June 19, 2008

Satire

It's Thursday, June 19th.

For the second year in a row, the chair of the RCMP's watchdog committee has told the Mounties to be more discriminating in their use of Tasers.

Currently, And for that, he has been tasered ... again.

This is The Current.


Crisis in Rural Canada

Panel

On June 18, 2008, after an extensive two-year study, the Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry released a report saying rural Canada was in crisis. It cites widespread poverty, diminishing job prospects and declining social infrastructure, and says the problems rural Canada is facing will affect everyone, no matter where they live.

Senator Joyce Fairbairn is the chair of the committee, and told us about the report.

We looked at how the problems Senator Fairbairn described are affecting three communities. To help us with that, we were joined from Summerland, in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley by Susan McIver, a freelance reporter with the Penticton Herald; from Moosomin, Saskatchewan by Kevin Weedmark, Editor of the Moosomin World Spectator; and from Charlottetown by Ian Petrie, a CBC reporter who hails from Iona, Prince Edward Island.


Listen to Part One:

Letters

We were joined by this week's Friday host Linden MacIntyre to look at some listener mail. Also joining us to discuss literacy rates in Canada was Nancy Jackson, a professor in the adult education program at the University of Toronto and a specialist in workplace literacy policy and practice.


Music

23&Kader - Maktoubi Destiny


Listen to Part Two: