Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 259: Racial Equity in Policy Making — with Véronique Sioufi
Speakers: Samantha Walters, Am Johal, Véronique Sioufi
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Samantha Walters 0:05
Hello listeners! I’m Sam with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Véronique Sioufi, the Researcher for Racial & Socio-economic Equity at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives BC Office, and a doctoral candidate in geography at Simon Fraser University. Am and Véronique discuss what brought her to her doctoral work and her interest in issues of labour inequality, as well as how her position at the CCPA was created in order to look at structural racism in BC and fill in major data gaps. They also talk about how she and her colleagues in the CCPA approach questions of decolonisation in their work. Enjoy the episode!
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Am Johal 0:57
Hello, welcome to below the radar. Delighted that you could join us again this week. We have a special guest, Véronique Sioufi is with us today. Welcome, Veronique.
Véronique Sioufi 1:07
Hi. Thanks for having me.
Am Johal 1:09
Véronique, can you— Maybe we can begin with you introducing yourself a little bit.
Véronique Sioufi 1:13
Yeah, sure. My name is Véronique Sioufi. I am the Researcher and Policy Analyst for Racial & Socioeconomic Equity at the CCPA BC. And for folks who don't know about the CCPA, we are, you know, a think tank, a left wing think tank, progressive think tank. We try and look at economic policy, social policy, from a critical lens, with an aim for social equity. So my job in particular is to look at the racial equity aspects of policy and recommend policy that will help us get to a slightly more just world.
Am Johal 1:50
Before I jump into the policy work that you've been doing.,I know that you're a student at SFU doing doctoral work, but if you could just share a little bit of how you arrived into your doctoral work, your kind of background on that front and what drove you to getting into this line of work.
Véronique Sioufi 2:08
Yeah, it's a fairly long journey. I think I would say I was a working person who felt like the working world was quite unjust. I worked in retail. I worked as a waitress for a long time, and it got me interested in labor studies, in you know, what happened to the labor movement? Why am an un-unionized, you know, retail worker making minimum wage, experiencing all of these injustices, to put it, you know, mildly. And so I got interested in labor studies. And I wanted to, you know, first, the masters at SFU in communication was looking at, you know, can we use the social media world to grow the labor movement? That was what I was interested in. And I moved into a PhD in the Geography Department, but still really connected to labor issue of, you know, how do these— How does the uneven world of the labor market transfer online? Is the internet this neutral place that we think of? And you know, as I'm wrapping up my PhD, the answer is, no, it is also an uneven world, all of the injustices and colonial inequalities that we see on the ground are translated online as well. So that was my long loop around to ending up in doctoral studies at SFU.
Am Johal 3:26
Did you grow up near here, and were your parents also political? I'm just wondering, like, did you already have the political bug when you were young?
Véronique Sioufi 3:34
Oh yeah, for sure. I did grow up in Vancouver, in East Van. My mom works in the labor movement. She works in unions. She was a young mom also in the student union movement when I was a kid here. So yes, I think I grew up campaigning for Libby Davies. You know, I went door to door in the stroller. So definitely a union baby from day one. So that was part of it. And I, yeah, the union makeup of the world that I ended up in by the time I became working age was very different than the one I had hoped for, probably, as a young child. But I still have hope. And yeah, that's what's gotten me into the policy world. Everything really is connected back to our work and our labor. Yeah.
Am Johal 4:19
Alright, we've uncovered that you're a red diaper baby. Wondering, we can talk a little bit about your doctoral work and kind of what you've been working on there. I know you work with Geoff Mann, who also has connections to the CCPA and Kendra Strauss, the chair of the Labour Studies program.
Véronique Sioufi 4:39
Yeah, my doctoral work is looking at micro-tasking. I feel like this is, this might be... We might be going down a rabbit hole here. As most PhDs tend to be a little esoteric. But I, you know, as specific as the kind of work that I look at, this micro tasking, which is, you know, the hidden click work behind algorithms. I think A) we all know AI is kind of the hot topic of the day. We see all of this, you know, bubble of investment in tech and anything that's got the words AI, artificial intelligence tied to it. And what I look at is the work behind the AI. How much of AI is really still manual labor? Like a lot of technological innovations of the past is, a lot of hidden human labor behind what we call AI. And so I look at how that work is divided across the globe. You know, it's supposed to be anyone anywhere can do this click work. You don't need any particular education, you know, should be available to anyone. And in theory, that should mean that we all get paid equal. And you know, folks don't. So workers in the global south get paid a lot less, and we're already talking, this is like pennies per click work, and yet folks in the global south get paid even fewer pennies per click for the same work that folks in the Global North get paid, you know, let's say $1 instead.
Am Johal 5:59
How far along are you in your dissertation work now?
Véronique Sioufi 6:02
So I am just wrapping up writing the dissertation. Research is done and analysis is done. And, you know, I'm in everybody's favorite phase of doctoral work, which is writing. And I would say, in the last, you know, the easiest part to write, which is those last like 20, 30 pages. So I'm at perpetually, just around the corner from finishing. But don't tell this to my advisory committee. No promises if they're listening to this, because, of course, I work full time at the CCPA, and that, you know, that takes up a lot of my time and energy.
Am Johal 6:37
Yeah, it's actually, you know, dissertations are actually, once you get into the zone, they can actually be quite enjoyable, right? And there's that part of when you're deep in the project, and there's something quite singular, and you spend a lot of time alone working on it as well. And there's some really great aspects of that. You know, I look back fondly. I was working full time when I was also working on my dissertation, and I enjoyed big, big parts of it. And so you got to put your own self into it, in a sense of your name is going on it. So say what you want to say. Don't hold back.
Véronique Sioufi 7:12
Yeah and I'm working with, you know, the data that I'm working with is people. It's, you know, it's interviews with people. It's surveys with people. These are people I spent, you know, hours talking to on video calls. And so it's never boring, and it feels so personal. It's not a drag to, you know, to write out, I just feel like I'm telling a story really. You know, there's some analysis in there, but for the most part, it's pretty fun.
Am Johal 7:41
Okay, so next, I wanted to ask you about sort of your arrival at the CCPA. The position that you hold, it's a very specific title, and wondering if you can sort of talk about how the position was created and the intent behind it.
Véronique Sioufi 7:55
Yeah, I think the position was a couple years in the making before I got there. So, you know, I can't tell you the full story of what happened there, but I think more and more folks were finding that the issue of racial equity is intertwined with all of the work that everybody does, but they really wanted a dedicated desk that, you know, can help to not just hone in on the key issues affecting racial equity in the province, but that can also inform other people's work around racial equity. There isn't really, you know, just like I say, there's no policy that's not somewhat connected to labor. There's no policy that's not somewhat connected to racial equity, particularly in a settler colonial state. So you know, the aim of this desk was to hone in on that. Look at issues of structural racism in BC, how policy perpetuates that, how policy can undo that. Can it undo that? In what ways? And doing a lot more data gathering, we have some major data gaps in Canada and BC around racial equity. It ends up being a felt experience that, you know, the community organizations we work with don't have the data behind what they're seeing. You know, they're frontline orgs, they see people's lived experience, and then they don't have the numbers that policy makers love to have in order to enact a new policy, you know, show us the inequality on paper. And so that's become my job. The cool part about this research desk is it's got an advisory committee that kind of helps me to design the, you know, the direction that I go in, because it's kind of an overwhelming desk to have an infinite possibility of things to research. And so I've got an advisory committee. There's some academics, some folks from unions, some folks from frontline organizations, all working towards racial justice, all working towards decolonization. And so they bring to me, you know, what are the hot button issues that are affecting the people you work with, and what are you missing to be able to, you know, fight that fight. And that's how I determine what I prioritize in terms of research.
Am Johal 10:12
Full disclosure, I'm on that advisory committee, but my attendance has been a little bit not as good as it should be.
Véronique Sioufi 10:20
Oh, that's okay. It's a very new desk, right? I'm only one year into this, and you know, part of the reason you're there is to help get the research out. So first I have to do the research, and then you'll come in when it's time to get the research out. So that's why we're here today.
Am Johal 10:38
So I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about some of the research projects you've currently been working on? It's interesting, you know, I'm of an age where I remember the media think tanks that were getting quoted in the papers. It was the Fraser Institute. They kind of were the game in town in terms of a free enterprise, right wing conservative orientation. Since that time, many others have come forward. But the CCPA, I think, at that time in the mid 90s, was, you know, it had a marginal kind of space initially. But through the work of people who were there, Seth Klein and many others that brought some of these ideas into the mainstream, I think, particularly when we had conservative governments in place in particular. So it's also like a testament to the longevity of the CCPA and that they've been able to maintain that kind of space in the public sphere.
Véronique Sioufi 11:30
Oh yeah. Yeah, we were just talking about that yesterday, actually, we were having a strategic planning meeting of, you know, I mean, the Fraser Institute has kind of disappeared. I don't want to encourage them to reappear again by saying that, but we far outnumber them in media mentions than when the CCPA first started. And so it does feel like those conservative think tanks are not the big players that they once were. But that hasn't really stopped the alt right from having this resurgence that we're seeing. You know, the election, we just saw that. That's a big, big turnout for the conservatives. The NDP won by a very narrow margin, although they do have a majority. So, you know, we still have, it's— the longevity is great, and I'm glad we have that public trust. You know, the donors are still supporting us and still believe in our work. And obviously that work continues to be just as important as it was in the 90s, when Fraser Institute kind of had that control over the narrative. But, yeah, so we've got a lot to work with here and work against here. And it has felt—and I don't know if you noticed this in this election, maybe this is my bias is the racial equity desk—but it really felt like racism played a big part in that conservative win, that it was something that they were playing on, you know. I wouldn't even say it was dog whistling. It was pretty clear. You know, the fear around immigration, you know, the fear that immigrants are stealing our jobs, or that diversity in the classroom is going to, I don't know, corrupt our children in some way. The fear around land back that, you know, we won this land fair and square, and it's ours to keep. And, you know, let's forget about our commitments to the rights of Indigenous people. So there's a lot of myth busting work that this desk is going to have to do. So I'm glad to have the community support in that.
Am Johal 13:30
And so what are some of the research projects you've been working on the last while?
Véronique Sioufi 13:35
Pretty quickly when the desk came together, like when I met with the advisory committee and asked folks what the priority focuses are, inequality in the labor market has always been top of mind. I'd say that this was, this was going into this desk I knew, and this is partly why I was hired coming out of labor studies, we knew the working world is going to be a top priority for this research desk. So some of the smaller, you know, quicker, little research projects that I've worked on in this first year have had to do with inequality in the working world. You know, income inequality, the gig world. So you know, the predominantly racialized immigrant workers that do gig work, and how unprotected that gig work is, I'm thinking of Uber drivers, food delivery workers. So, you know, we submitted some policy recommendations to the government for how that work could be better regulated to make it more just and better pay for those workers.
But the other big priority, which I should have anticipated, but didn't quite anticipate in coming into this research desk, and I'm glad I do have a bit of a geography background here to deal with this, is housing. Of course, you know the crisis that we're all facing, and it's, you know, you can't go a day in BC, particularly in Vancouver, without thinking or talking about the housing crisis. And what I heard from my advisory committee, from community folks, is this housing crisis doesn't feel even. It doesn't, you know, we talk about it in the news in this racially neutral way. We don't talk about the housing crisis as affecting different people differently, but that is the experience that folks are seeing on the ground. This is not an even housing crisis. We're not all experiencing the same housing crisis. The level of the crisis is different for different people, but we don't have a ton of research in BC to back up that lived experience, and so that's become the new focus of the desk. We've luckily managed to get some funding from the real estate foundation. Vancity is also supporting us in this. To do what we're calling—we're starting with Metro Vancouver as our, you know, grounded, you know, taking this project off the ground in Metro Vancouver—So it's called Metro Vancouver's color coded housing market. Our goal here is to try and understand how housing inequality, you know, the haves and the have nots in housing. And so this is both housing wealth. You know, folk's experience in the rental market. How does that fall along racial lines? And how does that fall geographically? Because, again, we know from our lived experience in Metro Vancouver that there are concentrations of wealth and race in the city, and we're not doing enough to address that in policy. Policy has been, for the most part, you know, it's great, a lot of great housing policy coming up, but it's racially neutral, so we don't know, you know, part of the project here is to watch and see what happens with this housing policy. How will it affect— predict how it will affect different people differently, and try and inform that policy going forward with race based data.
Am Johal 16:59
Yeah, that's, uh, it's fascinating, because, you know, I think, when I think about the older stock of social housing that we had, or Co Op housing, people moved into those units in a particular time, particular sets of demographics, it's great that they provide long term housing, but they're not necessarily the most diverse. I don't have sets of numbers, but I just, the visual eye test will tell me that. So those are, like, good policies in that people have been able to stay in a long term way, but they definitely don't reflect the demographics of the city or— You know, there's, remember, there was about a decade ago or longer than that. There was that Vancouver Foundation report around belonging, and, you know, everyone was bummed out, and all this kind of stuff around living in towers and this type of thing. And they mentioned people were living in ethnic enclaves and things. But they were always, they were talking about that in terms of racialized communities. I was like, I got evicted and moved to North Vancouver, and I was in like, a very white neighborhood. The white neighborhoods are never called ethnic enclaves, you know? I mean, it's a diverse set of white people. One side was, you know, listening to ACDC, and other people were listening to Sara McLaughlin, but, like, they were white, right? It was a diverse set of white people. I don't mean to homogenize them, but it's interesting when the terms of what is considered an ethnic enclave.
Véronique Sioufi 18:15
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we have, so, you know, when we think about, like the ask from my advisory committee, what they had in mind is we get this research out of the US. We see this research in the US. We know about redlining in the US. We know, you know, I'm thinking about the research coming out of the Economic Policy Institute. So another, you know, another policy institute like ours, they... Income inequality is a part of the equation of, you know, who can buy what house and what kind of housing wealth they get, for sure, but when you look at income inequality versus wealth inequality. There's a much starker gap between Black family wealth and white family wealth in the US, and that comes down to housing. And it comes down to housing partly because of the history of redlining of you know, black families being relegated to neighborhoods where that property value did not go up, partly because it was an ethnic enclave. And there's other structural inequalities that go with being in one of those ethnic enclaves that gets fewer resources. You know, if all of your social service resources are tied to your property taxes, and your property value is not going up, there's going to be fewer property taxes. So all of these knock on inequality effects that come down to this housing wealth inequality. Also, you know, incentivizing the purchase of single family homes for white families, and not doing the same for Black families. Access to mortgages for white families, not doing the same for Black families. And we see how that has, you know, intergenerational impact that that wealth accumulates partly through that housing wealth and then is passed on generation to generation. And we don't have a ton of research like that equivalence in Canada partly. That's because up until very, very recently, we weren't collecting wealth data by race. We have our survey of financial security. This is what collects data around wealth, particularly housing wealth, is in that survey, and we weren't asking questions about ethnicity. Now it is.
That data is not released yet, but we hope to have access to that to be able to paint a bit of a picture of that. But the other part of it is we think of ourselves in Canada, and BC in particular, as not having done red lining because it wasn't maybe as overt as American red lining was, you know, across every municipality in the US. So we think we didn't really do that. But that's not true. So part of this project is, you know, first, there's the dispossession of Indigenous people that kind of underwrites every mortgage that we have in this city. Then there is redlining. You know, we know it was difficult for racialized communities to get mortgages in the parts of the city where they were able to afford housing. So I'm thinking anything east of Main Street. For a long time, it was very difficult to get a mortgage there. That just had an impact on the value of property east of Main Street, you know, on an ongoing basis. You know, there were, there's parts of Vancouver where it was written in that, you know, the Chinese laborers that were here were not allowed to buy properties in those areas. That's, that's redlining.
Am Johal 21:31
Some of those covenants still exist on paper, even though they've been legally taken out. But those may still exist to this day, or even Chinatown, Japantown, like there were areas— whether they were formally or informally designated, there were places where you could get spaces and other parts of the city where you couldn't.
Véronique Sioufi 21:49
Exactly, exactly, and we haven't done a thorough job of measuring that impact over time. You know, drawing that thread, we have— the history is there, and we can draw out that history, but measuring the impact that it has on today's Metro Vancouver housing market is going to be a big part of that. And then there's a bunch of unmeasurable, you know, in a survey, experiences that people have. So we do, you know, we have some surveys that do ask people questions about their experiences around evictions and discrimination in the rental housing market. So we'll have a look at what's available. And then the second part of our project here will be to fill in the gaps. So, you know, what does the— So, what can StatsCan data not tell us about people's experiences in the housing market? You know, we want to know, like, does the size of housing suit people? Are people living in housing that's too small for them because they can't afford anything more, because nothing else is available? Is it a financial issue that you've got multi-generations in a single house, or is it for cultural reasons? You know, are you living in Surrey because that's what makes most sense for you, or is that what you can afford and now you have to transit one hour every day to work? Trying to tie all those aspects of a person's housing and life together to really, you know, map out that inequality is the primary aim of this project.
Am Johal 23:20
Yeah, I know the social indicators report for the City of Vancouver relies on Statscan data, but I can't remember if they have it breaking out in terms of racialized data or not. I was going to flip it around to the other side, which is, we've had some reports done on the upper end of the housing market, which could, you know— partly concerns around international buyers and money coming into the market, versus what some argue is a kind of moral panic around these things that has long histories of racism, but also racialized data being kind of pulled in particular ways. Andy Yan has done some of that work, etc. But wondering if you could speak a little bit to kind of the complications of using racialized data, because we've seen sort of controversies also emerge when one starts to articulate and piece apart data to tell a story.
Véronique Sioufi 24:14
I think if anything, this is going to counter those narratives, you know, when we have those panics about foreign buyers. I mean, not that that's not a problem. You know, the problem of housing as an investment, housing as a, you know, market good, instead of a right, that we kind of all need a roof over our heads. You know, that's something that the CCPA BC has been tackling and studying for a long time.
Am Johal 24:39
We have our share of domestic speculators.
Véronique Sioufi 24:44
Yeah, we have our share of domestic corporate speculators, like I, you know, this is—
Am Johal 24:47
Real estate, income trusts, etc. Yeah.
Véronique Sioufi 24:50
It's not that it's not a problem for, you know, that foreign folks might treat housing as a market good, but that's not our biggest problem that we have here. And I think looking at more racialized data around housing inequality will just show that, you know, racialized folks are not the winner in this situation, and that those foreign buyers are going to be the outliers in those numbers. And you know, as usual, it's a way to use racism as a distraction from capitalism and who's really winning in these games, and who's driving up the cost of housing for all of us.
Am Johal 25:29
Thank you for that. Wondering if you can share sort of any other future research projects you want to get started on. I guess as you're meeting with your advisory committee and seeing other forms of research out there, you probably have more questions than you have time to get into research project. But some things you'd like to take on in the future?
Véronique Sioufi 25:48
Oh yeah. I mean so many and you know, part of this project that I haven't touched on too much is around the decolonization aspect of it, right? We don't want to do, I mean, we don't want to recommend any new policies or do any work at the CCPA BC, that does not involve decolonization. It's just something that we cannot move forward without addressing the fact that we're on stolen land, the fact that we have, you know, that we've commoditized land resources and disenfranchised an entire population and continue to benefit from the fact that we've done so. It's not a past tense occurrence, but something that we do on an ongoing basis. So you know, even being the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, being in British Columbia, you know, we're recommending policies to a settler colonial government. There's a lot of accountability that we need to do in there. We can't move forward without doing everything in consultation with the first nations whose lands we're on. And so, you know, that's a big part of the housing project is prioritizing First Nation solutions to the housing crisis, but that'll go for every aspect of the research. Other research projects, I've got a long list. What is my priority? You know, we'll see coming out of this election. We haven't had our post provincial election meeting yet as an advisory committee, but, you know, I've started to do some work on debunking myths where racialized folks get blamed for things that are typically capitalist, you know, problems. So I think a lot of the work going forward will be around that, you know, I'm thinking about the fear of crime being on the rise, right? That was something we heard a lot about leading up to the election. You know, crime and safety, community safety. We need more police on the streets, and we know that police are not good for people. They don't solve crime, they don't reduce crime. And so that's going to be probably a big and difficult project, you know, to deal with in the future, because there's such an emotional attachment to police providing safety, and people don't like to hear that police don't really provide safety, and especially when you start to break that down a racialized group, police are deadly for a lot of folks, you know, Indigenous folks, Black folks. So that is something that we're really going to have to tackle within the city, because it kind— in the city, in the province, because it kind of, you know, crosses both political parties. Across the table, people really believe in police as a solution to crime and violence, and when we're talking about crime, most of the time, what we're talking about is poverty. You know, we've criminalized poverty to such a level that it's become interchangeable. We don't really know the difference between somebody experiencing extreme poverty and what we think of as crime or a lack of public safety on our streets. So that's going to be a lot of work. I think that's going to be a lot of work. Partly it's research work. Partly it's changing the minds of folks about what we think of as a crime and what we think of as public safety and what we think of as solutions to those. So that's one of my major priorities going forward after this housing project.
Am Johal 29:18
Thank you for that. Yeah, interesting. I've gone to some meetings of the Hastings Crossing Business Improvement Association that represents some of the businesses and property owners along Hastings street where SFU has space. And it's interesting being around the table with people running restaurants and small businesses, etc. And I think they would all agree that a balanced approach is what's necessary. That includes all the services, all the other pieces. There's no... You can't police your way out of the situation, and particularly in the post pandemic environment, where urban centers, Vancouver, Portland, Seattle, you go up and down to other major centers, is very similar issues, although the gravity and the presence in Gastown and Downtown Eastside is particular and intense. But there definitely is going to need to be a much broader lens put onto this. But question, CCPA has done a lot of work around housing and housing supply, and looking at taxation in ways of addressing which has been an intractable issue in this city in so many ways. And even though we keep increasing supply, the affordability hasn't quite come in yet, although there's some measures on that front that hopefully down the road are going to start providing that, or we're starting to see a little bit of the rental prices at least flatten, in some cases, go down in very recent months. But I take the example like, let's say, a concrete example. I live in Strathcona. There's a new proposal that's been put forward. A couple of rental towers by West Bank. One of them is an affordable housing project that would be run by a non-profit. There's an existing local area plan that says you can only build so high. When I talk to most of the people around my neighborhood, most of the people are in favor of development, but once you start getting into towers of 39, 40 stories, and also other services in the neighborhood, or community amenities not being added in, that can add cost to a development or whatever. Lack of parking means that there's going to be other implications in the neighborhood. And it seems like every neighborhood, there are these flash points, and things get polarized into a kind of NIMBY versus pro development phase. But I think in reality, most people are kind of somewhere in the middle. They want to see development, but they also don't want to be in a kind of soulless tower filled place. And so how do we solve those questions? How can we have density and affordability, but also good planning? And do those— do we give up on those things in order to deal with a crisis? Because once you build that high, it also sets the precedent of the kind of forms of development that are going to set the inertia in terms of the way things are going. And do we need to throw away the plans that did have the consultation in place? So things get over simplified in the media narrative oftentimes.
Véronique Sioufi 32:14
Yeah, and this is where there's overlap between the housing work that my colleagues like Alex Hemingway and Mark Lee have already done, and these new questions we're asking about, you know, unspoken redlining along racial lines that we might not be addressing. You know, where have we been doing this redevelopment and extremely high density, like major towers, tends to be in places that already have a little bit of density, right? They're already at that middle level of density. Low-rise towers. We tend to be redeveloping already somewhat dense areas, instead of looking at those gigantic swaths of land, of single homes on big lots and creating that, you know, that missing middle, as they call it, you know, medium density, where we have nothing but single family homes right now. And why do we ignore those single family home areas? There's a lot of wealth there, right? That's the nimbyism. We, you know, we're happy to critique it when it's a community saying like, Hey, don't tear down our, you know, six story rental house to build a higher tower. Yes, that's going to provide more housing. But why are we not looking at those, you know, what my colleague calls exclusionary zoning. You know, we've allowed all these often predominantly white, single family home areas to just stay untouched while we continue to redevelop and redevelop areas that already had some medium density. So that's going to be a major question going forward, and we've seen the resistance to some policy that's moved in that direction, and we'll see how it goes from there.
Am Johal 33:53
Véronique, anything else you'd like to add?
Véronique Sioufi 33:57
Oh, I don't think so. This has been a great conversation that's gone all over the map so I think you get a sense of, you know, how stretched this research desk— when you're looking at racial equity in the province of BC, it covers a lot of ground. So, you know, obviously there's a lot I haven't been able to mention in this particular conversation, so you'll have to go to policynote.ca and check out my other work there, and my colleague's work. Everything that my colleagues do also touches on a lot of these issues. This is not, you know, not something that this desk can do single handedly, but, yeah, impossible to cover in such, you know, in a short conversation, but I appreciate scratching the surface here.
Am Johal 34:36
Yeah, Véronique, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar.
Véronique Sioufi 34:40
Thanks for having me.
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Samantha Walters 34:45
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to our conversation with Véronique Sioufi. Head to the show notes to learn more about Véronique’s work. If you would like to support our podcast, you can donate at the link in the description below. Your generous donation will help support the podcast's activities and associated public events with SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks again for listening, and we’ll catch you next time on Below the Radar.