September is supposed to be busy for students as they head back to school. Get acquainted with new schedules and expectations for a productive school year.

Instead at four Hamilton high schools, a total of 16 bomb threats have forced four high schools to close for student safety over four separate days. Hamilton police have open investigations into all of them, and preliminary reports have the threats linked to anti-LGBTQ+ and Trans rights motives. In September, the 1 Million March for Children came through Ontario advocating for policies that would put Trans students’ safety at risk and eliminating pro-LGBTQ and Transgender policies from schools in the province. We don’t believe in coincidences, at least not ones this big or obvious. So the question we had on our minds was, why is no one speaking up about this risk to student safety?

To date, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Minister of Education Stephen Lecce have issued no statement condemning the threats to student safety. We invited on to the podcast, long-time friend and colleague Laura Babcock to dive into what is going on with this issue. As well we take the opportunity to broaden our inquiry into Ford’s attitude towards Hamilton, as a prominent business Collective Arts Brewing is threatened with a massive tax bill from archaic and harmful tax laws. For a pro-business government, they seem to not care about policies that are hurting Ontario industries.

We talk about it all!

This Episode is brought to you by Graham Agnew of Dominion Lending

https://grahamagnew.ca/

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Nicholas Paul: sound editing.