Someone who is well versed in the current state of human rights in the US is the Irish-born Harvard-trained lawyer, Paul O’Brien. He is the executive director of Amnesty International USA – one of the world’s leading human rights organizations. I recently sat down with Paul O’Brien when he visited Canada in early May 2025. We spoke at the headquarters of Amnesty International Canada in downtown Ottawa. Here’s our conversation.

In a recently released review of the first 100 days of the Trump presidency, the human rights organization, Amnesty international USA, outlines how the Trump administration is pursuing an agenda that seems bent on “eroding human rights protections, fostering fear and undermining the rule of law.”

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” That’s from Article One of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted on December 10th, 1948. The principal author of the landmark document was a Canadian. The New Brunswick born McGill University law professor John Peters Humphrey.

Around the world, institutions and individuals dedicated to the defense and protection of human rights are facing increasing attacks. Human rights are under extreme duress in the United States.

Judy Rebick has lived her life at the intersection of community activism and political party organizing. `

Born on August 15th 1945 on the cusp of the Baby Boom, Judy Rebick has been at the forefront of Canada’s most significant social movements for the last 60 years , whether it has been as a student activist in the 1960s , an organizer and journalist with socialist revolutionary groups in the 1970s, spokesperson for pro-choice groups and ally of abortion rights advocate Dr. Henry Morgentaler in the 1980s, president of Canada’s leading feminist organization the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and progressive commentator and tv host in the 1990s , writer and academic in the 2000s.

Throughout that time, she has also been either associated with or at the centre of numerous groupings and organizations determined to reform and transform the NDP. Whether as an engaged member of the Waffle Movement, the Campaign for an Activist Party, the New Politics Initiative or the Leap Manifesto. And so given her history , there’s no better person in Canada to assess the current state of the NDP and to consider a path for its future, than her.

Armine Yalnizyan has spent her career explaining budgets, markets and fiscal matters to generations of Canadians. She’s an economist and the Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers and a regular columnist to the Toronto Star. In 2023 she was awarded the Galbraith Prize in Economics. Named in honour of the esteemed Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith.

John Vaillant's 2023 book Fire Weather: The Making of A Beast chronicles the gargantuan Fire that engulfed Fort McMurray, the fourth largest city in Alberta and centre of Canada’s oil industry nine years ago this May. He describes how residents, politicians, civic officials and firefighters dealt with a cataclysmic event that destroyed 2400 homes and structures, damaged thousands more, and caused over 100,000 people to flee their homes in Northern Alberta in what remains the biggest single day evacuation in the history of modern fire.

John Vaillant is one of Canada’s most celebrated writers. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Outside and National Geographic. He is the award-winning author of four books including The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth Madness and Greed, The Tiger” A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, and a the novel Jaguar’s Children. He is the recipient of the Governor General Award, The Writer’s Trust Non-Fiction Prize, and the Windham Campbell Literature Prize

In November 2024 the Syrian government of Bashar Al Assad was toppled in a revolution. The Assad family dynasty ruled over Syria with iron fists for over 50 years. Maher Arar knew the Assad regime all too well.

In late September 2002 just a year after the Al-Qaeda led September 11th attacks on the United States and in the midst of the so called War on Terror that followed 9/11, Maher Arar, a Syrian-born-McGill University educated engineer, was on his way home to Canada following a family trip to Tunisia. While on a stopover at New York’s JFK Airport, Arar was detained by US authorities and held for 12 days. He was then sent secretly on a private plane to Syria through Jordan. Maher Arar would spend a harrowing 10 months and ten days in some of Syria’s most notorious prisons where he was interrogated and tortured. Following a nationwide campaign led by his wife Monia Mazigh, Arar was released from Syrian detention and returned home to Ottawa in October 2003.

A few months later the Canadian government established a “Commission of Inquiry that examined his case.” Finally in January 2007 the Canadian government officially apologized to Maher Arar and paid him over $10 million dollars in compensation for its complicity in his detention.

Adrian Harewood spoke to Maher Arar in mid-December 2024 just weeks after the revolution that swept Syria. They discussed the political earthquake occurring in Syria, his memories of growing up during the Assad dictatorship, his time in the Syrian gulag and his hopes for the people of Syria.

In May 2022, the Italian lawyer and academic Francesca Albanese became the first woman to assume the role of UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. At the time she couldn’t have predicted how events in the fall of 2023, about 18 months into her tenure, would transform the lives of millions of Palestinians and Israelis, and thrust her into the global spotlight.

Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel, on October 7th , 2023, killed 1200 people including over 600 civilians and 39 children. Israel’s subsequent attacks on Gaza have now killed over 50,000 people, including over 14,500 children according to UNICEF, displaced millions and flattened much of the territory.

Francesca Albanese has become a polarizing global personality due to her forceful and unrelenting defense of the rights of Palestinians and her equally powerful condemnation of Israel’s protracted assault on the Palestinian people.

Albanese has consistently called Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide. And has demanded that the world stop the carnage.

As a UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese travels the world giving interviews, delivering speeches and filing extensive reports. Her job is high profile, stressful and comes with enormous responsibility, and considerable risk. It’s also unpaid. Francesca Albanese is effectively a devoted volunteer who enthusiastically gives of her free labour. The job of Special Rapporteur consumes her. But she thinks the sacrifice is worth it. Despite facing intense opposition from the United States, Canada, Israel, France and Germany, in April 2025 Francesca Albanese was reappointed by the UN’s Human Rights Council to a three- year term as the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian Territories. It means she will be in the position until 2028.

In November 2024 Francesca Albanese came to Canada and it is then that I had a chance to sit down with her when she paid a visit to our studio in Ottawa. What followed was a wide-ranging conversation about the plight of the Palestinian people, the horrors that the world has been witnessing in Gaza, allegations that she is anti-Semitic and her own personal journey.

Our guest today is Andrew Johnston, a professor of late 19th and 20th Century US History at Carleton University in Ottawa. He’s a specialist in imperialism and foreign relations, liberalism and pluralism in American social thought, and the history of international thought.

Donald Trump’s second presidency has already been a game changer. His brazen public statements about his desire to annex Canada and slap tariffs on imports entering the US from Canada seems to have fundamentally altered the nature of the Canada – US relationship. Transforming perhaps for all time, the way Canadians see their American neighbors and possibly transforming the way Canadians understand themselves.

For most of the last century Canadians have imagined the United States as a friendly neighbour, a vital trading partner, a trusted ally. And yet in mere months the ground has shifted under Canadians’ feet. Join us for this episode of In Bed with the Elephant hosted by Adrian Harewood.

Stephen Maher is an award winning columnist and investigative reporter who has written for Postmedia News, iPolitics, and Maclean’s. His most recent book is called The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau tells the story of one of the more tumultuous prime ministerial tenures in Canadian history.

In early January 2025, Canada’s federal Conservatives seemed headed for a landslide victory in the upcoming election. Polls suggested the party led by Pierre Poilievre was in the lead by as many as 20 percentage points over the incumbent Liberals. But then Canadian politics took a turn.

In February, US President Donald Trump started belittling Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, calling him Governor.

He then raised alarm bells by brazenly threatening Canada’s economy and its sovereignty, vowing to slap tariffs on Canadian goods entering the US market and stating his intention to annex his northern neighbour and make it the 51 st state.

In March, the unpopular Trudeau, in power for 9 years, finally stepped down as Prime Minister and Liberal leader and was replaced by Mark Carney former Governor of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England. Canada is now in the middle of an election campaign and polls are now pointing towards a Liberal victory. Some suggest the Mark Carney led Grits could even win a majority. It’s a remarkable change of fortune for the once beleaguered party.

Adrian Harewood sits down with Stephen to discuss the 2025 Federal Election