George Brown Polytechnic is located on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and other Indigenous peoples who have lived here over time. We are grateful to share this land as treaty people who learn, work and live in the community with each other.
Let us raise monuments all over Canada. Monuments in the form of schools and hospitals and libraries. In decent homes for people to live in. In decent roads, in decent conditions. In a Medicare program… In adequate healthcare services for every man, woman and child, irrespective of their income, their age or their physical condition. These are monuments of which we can be proud. These are monuments that in the days to come our children will see them and they will bless us and thank us for those kinds of monuments.
-Tommy Douglas
The Tommy Douglas Institute of Labour and Social Justice at George Brown Polytechnic provides a forum for both structural critiques of these neoliberal times and alternative visions for the future of post-secondary education, communities and the larger society.
As the Institute continues to explore the intersection between post-secondary education, communities and social change, each year it will focus on a particular question or theme related to critical pedagogy and social empowerment.
From its founding in 2013, the Tommy Douglas Institute of Labour and Social Justice has been centred around an annual conference which brings together educational and wider communities, activists and visionaries. We have also hosted events dedicated to election education, anti-Black racism and carding and in 2021 we launched the Courage My Friends podcast series with media partner rabble.ca.
Where the values represented by Tommy Douglas inform the foundation, practice and enduring spirit of what we do, we are proud to present the Tommy Douglas Institute of Labour and Social Justice.
The TDI over the years…
- Rethinking Pedagogy in Changing Times (2013) Featuring Henry Giroux (author and cultural critic)
- Critical Pedagogy and the Citizen-Student: A Just Society is Possible (2014) Featuring Judy Rebick (journalist and activist), Shirley Douglas (activist/artist) and Olivia Chow (activist / former MP)
- Education & Activism: Rethink, Resist, Reclaim (2015) Featuring Chris Hedges (writer, activist, public intellectual)
- Canada: A Different Story (2016) Featuring George Elliott Clarke (Canada’s 7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate)
- Social Justice = Environmental Justice: Rethink! Reclaim! Respect! (2017) Featuring Vandana Shiva (Global environmental justice activist) and Clayton Thomas-Müller (Indigenous rights & environmental activist)
- Community, Education, Change: Indigenous Ways of Knowing – KIHKINOOHAMAAKEWIN (2018) Featuring Senator Murray Sinclair (Chief Commissioner, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada)
- Poverty, Populism, Planet (2019) Featuring Maude Barlow (Author, Activist & National Chair, Council of Canadians)