Episode 12 - Still Waters

What if rest isn't a luxury, but our birthright? In this powerful Season 2 premiere, we wade into the deep waters of burnout culture and discover surprising currents of hope beneath the surface.

The statistics are sobering: nearly half of Canadian professionals report burnout, with a third saying it's worse than last year. In Calgary, one in five police officers are on leave due to mental and physical strain. We've all heard the advice to practice self-care, but as our expert guests reveal, that's like applying a bandage to a broken system.

Joining us at the table are Carolyn Krahn, Executive Director of Calgary's Workers' Resource Center, and Gian Carlo Carra, Calgary's Ward 9 City Councillor. Together we explore how everything from urban design to housing policies to workplace expectations shapes our capacity for rest. Carolyn explains that true burnout isn't just tiredness—it's a profound state of emotional exhaustion where people feel used up, unworthy, and unable to bring their best to work or personal life.

The conversation takes surprising turns through biblical concepts of Sabbath and Jubilee, housing affordability, union rights, and the collapse of nonprofit support systems. We discover that our cultural worship of productivity isn't just making us miserable—it's fundamentally at odds with human flourishing.

Yet hope emerges in our shared stories of community resilience during crises like the 2013 Calgary floods, when people showed up for each other regardless of background or status. We glimpse possibilities for rest built on collective action rather than individual striving.

As we navigate this burnout culture together, remember: you do not owe your life to your productivity. Your worth isn't measured by your output. Join us as we imagine a world where rest is sacred, community is valued, and we all carry each other through the hardest times.

Check us out at www.preparedtodrown.com

Continue the conversation over at our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/PreparedtoDrown

Chapters

• 0:00 Season 2 Introduction: Still Waters
• 3:41 Burnout by the Numbers
• 8:30 The Human Cost of Burnout
• 13:50 City Design and Community Connection
• 23:19 Housing Crisis and Affordability
• 37:19 Mental Health and Systems of Support
• 53:32 Rhythms of Rest and Sabbath
• 1:05:16 Reimagining Work and Community
• 1:17:32 Finding Hope and Collective Solutions
• 1:33:57 Creating a Better World Together

Transcript

Bill: 0:05

We are back, everybody, and Season 2 starts right here, right now, Around this table. We're going to talk about God, not the tidy, polished version, but the God whose love is wide enough to hold our stress and our striving, our setbacks and our joy. And we are going to do it, as always, in real time, with no edits and no do-overs. Our first dive of Season two is called Still Waters. The stats tell us what we already feel in our bones that we are all headed toward burnout, personally and professionally. Tonight, we are talking about what it means to stop, about Sabbath and solidarity, about the connections between work and housing, and dignity and rest, because here's the truth you do not owe your life to your productivity. I'm Bill Weaver and this is Prepared to Drown. Let's get started, and welcome to the start of our second season of Prepared to Drown here in the basement of MacDougall United Church in Calgary, alberta. We are going to be talking this evening about rest as we begin our season, because these days, everybody is talking about burnout, mental health, work-life balance, boundaries. You hear it in HR emails and you see it constantly across Instagram reels Take a break, drink water, breathe deep. But the reality of it is that in March of this year there was a survey done that indicated that almost half of Canadian professionals 47% say they are currently burned out and about a third of those said that it is worse this year than it was a year ago. Ricardo is already raising his hand and we haven't even introduced him yet. There was also in October of 2024, a Polaris Strategic Insights poll that reported that nearly 70% of Canadian workers have experienced the kinds of symptoms that lead to burnout, including things like fatigue, headaches and irritability. And just this week our local news reported that nearly one in every five Calgary police officers are currently on leave or modified duties because of mental and physical strain. So when people say take a break, yes, absolutely that helps, but it's not enough Because better self-care doesn't shift the conditions that are grinding so many people down. So in this opening episode of our second season, we are going to drift into the deep end of work and rest and talk tonight about what we're actually being ground down for and exploring a God who built rest right into the routine from the very beginning.

Bill: 2:41

Now I'm just going to get it out there. Most people will call me a hypocrite for even hosting on this topic, which is why I don't need to be the expert in the room. We've got Reverend Joanne Anquist and Ricardo de Menezes, who are here returning regulars. You all know who they are. But we also brought in some experts with us tonight, or at least expert adjacent tonight. So with us we have Gian Carlo Carra, who is Calgary's Ward 9 City Councillor for just a little bit longer; under 30 days, correct. You may remember, if you've listened to our podcast, that he was actually our very first guest on this podcast back in season one. He has spent the last 15 years at City Hall championing neighborhood-based planning, walkable cities, civic systems that make life more humane and livable, equity and diversity. And, Gian Carlo, we are so glad that you are willing to be back here with us tonight. Thanks for being here.

Gian Carlo: 3:34

I'm delighted to be here.

Bill: 3:35

I'm a big fan of the podcast, and I also get the privilege tonight of introducing you to Carolyn Krahn, who is the Executive Director of Calgary's Workers' Resource Center. Carolyn leads a team of people that make sure that Alberta's workers know their rights and are supported when their workplaces fail them, whether it's job loss or pay disputes, or discrimination or injury. Her work combines advocacy and compassion and practical help for some of the most vulnerable people in our city. So, Carolyn, thank you for being willing to join us here tonight. We are looking forward to learning from you and to hearing your perspective on all of this.

Carolyn: 4:06

Thank you so much.

Bill: 4:08

So let's start right where the stats leave us, and I'm going to actually start with Carolyn, because that's just how I tend to do this. In your work at the Workers' Resource Center, you see the human cost of burnout up close every single day.

Carolyn: 4:18

Oh, it's so funny because I think we took the same stats that I also have written down.

Bill: 4:28

So I'll skip that part. All right, fair enough.

Carolyn: 4:29

So my question to you is what does it look like on the ground for workers in Alberta right now? To put it bluntly, not great. Our calls have increased by about 23%. We get 11,000 calls a year from Calgary workers and Alberta workers. We serve all of Alberta. But there's a lot of contributing factors to this and I think the biggest thing is burnout is different than tired. Burnout correlates with basically, like emotional exhaustion, a cynicism around the work they're doing and the value they have, which leads to a reduced sense of accomplishment. So by the time burnout hits the table, we're not talking about I need a break. We're talking about I'm used up, I don't feel worthy, I can't give my best to my work or my personal life and the cards are falling.

Bill: 5:18

Yeah, I'm not okay.

Carolyn: 5:19

I'm not okay, and so you know. It's nice that companies have HR policies and say things like take a break, but in our experience I'm a little jaded because I see when that doesn't happen, they don't actually want you to, and that's because to take a full amount of rest that would be required to be able to show up that way is substantial. It's not a wellness day, it's an extended period of time once it hits that point, and so companies will often systematically try to get rid of employees who take stress leave, because they see them then as weaker then and not contributing. The same way, that workload often gets piled onto another staff member, so the domino effect happens. So, and rather than blame the company that's not adequately supporting that, they blame the person on stress leave. So there's a huge difference between what companies like to say versus what they actually do, and a lot of our insurance plans are not equipped to support this mental health I would say crisis that we're currently in.

Bill: 6:29

So, Gian Carlo, big fan of yours, obviously, and knowing you for a while, I've been able to hear you speak a number of times and one of the things that I've always appreciated about the way you speak about neighborhood planning is that, from your perspective, the very systems of the city that we build into our urban design, into the way that we develop our communities, and the city that we build into our urban design, into the way that we develop our communities and the way that we establish ourselves in relationship with our communities Everything from our commutes to our housing to our access to services all of it can either make it easier or harder for us to live well and be okay in the midst of our living, personally and professionally. Do you want to say a bit about that? Well, yeah, I've got a lot to say?

Gian Carlo: 7:09

The first thing I just want to say is that Calgary is a remarkable outlier.

Gian Carlo: 7:13

So if you look at the statistics, like, Calgary consistently comes in number one in the most drivable city of 100 world cities that are frequently sort of studied, and we have built a city for the car in a remarkable way, and what we've learned across North America is the more time you spend driving, the less time you volunteer and generally the less healthy you're going to be, particularly from a cardiovascular perspective, because we've in many ways in modern society and due to the proliferation of cities built for cars, we've engineered movement out of our existence, and it's having significant impacts on our ability to connect in community because we're spending too much time driving, and it's having significant impact on our actual physical health because we don't walk around to get things that we need on a daily basis.

Gian Carlo: 8:11

We drive or we sit in front of a computer screen, stuff like that. Having said all of that, calgary is an outlier. We are much, much more community-minded than your average bear and way more than we should be, given our connection to automobile dependency, and we're also a lot fitter than we are, and so I always look at Calgary as a remarkable sort of tale of two cities.

Ricardo: 8:34

I'm the outlier there.

Gian Carlo: 8:40

But I mean, the fact is that, you know, we have an incredible park system that people love to use, we have an incredible community association network, we have incredible service organizations, we have incredible faith communities, many of which are sort of bucking the trends in terms of attendance and all of those things. So, you know, I think the baseline for Calgary is generally better than everywhere else. Having said that, we are, you know, I think, in a Western crisis-wide, a Western culture or Western civilization-wide crisis of systems that are just grinding us down. You know, a lot of people talk about end us down. A lot of people talk about end state capitalism.

Gian Carlo: 9:27

A lot of people point to extreme inequality. We've declared in the city of Calgary a housing crisis because people are moving here from all over the world. We had 100,000 people come last year. We're on track for 85,000 people to come to Calgary this year and just housing people when that many people come becomes a significant challenge. And we've seen what happens to cities in Canada where their housing supply does not keep pace with their population growth and you reach this point of complete unaffordability. And Toronto and Vancouver are the shining examples that we uphold of what we don't want to become examples that we uphold of what we don't want to become. And so, you know, Calgary remains a remarkable tale of two cities where we spend too much time in our automobiles and yet we volunteer a lot. We are increasingly socially isolated by, you know, the design of our city, by the design of our work structure, by the design of our housing and things like that, and yet, at the same time, we are incredibly more connected to community than we should be in an absolute sense and definitely, definitely in a relative sense.

Gian Carlo: 10:36

So I think you know, and I you know, speaking about this sort of in a broader sense, I had the opportunity to serve on Calgary's Metropolitan Region Board and we hired one of the top regional planners in the world, a guy named Peter Calthorpe, to come in and he was amazed that we were doing regional planning with our neighbors in the Calgary region.

Gian Carlo: 11:01

And he said you know, I usually get brought in around the world and he's planned all over the world. When air quality becomes a huge problem because of smog, when housing affordability goes out the window and when mobility grinds to a halt, and you guys have none of these problems. So, like for the first time in my life, and you guys have none of these problems. So, like for the first time in my life, I'm doing regional planning not to fix problems that are intractable but to inoculate against them. So I mean, I guess the hopeful thing that I'd like to throw onto the table is that, as problematic as the moment we find ourselves is, we're doing pretty good relative to other places and we can use that as a path forward into a better future.

Bill: 11:48

I do also feel like I am morally obligated to throw into the mix of the things that you listed. The bike pathway network in Calgary is top-notch, and I say that primarily because they connected me to the rest of my route to work just this summer me to the rest of my route to work.

Gian Carlo: 12:03

just this summer, I spent my entire day-to-day visiting constituents bike-mounted and I put over 30 kilometers on almost exclusively on cycle-protected infrastructure, and I was very proud to have been part of that.

Bill: 12:17

Yep, yep, absolutely. I think we are the largest network of bike paths in North America.

Gian Carlo: 12:33

Right, yeah. Well, if you look at our greenway, our bike path, our river parkway system, there's no place in the world that has this level of interconnectivity. And then when you start adding actual last mile destination to school and to rec centers and to work, we're doing good. But it is also under threat because bike lanes are now ... Someone said that bike lanes are the urban infrastructure equivalent of trans rights right now.

Carolyn: 12:56

Wow what.

Bill: 12:59

That is a all right, that is an interesting.

Joanne: 13:02

That is a very loaded statement there.

Gian Carlo: 13:05

Well, 3% of people bike every day in Calgary right now, which is a very small number, and it seems to be the politics of the moment to go after the small number that most people don't do.

Bill: 13:20

Absolutely Yep. So, Ricardo, unions have been fighting for decades, right Shorter hours, weekends, benefits, safety, all those kinds of things. We just passed Labor Day right we are. We're back into the grind of life now that we celebrate post-Labor Day with the rest is done.

Joanne: 13:40

Yay, labor, yay.

Bill: 13:42

Let's go do stuff. That's right. So how do you see collective bargaining is not just about the wages, right, because the wages are certainly important, but we're talking about obviously much deeper things here than just the wages themselves, right?

Ricardo: 13:54

Mental health is the biggest thing, no matter what spectrum you're in, unionized or not.

Ricardo: 13:59

You know we have seen stats of almost a 300% increase in violent and aggressive incidents in retail, grocery stores, environments, right, people who are burnt out, pissed off at life, just take it out on whoever's in front of them and they shop daily, buy daily, every week, whatever, and they go to a grocery store and the prices are going up and up and up and grocery store billionaires are making more and more money and they take it out on the people right in front of them who are making just over or above minimum wage, right.

Ricardo: 14:29

So the rippling effect. But I mean, I want to cast a wide net on this topic to say, like we're still living in the world where our children now aren't doing worse than our parents, right or us? And how do we fix that problem en masse when now it's not just about money, like you said, doing worse than our parents, right or us? And um, how do we fix that problem on mass when now it's not just about money, like you said, it's about the ability to even wrap your head around the magnitude of challenge ahead of us?

Bill: 14:53

for in the world at work. So so I want to actually encourage you, because I think that's an important statement you're making. So can you quantify for people a bit more

Ricardo: 15:10

Well, wages haven't kept up with the cost of living in general. Forget food. Forget insurance, because you know Alberta now pays the highest insurance rates in the country.

Joanne: 15:16

Housing prices and university costs.

Ricardo: 15:18

University costs, right. So not only you know, we all grew up in the time and the age where, if you get a degree, you'll have the best jobs, and that's not the case anymore either. You go to the Haskins School of Business and you walk off the stage. You could have top marks but still never find a job that would pay what you think you need to make. Right 10% requirements for down payments on houses. Now we're down payments on houses now, but when houses are a million dollars a pop, how long will it take for you to save $100,000 when the cost of a jug of milk is $8 each?

Ricardo: 15:52

One of the biggest complaints not complaints arguments we had when we were negotiating a little bit with Safeway was someone got up and said a tub of your margarine costs $14. That's one hour's or less than an hour's pay for me, but like I have to work 45 minutes to afford a tub of margarine, that's not even including the loaf of bread that I'm putting the margarine on, right, that's not including my rent. And, god forbid, I can watch some TV and pay for a Netflix subscription, right. So rest is almost a privilege because people are working multiple jobs and parents are working multiple jobs and it's a culminating effect, really, and let's not bring in the world around us and the politics that we exist in that we were faced with on a daily basis in the news.

Ricardo: 16:46

Right, the affordability crisis is real and this is why we're seeing strikes like crazy in unionized workplaces. Right, air Canada just finished theirs and all they wanted was pay for work that they were doing. Right, and I liked the quote that somebody used where snowstorms have shut down Air Canada longer than it took for the government of Canada to put in Section 107 and force them back to work. Right, but they tore it up. This is where workers are at now. Right, we have an unprecedented increase in calls at our union office for organizing leads, but we don't have the capacity either to bargain every single. Like small 15 employee workplaces are calling us to unionize. Yeah, I could unionize that in two days.

Carolyn: 17:33

I have some thoughts on that for you. Right, I'm a bargaining unit of one. That's why I say that.

Ricardo: 17:38

I could unionize them in two days, but then try to get a collective agreement right. That's when the government works against you. And we have the government in power that every single step of the way oh, minimum wage is not going to go up, oh, we're not going to do this, we're not going to do that, and it's just. It has a cumulative effect on everybody, especially when you see other conservative jurisdictions, like even the province of Ontario, raising their minimum wage and in here they're like no, sorry, right, it's hard. And then, going back to what we just talked about, how do you then provide for your children or offer them hope, right?

Carolyn: 18:12

I think it is hope. I think you know all the things you're blowing down about with our kids are doing worse off is they don't have any hope, they don't see themselves in that future, right. And then you couple it in with working two jobs to try and pay your student loan interest, and then it's like when do they have time to actually negotiate the finer points of like political parties or things they want to, you know, show up for? And I, and I do think that some of that is a systemic approach. It's like if you keep people tired, um, then you keep people complicit and, and in that exhaustion they can't question, or don't have the capacity to question, the nuances of how those things are acting or how those systems are acting on them. And so, from a you know I hate to have this be so pessimistic on a Friday night, but like there is hope, I think, and the sun's still shining.

Bill: 19:00

Yeah, exactly, we usually try to save the hope for the second half. Oh good, okay, so we'll do a bit of a sandwich thing.

Carolyn: 19:06

Okay, I got you, but it's absolutely that, and I think that's why people are so isolated. People don't have hope right now because they can't see an end separate from how they feel, and that is where a lot of that mental health crisis is, I think, really coming to burn a lot of people out.

Ricardo: 19:26

Let's talk about the cumulative effect of community economics. If people can't afford groceries or even rent, they're not putting money in the collection plate at the church or donating to the places that may have helped them in the past, right, like the food bank is seeing an unprecedented increase in people using the food bank, but they're not seeing the same increase of people donating to the food bank, right? So not-for-profit is in and out in that sense, right.

Carolyn: 19:52

Well, and they're burning out of nonprofits too. That's the problem as well.

Joanne: 19:57

It's really interesting because, as we're talking, part of me is saying we need an adjustment of expectations. But I think that's a two-sided sword here, because, you know, part of in the Christian tradition, part of our job as ministry and as communities is to develop this idea of we carry each other right, you know? I mean, I say that very often on Sunday we get the privilege of carrying each other and that we are the hands and feet of Christ, and what that means is that we don't buy into the empire's expectations. We set our own expectations, but I think we have a population of folks who have, who live in the expectations that the empire has set. Okay, so, for instance, if you work hard enough, um, and it's not true anymore but if you work hard enough, you will be able to achieve things. And if you can't achieve those things, then either you're not educated enough, or you're not smart enough, or you haven't worked hard enough.

Ricardo: 21:06

You pull up your bootstraps right.

Bill: 21:07

Right has that ever actually been true.

Joanne: 21:11

Well, so here's the thing. There was a time where you could have a regular job, you know, one that didn't require a university degree, and you'd be able to buy a house, take a vacation and support your children.

Carolyn: 21:22

That's what minimum wage was was to support a minimum standard of living.

Joanne: 21:26

And you know my kids will often say to me, you know, because I will not anymore, but there was a time I would argue for a kind of capitalism, mixed market capitalism, which Canada has historically had, and they would say like why, why? And I said because you know. You know, for my generation capitalism was pretty good, like the burgeoning middle class. If you even Ford said, for all his problems, I want my workers to be able to afford to buy my car, there was an understanding that um, a strong middle class was necessary in order to support a culture and all the kind of uh, morality that um went along with that.

Joanne: 22:25

What has happened, I think, is that the empire has set expectations Like, for instance, there's this real sense in banking. You know, people will pay their mortgage if they can and sacrifice all of their things. If they stop doing that, if they say it's not worth for me to own a house, I'm going to stop. It's like moral hazard. It's not worth for me to own a house, I'm going to stop. It's like moral hazard. Right, we got to convince these people. It's their obligation to buy into the system, right? So I don't think we should buy into the expectations of the empire at all, and we need to point out that the expectations of the empire are not only flawed but they're harmful.

Joanne: 23:03

But I do think that you know, in being a church practitioner, that the expectations that you can make it on your own or that you should be able to make it are also flawed. There is not the same sense of we carry each other in the culture that is required if we actually are going to band together and make big change, and so maybe we don't. You know, like, if your goal is I'm going to buy a house in the suburbs, maybe that is an adjusted expectation that has to happen, not because you're not deserving of that, but the culture cannot persist in the. My biggest investment is my house and I'm going to get a house and that's the biggest achievement of my life. You know that's the empire's expectations. We need to adjust them, not so that we diminish our lives, but that we enhance them, that we are more community minded, that we are able to exist in a simpler way of being, rather than the complexity that our culture is throwing at us, that exhausts us all.

Carolyn: 24:12

I think there might be some privilege in there. I'm going to be totally honest with you.

Joanne: 24:17

You'll never invite me back again, but that's fine. Point it out absolutely. Here's the issue, though.

Carolyn: 24:22

If you look at the rules around renting and scarcity of renting and the volatility of said market. So I agree with the proposition that you're making in terms of like, the theory of it, but when we look at the application of that like we look at what happens. So if all these people are coming to the city, as Juan Carlos already said, or Gian Carlos sorry we have to look at it in terms of like, well, rents are going to go up. We've seen it already. Right, there's all of a sudden immediate volatility. People can't have pets. There is an expectation that you know, if you make noise about the safety or the the quality of your housing, that you're going to get like. So I I know what you're saying, but at least with an asset that you can own, it's more difficult for someone to tell you that, whereas, if you look at it, maybe you're not pointing to rent as the alternative, but what I will say is it can't be to just put it into another system. That is equally disenfranchising, absolutely.

Bill: 25:19

So I would say from personal experience and I'm actually going to have to rely on Giancarlo and I'm probably going to put him on the spot, so I'm hoping he actually can answer some of it but we rented for a long time, my wife and I, like a two bedroom house. We had three kids. We got to the point where it was like this is no longer, you know, actually an option. We were again anytime. We complained about the fact that like the furnace was breaking. You know middle of December and you know we're at like minus two on the thermostat and you can see your breath in the house and like landlord, very angry, like if this is going to be a problem, then we're going to need to talk about whether or not you can still be here.

Bill: 25:55

We finally kind of did the math, worked through some things and found Attainable Homes Calgary, which is a city of Calgary, not for profit. That did a. I mean, it's the only reason that we are where we are now. In all honesty, right, the down payment becomes part of the mortgages alone and we were able to move into a fantastic townhouse that had just been built as a part of like an infill community and we pay less now on that mortgage than we were paying in rent to a landlord that consistently didn't have enough gas in the car. Rent goes up 100 bucks the next month, right. And there was no checks or balances or safety or anything in the middle of it for anybody.

Bill: 26:44

That was just devastating, right. And you feel hopeless when you're infested with mice and your landlord won't even call an exterminator, right. So there is a whole kind of challenge around what is the alternative when none of the options on the table seem to be. So, again, I love the beauty of the idea of like we all carry each other, and I think there's been like I've been lucky enough to find, like in the case of Attain Alohom's, calgary. There are places where you find these opportunities to kind of buck the trend right, the buck, the trend right. But the phrase I use a lot across many facets of my life right now is so much of this is dependent on everybody involved surrendering to their better angels in order to make it work. Right. And all it takes is one opportunist to bring the entire house of cards down. And there's got to be a better way. Right got to be a better way.

Joanne: 27:44

Right, when I say we shouldn't be relying on sort of the single family household as the way that we gain wealth, I'm not saying that people should not have regulated rentals, for instance. The issue also becomes political because you have a government that likes the sort of laissez-faire capitalist model and does not want to regulate property owners. Right, and I get that. But I saw this I think it was probably a TikTok or something. That seems to be where I get most of my information now.

Joanne: 28:20

But talking about how the idea of as soon as you get a certain age, you move out and get your own place is a capitalistic idea to fragment families and communities and that you know there's lots of cultures where you will live in the same house. Now, that does have its problems. When I was in Guatemala, they have these things called the love motel and what you you know for people who live with their parents, and so you just rent a room in the hotel, you drive the car in the garage, go down, no one knows you're there, you rent it for an hour and you're gone. Like they have a whole infrastructure to get privacy and intimacy outside your family home right Business idea.

Ricardo: 29:05

What Business?

Joanne: 29:06

idea.

Bill: 29:07

We should have it here too.

Carolyn: 29:08

I'm pretty sure they do have it here.

Joanne: 29:10

They call them the love motels and they have like signs. So you know that that's what this is for. But anyway, you know, like we happen to have a household where our children live with us, and they're adult children like 30, in their 30s. They don't always want to live with us. And they're adult children like 30, in their 30s they don't always want to live with us. But our thing was like if you need to save for a home, if you need to have some, either you can buy in with us or you can have cheaper rent so that you can also have something.

Joanne: 29:36

Like I think that there are ways that we can adjust these empire expectations where we can all own things. You know, like there's. I have a niece who lives out in Chilliwack and for the longest time she and her their best friends bought a house together and they lived for like 10 years that way. Then they sold it and had enough to buy their own place when they adopted a child. Like I think that's what I'm trying to say about adjusting expectations. Not that we shouldn't own property, but we can do it differently, in a way where everyone has access and not just privileged people like me and I admit 100% privilege. That I have, you know, 100% educated. My dad was a doctor, middle-class, all those things, and I recognize how that. But I also see how that privilege is a trap as well. It's a thought trap, I think, and sorry if that came out wrong, sorry.

Gian Carlo: 30:38

I'm going to jump in here because we've touched on a number of things that are sort of in the wheelhouse of my expertise, so I'm going to do some mansplaining Great start. The first thing I want to say is that, connecting to the theme that we're talking about here, about rest right, we know that the stability of a roof over your head is fundamental to being rested, to be mentally well. We know that the crisis of unhoused people on our streets is not fixed until they have the stability of a roof over their head. I remember 15 years ago when I started my beginning of my public service. I remember a long-time social work advocate in the city of Calgary saying you know, Ten years ago, if you told me that housing was the answer to homelessness, I wouldn't have believed you. Like as wild as that statement is right, and I mean I think what we've seen over the last 20 years is an understanding that unless people so let's deconstruct the term homelessness right, Homelessness. People now say unhoused right, and it's sort of like you can go onto TikTok and have people make fun of that Like no, it's unhoused.

Gian Carlo: 32:03

But what homelessness refers to is the fact that people believe that you lose your home long before you lose your house, right, and you know things go sideways in your life and stuff like that. And then you're on the street and so people are the first generation of people who were trying to correct the growing unhoused situation were like, well, we got to get people back into a home and we got to address, you know, whatever mental health crises they're in, whatever poverty issues, but without the stability of a home, like that. The antithesis to that thesis was that, well, actually, if you've lost your house, you can't even have a home. And and the other argument, of course, is that people who are unhoused have a home in the city because this is all of our home. So, anyway, I think the synthesis of that thesis antithesis is that, yeah, you need a roof over your head, but you also need the roof in the context of that supportive community, out of our cities because of the commodification of housing, because of the dream of the single family house, and we spread ourselves further and further out and we have to drive out there to get to it and all of a sudden there's no community and we can't even afford the school. It's a vacant lot for 20 years and the kids have all moved out by the time there's funding for a school and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Gian Carlo: 33:37

So I think the first thing that we have to understand is that if we are going to be well rested, which is to say mentally well, you, everybody deserves the stability of a roof over their head, and then, ideally, that stability comes in the context of not just a four walls and a roof, but a community of support to belong to. Now I want to just call out Bill you talked about the attainable housing model that you have found stability in as someone who slaves away as a dedicated servant community, as a reverend. Attainable housing is an ancient model right Like I'm looking at my father here in the audience and in the 1940s his mother moved his family out of the tenements of the Lower East Side of Manhattan into an attainable housing project built by the United Garment Workers of America, the Women's United Garment Workers of America, and the basic idea Look for the union label.

Ricardo: 34:49

Just look for.

Gian Carlo: 34:53

We're both unionized we're like yes, we get that and the basic idea, right, is that there is a profit motive that often drives the construction of housing, and if you're not going to make some return on that investment, why the heck are you going to build it? I mean, some of the most dyed-in-the-wool capitalists I've ever met. When someone is building a house next to them, they're just doing it to make money. It's like how do you think most of the housing gets built? But with models like attainable housing, you say, well, why don't we take that profit motive and collectivize it within a beneficial, a benefits-focused organization? And unions were amongst the first groups to step up and sort of address housing crises through that. Attainable Homes Calgary was established by the previous mayor, dave Brancanier, when he started to understand that we were potentially heading towards a housing crisis and he understood that there was an opportunity to do that, and I'm delighted that that works. But I think I want to just back out one more second and sort of address the fight between whether we're privileged to own or whether we're slaves to rent or

Gian Carlo: 36:02

whatever and say that you know. I think that a city of one point, almost 6 million people now, is big enough and complex enough to sort of accommodate a multitude across a spectrum of housing. And so I think what we need to be focused on, as Calgarians, is say it's okay, everyone should be able to get into the property game if they want to, but at the same time, if you can't, or you don't want to or you won't, there also has to be a fallback position, and I think we have to look at the housing market as a or the housing spectrum as a full spectrum. And there's a market side that, in Calgary, is remarkably robust and it's, you know, the market is responding by adding more supply and that is keeping our housing costs low. But then there's the non-market side and Calgary is way behind on the non-market side.

Gian Carlo: 37:00

Most Canadian cities of any size, 6% of their housing market is non-market and built by unions or not-for-profits or civic organizations or government. In Calgary it's 3% and it's shrinking because we're building way more market housing than non-market housing. So I think, collectively, what we have to just say is we're a big enough and complex enough city to allow for a multitude of different housing, tenures, types, styles. But what we really need to do is we need to roll up our sleeves and bring that 3% and shrinking up to 15, 20% within a generation or two, if we're going to all be able to just rest.

Carolyn: 37:47

Well, and from a nonprofit point of view just to kind of echo that sentiment too is like, you know, those agencies that do that work, like Calgary Housing and other groups that work basically in that sphere, right. So our agency, the Workers Resource Center, help people apply for assured income for the severely handicapped, counterpension plan, disability, which gives people a stable income that allows them, you know, hypothetically to participate in housing and a chance of reprieve. But what I will say is I don't know how many of you are familiar, but one of the recent changes to the legislation under Bill 39 was that the provincial government got to approve every funding grant over $250,000 from the Alberta Law Foundation. That's not public money. The Alberta Law Foundation exists by the interest earned on the lawyers' pooled trust accounts and they use that money to distribute grants against justice sectors in Alberta, and not just legal aid clinics but other agencies such as mine. So two-thirds of our funding is from them. Now, despite that not being public funds, all that approval over $250,000 grants annually have to go before the justice minister. So it's a way of skewing the game. So there are experts in this sector in Calgary housing in supporting, you know, rest and opportunity for rights and equity, rights and equity, but they are also being severely compromised by this sort of empire system. Because if you don't go along kind of with the will, what will the consequence be and it's not your consequence for survival of your own agency, it's. You know the very high stakes that happen to your clients when these things happen, and so I think you know it becomes this really systemic silencing event where we can't say the things that we would want to say about the system we are. Also, the nonprofit sector is in collapse, like you know.

Carolyn: 39:53

Coming out, covid was awful for nonprofit sectors. There was never. We helped people file employment insurance. So you can imagine when CERB hit, those were some very interesting days, working your kitchen table, wondering what's happening. News changes by the day and you've got thousands of people calling you looking for these answers. Like so a lot of nonprofits went through that to some degree in COVID and we were like we will just get through this, things are going to be okay.

Carolyn: 40:18

So you know we summoned all of our bandwidth we could to patch through this time and then what happened was coming out of COVID is the mental health crisis didn't stop, affordability went out of control, further polarization of politics happened and all of that resulted in an increase in complex needs of our most vulnerable people, and at a reduced funding rate, because they threw money at us for COVID and then it peeled back right. So all of a sudden you have nonprofits trying to close this gap, calgary Housing the food bank. With less money, more complex needs. Well, then we have to pay our people less. Then you know they can't support the mental health that they need.

Carolyn: 41:05

The clients are so difficult. Making sure that you can still exist is difficult, and at this point I will tell you, as someone who runs a nonprofit, it feels like you're rolling a boulder up a mountain and you don't actually see the end in sight, and I think that's a common feeling for our clients. But my biggest thing is that I don't want that to fail for our clients. But the other thing is my staff are unionized as well, so we have a legal obligation and we live our values as an organization. We don't have burnout. We honor your space. I say you don't owe me your whole life at the expense of the job that you do. I ask that you perform the job to the best of your ability when you're here and that you take your time to restore yourself.

Carolyn: 41:51

When it's done, I give them a large degree of freedom and choice and I let them conduct their work the way that's meaningful to them, in a way that makes sense. We can do that because of a collective agreement. Because of that layer, I have to say to my funders this is what we pay, we are legally obligated to do it, we are legally obligated to provide these and there isn't really much they can say about it. And so just to kind of toot union's horn along with Ricardo is that, like I will tell you, right now, the nonprofit sector is ripe for unionization 100%. And that's not the be all end, all solution, I will say. But what I will say is we are all in this together. Everybody feels the same. Like everybody feels a certain degree of a lack of hope. People feel alienation, isolation, you know, a less sense of belonging. So where you can find those collective spaces to have this experience? Or invite us to a podcast, even though I'll probably never get invited back again because I throw privilege at it Over and over again.

Joanne: 42:55

You will be invited Never again.

Carolyn: 42:57

But we need these collective spaces to talk about these creative solutions, because if I just sit in my office, you know, with existential dread about the system, it does nothing. But when I go to union events and I sit on the Alberta Federation of Labour Executive Council, it gives us a chance to bring some hope back. Because you know what, when you have community, that's a shared responsibility and it's the best place to collectivize, to bring forward a different type of institutional model or a different empire, for lack of better words. Right, people always say the system is broke and I said no, it's not. The system's operating exactly as it should. The question is, for who?

Carolyn: 43:40

so I think we really right there yeah, so I always, but I always like to echo it back the the spirit of this city in the 2013 floods. That's what I always think of when I think about the potential for people in this city. That's what I think about. I think about millionaires and my dad and having more volunteers. They know what to do is showing up to clean out people's homes that weren't even theirs. Where is that heart? Because that's where we have to be if we're going to collectivize and implement change and give people the permission to have humanity and to have rest. That is what we need.

Ricardo: 44:12

It's interesting. You say like it's not interesting at all. The way you treat your staff is a model, not just because of the fact that you're legally obligated to do so with a collective agreement. It's just the right thing to do, Right? So I mean, in the not-for-profit and even in the social work I don't want to say industry, but the social work field it's the right thing to do, right thing to do. And the fact that we, that we have to. You know, a wise man was told once told me that every company or or business or or organization deserves the union that that comes into that workplace because, uh, and every union deserves the company that they are representing. Right. And so we do represent some not-for-profits at UFCW, and one being a school for special needs children and and uh, people who provide, uh, people who provide in-house services to disabled people as well.

Ricardo: 45:01

And the thing we always hear at the bargaining table, especially in long-term care and assisted and seniors living, think about the clients. What about the clients? Okay, well, that's great, but you're asking me to work 16-hour days and you're asking me to work more with less, and somebody goes and gets injured themselves in wcb. We don't get more help with an injured person. We just get the same amount of hours with an injured person and so my workload doubles, like it's just non-stop. And you know, when we have these models especially in alberta and uh, where you have for-profit companies running these operations and saying, well, think about the clients. Well, you're not thinking about the clients, right? Because in long-term care there's a company, Aged Care and Medicine Hat that I bargained for just last year, this year, and the clients buy their own soap and shampoo and toiletries, right? And you know people will have diabetes and they still get big pieces of cake with icing on it because this is what the budget allows for, right?

Ricardo: 45:56

When we talk about housing and you know, Giancarlo, you talked about the level, the amount of immigration we've had come into the city we can't forget the opportunity and the fight for rest and how it's affected in the context and lens of racism, because immigrant families come to this province with less. They generally and historically and currently earn less than people who were born here in St Louis and other Tim Hortons. So Staffs, all that, but is the province of Alberta really the right, the right body to to manage immigration and new Canadians? You know, there's three things I can think of off the bat that we can do in Alberta to fix the lives of people here right now.

Ricardo: 46:44

Energy rates, electricity, water, heat right, that's taking up like $300 a month for some people when you're earning $15 an hour, is not you know? Insurance rates okay, Insurance rates are going up for everybody, or some people when you're earning $15 an hour, is not you know? Insurance rates Okay, Insurance rates are going up for everybody. Buses pay insurance, you know, and I think ATU had said that the cost of a bus fare is still only covering about 60% of the cost of actually operating transit in Calgary. Right, and so.

Gian Carlo: 47:13

It's actually probably around 40%. Oh shit, oh shit.

Joanne: 47:17

Oh shit.

Carolyn: 47:20

I wasn't the first one. I'm so excited.

Ricardo: 47:23

So these costs keep going up and so we have this conundrum where we need to keep transit affordable so people who can't afford a car can still afford to get to work right. And the third thing is what we've been talking about when it comes to housing is obvious rent control. Right, like the province of Ontario has rent control, but only grandfathered for houses built in a certain so all these massive condos that are being built and being rented out, they have no rent control on them. So you force people with lower incomes to go into less safe and maintain housing because the rent control. People are saying, well, we can't afford to fix it because we can't afford to raise the rent to cover the cost.

Gian Carlo: 48:01

So let me jump in on rent control, because this is sort of a political third rail conversation, and I will say that I think when you start talking about rent control, you have to be very clear about what generation of rent control you're talking about, because you're going to find a group of people who want to have a very black and white conversation, and so the black and white conversation. And again I'm looking at my parents here in the audience, who spent six months of their year in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the apartment that they moved into 59 years ago when they got married, and they're in a rent-stabilized environment. Rent stabilization is a second or third generation of rent control. But what happens when you have rent control in places like New York City had rent control for generations is it was short-term gain for the people who got to enjoy rent control, but it was long-term pain for the subsequent generations. And I think about the Upper West Side of Manhattan, which was a bastion of middle class and now it is hyper-gentrified and, except for elderly folks who are holding on to a rent stabilized situation, the rents are fantastically out of control. I'll just speak in round numbers. My parents pay around $2,000 a month for their apartment and the apartment Three now. Three now because of rent stabilization, but on the open market tenants who have left and apartments that have opened up to total market forces they're paying $8,000 to $9,000 a month. Right, and so like who can afford that?

Gian Carlo: 49:43

But the reality is that if the first generations of rent control and there are stories of people who, like, lived in 20-room apartments overlooking Central Park West and we're paying 300 bucks, you know, period was that if developers can't make money building houses, they won't build houses, and if you just implement a blanket rent control, they're not going to be able to afford to do that.

Gian Carlo: 50:11

So I think when we talk about, and when you're talking to conservatives, I mean we tried to talk as part of our conversation about the housing crisis in the city of Calgary. We wanted to have an adult conversation about rent control and it was very clear that you know more conservative forces and the province were very interested in shutting that down and having a very black and white conversation. And the reality is that if prices are going up, there is a balance to be struck between the cost that the landlord is facing, the cost that the tenant is facing and the fact that the landlord gets increased equity, because as prices go up, arguably the cost of their asset is going up, and so there has to be some way to shield the tenant from the total cost and bite into the asset growth to shield cost.

Carolyn: 51:15

Raise wages. I think that's what you do, okay.

Gian Carlo: 51:18

But that's the other side of the equation, right? So I mean, I think the answer to affordability, which is ultimately the answer to rest, is there is no one answer. It's we have to do everything and we have to have very thoughtful and nuanced conversations about every element. Every arrow in the quiver has to be thoughtfully drawn and shot. I think you're right.

Ricardo: 51:42

We have to do everything, but I also think that we're far behind. We have to catch up. We have to do the simple small things to catch up. Jim Stanford, who was the economist for Unifor for many years, told us at UFCW that because, remember, safeway rolled back everyone's wages 6.5%, they need 5% and 5 and 5 retroactively just to keep up with the cost of inflation now, let alone what we're able to negotiate going forward. So I mean it's nice for Premier Smith to get up on a stand and say, oh, we're offering teachers 12% over three years. Cool, what happened to the eight years they got?

Gian Carlo: 52:17

nothing Right and what happened to the class size and all the other things that are contributing to?

Carolyn: 52:24

So we have to catch up and yeah, but who's the we right Like this is my always question, right?

Ricardo: 52:29

Like who's?

Bill: 52:30

the we.

Carolyn: 52:30

And what are those driving forces that are going to do that?

Bill: 52:34

So I am aware of time. I'm actually going to give Joanne the last word here, but first I just want to two things. When we come back, I want us to talk about the hopeful side of this conversation. Okay, you painted the bleak picture. But I do want to flag 300% increase was what you flagged right at the beginning, Ricardo.

Bill: 52:54

20% increase in calls 11,000 calls a year was what you flagged at the beginning. Again, a research study from 2024 that showed that over 50% of people experience burnout and that two-thirds of them are more burnt out that year than they were the year before. Right that it is getting worse, not better. We've talked a lot about market factors and wages and all that kind of stuff. Carolyn, you also mentioned that in a lot of cases, even the support structures that exist within benefits and insurance and that kind of stuff that people are offered as a part of their compensation for the work that they do is inadequate and unable to actually weather the demand in order to help keep people well. So before we go to intermission, I will have one more question, actually before we do that. But first off, Joanne, talk about the spiritual toll of all of this, because that is a huge part of really what it comes down to, right, when all of the money and everything is taken out of the equation and we just talk about the spiritual toll.

Joanne: 54:04

You know, as Christians we believe that God set a blueprint for life and I was thinking at the very beginning, like the 23rd Psalm, you know, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want he leadeth me beside. He makes me to lie down in green pastures, he leads me to side still waters. He restores my soul. Sorry for the gendered language around God, but built into the human code is true rest, true rest, which is spiritual rest. We don't have those avenues.

Joanne: 54:44

I was thinking in all this conversation that you know the Hebrew people, the code that God gave them included a reset. Right Every seven years there would be kind of a reset. Fields were fallow. And then there was the year of the Jubilee, which unfortunately there's no evidence it was ever practiced. But the idea at the year of the Jubilee was everything goes back to the way it was at the beginning. If you were a slave, you were free. If you bought land from another tribe, all the lands went back. There was a great reset and in that reset was the hope that you could begin again. I think after COVID we needed a reset that we never got and we needed space to say this is our fallow year and we never took it.

Joanne: 55:34

The spiritual life says the rhythms of existence around seasons, for instance, which happens to be Sunday's sermon, but the rhythm of existence around seasons always has a wintertime where you don't have to put out the same as you do other seasons. We need that time, we need that space, but we also need that orientation. Again, the empire says all you have to sell me is your labor and your body, and what are you going to do for that? And the spiritual life says we are first and foremost humans who are worthy and deserving of dignity, and that is the ground level that we work from All our housing policies. Everything we do should be how can we promote human flourishing? And if there's money to be made in that, you know, god bless, you Make some money, but the baseline is human flourishing, our housing policies, our politics, our labor practices. Human flourishing, and not just for the privileged, for everyone. That's the spiritual response to these kinds of questions.

Bill: 56:59

Wow, we silenced the panel with that.

Joanne: 57:01

Well, they know that's pretty cool, All right.

Bill: 57:03

So my question I thought that was the last word, I was sure someone was going to have some kind of like an amen or something coming up. So easy question, we're just going to. I'll start with Ricardo, we'll work our way down and then we'll go straight into the intermission. Um, and it's easy question, we're just going to. I'll start with Ricardo, we'll work our way down and then we'll go straight into the intermission. And it's just a more kind of a personal thing, because I'm curious anytime you get people around the table, what's one way that you personally resist the grind in your own life? What's one thing you do that helps you reclaim Real rest?

Ricardo: 57:34

I don't have, I don't know, I always say to myself how did you enjoy your vacation? No, I slept a lot, I slept. I enjoy reading, but I found, like even post COVID, when you stared at a screen so much that I couldn't, the burnout was setting in where I couldn't focus on reading a book. I couldn't even get through a page without my brain starting to jumble. So audio books has been my thing, and podcasts too, right. I always enjoy when I get the notice from Patreon saying Brad Drown has released the podcast episode. I get to listen to myself. But like podcasts and audio books for sure right now aside from my music, right, because music is back and I'm happy with that.

Carolyn: 58:18

I force myself too. So I'm very ethically plugged into the work I do and I have a great degree of freedom, which we can talk about. Hope in the next one. I I have some thoughts on. I have thoughts on everything, but, um, what I've actually had to do is I take days off and I make my staff know that I'm taking days off to do nothing. Um, I'm like i'm'm taking a wellness day. I'm just not up for things. So I forced myself to do that because I need to normalize to my team that it's okay if you can't operate at your entire capacity in a time that doesn't allow us to it's an interesting question to ask because I think when you're an elected official, you are in a term of service and it's very hard to not be working Like.

Gian Carlo: 59:07

when I'm standing in the checkout counter, I'm talking about politics to my neighbors. When I'm walking my dog at the dog park, I'm talking about politics to my neighbors. When I'm walking my dog at the dog park, I'm talking about politics to my neighbors.

Gian Carlo: 59:24

I would say for me right now my moments of rest are the creative act of preparing food for my family. And I sort of find and I came from a design background and for the last 15 years I haven't designed anything, I've just blabbed at people about their designs and their work, just blabbed at people about their designs and their work. And so cooking is a big creative outlet for me and preparing food for the family.

Gian Carlo: 59:49

And then I'd say the other thing is I like to incorporate disc golf into my dog walks to get out into the forest and enjoy nature time, forest bathe, while chasing plastic discs.

Joanne: 1:00:02

My son's a big disc-o, his partner. I allow frivolity to enter my life to do frivolous things and that's important to me. I like binge-watching British everybody knows this by now British procedurals and things like that and I there's so many People I find that even in their downtime they find a way to promote their occupation Do you know what I mean. They're always working towards. How can I do this? And I try to allow myself to just not think about being a minister and just being a real person. That's really important.

Ricardo: 1:00:48

Ministers are real people too, Joanne.

Joanne: 1:00:50

Yeah important.

Gian Carlo: 1:00:59

I imagine being a minister is a lot like being an elected official.

Joanne: 1:01:00

You're always working when you're in community. I live on the other end of the city from the churches that I serve, so I don't run into them in the grocery store.

Carolyn: 1:01:05

Was that a strategic decision?

Joanne: 1:01:07

It was a decision made during COVID and now with Glenmore Trail, I'm regretting it every day. It's under construction always. But the other thing for me is and I haven't had my radium experience yet this year, radium being radium, hot springs, not the you know, mineral or whatever that will make me sick.

Gian Carlo: 1:01:26

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

Carolyn: 1:01:33

Oh sorry.

Joanne: 1:01:34

I'm tired. Oh, I'm burnt out, but holidays are really important. Went to Newfoundland right and just being in St John's and you know enjoying that space Like I can put things on the shelf. I have practiced putting things on the shelf so that they don't preoccupy my life and that's how I stay sane. What about you, bill? Speak into the mic clearly.

Bill: 1:02:05

I feel so judged All right. So I mean, in all honesty, for me, running, and I would say that there are two sort of. I would not say that training for running would be my rest, because training for running has always been and will continue to be for a long time, work in the true sense of the word. But, like tomorrow morning, I will get up at 6 am, I will go to the Calgary Police Classic that is happening over at Shaw Millennium Park and I will run and it will be like it will be the race and I am a runner, not a racer. But I will still start, I will finish, you'll face whatever it is you face on the track, on the way there, on the track, on the way there, and the moments of actually getting to the start line and running are kind of the moments that I build up all of the work towards. So that's when I am running. It is restful, it is life-giving, it is refilling and renewing and always leads to a sense of having done something right.

Bill: 1:03:12

For me, the greatest exhaustion is in the unfinished work. So to be able to say I started and I finished, there's a profound amount of just like box ticked I can move on right, so yeah, so with that, we are going to take a brief intermission and we will return for the hopeful half of the conversation in just a short while here. So don't go anywhere, we will be right back and welcome back to the second half of our podcast. We need to be a little bit more hopeful, so I want to begin right here.

Bill: 1:04:04

The book of Genesis, first book in the Hebrew Scriptures, tells us that God rests right from the very beginning, not out of exhaustion, but to weave rest into creation itself. And in Exodus and Deuteronomy, sabbath is commanded as an act of justice. Even servants and strangers and animals are included in that command. So I wonder how Sabbath and Jubilee and periods of reset and fallowness and seasons including the winter, how all of that actually widens our imagination of how we can change our culture of the grind and I will open it to anyone who wants to start with that but the idea that rest can be mandated as a part of the rhythm of life.

Gian Carlo: 1:04:51

Well, I'm going to jump in.

Gian Carlo: 1:04:53

And from a city building perspective, in the 1800s, as we urbanized and moved into factories and had no labor standards and people were getting ground up and spit out and children were laboring and stuff like that, there was a huge movement as we were packing into cities to make cities more beautiful.

Gian Carlo: 1:05:19

The City Beautiful Movement and directly tied to the City Beautiful Movement was the idea of recreation being an essential part, and that's where we see a lot of the beginnings of a parks and culture. Parks and recreation culture start to emerge as part of city life. And when you think about it, recreation is literally about recreating yourself and there was the belief that time spent in parks, time spent playing sports time was essential. And since the inception of the city of Calgary we have had a recreation department that has provided, at very good cost, a whole suite of recreation opportunities to people. And so I think that urban life is about, or life in, a civilization, and the word civilization and the word city are very etymologically linked. It comes with a series of deals and some of it is safety, some of it is a roof over your head in community. But I think an important part of that also is recreation and the ability to breathe and recreate yourself and commune with nature and commune in community in leisurely pursuits.

Joanne: 1:06:38

I was in Mexico City once a long time ago and on. Sunday I think it was, the park was completely full of people blankets, picnics, everything you know. The park was the place that they went um. It really struck me that how important those green spaces are, particularly in very overcrowded cities where everyone lives in small spaces.

Gian Carlo: 1:07:06

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

Ricardo: 1:07:17

I could be the monosyllabic union thug that slams his fist on the table and says stronger rights for the working class. But I think it starts earlier than that in our youth, and what we invest in our youth, recreation and community and beautiful cities is a great thing, but I also think a strong funding base for the arts is important as well, because in order to find value in the rest that you receive, rest is more than just sleep, like we've said in the first half. But if we can find music or painting or even writing as a means to escape reality and use that imagination in our brains, then it'll help a lot.

Ricardo: 1:08:02

And I've seen over the years a decline in the amount of funding and resource being allotted to schools for instrumentation and for music and music programs and arts and the arts in general right, and not only that, but it's resulted in a very and Anne just told me you could watch music everyday here in the city if you could afford it, but people aren't going because people don't know and people don't have appreciation for classical music and visiting art galleries and putting into that system. And now we have a generation of people that, like, don't even know the arts and there's a small group of them that are, that are considered like, um, leftists, really right, when they're just doing creativity. So I I appreciate completely that, uh, it's hopeful if we can invest in in early ages, uh, for kids to understand, um, even just the original concepts of the labor movement of eight, eight and eight. You know, eight hours of rest, eight hours of work and eight hours of work and eight hours of free time, and hold that dear, then we can survive. I will say one last thing in the sense of youth, especially given the provincial government's statement today about ending the temporary foreign worker program. And you know, if they're taking control of immigration, then more youth people will have jobs.

Ricardo: 1:09:30

There are recent statistics that show that young people, if they are able to find work, are very often accepting lower salaries or sacrificing lower salaries in exchange for a more robust benefit plan, especially one that supports mental health and higher caps, or even unlimited mental health supports, dental plans, pension plans. So we're seeing now a resurgence where we've had pension plans diminished to almost negligible. With the advent of RRSPs and defined contribution pension plans, people are saying, well, I want to retire one day. I don't want to work till I die, right. So it's not going to be good for the government to just cut immigration out and think that the youth are going to jump into the jobs and not demand better because they know better.

Ricardo: 1:10:22

They've seen the mental toll that has taken on on their parents and I'm talking about the youth that are coming through junior, high and high school right now. Right, and in college they've seen the total ticket on their parents. Their parents are working two jobs and lacking a family life. So many kids don't know how to cook or clean or even budget a book, and they will demand better and once again the doors will open for immigration. The immigrants will come and say we want better too. It's inevitable, really is what it is, and we have to start investing young and early.

Bill: 1:10:54

I do feel obliged to at least nuance one thing that you did say, in that that the arts are not necessarily the means by which you escape real life, but perhaps that you might be able to reimagine real life as well through the arts. Ah, that's true.

Joanne: 1:11:08

Or process real life, or process real life through the arts. That's what creative arts.

Ricardo: 1:11:12

Are that's true? Yeah, absolutely.

Bill: 1:11:14

Not as a means of escape or disengagement from it. And again, like, I'll agree with most of it. We actually just went to. My daughter just started high school and we went to meet the teacher last night and had a fascinating conversation with one teacher that we met who talked a lot about the expectations in the classroom. If you miss the day that a lab happens, there is no opportunity to catch up or redo or find another time. So the question was sort of like what if you're sick? Well, if you're sick and you miss the lab too bad, you've missed the opportunity. You will not be able to complete that part of the assessment.

Bill: 1:11:51

I had a whole kind of conversation right there in the moment around, like, let me be clear, if my child is sick, the only message I want them to understand is that you do not owe your teacher your attendance in class for a lab. Your health and your wellness matters more. And the teacher said, fair enough, but there's a cost to that. And I went. This is actually the problem right now.

Bill: 1:12:10

Right, and certainly you know I grew up with workaholic parents. I learned well from them and at the same time, like I had a junior high kid stay home today for a mental health day, because she's been 14 straight days between camps and school and everything else and we just kind of said, like who cares, nothing's going to happen on a Friday anyway, stay home, right. So there is still it's almost a clash, I think, right now of the two cultures still happening. And again, the idea even that even the idea that kids in junior, high and high school you know, reaching that age of being employable are hungering for like committed jobs, I think is a bit of a stretch right now.

Carolyn: 1:13:00

Well, they want their employer to care about them the way that they expect them to care about the job and I think that that's the bigger part of it is that the message I always say to my staff is you don't owe me your whole life for this job.

Carolyn: 1:13:11

The message I always say to my staff is you don't owe me your whole life for this job. And I think to reorient it back to sort of rest is that rest doesn't necessarily have to be precluded by arts or picnics or couch Rest can sometimes just be that.

Bill: 1:13:24

Hey.

Carolyn: 1:13:24

I'm going to stay in bed until I'm ready to get out, and that time could be, you know, anytime.

Ricardo: 1:13:29

Isn't that so nice? I know, but I hate to do it.

Carolyn: 1:13:31

I wait till I do it too late, and then it's like it's a need.

Carolyn: 1:13:36

It's not a want.

Carolyn: 1:13:36

But I think the bigger part about it, too, is that rest and resetting allows people to free their brain out of survival mode and allows them to access higher faculties of thinking when they're recharged to do so.

Carolyn: 1:13:56

So I think there's a business case to be made here, if one has to be made, but I think what it is is that giving people that actual time to unplug from their computer at night and not expect to answer emails, and to have those days of rest, allow your people to come back to the workplace with the ability to innovate, with the ability to work creatively with each other, with the ability to manage sort of all the onslaught of things that come at us at any given point in the day. But what it also does too is, I think, that when you invest in your people, you care about your people. So many times I have conversations I say now's not the time for max output. Life happens and we don't get to choose when that happens, and so I get trust and as a result of this trust, reciprocity that we have together, people feel permission to take rest and in return, wow, do they give you the best of themselves, in the way that if you care and invested in somebody. They're going to care and invest in what?

Carolyn: 1:14:55

you're doing and so, at a very base term, like you can talk about terms of like practical things, like days, but what we're really talking about is like giving people the permission to be human, holding that space for them when they need it, and then having that reciprocity of trust and like I can tell you with my team like, wow, that investment in people. You know people say, oh, they get so many benefits yeah, but I get so many benefits from that. Like it's not, you know, having someone take one sick day versus who cares, it's irrelevant. You want people to be well. It's not predicated on a time schedule and that's where trust, innovation and real growth comes from.

Gian Carlo: 1:15:35

I think, certainly with my agency, that's been the case is this a work hard environment or is this a take care of yourself environment in the context of school? And I think that that's taking place in a larger context throughout society and I think COVID brought a lot of this to its head. As I look out at the world, I was starting to freak out about the advent of AI and increased automation and I'm thinking to myself is there any way that job creation is going to outpace job destruction in an age of unfettered AI and automation? And the answer is no. And so what's the answer? The answer has to be some kind of universal basic income. And how are we going to get there? And I'm thinking this is 20 years away.

Gian Carlo: 1:16:35

And then when COVID came, all of a sudden, it was like a preview of coming attractions. And, you know, government went digital very quickly and I was sitting in the comfort of my you know, well-appointed, middle-class housing, working in safety. And then there were people who we came to very quickly understand were essential workers, who were out on the front lines keeping society going, whether they were stocking grocery shelves or whether they were building things or fixing things and putting themselves very much in harm's way. And then there was an entire other portion of the society that were just instantly unemployed.

Bill: 1:17:17

Well, but even the one thing I will say, what I think people learned very early as well was that, after sort of considering the needs of those frontline workers that were kind of indispensable and couldn't sit at home and be unemployed I mean, my wife was one of the ones that was in the childcare center that had to stay open so that the essential service people could bring their kids to have childcare, so that they could go and do their essential services right, and the interconnectedness of just how many people were actually involved in the mutuality of everybody being able to serve well and work well and do it in a way that they were supported and their needs were being met at the same time as trying to meet the needs of others right. There was such a web of people that were involved in just sort of holding even that baseline together to make it work right.

Gian Carlo: 1:18:12

I think what COVID, the lesson of COVID, is that life is fundamentally a team sport, and I think what has ensued since then is the cognitive dissidence of so many people who believe that every man's an island, and you're a rugged individualist and you're pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. That did not fit well with COVID, and so I think a lot of the rejection of the collective action that we needed to take to keep each other safe was the cognitive dissonance of that just not fitting with that individualistic worldview that seems to dominate. And I would say that we are still very much engaged in that battle right now, and I think everyone who sits around this podcast table is certainly on one side of that fight, but it is something that we have to acknowledge is probably driving so much of the polarization that we see today.

Carolyn: 1:19:13

I think it's survival. Honestly, I really do.

Carolyn: 1:19:15

I think when you're looking at sky-high costs and rollbacks of wages and not resolving the issues that you know people lost family members during COVID and couldn't see them at the hospital, like there's so many after effects of what happened there, and so polarization naturally occurs when you can't access the higher faculties of your thinking because you're mired down in how you get through a day. So I don't even. I don't even. I mean I think that cognitive dissonance does happen as a result, but I actually think it's a more base element than that. I think it's. I don't begrudge people for doing the best they can at a time when I don't have to be faced with the choice of how I physically pay bills, like every single day, or make the decision at the grocery store how to feed my family of four, like that's not a problem that I have, but it's a very real problem for a lot of people right now, and so I don't know. I think when people are stuck in survival mode and they have no hope, um, that's when those things happen.

Joanne: 1:20:17

The thing is about that pressure, right. Like when we talk about Riccardo. You were talking about young people and young people not going to put up with that. Um, let's see if that's the case if they can't buy food, let's see if that's the case if they can't buy food. Do you know what I mean? Like, the pressures of life sometimes dictate what you are willing to put up with, and that's the sad thing. Like, as much as we recognized, oh yeah, they're essential workers and they're frontline workers. We still pay the minimum wage.

Carolyn: 1:20:47

Well, and even look at, like the legislative systems right, like we love to say, like people are like well, they legally can't do that at work, it's like okay, but if they do, like if you file a human rights complaint, they can't technically file you, fire you for it, but they'll find another way. The average human rights complaint takes two to three years to resolve and the average settlement is like $7,000. It does nothing to address the fact that if you're earning $60,000 a year and then all of a sudden you're on EI, if you're lucky to get, they don't try to make example out of you by terminating with cause, like so you know that's. The thing is that there's there's very real situations where people are forced to do things that they don't want to do because that system exists. Now I I hope we can find a hope, a hopeful scenario out of this the next little while.

Joanne: 1:21:35

I mean, isn't it a revolution hopefully not a bloody one where people just say we are in this together and we have to in some way recognize that this individualism that we worship in our culture has harmed us and that we are better together if we work together, if we stand up for each other? You know, if things like, for instance, paternity leave for new fathers wasn't seen as a black mark, if you take it like, if everyone insisted that this is like, if we insist we need to rest together, like this is the interesting thing about Sundays, right? Because in many provinces Sunday was called the Lord's Day Act, including Alberta. The case that went to the Supreme Court of Canada was from Big M Drubmark in Alberta and it was struck down. Because you can't make people rest on the seventh day, because God told us to the Lord's Day Act, ontario's law was a labor law, not a Lord's Day Act. It was not struck down.

Joanne: 1:22:36

And when I went out to live in Ontario and the stores were still closed on Sunday, that was an amazing thing to me.

Joanne: 1:22:43

Do you know the only thing that could be almost like garden shops or tourist things? Because it was a labor law, because they insisted that we need to rest together and there is value in mandating true rest In us as a culture, saying we need this as a culture and I'm not going to get ahead by working all the time so that the person who doesn't work 60 hours a week because of the other things in their life is not disadvantaged because of that. Do you know? We need to say I'm going to work 40 hours even though I can do 60, because I want you to be able to work 40 hours too. Or I'm going to take the mental health break that I need because I want you to be able to take that break too. We got to think of this collectively more. It is not us against the world, it is or me against the world. It's us creating the world in which we want to exist.

Bill: 1:23:44

Imagining reality or reimagining reality right.

Ricardo: 1:23:47

And I think that we talked in this hopeful part of our podcast.

Joanne: 1:23:52

I hope you're getting that folks. I hope that hope is really coming through About business and operation and legislative bodies.

Ricardo: 1:24:00

And I think that the farce of trickle-down economics has failed us and business has essentially failed us in the pursuit of profits. Hopeful, and when we when I grew up, at least going through school in the sense that if businesses were getting too out of control in one way, legislative bodies would help us in the other way to ensure that there was a balance in society. But now we're getting to the point now where even legislative bodies are starting to not work in our favor either. And so I always think when I say that the young people are going to change, then that's where the change is going to happen. You know, I always think of Tommy Douglas.

Ricardo: 1:24:40

And why vote in cats when you can vote in mice? Right. And people are going to say to themselves, like, how do I make it better? Right. And if the government's not going to help me, and if the person I work for or the people or the company that I work for, like, where can I go? And so if quitting your job is impossible because you get to pay a rent and pay it, and you know, then the voting booth is the next place to do it.

Carolyn: 1:25:03

But we have to show them that, like we can't just say this is going to be on them They've been saying that forever.

Carolyn: 1:25:08

Like the reality is is, the people that fight in this moment, right now, are the ones that have to show them how to do it like if a kid doesn't know how to cook, they're not going to figure out how to motivate a group to vote, and they're like the on, like president group that shows up. So what I'm saying is like, show them, believe in them, trust them and honor them. It's the same with, and they will show that to you because they want to make you proud, because you're proud of what they're doing.

Bill: 1:25:37

But I think I'm also going to say that at a foundational level, because it was actually you, carolyn, that pointed to the floods right 2013, the floods here in Calgary, right, I would say as well, a lot of the lessons, at least through the early stages of COVID, before you know, whatever you want to call the grand reemergence was like. We've seen instances where it isn't just young people who are either learning or figuring it out, or relearning or remembering even right right, that out of nowhere, suddenly there are these glimpses, these moments of true humanity that just emerge in the midst of crisis, right. What actually needs to happen, I think, in my mind, is we need to figure out how to start doing it before the crisis hits. Right. How can this just become the the inoculation?

Gian Carlo: 1:26:25

against crisis Right.

Bill: 1:26:27

So that it never gets there because spoiler alert. If you do it before it happens, so that it never gets there, because spoiler alert, if you do it before it happens, it won't happen right. If you do the humanity thing before the crisis hits, the crisis will actually be averted right, and that's not up to the next generation to do that, because we already know how to do that and we've demonstrated it.

Carolyn: 1:26:52

What we haven't demonstrated is long-term capacity to sustain it as a society. Well, and to echo that too, I think what it actually is is idealism. We have to believe that there's a better world for everybody here, and we have to be bold and unapologetic in how we stand up for that, and I think that's the answer I always like to use. Union people and Ricardo will know they love to say past practice, right? Oh well, let's do it this way. Well, past practice. And well, let's do it this way. We'll pass practice. And my response is well, thinking like that never put anyone on the moon.

Carolyn: 1:27:15

So, like do we actually want to create a system of idealism and hope for everybody, or do we want to use some watered down version because we don't want to rock the boat and take the risk?

Bill: 1:27:25

yeah, that's not limited to union language. In church we call that. That's not how we've always done it. Oh, okay, sure, yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure everybody here has versions of that.

Carolyn: 1:27:33

But what I'm saying is like I my in motivating movements, like that's what I'm about. I'm about long game and promoting the motivation of movements. How do I do that? I don't point to political ideology, I point to an ideal and I point to belief system in you values, because what's the alternative? So, like, if we're not going to create a new space right now, one's going to be created for us and and that's where you have to decide, where you want to show up in that and where you can gift your most talents. And and that's like what I'm, what I'm carrying right now is that I'm here to build a movement. I'm not here to to put my ego into it, and I think we got to put our egos aside and think about what's the longer term humanity really of this?

Joanne: 1:28:13

You have to be able to cast a vision and then enroll people in it. That's what they tell us in church land you know, and the problem with our time right now is there's so much to point to the fear you know, like Giancarlo you were talking about in the march towards fascism, we're like at box six or something like that.

Gian Carlo: 1:28:35

Six of seven, everybody, six of seven.

Joanne: 1:28:38

I think that was off of the podcast.

Gian Carlo: 1:28:39

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

Carolyn: 1:28:42

Yeah, that was not on camera, but we only have 30 days left. Yeah, that's right. So what does it matter?

Joanne: 1:28:48

So what I'm saying is that it's not enough to say bad them Empire, bad, you know. You have to be able to cast a vision of a different world and I think that's you know. Like in Churchland we talk about the new heaven and the new earth and all the Hebrew prophets would talk about. There will be a time where the lion will lie with the lamb and you know we'll pound our swords into plowshares. And keeping before you that hope of that, like there is a vision of what the world could be, not just we don't like it, the believe it and let go of the values of the empire which have sort of served some people is is essential, essential. Punching through with a you know you were the one who earlier said Jack Layton's. You know hope is better than fear.

Carolyn: 1:29:48

Yeah, Courage is better than yeah.

Joanne: 1:29:50

Yeah, and you know, like the Obama thing, right, Not that I could vote for him, but it was. I mean I could if I was a citizen. Let me make that clear.

Bill: 1:30:00

I would have.

Joanne: 1:30:02

I would have. But you know, the whole thing was hope, right, hope, hope, yes, we can Hope, yes, we can Hope, yes, we can. Well, you know, there was some disappointment in there, but there was also this dream. There was a dream. For just a moment it got dashed with the one whose name shall not be spoken.

Carolyn: 1:30:21

But we just needed more messengers. Like really.

Gian Carlo: 1:30:24

Well, I think we also need action towards that vision. We need to identify that vision and then we need to identify how you get there from here. But it starts with the vision and you need that. That's an essential part of the process. But I do think that you know, I agree with what you said earlier, carolyn, when you were like when you called BS on my saying it's like this clash of worldviews and it's just day-to-day survival that's motivating. I think it can be both. I think it absolutely can be both. And the story that people tell themselves and the North Star that they affix themselves to, you know, is very much in play, and we can tell a story of scarcity and we can tell a story of othering people and we can tell a story of competition.

Gian Carlo: 1:31:12

Or we can tell a story of collaboration and a march towards a better world, and the more we can do to enunciate what that better world looks like and the more we can direct the path of how we get there from here, the more compelling it's going to be and the more it's going to start to break down. I think you know stories that people tell themselves in their minds that are counter to that.

Carolyn: 1:31:40

Well, and it's live your values Like really at the core, it's live your values Like. If you don't live your values, you can't profess to say it, and I hold unions accountable, whether they want to hear it or not. Ricardo's heard my soapbox rants at union conversations about this, but really, solidarity is all. So do you mean it? Or do you mean solidarity in your respective context? And I think that's the biggest thing that's required is you have to put your ego aside. You have to and you have to acknowledge that if we mean to carry everybody, we mean to include everybody, and that we have to. We have to show a shared collective vision, and too many people are quick to say that they care but they don't own their own house in it, and it's like you have to do that first.

Ricardo: 1:32:22

People will often say I mean about unions too is that? You know? It's so funny about past practice, because you know past practice in union constitutions was to exclude black people for our conventions right. But yet we have unions that are struggling to figure out how to introduce and incorporate and negotiate trans rights into collective agreements. So we move forward a glacial pace on the left in many ways, while the right is moving forward, thrusting themselves forward into this, this land of, of hate.

Gian Carlo: 1:32:50

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

Ricardo: 1:32:53

Okay, whatever direction they want to go in, they had a very clear vision Project 2025.

Ricardo: 1:32:59

Exactly Right so and and we have to figure out a way to not only build sorry, dismantle individualism towards collectivism and community, but to work intersectionally as well with many different groups. I preach to the high hills at every union convention that I can to say that churches and unions are natural allies, and in the labor movement in the US and right-to-work states we organize side-by-side on the pulpits and in the union halls, and it's just a vision that we've lost here in Canada and we perhaps have become very comfortable in our mindset of kindness.

Carolyn: 1:33:38

It's like we like to think we're doing good work, like that's the problem.

Ricardo: 1:33:41

And that we're very good people. And we are. We are good people compared to a lot of other countries and places, but the pain and the damage is seeping in in and we're not wholly prepared for it.

Bill: 1:33:56

It's not as secure as we would like to think it is.

Carolyn: 1:33:58

But humans are like human. Humanity is humanness. It's like an exchange, like we need to be in a collective. We need to exist together.

Gian Carlo: 1:34:05

Life is a team sport.

Carolyn: 1:34:07

Yeah, but AI, and I understand that I have a whole. We have a whole nother thing about ai and how that kind of dismantles, like humans actually need to belong to processes, and when you mechanize these things, you think you can commodify humans the same way and it doesn't work that way. Um, that's a whole nother conversation. But like, really, I don't even think we have to work so hard to dismantle individualism if we call on a better good and I'm a fatal optimist when I say this but when it works, wow, is it powerful. It is powerful and children.

Ricardo: 1:34:36

You need to teach our kids this from the start, and what we teach our children we don't. They don't. They're not born hating each other, they're not born individual. In fact, we are born in the collective need for to, to depend on one another, and and that's that's my hope, is that you know. I'll give you an example in 2005, when we were unionizing the, the at then called Lakeside Packers under Tyson, it was a very brutal, very violent organizing campaign that we had to organize those 2000 people in Brooks to the point where, uh, doug O'Halloran, our president, was run off the road and permanently put in a wheelchair from the strike. Yeah, and there was such a divide between white and black in that city and because we were perceived as being and I won't use the word they use the black people union, they wouldn't rent us offices, they wouldn't rent us hotel rooms. We had to pull out money and just buy a house in order to have an office. You go to Brooks now and diversity is king in many ways, even though that's Danielle.

Carolyn: 1:35:39

And queen.

Ricardo: 1:35:40

Yeah, sorry, and all Royalty, Royalty, even though that's Danielle Smith's writing. Yeah, square that circle. Yeah, yeah, white children and black children and Filipino children and Latin children, they don't see that color, they know all their parents work at the plant. They have commonality, they're friends. A better world is possible if we keep that momentum going. But the minute we imply me versus them and add racist rhetoric and discriminatory rhetoric and put people in classes and boxes and positions, then we find ourselves in the world we are catapulting towards right now dangerously. So sorry, we've kept you.

Carolyn: 1:36:26

That's okay, I'm late for everything all the time.

Bill: 1:36:29

So I think we will just close it off here, sensitive to the time. But before we do that, I am going to shamelessly ask your indulgence for a moment because, again, it's no secret that I have deeply appreciated, john Carlo, your time as Ward 9 City Councillor. So I just want to say to everybody gathered here, everybody listening, that, giancarlo, you started in 2010 as Wardline City Councilor. Fifteen years.

Bill: 1:36:57

And in the entire time that you have been a city councilor in this city, you have championed neighborhood-based planning. You've championed walkable, livable communities, diversity, equity, anti-racism. You have reimagined civic systems so that they serve people better. You have your Great Neighbors. Great Neighborhood Initiative, rather, was a big vision of what a thriving city could be for people belonging to community, belonging to other people, and this vision we talked about tonight about a city that actually carries each other and invites each other to be in a real, meaningful relationship with each other. So I have appreciated, for over a decade, how you have asked us to imagine and reimagine public life in a way that is more humane and more just and more deeply connected to one another. So I just want to say thank you for your service, because I know that a month from now, I don't even know what you're going to do, and I'm not going to ask you what you're going to do, because he's going to rest.

Ricardo: 1:37:57

I am going to say thank you for your service.

Bill: 1:38:01

I am going to say thank you for your vision and the hope that you have brought to this city, because I do believe that you have brought hope to this city and in some cases in some cases I think it's very much sort of like the you know the prophet Jeremiah not in your lifetime 70 years, not seven years that people will see the benefit of the groundwork that you've laid here. But I do want to say thank you for all your service and for bringing that into our conversations here tonight the first time. It has been a privilege to be a partner with you.

Gian Carlo: 1:38:30

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

Bill: 1:38:47

So thank you, ricardo, thank you, joanne, special thank you to you, carolyn, for being here tonight. Really appreciate your contributions. Last question is going to Giancarlo. I'm not going to ask you what it is that you're going to do with yourself after you're done as a city councilor, but I am going to ask you what does rest look like for you at the end of October?

Gian Carlo: 1:39:05

Well, sadly, I think we're part of a grind. I think we're part of a grind. I will say that, having served 15 years, I have a little bit of a buffer and I need to figure out how I'm going to feed my family and serve community and thankfully, because of the benefits package from having served from 15 years, I'll have a couple months to do that. But thank you so much.

Bill: 1:39:30

And with that, we are checking out for tonight. We will see you again next month. In the meantime, thanks for diving in deep with us tonight. Until next time, I invite all of you to go in peace to wherever it is that the road is going to take you and whatever else it is that you do, I invite you to rest in the process. Good night, rest in the process, good night. And that's a wrap on the opening of season two. Thanks for listening and for diving in with us.

Bill: 1:40:01

Prepared to Drown is recorded live each month at McDougal United Church in Calgary, alberta, and if you're nearby, we'd love to see you at the table as you go, remember this you are more than what you produce. You are more than what you can afford. You are more than what you produce. You are more than what you can afford. You are more than the pressures that weigh down on you. You are beloved and you are called beloved by a God who asks you to make room, to breathe and to rest and to remember who you are and whose you are. This world will demand all of you, if you let it so, find those moments that connect you back to a God who loves you beyond the affairs and hardships of the day and let's work to build a world where all can truly experience that kind of rest. I'm Bill Weaver. See you next time.