Pt 1: Quebec Culture War - That's part of a very popular video called Culture en Péril, or Culture in Peril. It's a satirical stab at the Conservative government's cuts to arts funding. It stars Quebec singer-songwriter Michel Rivard of the band Beau Dommage and it's become an internet phenomenon, with more than four-hundred-thousand hits on the video sharing web site YouTube.



Pt 2: Philippines - Documentary - Part 2 - About a year ago, the federal government began a pilot project to bring more temporary foreign workers to Alberta and British Columbia. And it seems to have worked. 43,000 temporary workers came to British Columbia last year - up 23 per cent from the year before. And in Alberta, there are now more temporary workers than immigrants.



Pt 3: Community Confidential - Anyone who wants to talk about crime and punishment on the campaign trail has had plenty of reason. Yesterday it was an armed hostage-taking at a high-school in Regina. The day before it was another shooting death in Toronto. Throughout the campaign, all of the party leaders have been touting plans to deal with crime from toughening penalties for young offenders to giving cities the power to ban handguns. Violence and safety are top-of-mind issues for many people, including voters in Canada's diverse ethnic and cultural communities.

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It's Wednesday, September 24th.

The U.S. Treasury Secretary says a 700-billion-dollar bailout package for American banks must be passed ... but that a proposal to prevent home foreclosures should be scrapped.

Currently, Because THAT ... that would be socialism.

This is The Current.

Quebec Culture War

That's part of a very popular video called Culture en Péril, or Culture in Peril. It's a satirical stab at the Conservative Government's cuts to arts funding. It stars Quebec singer-songwriter Michel Rivard of the band Beau Dommage and it's become an internet phenomenon, with more than four-hundred-thousand hits on the video sharing web site Youtube.

It's also become a powerful political force in Quebec by turning the federal government's cuts to the arts into an attack on Quebec culture.

Bernard St-Laurent has been charting the video's progress as a burgeoning election issue. He is a national reporter and the host of CBC Radio's C'est La Vie. And he joined us from Montreal.

We also let you listen to a portion of a concert held this week in Montreal. It was a concert staged by a group of Quebec artists including Michel Rivard and meant to reinforce the message in the Culture en Péril video. Ian Kelly was one of the performers on-stage last night and he also joined us in Montreal.

 

Philippines - Documentary - Part 2

About a year ago, the federal government began a pilot project to bring more temporary foreign workers to Alberta and British Columbia. And it seems to have worked. 43,000 temporary workers came to British Columbia last year - up 23 per cent from the year before. And in Alberta, there are now more temporary workers than immigrants.

In all, there are about 165,000 temporary foreign workers in Canada. That's ten times as many as a decade ago. And no country exports more workers per capita than the Philippines. Yesterday, we heard Karin Wells' documentary about the consequences of the country's long-standing policy of exporting people. Karin is a documentary producer with CBC Radio and she came back into our studio this morning to tell us more.

 

Community Confidential

Anyone who wants to talk about crime and punishment on the campaign trail has had plenty of reason. Yesterday it was an armed hostage-taking at a high-school in Regina. The day before it was another shooting death in Toronto. Throughout the campaign, all of the party leaders have been touting plans to deal with crime from toughening penalties for young offenders to giving cities the power to ban handguns.
Violence and safety are top-of-mind issues for many people, including voters in Canada's diverse ethnic and cultural communities.

Take Vancouver's Chinatown for example. It was once a cultural hub for Asian immigrants. But over the years, it's been crippled by drugs and violent crime. Charles Lee is a local community activist and he took the CBC's Heiko Decosas on a walk through the neighbourhood to see what kinds of issues people there are dealing with.

To get a sense of how crime and punishment are playing out as election issues in Canada's ethnic and cultural communities, we've reconvened our Community Confidential panel. Winnie Hwo is the News Director with the Chinese-language network Fairchild TV. She joined us from Vancouver. Nadia Zouaoui is a freelance journalist and a contributor to Radio Canada. She joined us from Montreal. And Anis Farooqui is the Editor of Voice Of Toronto.com, a news website that caters to South Asian Canadians.


Last Word

We left off the show with a song from Chuckie Akenz. He's a rapper from Toronto who was featured in a documentary on CBC Television's The Fifth Estate. He grew up in the Jane-Finch corridor, a Toronto neighbourhood with a long history of gang and gun violence. This is One Way Out.