In 2020, Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 departed Tehran carrying 176 passengers and crew. Minutes after takeoff, the aircraft was struck by two surface-to-air missiles, killing everyone on board.  Director Soran Mardookhi’s feature documentary The Flight, produced by the NFB, follows the lives of family members left behind in their pursuit of truth, justice and accountability. The Flight has its world premiere at VIFF Oct 8.

Soran Mardookhi on The Flight, his new documentary premiering at VIFF

Municipal elections on Saturday, October 17 are just 2 weeks away. With us to talk about some of the Metro Vancouver races is Redeye collective member Ian Mass with his City Beat report for October 3.

City Beat for Oct 3: Mayoral races in Richmond, Surrey, Burnaby and New West

There is growing evidence that phone use and social media are harming youth, and having a negative impact on their learning and their mental health. Concern about the impacts is driving cell phone bans in both primary and high schools. The question is, are these policies effective? And what makes them succeed or fail? New research with Toronto area teachers set out to discover some answers. We speak with Sachin Maharaj of the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa.

Assessing the effectiveness of the Toronto School Board’s cell phone ban

In June this year, hundreds of people took to the streets in Vancouver to oppose the construction of two new AI data centres in the city. Vancouver city council has shunted the decision for a Telus-Westbank data centre in Mount Pleasant until after the municipal election but there are many more coming down the pipe across Canada. We speak with Anne Pasek, associate professor at Trent University and one of the authors of the toolkit Resisting Data Centre Development in Canada.

Toolkit: Resisting data centre development in Canada

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released its Final Report and showed Canadians the evidence of how residential schools constituted genocide. Despite six volumes of historical documents and survivor testimony, some Canadians chose to deny and disparage these findings. A new book published this month by the University of Manitoba Press tackles this denialism head-on.  We speak with Niigaan Sinclair and Sean Carleton of the University of Manitoba. They are co-editors of Truth Before Reconciliation: Confronting Residential School Denialism.

Truth Before Reconciliation: Confronting Residential School Denialism

Systemic racism and historical displacement have created profound  disparities in housing outcomes across British Columbia. Indigenous and racialized communities are significantly less likely to own a home,  and they are also more likely to face core housing need, evictions and homelessness.  In a new report, the BC Society for Policy Solutions says BC has a racial housing gap that colour-blind policy will never close. We talk with Véronique Sioufi.

What the province needs to do to close BC’s racial housing gap

For years, Independent Jewish Voices Canada alongside the Global Justice Coalition and Palestinian groups have been organizing for meaningful sanctions on Israel and its illegal settlements. On September 8, that pressure helped bring about an important development, as Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and nine other nations announced trade restrictions and sanctions targeting illegal settlements in the West Bank. We speak with Corey Balsam, National Coordinator of IJV Canada.

Canada’s proposed trade restrictions on illegal Israeli settlements

People across British Columbia will be voting in municipal elections on October 17th. In today’s edition of City Beat, Ian Mass talks about who’s running in Vancouver and what their chances are for occupying the mayor’s seat for the next 4 years.

City Beat for Sept 19: Who’s who in the mayoral race in Vancouver

If you have never been homeless, you probably have a lot of misconceptions about what it means to live on the street. Street Medicine 101 is a series of short videos that aims to dispel them. It features Dr Jill Wiwcharuk, known to her patients as Street Doctor Jill. She is a Victoria-based family and ER physician, specializing in addictions, inner city family medicine and emergency medicine. We speak with Street Doctor Jill in today’s episode.

Street Medicine 101 with Dr Jill (encore)

As Israel and the US carry out devastating attacks on Iran, the Canadian oil industry and some politicians are seeing it as an opportunity to expand fossil fuel production.  Nick Gottlieb argues the fossil fuel industry is replaying its 2022 playbook, when they used Russia’s war in Ukraine to effectively destroy the Western climate movement. Nick Gottlieb is a climate writer and author of the newsletter Sacred Headwaters. We spoke with him in March from Terrace, BC.

Fossil fuel industry using global conflict to push for more production (encore) 

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Redeye (@redeye)

A progressive take on current events. Produced by an independent media collective at Vancouver Cooperative Radio.