In our final Off the Hill political panel of 2023, we looked back on some of the top news stories of the year – and speculated about the year ahead.

In 2023, some of the hottest-ever global temperatures were recorded. Inflation and the high cost of housing and groceries skyrocketed. Canada’s labour movement saw major wins – and challenges. 2SLGBTQIA+ rights in schools were threatened. And the conflict in besieged Gaza reached a breaking point.

Guests included MP Leah Gazan, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees’ Ontario School Boards Council of Unions (OSBCU) Laura Walton, economist Jim Stanford, rabble’s parliamentary reporter Karl Nerenberg. Hosted by Libby Davies.

Meet our Off the Hill panel

Leah Gazan is Member of Parliament for Winnipeg Centre. She is currently the NDP critic for Children, Families, and Social Development, as well as the deputy critic for Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship. Leah is a member of Wood Mountain Lakota Nation, located in Saskatchewan, Treaty 4 territory.

Laura Walton was first elected president of CUPE’s Ontario School Boards Council of Unions in 2019. Laura is proud of her rural roots growing up in Belleville where she worked as an educational assistant supporting children with special needs. With a firm belief in the socio-economic equalizing power of public education, in 2022 Laura led her 55,000 coworkers across Canada’s largest province to withdraw their labour for a two-day protest of the Ford government using the notwithstanding clause to ram through a law imposing a contract. Ultimately education workers resisted concessions and freely negotiated a $1 per hour pay increase each year for four years after a decade of legislated wage erosion.

Jim Stanford is an economist and the director of the Centre for Future Work, a labour economics research institute with operations in Canada and Australia.

Karl Nerenberg is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and filmmaker, working in both English and French languages. He is rabble’s senior parliamentary reporter.