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In April, UNICEF reported having received just 16 percent of the US $962 million it had requested from United Nations member states to provide desperately needed assistance to 13.8 million people in Sudan, including 7.9 million children.

In May, a study in The Lancet projected that deep cuts to overseas development assistance by the Trump Administration and other Western governments, beginning in 2025, could result in 22.6 million additional deaths by 2030.

In these circumstances, private humanitarian organizations are sometimes the only ones left with the will and the capability to save lives. The most respected of these organizations is undoubtedly Médecins Sans Frontières—recognized worldwide by its acronym, MSF.

Our next Forum guest is a Canadian who has spent more than three decades working for MSF, including in the most senior of leadership roles.

Stephen Cornish has spent a career saving lives around the world: managing humanitarian responses from Chechnya to Sierra Leone, negotiating with warlords to gain access to vulnerable populations, and securing the release of abducted aid-workers.

Most recently, Stephen has served as the General Director of MSF Switzerland, responsible for providing more than $350 million of humanitarian assistance annually.

It will also be of interest to many Salt Spring Islanders that, a decade ago, Stephen took a break from MSF to serve as CEO of the David Suzuki Foundation, where he helped guide one of Canada’s most influential environmental organizations through a period of growing urgency around climate change, biodiversity, and sustainability.

Please join the Salt Spring Forum in warmly welcoming Stephen Cornish, a humanitarian and environmental hero, who will join us for a wide-ranging conversation about the perilous state of the world—and why we must never give up.

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2026 Derek Lundy Memorial Event

Can we take meaningful action on climate change without damaging our economy?

Prime Minister Mark Carney's current policies seem to represent a major pivot from his earlier, pre-political concerns about climate change. While he previously championed strict regulations, carbon taxes, and mandated phase-outs globally, his government's new strategy—outlined in his "Forward Guidance" framework—deliberately prioritizes economic affordability, national unity, and energy expansion.

For more than two decades, journalist and author Aron Kopecky has examined the difficult trade-offs that define our relationship with nature.  Kopecky has travelled the globe reporting from the front lines of environmental change, asking uncomfortable questions about conservation, climate change, Indigenous rights, and energy. Rather than offering easy answers, he challenges us to think more deeply about what it really means to live sustainably.

Arno Kopecky is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, The Guardian, The Narwhal, The Tyee, and many other publications.  In June, he won a 2026 National Magazine Award for, “A Son, a Scientist, and the Secret of Bioluminescence” published in The Walrus.  His acclaimed books, The Environmentalist’s Dilemma (ECW Press, 2021) and The Oil Man and the Sea (Douglas & McIntyre, 2013) blend vivid storytelling, investigative reporting and personal experience to explore some of today’s urgent environmental debates.

Please join the Salt Spring Forum in welcoming Arno Kopecky for the 2nd annual Derek Lundy Memorial Event, where we will discuss the complex political and ethical dilemmas raised by a global ecological crisis.

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What if the mental health symptoms we face are signals that can help us see and solve actual causes?

Nationally, about 1 in 5 (or over seven million) people in Canada experience a mental illness or significant mental health issue annually. By age 40, about half of the Canadian population will have or have had a mental illness.  The Vancouver Island Health Authority (VIHA), which includes Salt Spring Island, consistently reports higher rates of mood and anxiety disorders than the rest of British Columbia. Data shows that approximately 1 in 4 VIHA residents report dealing with depression or anxiety.

Dr. Joanna Cheek sees mental health struggles as symptoms of the imbalances in our wider systems, and works to decrease the stigma that is too often misplaced on the individuals who suffer rather than the ailing society around them. In addition to caring for individuals, she hopes to heal the harmful dynamics of domination, division, and indifference within our collective systems, teaching that collective-care is self-care.

Joanna Cheek, M.D., is a Canadian psychiatrist, award-winning professor at the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Medicine, speaker, researcher, group facilitator, meditation teacher, psychotherapist trained in numerous styles of therapy, journalist, and mom. She co-founded Mind Space (https://mind-space.ca), a collective of physicians offering mental health groups to tens of thousands of participants, to improve access to publicly funded mental health services in BC.  Her writing has been featured in the Toronto Star, CBC, NeoLife, L.A. Times, Walrus, and Maclean’s, among others. Her recent book, It's Not You, It's the World: A Mental Health Survival Guide for Us All (HarperCollins Canada, 2026) is a go-to guide for anyone feeling depressed, anxious, enraged, numb, or sick from adapting to a world on fire.

Whether or not you or someone you know is struggling with mental health symptoms, this special Salt Spring Forum event will provide helpful information and tools—so we can come together to respond to the shared problems that we face.

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As Canadians, we’re used to ‘sleeping with an elephant’—as Pierre Trudeau quipped in 1969. ‘No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast... one is affected by every twitch and grunt’.  Sadly, Canadian-US relations have not been ‘friendly and even-tempered’ in the past two years and now the U.S. mid-term elections are upon us.

On November 3, all 435 districts in the U.S. House of Representatives and 33 seats in the U.S. Senate are up for election. Republicans currently control both chambers of Congress, holding a 53–45 majority in the Senate and a 218-212 majority in the House.  There’s a lot at stake for President Donald Trump and the results could also have significant effects in Canada. 

A shift in control of Congress could help curtail presidential executive powers and reshape trade relations. But will the 2026 elections be free and fair? According to The Atlantic, the 2026 mid-term elections face severe threats. Analysts warn that Trump and his allies are laying the groundwork to subvert the vote, using tactics like extreme gerrymandering and voter roll challenges, and attempting to influence election administration and vote certification. How worried should we be?

Terri Givens is a best-selling author and Professor of Political Science at University of British Columbia. Born, raised and educated in the United States, she is well positioned to respond to your questions and concerns about the U.S. midterms. Dr. Givens’ research and teaching focuses on comparative politics in Europe and the U.S., including immigration and anti-discrimination policy as well as the politics of race. She conducted ground-breaking research on the radical right in Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s, and has long studied the role of gender and race in electoral politics.

Dr. Givens is the author of The Roots of Racism: The Politics of White Supremacy in the US and Europe (Bristol Press, 2022), in which  she examines the connections between immigration policy and racism that contributed to the rise of anti-immigrant, radical-right parties in Europe and the rise of Trumpism in the US.  

Please join the Forum and Dr. Terri Givens for a highly insightful and incredibly topical discussion about U.S. electoral politics!

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Canada has always been a country of competing identities, regional priorities, and political differences. But today, these tensions feel stronger than before. From debates over energy and climate policy to renewed threats of Quebec and Alberta separatism, many Canadians are asking a difficult question: What holds us together—and what could pull us apart?

Few people have been closer to these debates than Jason Kenney. A former Premier of Alberta and federal cabinet minister with portfolios over immigration, employment, and defence, Kenney has spent more than 25 years at the centre of Canadian politics. He has shaped national immigration policy, negotiated intergovernmental relationships, and led Canada’s most resource-dependent province through periods of profound economic and political change.

Jason Kenney has the perspective and intellect to help us understand the forces driving Western alienation, the relationship between Ottawa and the provinces, the future of Canada’s energy sector, and whether the country can hold together in the face of growing political polarization.

Some Salt Spring Islanders will disagree with Jason Kenney’s politics. But agree with him or not, this is a rare opportunity to hear directly from one of Canada’s most influential conservative voices about one of the most important questions: Where does Canada go from here?

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The deepest reaches of our oceans are among the least explored places on Earth. Yet they have become the location of an international race for minerals essential to artificial intelligence and renewable energy technologies. As governments and corporations push to mine the deep seabed, a fundamental question has emerged: Who will determine the fate of the world’s oceans?

For Coalter Lathrop, that question is not just about the oceans—it’s about the future of the international order itself.

A world-leading international lawyer and marine cartographer, Lathrop advises governments and international organizations on the world’s most complex ocean and territorial disputes. He appears frequently as counsel before the International Court of Justice and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

As Lathrop explains in a recent on-line essay, The Unmaking of International Law, longstanding legal institutions are facing a fundamental challenge from US President Donald Trump and “The Metals Company”—a Vancouver-based mining venture.

Trump and The Metals Company aim to destroy the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea – which has been ratified by 171 countries, including Canada – by mining the seabed unilaterally and without environmental protections.