 Hey, everyone. Before we get started today, I just wanted to remind you about our listener survey. It's to find out a bit more about you, what you like about this podcast, and what you want to see more of. It only takes 10 minutes to fill out, and it'll really help us shape this podcast with you in mind. You can find the survey at Don'tCallMeResilient.com. From The Conversation, this is Don't Call Me Resilient. I'm Vinitha Srivastava. I think what the pandemic did was it gave 7 million Canadians a taste of a basic income through the Canada Emergency Response Benefit. It also showed us that when there's political will, things can happen really fast. You know, I've really started to notice the lineup for the food bank in my Toronto neighbourhood. I see all kinds of people there. The lineup starts early and it snakes down the sidewalk in a way I've never seen before. Well, a new report explains that in Toronto, 1 in 10 people now rely on food banks. In fact, the number of people using food banks in my city has doubled since last year. And across the country, that number has jumped by almost 40%. And there's no one type of person who relies on food banks. Many of them have full-time jobs, for example. In other words, we are in the middle of a food insecurity crisis. And as we head into this holiday season, traditionally a time for giving and sharing and gathering around food, there's no better time to talk about this and help us understand what we as individuals can do to help. According to the latest stats Canada data, almost 1 in 5 households experiences food insecurity. Single-mother households are especially affected, as are some racialized homes. Black and Indigenous people face the highest rate of food insecurity, with over 46% of Black children and 40% of Indigenous children living in households that don't have a reliable source of food. For years, advocates have been saying that more food banks is not the answer. Our guest today is Elaine Power, and she has spent years working on this issue. She says reducing food insecurity requires our political and business leaders to address the root causes, including the ability of household incomes to meet basic needs. Elaine is a professor in health studies at Queen's University, whose research focuses on issues related to poverty, class, food and health. She is the co-author of The Case for Basic Income, Freedom, Security, Justice. Welcome Elaine, thank you so much for being here. It's my great pleasure and honour, thank you. Let's paint a picture for everybody if we can, and let's talk a little bit about what's currently happening across Canadian cities, especially we really want to talk about the urban centres and who's impacted. So let's start with that. If we look across the country, I think we're seeing unprecedented demand for the services of food banks, especially in urban centres, record numbers of people accessing food banks. I think one of the things that's really surprised the operators of food banks is that there are so many new people coming who are working, and so they've had to adjust their hours in fact to take account of people who have full-time jobs. And one of the things that's so frightening for me is that we know that food bank use is just the tip of the iceberg, that for every person who goes to the food bank, there are three or four or five more in the country who are food insecure but not going to the food banks. I think we can see the use of food banks as a red light, as a warning sign. We're in a crisis like we've never seen before in this country. When you said that there are some people that they don't go to the food banks, who are those people that don't go? Well, there's lots of reasons why people don't go to the food bank. Some of it has to do with the stigma of accessing a food bank. For many people, going to the food bank is a sign that you're hitting the bottom, you're scraping the barrel. About a third of food bank users are kids, so these are parents who go to the food bank because they don't want their kids to be hungry, of course. If you're a low-income person, you're more likely to have a health condition. The food at the food bank might not meet your requirements. You might have religious or cultural reasons why the food at the food bank isn't appropriate. With food bank demand so high, people, they say, they give you food but there's not really anything I can make a meal with. Food banks are running out of food or their donations are down because of the economic crisis and they're finding it harder to purchase food because the cost of food has gone up. So what they're able to give people often is not really what you'd use to make a meal. You might have to wait in a long lineup on the sidewalk to actually get some food and then when you get it, there's not really anything there that you can use. So you might go once and never go back. People have told me that they've gone once and they look around and they think, oh, there are so many people who are worse off than I am and so I'll leave it for those people. Food banks might not be in a location that's suitable, especially if you have kids, if you have to go on the bus. So there's a whole host of reasons why people don't go. In my neighborhood, the lineup for the food bank, I've just watched it grow over the, I would say, couple of years. It's just growing. And I know this is because maybe I'm a mom, but when I see kids in the lineup, it really bothers me. When I see that, I think that's because you have no choice. This morning, we published an article in the conversation about all the stereotypes that go along with people who use food banks and I think what you're saying is wipe those out of your head because we don't know necessarily who's using it, but it's probably not who you think. Yeah. Like you're saying people who work full-time might be you. Exactly. The housing crisis in particular, the tremendous increase in the cost of housing, whether that's mortgages or rents, has pushed a lot of people to access services that they've never used before, including food banks. Yeah, I guess, I mean, if your rent is so high, then you use all your money for rent and what's left over for a good, healthy meals can get less and less. Exactly. And housing, whether it's rent or mortgages, the fixed cost in a household budget, it's almost always the biggest cost and so you can't not pay your rent or your mortgage for very long without risking being unhoused and so you pay that first and then you're looking around to see where can I cut. Food is one of the first things where people, first they start cutting the quality of the food, you might ditch whole categories of food like fruits and vegetables or dairy or meat and then you're looking for the kinds of foods that are going to be filling, which are often the less healthy foods, bread, starches and things that will keep you from being hungry. I'm wondering what brought us to this moment. You talked about housing, we talked about the price of food, of course, is going up as we've all been talking about, but did COVID have some impact on these numbers that the food makes? The impact of COVID was really variable, I think, across the country. So in smaller centres, particularly in Atlantic Canada, the demand for food banks dropped off because people were accessing CERB, the Canada Emergency Response Benefit. Yes, right. And for many households, that was an increase in their household income. So $2,000 a month if you're living in a small town and the Maritimes maybe goes a lot farther than $2,000 a month in Toronto. There's been an analysis in the last year showing that poverty actually dropped considerably, especially child poverty during the time that people were accessing the COVID benefits. Last week we were talking, I was talking to educators in schools and they said, COVID pointed to so many possible solutions for us, so many paths forward and then we just went right back to whatever normal is for people and we forgot to take all of the lessons that we learned in this crisis. Absolutely, yeah. As you know, I'm an advocate for basic income, a guaranteed livable basic income and I think there was a sense of hope early in the pandemic that there were so many things as your previous guests noted that we could see so clearly and then we were going to take those lessons and make a better world and we were so hopeful that the Canada Emergency Response Benefit SERP would be one of those lessons to show that, yes, we can support people and give them a sense of security and dignity at a form of basic income. Let's talk about definitions a little bit. You're talking about something called basic income. Yes. And I'm not sure if everybody understands what that means. What is that basic income solution that you're talking about? What does that mean? Everybody gets enough money. What is that? That sounds like a utopian kind of ideal. Let's just break it down a tiny bit and then actually break down a couple of other definitions as well. But let's start with that one. Sure. I've been doing basic income advocacy for about 10 years and if I were starting over again, I would call it a guaranteed livable basic income as opposed to just basic income because I think that's more descriptive in terms of what the Canadian basic income movement wants. It's an unconditional income floor below which no one can fall and it would be adequate to meet basic needs. So it's a guaranteed, it's livable. It would be like the Canada Emergency Response Benefit in the sense that it would be deposited in your bank account probably through the tax system and no one would tell you how you had to use it. The only criteria would be that you'd have to meet a certain low income cutoff. If you had no income, you'd get the full benefit and then as you had earned income, it would gradually taper off. Okay, I'm going to challenge you on that a little bit more too. Sure. But before we get to that, let's get to a couple of other definitions because we're talking about the use of food banks. I believe sometimes we talk about hunger when we talk about food banks and I think this different language that we maybe should be using around that. Yes. You know, especially at this time of year, we're here in December and we hear about people quote, going hungry. So can you tell me why that is maybe not the appropriate language to be using for this conversation? You're absolutely right that hunger isn't exactly what we're talking about here and the technical term, which is a bit jargony but is more specific is food insecurity and food insecurity is an experience of not having enough money to meet your needs and there's different levels of food insecurity. The mildest, the least severe, it's categorized as marginal food insecurity which means you're really worried about how you're going to pay all the bills and put food on the table and at the moderate level of food insecurity you start changing what you eat and how much you eat and you start substituting the less expensive things for the more expensive or you start cutting out whole categories of food and then at the most severe, that's when people are skipping meals especially women who have children, they normalize skipping meals or they normalize having food that's different from their kids like maybe they have a half a sandwich or supper instead of the food that they're serving to the rest of the family Even within the household there might be different experiences of food insecurity Mothers in particular will do almost anything to protect their kids from being hungry You mentioned seeing kids in the lineup for food banks and some mothers won't tell their kids that the food in the cupboard is from the food bank because they don't want their kids to be stigmatized In a country this wealthy, there are at least 7 million people who are food insecure and some of them are going hungry for a day or more at a time because they don't have enough money Right, there's someone that you work with last week on ideas on CBC Paul Taylor, he's the former head of food share He draws this direct line between food insecurity and white supremacy Can you explain how those two things are connected? We can directly connect food insecurity with white supremacy with colonialism and with patriarchy We see the outcome of that in who's impacted by food insecurity So we know households headed by any racialized group are much more likely to be food insecure We also know in particular that single mothers have one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the country One of the things that you said in your book was there is a racialized component but researchers say is that it's also class, maybe we can just break that down even further to talk about, you said single mothers but there's so many intersections that you're talking about The thing that we see with rates of food insecurity is that it's the same groups of people who are more likely to be poor One of the other things you said is that mothers will do almost anything to get their kids fed as a mom I personally would have no problems going into the store and shoplifting It's possible that I end up getting arrested This is probably a reality for some people You're then putting your security on the line so it's not just that you're food insecure but your whole life becomes tenuously When I was doing research for the book on basic income one of the people we interviewed was the now retired chief of police in Lindsay and it was exactly that case that turned his mind towards basic income of a mom who was stealing bread, was caught shoplifting bread from a corner store and in his mind this was the chief of police he just thought it was unconscionable that a mother would be prosecuted for trying to feed their kid We put parents, women in particular in these impossible situations by forcing them to live on the assistance rates that put them in deep poverty and this double bind of not having the money to feed their kids It's devastating The other definition I wanted you to help me unpack was this food injustice and I think just in having this conversation that's the word that comes to mind, right? It's this idea of injustice You said even the police chief said it I like Paul Taylor's idea of food injustice because it intersects with social injustice and economic injustice For example at Food Share they started paying people living wage so that the people who worked there could actually afford to buy their food So they really took that message of injustice into the organization and thought about the ways that they could work to lessen that injustice They started paying people for doing interviews at Food Share They would give people an honorarium of $75 if they came for an interview You mean the job interview? A job interview, yeah, because it costs money, right? Yes, yeah You might need transportation, you might need to pay for childcare you might need to get a new outfit and so they started paying people if they were selected for an interview This is what an organization committed to food justice that they had to walk their talk We have corporations like Loblaws running food drives but are they paying their employees a living wage? Remember we paid them hero wages for a few months during the pandemic I actually had the experience of being in a Loblaw store early on in the pandemic very early when all the shelves were empty of toilet paper and cleaners I don't remember what I was looking for One spot in the cleaning rack that had maybe a dozen or two dozen cans of some kind of antiseptic that you sprayed on surfaces to kill viruses and I thought, there's nothing else here I guess I'll buy that And I took it to the cash register and the cashier who was probably in her fifties she was having chemotherapy at that point She was a cashier at Loblaws it was before there were masks, before there were any kind of physical barriers And she is working at the cash exposed to everybody like me who's in that store on chemotherapy What kind of society is this? Where we have people exposing themselves because they're forced to work to put food on the table I think you brought up two things there One is that, okay, what kind of a society do we live in? One, which I think is a very good question And also, too, this idea of the food drives and food banks So you voted op-ed in the Globe of Mail a while back But you said that you thought food banks should be closed Why are you advocating that food banks be closed? But also, what kind of reaction did you get from people? People thought I was nuts, quite literally I had people say that to me It was meant to be deliberately provocative And yet at the same time, in my ideal world we would enable everyone to have the income that they need to go to the grocery store And the food banks could just close When they started in the 80s, they thought it was temporary It was meant to be an emergency response to an emergency situation I have a document from 1991 from food banks meeting in the Greater Toronto area where they were still talking about closing They don't talk about that anymore It was really meant to be provocative the idea that they should just close I guess what you're saying is you want them closed because you want us to not have a need for them Exactly And the reality is I think it would be hard for any food bank to put a lock on the door But they're actually having to do that right now because the need is so high that they're having to close early or they're having to turn people away Or imagine waiting on the sidewalk for however long hours and hours in this weather when it's cold and maybe rainy and miserable and then to get to the top of the line to realize that they're out of food I think the fact that food banks are here creates an illusion that the problem is being looked after So instead of insisting demanding from our governments that we ensure everybody has the income that they need there's a barrel at every grocery store and sports game at this time of year at on every corner and I think people have the idea that somebody's looking after it and no one's quote-unquote going hungry So we don't have to think about what's going on here and what the real problem is and what the real solutions might be So it's really providing kind of a smoke screen hiding the reality and what it does is allow the system that creates this it locks it into place it allows it to stay in place The food banks do the idea that we're taking care of things because as you say we have a barrel or we're dropping a box of crackers in there before we leave the grocery store So basic income as you've defined it earlier for us keeps coming up as a solution There was a pilot in Manitoba in the 70s and there was a recent pilot in Ontario and I remember reading about this in about 2018 and it was a contract between Government of Ontario and a group of people in a small town in Ontario and then a new government came in our current government and the current government killed that program and the thing that I was reading was how unethical it was that they killed that program What I'm wondering about is what are the big takeaways from those pilots in the 70s and the more current one What did we learn from those programs? We have the two pilots the Mincombe experiment from the 70s we had the Ontario basic income pilot that was set up under Kathleen Wynne's reign as Premier There have been other basic income experiments around the world What we saw from the Mincombe experiment thanks to economist Evelyn Fourje at the University of Manitoba she went back in the early 2000s and she found 1,800 bankers boxes of data from the Mincombe experiment that had never been analyzed and she found an 8.5% reduction in hospitalizations over four years A huge draw in the rate of hospitalization that's just one indicator of the potential health impacts We could think of this as an investment in people as opposed to an expense that would pay for itself over time so hospital admissions dropped a lot because of mental health and injuries in particular A couple of the other things she found was that people are always concerned no one's going to want to work That's one of the main objections The two main objections are that it's too expensive if we can't afford it and the second one is that people won't want to work There were two groups that decreased participation in the workforce One was adolescent boys who decided to stay in school so dropping out to making money to help support their families That's a good thing that they stayed in high school The other was new moms who decided because we didn't have the parental leave that we have now they would stay home with their newborns for longer rather than rushing back to work We know that's a good thing too That just gave me goose bumps Those are two obvious categories that we will show up in benefits later on Exactly Right now there's dozens of small pilots happening in the United States They're different from the kind of basic income that we've proposed in Canada because there's small amounts like three or four hundred dollars a month up to maybe a thousand But as someone who is interested in this it gets boring after a while because the results are always so positive Basically people take that money and they use it in ways that make sense in their lives to improve their own lives and the lives of their children and their prospects for the future Unfortunately the basic income pilot in Ontario was supposed to run for three years It had a very rigorous evaluation plan in place There were data collected at the beginning but we don't have any of the data halfway or the end of the pilot because it was cancelled before that data could be collected which in and of itself just seems like such a tragedy but I'm sure it was part of the reason why it got cancelled but we know anecdotally that it had hugely positive effects on people's health on their ability to find better work to go back to school People talked about not waking up in the middle of the night attack wondering how they were going to pay the bills not going to the doctor so often people were able to stop taking medication that they'd taken for years People actually stopped smoking and they drank less because those are part of their coping mechanisms One of the women who was on the pilot in Hamilton I heard her speak she's in her early 60s and had been on Ontario disability for many years and she was so happy to be on the pilot and the first thing she did was to buy a new pair of glasses because she could choose whatever frame she wanted she wasn't bound by the restrictions of social assistance program She bought a new one of those walkers the wheelie walkers with the brakes and the seat where you can sit and she had a shiny new one and she was so happy and then the third thing was she said she gave a donation that had supported her for many years through thick and thin and she was so proud to be able to give back to them and one of the things we saw with the pilot was people engaging more socially being involved in community activities visiting family members that they hadn't seen for a long time even because they couldn't afford to travel buying a new winter coat for the first time in their lives trying new fruits and vegetables not going to the food bank getting dental work done so people use that money in ways that benefit them it sounds like they benefit them then they benefit their community it's got this rippling kind of effect and I'm just wondering going back to your other question which is what kind of a society are we living in but what is stopping our governments from embracing basic income if it obviously has all of these benefits like you said a reduction of hospital visits these are economic benefits in the end so what's stopping our governments from embracing this idea as an academic I used to believe in this idea that evidence informed policy that's why we do research we generate evidence that informs policy and the evidence on basic income is so clear just the economics alone makes so much sense it's always seemed like such a quote unquote no brainer to me in terms of thinking about it from social determinants of health the impact on diet on housing, on stress one of the things that people forget is that we actually pay a lot of money for poverty one study from the Ontario Association of Food Banks from a while ago showed that around 6.8% of Ontario's GDP goes directly to poverty we know in the healthcare system there's some estimates that about 20% of healthcare costs are directly related to poverty we can think of an investment in people as opposed to the cost of this it would pay for itself over time it probably wouldn't pay for itself in an electoral cycle which is one of the problems I had one of those COVID clarifying moments it was 2021 we're in maybe the third wave of the pandemic and public health was advocating for paid sick days which in the context of a global pandemic seems like a bit of a no brainer but there was a lot of pushback on that we got two paid sick days temporarily and what I came to realise is that if workers in unsafe, low paid undignified jobs had a basic income so they could leave those jobs and still keep a roof over their head and put food on the table they'd have paid sick days they'd have higher wages, they'd have benefits they would have more dignified working conditions and that's why we don't have basic income I think it's too threatening too threatening because are you suggesting that we as a society need those people in those jobs is that what it is? well I think the Amazons and the McDonald's and the Tim Hortons all rely on low wage workers who are desperate for a job that will help them keep a roof over their head I think there is a large section of our economy that does rely on low wage low skilled low wage jobs and basic income would give people a choice it would give them options and we don't seem to value that when it comes to people who are living on low incomes understandably and unfortunately people who live in poverty don't tend to vote because they don't see that any government makes any difference in their life so they don't vote and that seems to be what motivates politicians you really hope as a researcher that your research informs policy which this last decade you've been advocating for basic income and it seems like the arguments are all there I read an article this morning that said Newfoundland and Labrador embraced basic income for elderly folks and so that's happening there and there seems to be more and more push across Canada that this is something that people are seriously looking at there's also actually just last month a report released outlining proposal for a basic income demonstration project for the whole of Prince Edward Island so just as Saskatchewan was the birthplace of Medicare we are hoping PEI will be the birthplace of basic income that we could try it out in a small province where we could figure out the glitches and what other kinds of things need to be put in place this group of economists, civil servants politicians and advocates worked really hard for about two years and had lots of very challenging and difficult conversations and they put together a proposal that has lots of compromises but has received pretty broad support even from some unlikely quarters basically they're waiting for funding from the federal government we know that there's lots of support in the liberal party generally there's lots of support among MPs even in the cabinet but it hasn't gotten quite to the top yet and plus if we have a different government I think that's partly what I'm wondering about like how do you make this an attractive proposal for somebody who may not be politically aligned in this area what are the financial arguments? I feel like you've made those though I highly recommend Astra Taylor's ideas, Massey Lectures because you know it's the age of insecurity and the financial insecurity in particular is giving rise to a lot of dysfunction especially on the far right xenophobic, racist transphobia that general sense of insecurity is pushing people to fascism Astra Taylor's Massey Lecture makes that argument and that basic income would be one of the ways to tampen down some of that insecurity but one of her main points is that capitalism thrives on that insecurity and that's really what we're dealing with I think is the kind of capitalist logic depressing and very dysfunctional and hard to imagine how it will change I think just even in the food bank world we heard the story about international students being turned away at the food bank and that's a form I think of that whole divide and what you're saying it's a fear, it's insecurity you don't belong here, these people belong here and that sense of scarcity there's only these scarce resources that's absurd when we have people so much wealth but it's all concentrated at the top there's so much abundance here and I think that's part of why food banks exist because there's that sense but there's all this food we're throwing food away we throw food away every day there's all this food going into the landfill so there's all this abundance so there's this kind of quote unquote common sense idea that we just have to take the food the people who have food insecure but that doesn't address the underlying issues how hopeful are you that we will get there that we will get to this idea of a guaranteed basic income I think that depends which side of the bed I wake up on every morning fair enough, that's fair, that's fair I thought when I started ten years ago doing this advocacy work that it was such a no brainer that we'd have a basic income in no time I was quite naive on the one hand I want to say there's this sense of inevitability that of course we'll have a basic income at some point with all the crises that we're facing that pervasive sense of insecurity and yet at the same time I think we could just as easily tip into some kind of fascism we could go either way the struggle for basic income it's clear to me now that it's a political struggle and it's going to take a lot of political organizing and it's going to take a lot more struggle than I ever imagined that it would based on the evidence because the evidence suggests it's a no brainer I think what the pandemic did was gave 7 million Canadians a taste of a basic of a basic income through the Canada Emergency Response Benefit it also showed us that when there's political will things can happen really fast to do the kind of work I think that you're doing and that you're talking about doing it does require a kind of optimism you say it depends on what day you get out of bed I hope that you continue to get out of on the optimist side because we need the evidence one of the great joys of this work the thing that pulls me along on the days when I'm feeling not so optimistic I have lots of days when I don't feel very optimistic but what pulls me along and what's been so beautiful in doing this work is the other people that I'm not doing this alone I'm in a coalition that keeps growing everybody has something to offer even when we might disagree on something there's enough common purpose common spirit that we I think we keep each other going that's been an amazing experience working in a social movement that's trying to make Canada a better place thinking about my community or my neighbors we're in a more equal kind of society then and you don't feel as stressed or worried about the children around you the children that are in school with my children do they have the right winter clothes are they eating well I believe that we all think about especially this time of year in Canada and the holiday season for a lot of people and a lot of people at this time are thinking about their neighbors and about others and about wanting to give do food banks still need donations and if they do what kind of donations are good even though I'm on public record is saying that they need to close I still give I still donate satisfying about the idea that you could give something that would alleviate some stress in people's lives I think that's why it's so appealing it's much more concrete than doing advocacy for basic income which is elusive and ephemeral many of us enjoy feeding people the idea that you could give someone food that would nourish them there's something very deeply satisfying and primal about that yeah it's a human thing I think it makes perfect sense over the years in doing research on community food programs that include food banks I've actually come to be more appreciative of community meal programs what we might call soup kitchens because for volunteers they offer opportunities to actually engage with the clients so one of the problems I think with food banks is that it's quite distant so we put our box of crackers in the bin at the grocery store we have no idea who gets that we don't get that opportunity to actually have a conversation with people I know that hot meal programs are often inundated with the volunteers at Christmas time and then they disappear but back to your question about what kind of donations I think food banks if you give them money they can buy what they most need they often can get a discount it's not as satisfying potentially as putting the can of soup or the crackers in the bin but it's actually more useful money is more useful than the old can of cranberry sauce maybe but the idea of cooking the community meals my kid who was 10 at the time joined a program and they joined a gigantic group of people cooking a thousand meals my kid what did you do and they said I peeled carrots so I think sometimes this idea of feeling like you can't contribute I'm just saying my 10 year old was able to get in there and help cook a thousand meals that day I think it is possible we all can jump in from time to time and they did it in May as you say those places need help all year round last question I promise besides the food banks and the donation of cash what can an individual do if they're like yeah I'm for this I agree this basic income sounds like a great idea if people are interested in learning more about basic income there's the Basic Income Canada Network there is an organization called Coalition Canada Basic Income there is the Ontario Basic Income Network there is a Basic Income Canada Youth Network oh wow wow there is a movement right now is really excited about that Prince Edward Island Basic Income report there's a website for that you could ask your MP to put pressure on the Prime Minister to fund it seems to me that any political party that made Basic Income central plank would actually get people out to vote who don't normally vote because they don't see any difference in the political parties if people actually believe them they have another problem with politicians the Green Party is the only political party that has actually made this a central plank they've done that for years but basically I would say to your listeners find out a little bit more and then talk to your elected officials and let them know that this is something you really care about and that you want to see and it's for our neighbors it's for our children to help create a new kind of security that enables people to flourish and to offer their gifts to the world whatever those might be without worrying about whether they're going to be able to afford to eat thanks for all of your time thank you I love talking about this thank you for listening to this episode if don't call me resilient if you're like me you'll want to hear more of Elaine's ideas well she shared some resources and I've dropped them in the show notes you can find them on our website theconversation.com you can reach me at DCMR at theconversation.com and if you haven't already give us a follow on Instagram at don't call me resilient podcast don't call me resilient is a production of the conversation Canada it was made possible by a grant for journalism innovation from the social science humanities research council of Canada the series is produced and hosted by me Venita Srivastava our associate producer is Atika Khaki our consulting producer is Jennifer Morose Remitula Sheikh does our sound design and mixing Kikachi Memay is our student producer and Scott White is the CEO of the conversation Canada and if you're wondering who wrote and performed the music we use on the podcast that's Zaki Ibrahim the track is called something in the water