Everybody's talking about it. It's the latest, best policy idea to come from the left since public healthcare and public education – it's free (and good!) public transit. We don't pay to go to the park, we don't pay to ride elevators, we don't have toll roads – so why do we pay for public transit? We already pay for most of the costs of public transit, "free" transit is just properly funding transit with public money, which we get by taxing the rich. When we eliminate fares for everyone we reduce carbon pollution, traffic and the cost of living not to mention all the positive economic effects and the reconciliation, racial justice and accessibility issues that are addressed with free transit. Can you tell we like the idea? 

We talk with Laura Kruse and Paige Gorsak with Free Transit Edmonton about their exciting new campaign to bring free transit to all. 

Progress Alberta speaks with the only person to provide even a halfway amount of drama in Alberta during the last federal election – Michael Kalmanovitch. He was the Green candidate for Edmonton-Strathcona who, just days before the federal election, threw his support behind NDP candidate Heather McPherson the only non-Conservative elected to parliament in Alberta. We talk about why he did it, what the Greens can learn from this and what's next for the Green part as Liz May steps down. Also, should Progress Report host Duncan Kinney run for leadership of the Greens? Email him at duncank@progressalberta.ca and let him know.

Jason Kenney’s brutal class warfare on Albertans on behalf of the rich means people want to fight back. And one of the biggest tools working folks have to fight back is the general strike – but it’s not to be undertaken lightly. We talk to Sam Gindin about the lessons learned from the Days of Action in Ontario in the ‘90s fighting Mike Harris and what folks who are considering a general strike today need to to think about.

Documents from the Glenbow Museum Archives show that Imperial Oil, a subsidiary of Exxon, knew about the catastrophic effects of climate change before anyone. Instead of telling the world and transforming their business they suppressed their research, started a climate denial PR war and started building dossiers and surveilling climate activists. We talk to Murtaza Hussain of the Intercept about his story on the Esso cover-up and on Iran and his investigative journalism on the Iran Cables.

Stanned by Herald columnists, protected by the old boys' club, and allegedly able to disintegrate a grown horse with a single strike: on this pod Duncan and Mav Adecer delve into the wild history of Jason Kenney's second-in-command, Jason Nixon.

While Albertans suffer from brutal austerity corporations in Alberta will collectively pocket $4.7 billion dollars from Kenney’s corporate tax cut - at least that’s what the government of Alberta and the media is telling you. But when you dig into what these companies are telling their shareholders you find that Kenney's corporate tax is costing Albertans at least $6 billion and probably much, much more. To help us sort through this we have Angella Macewen, senior economist with the Canadian Union of Public Employees as our guest. 

Say hello to Frank Oliver, the man who tried to block black people from coming to Canada, created modern Western Canada by stealing massive amounts of land from Indigenous people and personally profited from the whole thing. Did we mention that he has schools, pools and huge swathes of Edmonton named after him? We dive into Oliver’s legacy with Jodi Calahoo-Stonehouse.

Don Cherry is finally off the air. We run through some of his greatest hits Rock‘Em Sock‘Em style but instead of brain damage and sweet goals its racism, misogyny and climate denial. And to help us process the news of this hockey commentator cut down in his prime we turn to comedian Mav Adecer and writer and hockey dad Tej Swatch.

There's a group of Canadian veterans often overlooked on Remembrance Day--the brave men and women of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion and the International Brigades who fought the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Kaarina Mikalson of the Canada and the Spanish Civil War Project joins us on the pod to tell us the story of Canada's original anti-fascists.

Alberta has deliberately designed its economy to be reliant on oil and gas production--which means the international climate change crisis matters here more than almost anywhere else. But you won't hear much on that subject from Alberta's monolithic, corporate media establishment. On this special episode of the Progress Report, taped live at the University of Calgary on November 4th, we interview climate activist and former Oil Sands Advisory Group member Tzeporah Berman to understand the climate debate beyond the narrow perspective and shallow discourse we get here in Alberta.