Cara Zwibel, CCLA Director, Fundamental Freedoms Program 

The pandemic has resulted in governments taking extraordinary steps to try to limit the spread of COVID-19 and maintain the capacity of our health care system. Individual rights and liberties have been severely curtailed, from requiring masking in public places, to limiting travel within Canada, to restricting how many people you can have in your home, and to shutting down core institutions like schools. What limits on our rights are acceptable in a public health crisis? How do we hold governments accountable for restricting these rights and ensure that they don’t overstep or use the emergency to expand their own powers?  

Abby Deshman, CCLA Director, Criminal Justice Program 

Bail and pre-trial detention: The Canadian constitution guarantees the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial, and the right to be released on reasonable bail. On an average day in 2018/19, however, there were about 23,500 adults held in our provincial and territorial jails and nearly two thirds (63%) of them were legally innocent – charged with a crime and waiting for their trial or release on bail. Although crime rates in Canada have generally fallen over the last three decades, the rate of pre-trial detention has dramatically increased. This session will explore the causes and impacts of this trend both for the people who are detained behind bars, as well as for the criminal justice system as a whole. 

Dr. Brenda McPhail, CCLA Director, Privacy, Surveillance and Technology Program 

CCLA has collaborated with a volunteer team of writers and illustrators to create a series of short, animated videos about Artificial Intelligence: what is it, what kinds of technologies use it, and how does it impact your privacy, free expression, free assembly and equality rights?  

The session will include introductory commentary on the videos and a series of discussion questions to help explore the ways data about us is increasingly collected and used without us fully understanding where or when it’s happening, and what it means for us, as well as some suggestions for ways to take back some control, to limit the diet of the range of technologies hungry for information about us. 

Animated videos include: 

1. Terminating AI Myths 
2. Are you being searched? 
3. How do machines learn?  
4. Is your doorbell racist? 
5. Your toaster is the weakest link! – extension activity… not part of talk but optional part of lesson 
6. Being smarter about using your smartphone 

Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, CCLA Director, Equality Program 

A bakery refuses to make a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage. A doctor refuses to tell their patient about birth control. And a hotel refuses to host an anti-LGBTQ+ conference. We live in a society that prohibits discrimination in our workplaces and stores. But what if the refusals are based on a religious or ideological belief system. What do we mean by equality and freedom of religion, and why are they important? How do we resolve the conflicts between the right to equality and the rights of individuals to their own beliefs? 

Are you a student with something to say? Are you keen to engage a global audience with issues you care about? Do you want see your story published? Storytelling is a key skill in your advocacy toolkit. This interactive workshop will introduce the fundamentals of storytelling using News Decoder’s four-step process for creating interesting, engaging, compelling media pieces. 

• Pitch: How to craft an original pitch that will convince an editor  
• Report: How to find primary sources, eliminate bias and conduct interviews that produce distinctive material  
• Draft: How to construct your story so every word and image has an impact 
• Revise: How to hone your story to be ready for publishing  

You’ll leave the workshop a better researcher and a better communicator, skills that will serve you in school and beyond as an informed global citizen and advocate for change. 

News Decoder is a global news service and educational platform that teaches journalistic and media literacy skills for young people around the world to engage with international issues. Learn more at www.news-decoder.com.