{"id":11790,"date":"2020-09-24T09:07:23","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T13:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/?p=11790"},"modified":"2020-10-01T13:40:13","modified_gmt":"2020-10-01T17:40:13","slug":"virtual-townhall-meeting-with-mp-rachel-blaney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/virtual-townhall-meeting-with-mp-rachel-blaney\/","title":{"rendered":"Virtual Townhall meeting with MP Rachel Blaney"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It started with an email forwarded to one of the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/cortesradio.ca\/\">Cortes Radio\u00a0<\/a>team. Our Member of Parliament was having a ZOOM chat. We asked to broadcast the chat over the radio. While this did not work out, it led to the ZOOM\/radio townhall meeting with\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/cortescurrents.ca\/tag\/rachel-blaney\/\">Rachel Blaney<\/a> on Sept. 22.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Our MC, <a href=\"https:\/\/cortescurrents.ca\/tag\/ashley-zarbatany\/\">Ashley Zabatany<\/a>, opened with, \u201cRachel has been our MP since 2015. She is the federal NDP whip, critic for veterans and a strong advocate for a national seniors strategy. She is also committed to ending poverty and food insecurity for seniors in Canada and tackling the rising costs of living. Rachel has lived and worked in coastal communities for over 20 years and is dedicated to protecting our coastlines for future generations.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_11792\" style=\"width: 416px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a class=\"dt-pswp-item\" href=\"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/0.png\" data-dt-img-description=\"Rachel Blaney - submitted photo\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11792\" class=\" wp-image-11792\" src=\"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/0.png\" alt=\"Rachel Blaney\" width=\"406\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/0.png 500w, https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/0-381x500.png 381w, https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/0-164x215.png 164w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 406px) 100vw, 406px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11792\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rachel Blaney - submitted photo<\/p><\/div>\n<h2>Some of the topics discussed:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Onset of the COVID-19 crisis: Canadian government and NDP party responses.<\/li>\n<li>Canada\u2019s inequalities and helping lower income mothers, families and others in need.<\/li>\n<li>Helping small businesses, veterans, students and people with disabilities<\/li>\n<li>Childcare<\/li>\n<li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/cortescurrents.ca\/tag\/cews\/\">wage subsidy<\/a>\u00a0program<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/cortescurrents.ca\/tag\/pharmacare\/\">Pharmacare,<\/a> dental care<\/li>\n<li>Canada's top 1 per cent; a universal guaranteed income<\/li>\n<li>The housing crisis and homelessness<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/cortescurrents.ca\/tag\/food-security\/\">Food security<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/cortescurrents.ca\/tag\/low-salmon-runs\/\">Declining salmon runs,\u00a0<\/a>removing\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/cortescurrents.ca\/tag\/salmon-farms\/\">salmon farms<\/a>\u00a0from the ocean<\/li>\n<li>Aboriginal rights, title and the <a href=\"https:\/\/cortescurrents.ca\/tag\/un-declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples\/\">United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Immigration issues<\/li>\n<li>Pension plans<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/cortescurrents.ca\/tag\/climate-change\/\">Climate change<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/cortescurrents.ca\/tag\/connected-coast\/\">Internet connectivity<\/a>\u00a0for all Canadians<\/li>\n<li>economic and environmental justice<\/li>\n<li>Subsidies and support to the oil and gas industry<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Setting up the meeting<\/h2>\n<p>Manda Aufochs Gillespie was our back up host, introduced the program and selected the questions to be handed on to our MC.<\/p>\n<p>There were other, less visible, people in the Cortes Radio team. You will hear a reference to Ayton Novak in the podcast. Bryan McKinnon, Sean (the radio station\u2019s techie) and Roy Hales also helped set up this meeting, as did Rachel\u2019s assistant Lucas Shuller.<\/p>\n<p>Blaney had just returned to Ottawa, for the throne speech on Sept. 23, and connected to the meeting from her computer.<\/p>\n<p>After a technical glitch, which momentarily disconnected everyone in the ZOOM chatroom from the broadcast, things started rolling quickly.<\/p>\n<p>There were too many questions for Blaney to respond to within the allotted hour. Our apologies to everyone whose questions were not submitted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It started with an email forwarded to one of the\u00a0Cortes Radio\u00a0team. Our Member of Parliament was having a ZOOM chat. We asked to broadcast the chat over the radio. While this did not work out, it led to the ZOOM\/radio townhall meeting with\u00a0Rachel Blaney on Sept. 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":11794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[225],"tags":[1628,1629],"radio":[252],"origine":[280,266,231],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11790"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11790"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=11790"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=11790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}