actually came about in response to a question that was asked about what does community resiliency mean, and I thought, rather than just answer the question, I would do a podcast about it. So in one of Jesus' most disruptive stories in our scriptures, he tells a story about a man being beaten and robbed and left for dead and the people that you would expect to help him, the people who are enshrined within kind of the structures of the society, the religious leaders and the moral authorities. They walk right by and leave him beaten and bloody and suffering in the street, but then a Samaritan, someone from outside the religious and ethnic in-group of the time, someone that they actually presumed was an enemy, stops and tends to his wounds and offers him care and makes some risks and takes him to an inn and establishes a relationship. And that is the backdrop story that Jesus tells to a question that has been asked, when he is told that he needs to, or when he tells people they need to love their neighbor as themselves, and Jesus' response is to tell this story and then ask who was the neighbor in this story, the people who passed by and left him or the individual who stopped to help, and it is a very disruptive story for his audience. It's not a feel-good slogan that he's telling them. It's a deeply demanding and disruptive invitation that asks us not just to care about people but to actually cross lines and intervene and build bonds and break down barriers for folks so that they can truly take their place in the communities that we are a part of. So we're not talking tonight about that passive, feel-good kind of stuff. We're talking about breaking through. We're talking about grassroots action. We're talking about community organizing, innovation, social entrepreneurship, we're talking about youth programming and advocacy and coalition building and public witness and all those things, and it's a lot to cover in our time here. But around this table tonight we have the people that are doing that work, the people who are helping to reimagine what it means to be connected and responsible and human to one another. And we're not here to offer a one track blueprint for how it happens, but we're here to share some stories and have some conversations. So to that end, I'm going to start at the far end of the table with the familiar face on the panel.
Bill:Ricardo De Menezes is here. He's always insightful. He's the director for Southern Alberta for the UFC W40 401, a tireless labor advocate, a passionate voice for justice in the workplace and beyond. A closet Marxist not even closet Marxist, let's be honest pretty overt Marxist. And we are still angling for some kind of sponsorship deal with Temu because it somehow ends up in every podcast. He's also part of UFCW Outreach, which works to build bridges between LGBTQ2S plus communities and the labor movement, and the thing that I love the most about him is whether he's organizing or negotiating or showing up in solidarity or coming to a podcast, he always brings a deep understanding of how real change happens when people move together. So, Ricardo, as always, thank you for being here.
Ricardo:Thank you
Bill:Next up, sitting next to Ricardo, who drove all the way here from Edmonton to be with us tonight, folks, is someone who actually lives and breathes community, often on two wheels, and has some really cool stories to tell you at the intermission about some pretty crazy bike trips that she has been on in her lifetime.
Bill:Laura Istead is here. She's the director of Two Wheel View, the executive director of Two Wheel View, which is a Calgary-based non-profit that uses bikes and bike mechanics and bike programs to build resiliency and leadership and connection with youth. I have loved Two Wheel View. I'm a huge fan ever since. I accidentally happened upon them while I was escaping the indecisiveness that was happening in Fair's Fair bookstore in Inglewood and I walked outside and went huh, I wonder what that Two Wheel View building is that's attached to it, and I have been a huge fan ever since. So she brings a ton of experience with nonprofit and community sector and she's someone who knows that sometimes the path to a stronger community starts with something as simple as a bike ride or access to a bike or a conversation or just a place where you can actually achieve some of your innate potential. So, Laura, I am really glad to have you here tonight and thank you for being with us.
Brian:You look fabulous for riding your bike all the way from Edmonton.
Laura:You know, that's why I was a little late. Sorry everybody. Well done, well done you know that that highway is a little breezy at times, so it takes a lot of pedaling.
Bill:Next to Laura is Brian Thiessen, a Calgary mayoral candidate in the upcoming October municipal election. With a background in law and advocacy and public service, brian brings a heart for civic engagement and passion for breaking down barriers between citizens and systems. I had one phone call with him and was actually really excited that he was coming to join us just off of that one phone call. So, as someone who's put his name forward to lead this city, he's here not just to talk about policy although I'm sure it's going to come up but also to talk about people and how we build communities that actually hold space for everyone again to be fully engaged and fully integrated into the communities that we live in. So, brian, thank you so much for being at our table tonight.
Brian:Thank you so much for having me.
Bill:And then, lastly, we have Aurelio Jun". He goes by Nareval and he is the Director of Programs and Public Policy at Action Dignity. He brings a really global lens to local advocacy because he's been involved with epidemiology, I believe. On the international scale he's an epidemiologist by training, but here in Calgary he's leading the work at the intersection of mental health and workers' rights and anti-racism and gender equity and community safety. So all of his work is centered around lived experience and making sure that public systems reflect the people that they are meant to serve. So, June, we are so grateful to have your voice in the mix tonight.
Jun:Glad to be in this space, Thank you.
Bill:And you know who I am. I am Reverend Bill Weaver- just Bill to the people who know me- and we are going to jump right into it. So, before we dive into sort of the who is my neighbor that undergirds the Good Samaritan story, I want to actually talk about crisis, because in 2013, Calgary had the floods that happened in the summer, and then again during COVID-19, we saw clearly that not all communities and not all people in communities fared equally. Some bounced back, Others had a really hard time even finding their footing, often because of systemic barriers.
Bill:And Laura, I'm actually going to start with you for this question because I have been such a fan of Two-Wheel View for so long. You have to kind of lead, because I am a fan the programs that you offer for youth, but also the intentionality of breaking down barriers that happens even around that, including access and inclusion, but also things like the gender equity mechanics program. So I'm going to ask you to start off this panel and then folks can feel free to jump in after you've had a chance to answer. Why do you think community resilience is important now more than ever, and how do programs like Two Wheel View work to contribute to that strength?
Laura:Yeah, that's a really, really good question. I think, you know, community resilience has always been important. I think we've always, we always, we've always gone through things right. Like you know, every generation and every kind of time in human history has had things that they're overcoming or situations, and I think now we have a lot, you know, in some ways a lot more access to all the information to know all of the things that are happening all of the time, which is, you know, interesting and beautiful in its own way, but also problematic and challenging. And I think, you know, I think it's those opportunities that we need to kind of dig deep together to find ways of supporting resilience in each other. And I think that that starts in small, actionable ways every day.
Laura:At Two Wheel View, we're trying to find ways of engaging young people. So we work with youth that are ages 12 to 24. And we try to, you know, young people. So we work with youth that are ages 12 to 24. And and we we try to, you know, young people are struggling there's. It's a different, it's a different kind of environment than you know. When I grew up as a kid, it was a very analog kind of life, which is, it's really fun to be part of a very analog organization in that way in terms of bicycles, but you know youth have a lot, a lot of different pressures and they're exposed to a lot more. You know youth have a lot of different pressures and they're exposed to a lot more. You know news and trauma and you know there's this whole online bullying situations and all these things that you know and I certainly didn't grow up with them. Probably most of us in this room didn't grow up with, and so you know what we're trying to do is, through the medium of bicycles, is really help young people find out who they are and find out, find with people that they, they get a lot and you know that they can find. You know commonalities with and, and a lot of youth feel very isolated and and they don't feel like they belong. They feel alone most of the time, and I think one of the things that really contributes to community resilience is the community part of the community resilience phrase, and being able to find people that you can talk to when you're feeling sad and find people that you know also help you celebrate things, and so we run a number of different programs.
Laura:Our biggest and probably our most well-known program in the community is our earn a bike program. So we run afterschool programming for junior, high and high school students. We teach them basic bike mechanics and through those kinds of things and using your hands to do something there's something magical about that too, where they get to use their hands and they get a chance to learn that they're capable. A lot of our young people don't feel very capable right now, and so we get to teach them. You know they can understand the difference between a screwdriver and a wrench, and then they know applications, how to use it.
Laura:And it's more than just bicycles For us. It's not just about the bicycle, it is about those skills that they can transfer to other environments. They can learn, you know, if you can't figure out your derailleur on your bicycle, which is a pretty common frustration for most people that own a bicycle, you know that you're learning perseverance through those kinds of actions. And so at the end of our program, at the end of 10 weeks, they earn a bicycle lock, helmet, toolkit and some other resources that help them navigate around the city of Calgary.
Laura:And we work with about 350 young people a year in that program across the city and our kind of two main qualifications for youth to participate in that program is they wouldn't otherwise get the opportunity and they could really benefit from this kind of experience, and so that looks like many different stories, and I think it's also, you know, communities resilience is important because it's also about being in rooms with people that you're not normally in rooms with, and so our youth are, you know, getting connected with other.
Laura:A lot of them are newcomers, but you know we also. You know we also have a lot of you know, canada born kids too, but we have, you know, young people are getting a chance to connect over something as simple as a bicycle with each other in our programs, and they're getting to sit in rooms and get to know folks in a different way that they might not have otherwise crossed paths with, and I think that's a huge piece of being a resilient community and I think it's yeah, I think we need it now more than ever on that individual, person-to-person level.
Brian:Okay, I'll jump in.
Bill:You don't need to be polite on this panel. Okay great, just jump right in. Yeah.
Brian:You know I spend a lot of time thinking about I'm an employment lawyer by training. Know I spent a lot of time thinking about I'm an employment lawyer by training and I spent a lot of time working with organizations trying to struggle through COVID. So kind of resonates to me the challenge of that and I thought a lot about. You know people, you know a lot of people came together on vaccinations and looking out for one another and doing their part and it felt like people got a little exhausted of that at the end and almost lost the message or the parable of the Good Samaritan. And so when I look at the crises or the issues that are facing Calgary right now as we form policy to, we formed a political party called the Calgary Party and you know we were looking at how we can help Calgary and you know a couple issues that were really focused. One is public safety and another is housing. And on the public safety front, you know I spent time. I spent four years as chair of the police commission and I did a lot of walk and ride alongs and saw a lot of people suffering from mental health and addiction issues and it really boils down to a lot of them being houseless or homeless and housing is an essential human need and people who don't have a shelter struggle to address their mental health or those other issues that they're really struggling with. So we have a real focus on the human as part of our policy on public safety. So it's not about policing and when I spoke with police about the issue, they're the first, they're the first ones to say you can't police your way out of this issue. You need mental health and addiction specialists to interact with people. They should be housed with police officers and you know Alpha House has a lot of success with mental health and addiction specialists working with police and transit police interacting with those suffering from mental health and addiction issues. But you know the Housing First strategy that Helsinki performed. It's a really good example of focusing on getting people sheltered. You get better success rates with treating people who suffer from addiction and the nice thing about the Helsinki model is they track the costs of it and they found that. You know I always say do it because it's the right thing to do. I mean, if you can't do it, because it helps you. And what Helsinki did which was really helpful, is they track the costs and they didn't track the cost to the justice system, but they did track the cost to the health system and it was about 35,000 euros per person per year. We figure it's about 100,000 per person per year that we save if we house people first and so if we think of them as our neighbors and people who are desperately in need, and we approach it from how to house them and treat them, we are a long way to solving the problem, in my opinion, and I think that about housing across the spectrum More generally, everyone's looking to you know people struggle with concepts like open zoning and building more density in their neighborhoods and to bring it home to them I say you know, think about you.
Brian:Know, my father-in-law is 93. He just finally moved into Lake Bonav ista Village. 60 years in his two-story house he was on his own. We just moved him in there and he's with his neighbors, people that he spent the last 60 years with. He gets picked up by his wine club to go out on Wednesdays and he's still got that community. And people don't think about that when they talk about housing density. But we're talking about a place where your parents can age in place, where your kids can come home from university or graduate high school and can live and work, and so if you think about the community you're building and the actual issues you're trying to solve in society as human problems, as your neighbors, it makes it a lot easier to draft really good policy.
Jun:Truly, and I really appreciate Brian introducing the term policy because I thought that this would provide long-term solutions to the problems that we are seeing. But I'm going to backtrack a bit but just to really appreciate the framing of Bill around this discussion. Starting off with a good Samaritan, I thought that that's really very, as you've said, disruptive in many ways and we look at and ask ourselves who our neighbors are and sometimes we can be so very physical that the neighbor would be just next to us. But I'm also like, coming from the frame that a neighbor is, anyone who would be in need, is anyone who would be in need and maybe translate that to the people that I've been like working for most of from the last five years would be the ethno-cultural communities. Again, you mentioned as well about the crisis in 2013 and then the COVID-19. And on top of that that was also around the COVID-19 was also the hail that affected the north.
Jun:Is that was also like that's my neighborhood, where some people are still actually waiting to get the the hail damage repaired exactly, and you can you can you can still see houses where their windows are still broken and not been replaced, and that really is very telling of the status and how marginalized these communities could be, although there are a lot of assets there. Then I would like to move to say that when we talk about crisis, we see that we all together are in the same storm the COVID-19 epidemic, which is a storm. The hail is a storm. The housing issue is a storm. Calgary had.
Jun:The housing issue is a storm, but I'm also looking at it that some of us, all of us are in somehow some forms of boats, you know, in that storm, but some of these boats are actually built to survive. Some of the boats that you are riding are built that you are protected, but from my lens, I'm also seeing a lot of boats that can hardly reach the coast, that can hardly can survive the huge waves, and I'm looking at this as the you know. What then, should we do? The only way I'm seeing this from the lens of the good Samaritan is that, if we have to go into a long-term solutions, should we support people?
Jun:I thought that the people who are in boats that are very vulnerable are the ones that we need to lift up, because when we lift those at the margins, we are lifting everyone. So that's just a point of you know, like a reflection on how I see all these crises happening. And there are several barriers. We need to look at barriers when we look into ethnocultural communities, for example, or those that are experiencing homelessness.
Jun:So we look at barriers and what are those barriers? And the barriers could be because of their religion and the barriers could be because of their religion, or barriers could be because of their color or barriers could be because of their economic status. So these or some of these barriers can actually intersect. You know, like a woman One would have disability, who would be probably having a religion, a minority religion, or probably would be a black or a person of color. So when those are actually intersecting, it compound the issue in such a way that they would be in a different situation. Yep, you know far more than the rest, absolutely, exponentially, exactly.
Bill:So, like, right off the hop, just to pick up on some threads and I should say to our guests that one of my unofficial roles on this panel is to also be kind of the downer Not that I choose it, it just seems to happen. So, like, talking about aging in place, right, this idea of like, if we could actually frame our thinking around how it is that we build communities that can sustain like multi-generational kind of living. My primary role in this church is pastoral care and I can tell you, if it's an allusion to anybody, the longer people can age well in place, the longer they can live lives with quality to them. Right, I will go to the wall anywhere saying that my experience, 100% of the time, is that when you reach an age where you cannot continue to live in your home and the only option is to not only be displaced from this house that you've lived in for decades, but also to be displaced to another corner of the city where there's room for you, you lose not just everything that is familiar, you lose your entire network of support, right, and I would say 95% of the time, because I can think of one person that endured it. Well, 99% of the time you see the impact that has on your quality of life and your livability really right To be separated from not just your familiar surroundings but your community of support, your networks, like your relationships, and it's the relationships that matter the most, which is what I see every time. I'm at two-wheel view, which is why I love the model so much, because it's the relationality under all of it that really matters. Right, and so where I'm going with the downer side of this is I was involved in a project that was designed to really invite sort of a redensification in a community and to target the housing affordability issue in a really meaningful, manageable way, and the resistance to it was so profound right, and is always so profound how quickly this idea of this community that we love, these relationships that we've built over decades, are only for us and do not make any room for any more to come in.
Bill:But, intriguingly enough, where it really hit home was standing outside the church and I'm talking like full-on collared up in the clergy attire, smoking a cigarette at the time it doesn't happen anymore and somebody happened to walk by and say are you the minister of this church? And I said, well, yes, yes, I am, and this project was underway and they said we hear that you're planning on building affordable housing here. And I said, well, yes, absolutely. And they said but there's a playground right across the street. And I said, okay, what better place to build affordable housing, especially because it's family housing?
Bill:And they said, but where are my kids going to play? And I said why wouldn't they still play at this playground? And, spoiler alert, you're not going to like what the response was because they shot back with building off of what you've been saying. There's no way my kids are going to play with all those black kids as the response to affordable housing. So the layers of racism even that undergird some of these barriers to people being able to just have a roof over their heads, I mean it's staggering. And again, to be a senior or a vulnerable population, like a young person, and carry any of these other things that exponentially impact your ability to really feel like you belong and are supported relationally by your community, it's substantial and I think in some cases, we think we're better off and more enlightened and progress is always progress, but there's an illusion if we think that these things don't still happen right here, right now, in the city of Calgary, in 2025.
Ricardo:It's interesting you should say that Bill and you brought up the COVID-19 pandemic and, in my role as a union activist, ufcw, local 401,. We represent grocery stores, meatpacking plans, warehousing, which everyone in this room will ultimately remember being the heroes of the day during the pandemic. In fact, employers were giving everybody $2 an hour more and $50 a week more and everybody praised grocery store employees for going to work every day during the pandemic and helping us feed our families. And the shock that came from that was that it was an invisible enemy that everybody had to deal with. It affected everybody, no matter what socioeconomic status you came from.
Ricardo:The ability and your ability to contract COVID-19 was there. I mean, it was more so in a meatpacking plant or a grocery store because you know our members were in contact with so many different people. The interesting part and I wouldn't say the tragic part of the whole pandemic was that when things, vaccinations started coming through and people were, the restrictions started to loosen, all of a sudden the money was gone for pandemic pay. In fact, it wasn't even just like a slow dissipation. Within a 36-hour period, every grocery chain, competitive or not, as soon as the first one announced it, in 36 hours every single grocery company took away the pandemic pay. Every single one.
Laura:Right.
Ricardo:So if that's not calculated, I don't know what would be. Aside that, what's happened, though, is that we've gone to recognizing our enemies, again in a multiplied form. So I've gone from, in negotiations for food service workers and retail workers, safety, health and safety, and plexiglass barriers and all those kind of things to please create a policy and a procedure for rude, abusive and inappropriate customers. So what is our view of neighbors? Is it, like June said, the person who lives next to us our aunts and our uncles or is it the person that just scans our groceries and helps us feed our families? Still, we've lost that perspective right now, and that's part of also the problem that we have, and maybe you guys have watched the news, have seen the grocery store commercials that our union has put out against a certain employer, but they have. And maybe you guys have watched the news, have seen the grocery store commercials that our union has put out against a certain employer, but they talk about oh good, thank you, that's not just something we've made up.
Ricardo:Grocery store employees some of them can't afford to shop where they work and to go into work and to struggle to earn in in a city where rents are going up, utilities are going up, the cost of insurance is going up, uh, and then suffer abuse from the people that you're already facing of depression for not being able to feed your families, and and and and so, um, what we need to create in as a framework in society where we recognize not just the neighbors who share the same postal code as ourselves, but recognize the neighbors and and, and recognize, um, what everybody does and the interconnectivity, the intersectionality that we all share, and face right that the people that are working in the stores, buying your groceries, sitting on the bus while you're sitting in your car. We all share the same challenges. We all pay the same price for the eggs. I love that the eggs thing is the big thing in the US right now right.
Ricardo:So, and that was something that we see, but when it comes to neighbors, it's basically and why I bring this particular situation up is you also wrote about the floods and when Calgary was flooded, there was no human being in the city that wasn't ready and willing to drive to High River and help them rebuild. They had to stop people from volunteering like we have enough people shoveling sandbags and stuff, right, like we know in our basic instinct what we need to do for humanity. Yeah, right, how to help each other.
Bill:But intriguingly enough, like I like again, like I think brian like hit the nail on the head, there was, there was a time when that was, you know, like everybody would, would, do anything they possibly could, and then the fatigue set in so huge, right, like I said on a podcast, I think back in december, I can remember in in the pandemic, there was a little old lady who stood on the corner in bridgeland every single morning and as you were driving by, she would give you a hug, right like an air hug, and and like, uh, there were news stories about her. She was a community hero, like and then, but then at some point in time, again like, we just flicked a switch and people started making bylaw complaints about being a distraction to drivers and we got back into the whole kind of messiness of like, no, no, we, we can't sustain this level of like community love, uh love for any length of time. Right, and I even remember in the floods, because I was in Halifax when the floods were happening here at seminary and I actually was riveted. I don't remember much from the courses I was taking at the time because I was so stuck on the TV screen and trying to figure out, because we lived in Bridgeland and the water was overflowing the banks and it actually came into our backyard and then stopped and never actually got to our house. But my wife had an infant at home and I was doing the whole like do I have to get on a plane tomorrow? Because she was stubbornly refusing to leave, even though my parents were more than willing to shack everybody up, even though my parents were more than willing to shack everybody up.
Bill:And so I remember a tweet back when it was Twitter and back when it was safe to tweet, going through to Nahed Nenshi at the time as the mayor of Calgary, where somebody said what are we supposed to do if you're forcing us to evacuate our communities in the face of this flood? What are we supposed to do about the homeless? Forcing us to evacuate our communities in the face of this flood? What are we supposed to do about the homeless people that are still walking around in the community as this sort of suspicious they're going to break into our homes and steal our stuff kind of message? And Nenshi's response is well, they might like a sandwich. They might like a sandwich.
Bill:And I thought like, on the one hand, there's somebody out there who wrote that original tweet, you know, uttering a string of expletives against you know, Nenshi, for writing this, but the response to that tweet was like it was a real kind of wake up call to folks like this is a human problem we're dealing with right now. Right, this is not about, again, not about policing, not about crime mitigation. This is like people are losing their homes, people who are already homeless, like the entire DI area was a part of the affected drop-in center. Sorry, di drop-in center area was part of the affected flood zone at the time, and so, like, we have these opportunities to really call forth the best in our humanity, but I will problematize our ability to sustain it beyond the crisis. Right, it's almost like we need a crisis to remind us of our collective humanity, but I don't know. We're supposed to be better than this, right.
Brian:I spent when I was. I did a business degree and between business and law school, I got this job as a 21 year old. It was very humbling experience. I worked at the Center for Newcomers and I was supposed to teach recent immigrants to Canada a business course on how to start your own business, and they would get preferred loans from HSBC. And so I went in with, you know, my camp, council experience, job experience and my business degree to teach, and I had a room full of newcomers and so I thought I'll do what I did at summer camp I will go around the room and I'll ask everyone. You know where are they from and what's their experience, and I'm not exaggerating.
Brian:The first person that introduced themselves was the former head of surgery at the hospital in Mumbai and it went on from there and you can imagine 21 year old like shrinking in their seat, thinking how unqualified you are.
Brian:But I thought about it a lot afterwards, about these newcomers and what they'd sacrificed to come to Canada and what they had brought to Canada. And then it dawned on me that that was my grandparents. You know. They came as Mennonite refugees from Ukraine and they sacrificed everything and they took new jobs and and we're all kind of guests here in this confluence, this place where people gather and come together and build lives together, and it helped me to make that connection and to realize that we're all, we've all been guests at a time and we've all you know our parents, or a lot of newcomers right now, are sacrificing, have way more skills than they're allowed to employ. And if we think of it that way, then we can focus on things like how do we get them credentialed, how do we allow them to practice in their profession? How do we help them with housing and become part of the community? It helps remind us of the humanity and the sacrifice it helps remind us of the humanity and the sacrifice.
Jun:It's a good thing that you also mentioned about credential, because if we have to look into the housing crisis, we need to question ourselves, to ask the question on why would there be a crisis? I don't think if it's only the lack of the physical structure, but it is really the capacity to own a house. And this is where the problem becomes more complex, because then you have to consider around job precarity, and then this ties very well with credential recognition of immigrants. Imagine that they come here on the strength of their profession and experience. Those actually gain a lot of points when they have to apply for permanent residency or whatever permanent residency or whatever. But when they reach Canada, all those qualifications that were the basis of their entry are suddenly gone. So their credential as a doctor, their credential as an engineer or a nurse just doesn't count, even if, for example, if you were a you know I'm a medical doctor too If you are credentialed, that doesn't even give you an entry.
Jun:And there are a lot of young you spoke about young people- and I think, you know, laura, there are a lot of young people too that are, you know, just have the education here, but they're just coming from an ethnic group and that really also disqualifies them in many ways for interview.
Jun:So this I would like to say that these are all the intersections of the issues, so it's not just about housing, but it's connected to job precarity, it is connected to credential, it's all you know, like far more complex and all the more it's very important for us to look at the system, because this system that we are in actually create those, you know, our precarity of our existence, of our neighbors, you know. But at the same time we need to look at solutions. Are the policies that we have actually support them in many ways? Are the practices, would you know, like the practice of this Good Samaritan, of making sure that it's not just checking the box of, hey, how are you doing, how could I help you? But really taking care of the person and then wanting to make sure that that person is taken care of by another when he is away and when, upon his return, he would be, you know?
Bill:He'll settle up whatever, whatever expenses.
Jun:So that means it's not a transactional thing, but really very transformational.
Bill:Absolutely, and there is no guarantee of a return on investment in the economic sense of the right. The return is community, it's relational, it's not financial
Laura:You're right. But I think you give somebody a chance and the ripple effect of that is not necessarily measured in a way that our brains can wrap around. But I think we provide young people with these opportunities in employment. But I think, you know, we provide young people with these opportunities and employment and the things that I've seen. We, you know, recently had a young person that was in our employment program and we were able to offer high school credits through the Calgary Board of Education for our program and so they get some work experience credits. So this individual we helped to graduate high school. They might not have been able to necessarily do that otherwise without the support of of ourselves and discovering choices.
Laura:High school with the CBE, um, and then you know, we we hired this individual on for for part-time work and, and, and they work for us on the weekends, uh, working on bikes, have amazing mechanical aptitude and experience. Um, we ran a. We ran a seminar, uh, for the for the young people to learn more about scholarships, and because some of our young people don't have that language or understand the potential opportunities they're just you know if that's not something that your family you know talked about or, depending on your level of access and understanding of those things, you wouldn't necessarily know that those things exist. And so we ran that and they were like, oh, you mean, I could get money to go to post-secondary school. We're like, yeah, that could be a thing If.
Bill:I could have been a professional student my entire life. I would have.
Laura:Me too, but I think you know. So they said oh well, you know, could I apply for some scholarships and would you write a reference letter? I said I would be honored to write a reference letter for you. So myself and two of my, my team, we we collaborated on a reference letter and I'm really proud to say that that young person got a hundred thousand dollars scholarship and that's game changing right, like that is game changing for that individual, um, for the rest of their life and anyone else that like comes after them, their family.
Laura:The ripple effect of that is huge and that's investing in one person. And we have a really incredible city in Calgary. We are very, very lucky to live here. But you know what, what would happen if we, you know, if we actually tapped into those untapped community assets, like people who you know have amazing skills that they bring to the community and we allowed them to use them. I mean, there's many, there's many drivers I've driven, you know, in taxis and Ubers with people that have far more education than I do and that could be really, you know, engaging and want to and want to use those skills.
Laura:It's not for lack of want, very much want to share those, those assets and those, their knowledge and their, their skills with our community. And we need to find better ways of you know, and what a city we would be if we were able to. You know, everybody was able to bring their strengths to the table and use them equitably, and it's not happening. And we need to find ways of finding opportunities and especially for the folks that have had the opportunities and those privileges is to find ways of supporting those who don't and getting to know people's stories and, you know, listening to people. I think it really comes down to just starting to open your mind and your eyes up to the listening possibilities. It is not just listening to respond right. It's not just about oh, what well, what retort can I say next and how can I respond to this. It's about listening to, understand and understands people's individual stories. And that's when I think, when we all start to do that, that's where we start to get somewhere and actually, you know, move forward as a group.
Jun:Yeah, I like that listening because I forward as a group. Yeah, I like that listening because I feel that it is very important for us, whenever we are in various spaces and in various roles that we do, to ask ourselves what voices are we missing? And the voices, yep, and the voices that we are missing almost always are the ones that are in the margins, and I always believe, bill, that the people who are greatly impacted by the problem are in the best position to offer solution. Yep.
Jun:And then sometimes in the best position to offer solution, and then sometimes in the community, we come as experts and we tell them what to do. And this is where I'm connecting with Laura around assets, because the people, every one of us, would have assets, either in arts or whether that would be in writing or whether that would be resources. Your basement can be turned into like a meeting room or bikes and whatever. These are resources. If we're able to see the assets in the community, then I think it will really build a better resilience.
Laura:People are so capable, absolutely.
Jun:Youth better resilience. People are so capable. Absolutely, youth are capable.
Laura:Seniors are capable, everyone is so capable but sometimes you need people to help you see the capability and that's what we do a lot at Two Wheel View and I think it's you need to help people see the assets that they have within themselves and the assets that we have within our community.
Laura:And then you know, it just kind of goes in bigger, bigger circles from there in terms of, you know, trying to trying to build upon those building blocks of all of those assets. And I think there's just so much that can be done in that area of you know, finding, finding, you know, and I think that's also easier way of connecting with people. It's like I want to know you know what, what you're good at and what you love and and and. Then that I that can connect with me on a on a deeper human level in terms of that connection. And it's like, oh, you also, like you know lawn bowling in the summer Great, we don't necessarily agree on all the things, but like we have that connection point and then you can start to build that list of assets in each other and assets in the community that people can access.
Ricardo:It's also not just the systems we have in place or the sort of the legislative policies we have in place with respect to barriers and people. It's the own stereotypes that we carry in our brains as well, like people who might immigrate from an African nation. I'll give you an example of one of my co-workers, fiduma. She's from Africa and she works with us and she says Ricardo, don't listen to the World Vision commercial. These Africans are eating. They have food, they're eating, but all we ever see on TV is the starving children in the fringe villages who need food. But Africa there are very many prosperous countries and cities in Africa that are thriving and wealthy, but they're coming here for a reason. There are issues there that bring people to come here, but when they come here, like June said, the qualifications and skills that they have aren't necessarily recognized.
Ricardo:But it's not just that. It's that people come here with the shock of how much does it cost to rent your house? Right, and you know, you talked about the time it takes to be able to purchase a home, but it's where our struggle is, even before that, it's the amount of time and money it takes to afford your monthly rent every day. So I was reading an article somewhere that said the average price rent every day. So I was reading an article somewhere that said the average price.
Ricardo:The average time it used to take to purchase your first home from 1977 to 1990 was about two to three years, based on the incomes of couples at the time. Now, in 2025, it's between 13 and 17 years to be able to afford, and it's even higher on that sex spectrum in places like British Columbia and Toronto and sometimes in Montreal and Quebec too. And so, if you think about that, if you're a happily married couple, for example, and you get married relatively young, which is another trend in today's society, people are getting married or even cohabitating much later in life. You're not buying your first house till you're 40. Much later in life, you're not buying your first house until you're 40. And with 30-year amortizations, you're into your retirement and still mortgaged. Yeah, I will preach.
Jun:Yeah right.
Ricardo:So that opens a whole bunch of questions. Well, why don't people go to school and improve their skills and get higher-paying jobs? Well, that doesn't exist a lot either. So in 2015, I had the privilege of going on the Governor General's leadership tour and we toured southwestern Ontario and we went to London and I had the opportunity to have lunch with our group not me individually with the former CEO of Blackberry. I forget his name. He had a movie made about him, basili. Sorry, basili, that's the one You're going to have to say it again. Nobody heard that, basili.
Laura:Basili, yeah.
Ricardo:Peter, yeah, and he was commending the business people in our tour group and in some ways the policy analysts and people who worked in government, but the labor people, those three union people there. He didn't have very much time for us and I just asked him the question. I said the Haskane School of Business in Calgary is probably one of the most prominent business programs. But at what point in time do the funders and the people who push students to go to the Haskane School of Business, at what point in time do we say to them okay, so give them jobs Right.
Laura:At what point in time do we say to them okay?
Ricardo:so give them jobs right. I look at a lot of because we were searching for people at work too. We had a labor. We needed to hire union reps, and you can't really post a union rep job on Indeed, but I was still looking you never know and the amount of people and companies that are still required post-secondary education but we're starting people off at like $60,000 a year was a lot and in my brain that's still good money, but when you have to take the 2025 fiscal reality of the average price of a one bedroom apartment in Calgary being almost $2,000 a month now, it's not enough.
Bill:Yeah, and so, to be clear for folks, because $60,000 is actually the magic number that led to somebody writing me an email after I had preached one time and said that part of the threshold for a low income in that moment was if you were below $60,000 a year. And uh and um, I don't know what the number is actually now in 2025, because this was a few years ago but uh, but uh, the person actually wrote and went 60 K is a lot of money. Um, like, that seems, that's just seems astronomical to me. And uh, we're really quite agitated to this idea that a number that high would be the number. But, to be clear, $60,000 was probably a lot of money at the time that the individual who wrote me that email bought their house 35 years before the writing of that email. And it was actually that individual's kids who I guess they had been railing at a family dinner about it, and it was their kids who went.
Bill:Mom, he's right. Like, like, you know what I make? It's more than 60 K and you know how much I'm struggling right now.
Laura:Right.
Bill:And and and so there was this like $60,000 was just, I mean, the magic number that really kind of set off the whole conversation. I mean, it was a scathing email to begin with.
Ricardo:To draw the end of one of my rant, because the poverty episode was last episode. We missed that. This is where neighbors come in, like we, you know, by supporting the change that we need to see in things. That's how neighbors can help each other, like the way we vote, the way we advocate, the way we support our businesses. So if we this is the only word you wanted to say if we shop in places that the money doesn't stay in Canada or even in Calgary, then we're not doing ourselves any favors either, because there's a bunch of big companies down at the bottom of the hill where they'll pay their workers a salary and we know they can afford to pay their workers more than they're paying them.
Ricardo:So where's all that money going? But right across this church, in the strip mall, across the street, there's a butcher, there's a local bakery, there's a nice little candy store too, where, if we buy from those places, then those people spend that money in our communities as well and that helps bring up everything and everybody's standard of living, right, and when we start talking and shopping. But then the cycle becomes well, I can't afford to shop there. You know, I really do want to, but my salary only supports me being able to shop at the big corporations where the dollars are lower.
Ricardo:Then we have to ask ourselves a broader question as neighbors and as a community what are the support systems in place doing for us so that we can increase everybody's standard of living? Is $15 minimum wage enough right? Is no caps on insurance premiums enough right? Is no caps on heating and water and electricity enough? Is the market doing what it's supposed to be doing for working people and bringing it? Because we can talk about helping the unhoused as much as we can through support systems, mental health shelters, but if we're not actually helping the unhoused get housed, if that is even out of our ability through charitable and social work, then we have to make a broader community question on what we're doing and how we're doing it and the piece that, sorry, I was going to say the piece that's interesting just about when you talk about you know there's a bakery right across the street from this church.
Bill:Right, and I'll be honest, I feel like I might be putting their kids through college.
Ricardo:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you showed me the points. App Bill.
Jun:I didn't know'm the highest rank.
Bill:But, more importantly than that, what we've experienced so much more over time as I put their kids through college, is that I walk out of that bakery and I'm bumping into people that I know that aren't here on a Sunday morning but they're there on a Monday afternoon and we're waiting as our coffee and our order is being made and we're chatting and we get to the point now where we had some folks from the wider church that came for a meeting and we all met on the corner in the restaurant, on the corner for lunch and we all walked out and it was pouring rain and just trying to walk from there back here to the church, I was stopped like six different times by people who are not parishioners of this church but that I know from you know this anchor of this corner that seems to have so many different businesses in it. And when you start to realize, like you get to the point where you can go oh hey, how did that job interview go? Hey, you know, how's your mom doing? Like these things that I would say vocationally are a part of the role that I, you know, serve in the church, but not for these folks, like they're not here on a Sunday morning.
Bill:They're not on my pastoral care list, they're just people that I encounter in the community that then get to meet somebody else who knows their story and is actually interested in them for the sake of them and like. That's the kind of idea of like community resilience building, where your lawn bowling, you know enthusiast, you know that you're, you're aware of, is the first person you think of when you know there's a flood and you go. I wonder if they need help, not because of anything else other than this random connection, that never would have happened, um, if you hadn't taken the time to expand, um, your, your sense of like. Who is actually your neighbor beyond the physical proximity? I'm aware of time and we need to take an intermission and this feels like a good place to stop. We will come right back and finish this conversation and I'm starting with you, ricardo, because I've got a very specific question for you to bring us back together but for now we're going to take an intermission and we to keep the conversation going.
Bill:And, as promised before the intermission, ricardo, we're coming to you because one of the things that I've become aware of as the adversary to really building relationships and community resilience in communities is a principle that I think, at its core, most of us experience in one way or another, and we're probably all guilty of it in some ways as well.
Bill:Wherever we draw the line of this mentality of we take care of our own first, and so part of what I've experienced in kind of my work as a minister of a church is how do we expand people's definition of your own?
Bill:How do we expand people's definition of your own? And so, as I think about you especially and your work often it's not top-down work of getting people to redefine the boundaries of your own you start very much with workers and neighbors banding together in solidarity that moves things forward, and true solidarity right gather in solidarity that moves things forward and true solidarity right, not the stuff that I think we kind of peddle as the, if I dare say it, on church podcasts, the half-assed approach that solidarity tends to take in our world today. So you've been part of places where people have had to become neighbors, that I think, as Laura had said before, the intermission being in the same room with people you otherwise might not be in the same room with, and survival and survival is the strategy, more than just the touchy, feely solidarity language that we use. Right, so how have you seen organizing and collective action serve as a way to break through the systemic walls that are keeping people from truly landing in their full belonging in workplace communities?
Ricardo:It's interesting the perspective I think you want me to go in, because workers own the means of production. But you know when I collectively bargain and we always want to lift up the value and the quality of life of working people everywhere. But I think of your question in the context of a queer perspective and chosen family. Because if we're going to talk about, like, taking care of our own first, then we have to look at the perspective of a gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, two-spirited person who comes out and is then kicked out of their houses or ostracized by their friends or lose their job. And then they have to find community and people that love and support them and that then becomes their family. And from a queer community perspective, you find family and you find your own real quick because they're all supporting each other, especially right now in the trans community where they struggle to find. I mean, I just two days ago saw that Trump has given the order to officially discharge all trans people from the army in the US, right, so it means hundreds of people are now losing their jobs there too. All the laws that are being passed in place and trans intersex people maybe occupy 1% to 2% of the general population, but there's all this focus that's coming upon them now.
Ricardo:And when we build community and we find neighbors, we have to understand and look at who. No, we don't have to. We have to stop trying to understand and stop trying to look at people for what they are and the color of their skin or who they identify as, and just help their humanity, because then the search becomes so much harder. To try and find just food on the table and a roof over your head. If you're a person in the 2SLGBTQ community, you're searching for a place to live and your next meal and someone just to give you a hug, because the unemployment rate is in the 60% to 70% to 80%. The homelessness rate is in the 60% to 70% to 80%. You know, the homelessness rate is really high as well, and the youth suffer the most, because when they come out at such a relatively young age, they're thrown into the street with almost no resources to help them learn how to. And so when we save and protect our own, we also save and protect each other and ourselves, and so I think that it's important for us to understand what our own means, more than just who lives in our house, more than just the people on our street, because sometimes people are very quick to kick out the people who they considered once their own, based on a difference, and then we have to recreate our own boundaries and our own families. So the importance of being good neighbors and the importance of being a good community is to welcome all with just a beating heart, to know that we all need the same thing to survive and to live right. And when we have these differences in people and we use those differences to attack one another, we don't become stronger as a species or as a community or as neighbors. We become far weaker and more divided.
Ricardo:I just got back from the USA a few days ago and I'm shocked every time I go now under Trump. I mean, I booked this trip when I thought it was going to be a Hidus and Walls or Harrison Walls, so it was hard to do. But I'll tell you a personal story, just based on the experience is that you know I applied for a Nexus card and I got my interview and me and my friend got our interviews at the same time and without telling you he's white, I'll tell him. But I've been denied my Nexus interview, my Nexus application. They didn't give me a reason. They just said no, right. And my friend got approved and we're exactly like the same person. We're born a month apart, right.
Ricardo:And so that's how fragile community can be, right? So I have a group of friends now that want to go to the US and they all have their Nexus cards and stuff and I have to go in a separate line, right. And so what do we do? When we protect our own right, we have to make accommodations and considerations and give help so that everybody's included and feels welcome, right, and that's how we protect our own and with each other and honestly, coming from the Marxist side, I mean the upper class, the billionaire class, right. How are we protecting our own? How are we ensuring that everybody has a fair shake and nobody's asking us to overthrow the? I mean, I am.
Jun:I am.
Ricardo:I'm saying burn it down. But nobody's saying that. We're just saying like, hey, we know you're making record profits. Don't tell us the best you can give us is 50 cents an hour. Right, on a full-time job, that equals, actually Safeway. I'll repeat this every podcast rolled back everybody's wages 6.5% in February. Right, it wasn't an increase. They rolled back their wages by 6.5% because they told them you're being paid too much. That's all they said. They said it's not that we can't afford to, we just don't want to. And so corporations are doing this. They're making record profits. So where has the mentality in society gone, where they're showing everybody that we're making gazillions of dollars, they're refusing us to give us what we need to survive and in the middle they're just saying we don't really care, you're not going to do anything about it anyway, right? So how do we keep each other safe?
Brian:You know I think a lot about when you were talking about the trans community and you can read about. They were taking very unpopular positions on birth control and abortion. So they focus, grouped it and found the most vulnerable group in trans people that were easier to target right. And so I think it's important to call that out because there is a group, there are groups out there that are trying to manipulate and tap into our anger and our distrust and divide us.
Brian:Yep, and our fear and our hatred and our yeah, I mean all of it, right, yeah, and so I think it's important to point that out and recognize what's happening so you can identify that you are being manipulated and so that we can get back to focusing on what there's so much more that brings us together community and she's brought me to Stonewaters and some of these events with youth that are struggling in the community to find support, and you cannot go to those events without feeling the pain of people who have been cut off from their community very early on and had to develop their own to your point.
Brian:And so I think it's important to get back to um, to focus and not be manipulated and focus on what binds us together, which is a lot. Right, there is, and that's what we have to build in Calgary, I think you know, even as I've talked to communities Muslim communities and Israeli communities, um, and, and you talk about what binds them, you know, uh, I was talking to Muslim communities who were saying you know, these are our cousins, and when we were trying to build a mosque on the west side of Calgary, we couldn't get it done for 10 years and the rabbi spoke up and that's how we got it built. And so, remembering that, we've built something really special in Calgary that binds us together and recognizes our difference I think it's and celebrates it, and not being manipulated into what makes us angry and makes us feel them and us.
Jun:So true when you say, like I'll connect to the word included and what binds us as well. Ricardo was also talking about. You know, to protect our own and to make people like feel included, and that really is still in alignment of what we've discussed early on. But also, the question that we need to pose ourselves is that whether we are creating God-enlightened spaces wherever we go, whether we are a worker, whether we are a father, whether we are a mom or a neighbor, we need to ask ourselves are we creating God-enlightened spaces in wherever I am, in, wherever we are? And, of course, when we ask that to ourselves, is that how are we helping others? That can be in the form of just listening, it can be in the form of offering help, it can be in a form of whatever ways that potentially you could do. But on the other hand, I also understand the need for an individual, you know, individually, as a person, how do we support and help, you know, elevate the conditions of other people? But also we need to ask ourselves how can we make sure that we are also, you know, like contributing to the political solutions of the problems that we have? And that means to really dissect, to really deep dive into the policies that keep the people, the problem to be more complex, that keep the problem in place like a glue. You know that you can take it away, because poverty, for example, homelessness, are actually very much associated with a policy that the government is taking too, or that the businesses are taking too, or, you know, like any institutions would. So I think, while we look at ourselves individually of what we can contribute but we need to as well be a contributor to a long-term solution Look into the systems.
Jun:What policies should we shift? What are practices that need to stop Like, for example, the requirement of a one-year Canadian experience? How can a newcomer be requested, demanded, to come up with a one-year Canadian experience? He just landed two months ago and you're asking for a Canadian experience. That is a practice, right.
Jun:And then we look into resources. Are we providing? We providing, you know, like, are we listening to the voices of those people with live experiences that are greatly impacted by the policy or the practices that are pervading in the community? So we need to look at resource allocation. You know, I like the way you put it, like ricardo with Ricardo, with how the business are actually earning massively but they're only able to give $1 or 50 cents I don't know how much it is, but it's kind of like really very meager in comparison to the total income.
Jun:But we need as well to examine are the people who are experiencing the problem in the table of decision-making? And these are the missing voices and we need them to be in this table so that our decisions are informed by them, that their lived experiences are kind of like integrated into the whole concept of the community solutions. But at the crux of this is also the mental model, the deep belief that we have of others, whether that would be like their sexual orientation, or whether that be by their color or by their religion. You know this deep-seated belief we need to ask ourselves you know, are we creating God-enlightened spaces by the deep belief that we have?
Jun:You know your example, bill, about. You know, no way can I live in a house, you know, in a house in a community where there are blacks. That is a deep-seated belief and we need to question that. And how are we transitioning that in such a way that we look into the policy but at the same time, individually, we're also creating that God-enlightened spaces as a good neighbor.
Laura:I think that brings to mind for me something that I heard earlier today. I was at a conference in Edmonton with a whole bunch of nonprofit leaders and actually Nahed Nenshi was there and speaking, and one of the things that really struck me that he talked about is, you know, he asked how many people drove up to the radio or something, and kind of everybody put their hand up and he said, okay, how many of you were listening to a streaming your playlist? And fewer people because of the age and demographic of the room. But he said that we often find ourselves engaging with information that we've curated for ourselves, which becomes then, of course, an echo chamber, which makes it harder to connect and we're not being exposed to new information and new stories because you know we're only listening to Alanis Morissette and Matchbox 20 or something, and so you want to make sure that you're, you know, exposing yourself to more than just a curated playlist that's giving you the same information and the same storytelling over and over and over again, and then by you know, connecting on a story level with people and connecting in community, that you're going to hear stuff that challenges you and you're going to hear stuff that's, you know, that resonates and that's a really.
Laura:It can be a hard space to sit in and sometimes it's a little uncomfortable or a lot uncomfortable, but I think it's important to continue to show up in those spaces and to, to, you know, have have make sure that the playlists that you're you know, in the podcast air quotes that you're listening to are are reflective of a larger, you know, a larger community and a larger world experience than you might be getting. Because if you just hear the same types of people, you know, if you think you're a penguin and you're surrounded by penguins, you know you're going to believe you're a penguin and you might not be.
Bill:Yeah Well, and I've said before, I'll say it over and over and over again like we choose the authorities in our lives right by whatever metric, I remember, you know, the federal election just happened in Canada and on election day I did, I went and I voted and I took my selfie, you know, next to the vote sign so that I could hopefully go get the free ice cream later and didn't end up happening. But and I even said when I posted it on social media, you know like, go and vote and vote with whatever authority it is that you you know uplift as being the one that drives you to vote right, but just go and do it and then get out of the way and let other people do it too, based on their metric right. But the flip side that I don't talk about at parties as much, that probably you know ought to be said just as much as you also have the choice of uplifting authorities in your life with integrity or without it, and we all get to make that choice with every decision around. Who am I going to believe? What voices am I going to listen to? And in the age of social media not that I will demonize everything about social media. It has, as with all things it has, a complex relationship with humanity and with the way that we live.
Bill:But the trouble with social media, more than anything, is that it is very easy to create the echo chamber, and the studies have been done on. What does it mean? When you have a thousand followers and you post something and one person says I disagree with that? It usually means they're no longer a part of your network, right, not? Hey, let's have a conversation about why it is that you disagree. Maybe there's information that I haven't heard yet. It's a now. 999 people said you know, like heart or whatever the case may be. They loved my post, you disagreed, you're just out and what you do is curate um, this, this, this narcissistic kind of view of the world.
Laura:Um, and the algorithms are designed to do that Exactly that Give us what we want to see and give us what we've always engaged with. And so you know you're kind of always being fed information that sort of agrees with your point of view, and I think that's really that's dangerous. I think that that's not very neighborly, quite honestly, and I think you know we need to make sure that we're checking in with that on a regular basis to make sure we're opening our eyes to new perspectives and understanding people who live and look and work and do things differently than us. And yeah, I think like social media totally serves that up on a platter in terms of like it's giving you what you want to see. It'll tell you the things.
Ricardo:It's interesting you say and both of you talk about media because Australia just came out of an election and in Australia they have mandatory voting and they also have a preferential ballot, so you put your first, second and third choice on your ballot so they can gauge. But when they were interviewing one of the candidates, they said the biggest challenge they had was combating social media driven news versus the actual news given by. And Australia has gone through their fight with Meta and all of the media, social media outlets, and they've come to a settlement of whatever hundreds of millions of dollars to pay. But you know, canada still hasn't and we have that media law and good or bad for whoever's opinion is of it I can't look at CBC on Instagram right here in Canada have that media law and good or bad for whoever's opinion is of it. I can't look at CBC on Instagram right here in Canada.
Laura:But when I was in Detroit last week.
Ricardo:I was looking at CBC's feed, it was pretty cool when that law came into effect. Every single data metric said every media list lost 43% of viewership. Said every media list lost 43% of viewership. 43% was on social media, which equated to 11.9 million page views a day.
Laura:People aren't getting the information 43%, exactly, well, people are getting that information.
Ricardo:They're getting a version of information. 43% of people are getting a version of information done exclusively through social media influencers, who are just pushing their opinion and narrative through microphones as opposed to and look, we can all have our opinion on media and the bias of media, and we can also all do our research on which media outlet we choose to follow, and it will tell you if they're right-leaning, left-leaning, if they're communist revolutionaries or if they're. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but the fact of the matter is we can't even really do that in Canada. There's so much social media influence with the generation under 40, uh, who just go straight to Instagram and Facebook rather than like the CBC news app or the CTV.
Laura:They don't even Google. They don't even Google.
Ricardo:They don't even, and we've, we don't. So this fight has to end is what I'm really saying. I, I do. I agree with the law that was put in by the government. Yeah, I mean, why are they getting a free ride? They're one of the richest companies in the world, right, but the fight has to end. We have to come to a settlement because we are now losing a whole, almost generation or group of people that don't know how to take media bias and critically think about the news sources they're hearing about. They're listening to people screaming, and the point I'm trying to say is all of that influence they get is creating the lexicon to which they behave in the outside world towards each other. Absolutely Right.
Bill:It impacts their ability to create meaningful community and it impacts their ability to actually cross divides that don't actually exist for them, that somebody tells them is there, with no integrity or lived experience to confirm or prove otherwise.
Ricardo:Because what I may hate or like about certain media groups, I don't even think the most right-wing media groups in Canada or the US will tell people to take up arms and go and fight or hurt these people Influencers do.
Bill:Yes.
Ricardo:They tell people hurt this group or do not like this group. They tell that with freedom of whatever sort of loose security protocols Instagram or Facebook will have, and that's what people are listening to. That's the problem we have. It's directly affecting the way that they treat our people around us.
Laura:I think Australia also just banned cell phones for young people.
Ricardo:Everyone under the age of 16.
Laura:Yeah, which I think is it'll be interesting to see how that, you know, shakes out in terms of, like, mental health for youth and connectivity and, you know, relationships with media and different things.
Ricardo:We'll see how time is. New Zealand's had it for almost a year now.
Laura:We'll see how time goes on.
Brian:You know the. The interesting debate is uh, for me is the we. We don't agree on what the truth is anymore.
Laura:Um.
Brian:I find that fascinating. It used to be. There were known truths out there that we all acknowledged, and with the social media and all that, we've lost that kind of north star of this is a truth and and people manipulate it in so many ways. It must be really. It's disconcerting for us and I imagine, if you're the young people that you interact with every day, how disconcerting is as you're trying to form your relationship with society and you can't find that North Star of what's an actual fact.
Laura:It's very disconcerting, yeah and trying to navigate some of the most awkward years of your life in lots of ways, very publicly, whether you've chosen to have it publicly or not, with online bullying and all sorts of all sorts of things. I mean, I will say that you know, youth that I work with are also using it. You know there's youth that get together for gaming and all sorts of different types of things, which has bringing them community, and what's been really cool is that some of our folks that have met through our programming are now, you know, hanging out online or hanging out at, you know, comic expo and cool places, cool things like that, and so they're kind of taking the online world in the real world and vice versa, and, and so that's been really good. But, yeah, I can't imagine, you know, I grew up a pretty analog kid.
Laura:Um, thankfully, and uh, I think it's, uh, you know it's, it's it's hard to be a young person where, yeah, you don't, you don't know what's true and and our brains have this really awesome way of telling us everything we hear is true. Um, because you know that's, our brains are lizards basically, and so, you know, they, they, they believe a lot of things and there's, you know, folks that prey on that in a really big way. I can think of a couple that I shall remain nameless, but that are targeting our young people and, you know, really providing them. They're providing them with the things that these young people feel like they're missing, like community and belonging. But it's not community and belonging for good, it's community and belonging for some pretty ill intentions and harmful intentions.
Bill:Yep. So there's a thread running through all of this stuff that neighborliness or taking care of each other or kind of investing in the people in our community and expanding those walls is not something that is passive, it's not something you can't. You can't just say, hey, I'm a nice guy and leave it at that. Right, this is a kind of an action, a chosen, kind of intentional thing that that we need to do again and again and again. It's something that we need to practice. It's something that we that we, I think we need to wrestle with constantly and listen for the voices that are not actually part of the narrative, part of the lexicon that we're using.
Bill:And in the Samaritan story, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, it wasn't just about stopping to help, right, that's the first thing recognizing the need, and stopping and helping certainly happened. But then there's the follow through Right, there's the relationship that's kind of built, taking responsibility, right, not just for the moment but for the longer term. And we always try to bend our podcast as we get to the end of it towards hope. Because if there isn't any, then what are we doing, right? So I'm going to ask a couple of questions. We'll see how these land. These are a bit more theoretical or hopefully a bit more experiential. Where have you seen and it's to anyone who wants to answer to start where have you seen unlikely relationships become the place where healing actually starts? Where have you seen in your own experience, your own life.
Jun:Unlikely relationships become the place where healing actually starts. It's a very profound question.
Bill:Thank you. Like I think of Laura's story about the person in the program that applied for scholarships, you know, and this relationship of again like people coming together had been part of the supportive relationship that you know, this young person now actually has, as you said, a life-changing opportunity, right, like, whatever ends up happening with it, the ripple effect of it is massive, right. That to me would be a prime example, not that I'm letting you off the hook with one you've already given, but to put some context around it, I guess, or some opportunity.
Brian:I mean, I'll throw one out. Maybe this is what you're getting at, but what has struck me, a I have, if you're looking for hope, this journey that I'm on as I'm going around Calgary and meeting all these amazing agencies and I was talking about this earlier, but I go home to my wife and I talk about you know, what did you learn today? And there's both these like really imposing problems of housing and public safety, but also these amazing groups and individuals that are working to solve them in their community and lifting people up. And I would say you know, I've met with I call it 20, 25 of the mental health and addiction agencies that are working in our communities and, like some of those agencies, are run by former addicts and working side by side with police officers and healthcare workers. And you don't necessarily you were talking about unlikely relationships you don't necessarily expect, you know, police officers and paramedics and former addicts and health care workers to be coming together and developing relationships and solving problems, but they are.
Bill:Absolutely, and some of the old models, they're actually on opposite sides of a really big divide.
Brian:Yeah almost in combat with one another, and they are. The hopeful part for me is that they are working together. They recognize the need for one another and they're solving some of the hardest problems that are out there for society, so that gives me a lot of hope.
Jun:In the space where I am working with ethnocultural communities and also having this intention to support in ways possible that I could in the organization, in addressing not only the immediate needs but really the system and the policy and the practices. And in one of my encounters I am in a space alongside with other service providers for mental health and they have been talking a lot about trauma-informed care, which really is fantastic. We need to approach every individual using a trauma-informed in a way looking at them that we don't add trauma to the trauma that they have, that we don't add trauma to the trauma that they have. But from the lens and perspective of an ethno-cultural communities. There's also a different layer of trauma and this is the racial trauma, the everyday microaggression where you know like whenever you are in the train, if you're a black and indigenous or people of color, you sit there, when you come into the train and you sit to somebody else and that somebody else would take the bag and really do like this. It doesn't really feel welcoming, you know and you feel that every day. You know Then that really creates a lot of mental anxiety and mental stresses that would lead to mental health issues as well. So microaggression and then if you apply a job, every day you go from hop from you know from one place to the other, but not a single interview at all Because by virtue of your color, probably because of your education, back in the country, wherever you are. So what I'm trying to say is that there is a level of racial trauma and my experience was to advance that you know. We also have to recognize racial trauma in the trauma-informed when we are working with racialized individuals. It should be embedded in our guidelines. It should be embedded in the way that we also practice our care. But I was so distraught because after one year of putting that forward, everyone seems to agree that yeah, we need to integrate that. But when we are in the act of integrating it, there are a lot of people, a lot of service, some service but not a lot, but some who have questioned why it should be considered at all. Look into the other. So that kind of like brought me to. You know how difficult it is to bring this kind of issues into collaboratives. But a silver lining there is that there are also a lot who really push for it and that up to now we continue to work on the document to make sure that racial trauma is integrated into the definition of the trauma-informed care. I know it has been a very contentious. There were months that it was so contentious, but what we've seen as well that some of those service providers have also left the collaborative. Because of that it feels so bad, but I also believe that it is for us.
Jun:Whatever color you have, whatever religion you have, whatever other demographics you might be, I thought it's very important to really come into a space of understanding, come into a space where we listen to what the other is and this brings us to, you know, like hope and the silver lining, the rainbows. These are the things that I see as important. Now that we are spring, we look at our garden. We want that to be multicolored, we want that to have a lot of color. So that's diversity. But if we shine only, if we give sunshine to only one plant, we give one sunshine, water to that one plant, that that can be so dominant and when you go into that garden it can be multicolored. But the others, you know the tone of the garden, the texture is really monotone. So what I'm trying to drive is let's listen to as many views, let's welcome as many people in our community and that would you know. Let's start off the hope that can spring into actually action, positive actions that would transform the lives of people. Thank you, thank you.
Ricardo:I like what you said and I think that this is not a really unlikely relationship, but a relationship that is long overdue as collaboration. For too long, especially in labor and unions, we've operated outside the social work and groups that exist when there's so much intersectionality between all of us right, I mean, I'll openly admit. We've recently started a partnership between Action Dignity and ourselves to try, which I am very happy, rick.
Ricardo:We're trying to start a partnership with the Calgary Alliance for the Common Good, because we, Our members who work in the stores, if they are new Canadians and they seek help or support, they go to these community groups and these community organizations and they don't think to ask their union for help as well. And it could be a work-related issue, but these communications don't line up. So I think that the unlikely relationship is not just unlikely, it's long overdue, and that's how healing begins when we all work together and collaboratively. We have our own goals and our own missions and our own action. Dignity has their own projects. Two Wheel View has their own projects.
Ricardo:I'm not sure if Two Wheel View would get on board with a dental care advancement clause in a collective agreement, but I'm sure I mean for sure though they would probably get on board with better health care for all children, right, Because we want them to all ride bikes and those kind of things. So like there is intersectionality in all of our groups, and these are the relationships that are long overdue, especially to be able to react and support people during times like these where such an unpredictable form of discrimination is happening, where we can't even imagine what the next thing would be. If everyone has seen that picture of Trump in the Pope's costume, did anyone know where that was posted?
Laura:On the White House page.
Ricardo:White House page, the White House Instagram page. Okay, that was posted on the White House Instagram page right next to another post that said DEI, not diversity, equity, inclusion. He wrote deport every illegal. Cool On the White House Instagram page. So this is the reason why collaboration is it's not just to build the relationships and help each other, it's also to like, combine resources and combine our skills and our knowledge and our support system so we can all help each other. And that's actually how healing begins, because I can say to myself someone can say I need a way to get to work. You know I can't afford a bus pass, but I live very close to work. And I can say I need a way to get to work. You know I can't afford a bus pass, but I live very close to work. And I can say hey, why don't you go see Two Wheel View? They might have somebody that will have a good bike for sale for you, right. Or to help you out with something.
Bill:They do Exactly right.
Ricardo:Or I need my kids sitting on the couch all day long. Give them a hobby.
Laura:They're really mechanical?
Ricardo:Hey, right, or my kid likes walking. How do you feel about door knocking, hey?
Brian:we can put them to work.
Ricardo:I know a lot of campaigns always got work to do right so absolutely. This is where relationships like this are not just, uh, unlikely. They're overdue and they need to happen soon.
Bill:Well, in some cases, I think some of the some of the important things to to consider. Um, as, as we we wrap up here, trying to be sensitive to time, it starts with showing up, at its core and a business degree, into a room full of doctors and like well-trained people and going I may not actually be the, you know, the person in the room with the education right, being able to show up to say maybe I don't have all the answers, maybe I actually, like I have something of myself that I can offer, but looking for the points of connection, the points of intersectionality, and doing it with the commitment and the intention to leave this world better than we found it, not just for your own, but for everybody, right, so that everybody gets to thrive and everybody gets to grow and everybody gets to flourish and become all that they can be. I always get the last word. It's just the way that it works. And I think that the most important thing that I am constantly reminded about, going back to where we started, the parable of the Good Samaritan, is that Jesus is sitting in front of a crowd and he's being. He's just finished telling them love your neighbor as yourself. And the first response to this commandment to love your neighbor as yourself is well, but who's my neighbor? Right, like, let's get the fine print on who I actually have to include in this circle, right? Spoiler alert go back and read the story again in your Bibles or Google it online. If you don't have one, that's perfectly okay too.
Bill:He never answers the question. He never says this is your neighbor. He actually tells a story about somebody who crosses barriers, supports somebody who's supposed to be an enemy, does it better than the people who are actually enshrined in the society, and does it for the long term, not for just the moment, and then says which of these people was the neighbor? So he doesn't actually say this is who is in the circle. What his answer is is go out and do that and you will be the neighbor. So in all of this I really want to uphold we all have choices, we all have agency. We all get to choose which authorities we're going to lift up and choose who it is that we're going to let into the circle. It is my hope and my prayer always that we are doing the work of expanding the circle and ensuring that nobody is left behind or nobody is left at a disadvantage, and that it happens in a way that long after we are done our work, the ripples continue for far more people than we can ever possibly fathom.
Bill:And so with that we're going to close off and I'm going to say to everybody who is listening thank you for listening To our audience, who is here in person. Thank you for being here and being such an engaged audience. Thank you for being here and being such an engaged audience. Thank you to Ricardo, as always, for being a mainstay on this panel, but especially tonight, laura, brian and June, it has been an absolute privilege to have you here. I am so grateful to all of you for taking the time to be here, and, as well, we say thank you to the United Church of Canada Foundation for their support of this podcast, and we will see you in June when we have another fantastic podcast episode coming up entitled Parting the Binary.
Bill:Let my Gender Flow, because it will be Pride Month and we are going to be doing all things pride for that panel. So take care of yourselves and each other. Find ways to expand the circle, find ways to connect with people at a relational level, because it makes more of a difference than you can ever possibly realize. Thanks and good night, and that's where we're going to leave it for today.
Bill:Friends, what you've heard around this table isn't just theory. It's testimony to the power of relationships that cross divides, to the resilience that rises in community and to the kind of neighborliness that isn't content with niceties but insists on justice, belonging and long-haul solidarity. So go out there and be a damn good neighbor, show up, reach across barriers, risk connection and keep breaking open the circle until everyone has a place. If this conversation stirred something in you, you can keep it going by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts or by joining us on Patreon. You'll also find past episodes and blog reflections and a few other behind-the-scenes extras at PreparedToDrowncom. Until next time, stay curious, stay kind and remember grace is wide and you are never in this alone.