The B u l l e t
Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 48 April 18, 2007

Just less than a year ago in May 2006, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario unanimously passed in convention its pathbreaking Resolution 50 in support for the global campaign against Israeli apartheid. The resolution called on the union to educate its members on the apartheid nature of the Israeli state. It also mandated that education be undertaken on Canadian political and economic support for these practices. CUPE Ontario would also participate in the international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until the realization of Palestinian self-determination and the right of return of Palestinian refugees. (Keep reading…)

Canadian Dimension Magazine, March/April 2007 Issue

Without the assent of the NDP, Harper’s Conservatives are unlikely to remain in power much longer. Chances are that, in the coming months, Layton & Co. will once again bring down a minority government, sending Canadians to the polls for the second time in a little over a year. (Keep reading…)

Canadian Dimension magazine, March/April 2007 issue

In Canada and elsewhere there is currently a wide range of impressive constituency-based struggles around specific issues. But without some broader coherence to these movements, this fragmented politics leaves us frustratingly marginalized in terms of reversing and reshaping the larger agenda. (Keep reading…)

Canadian Dimension magazine, March/April 2007 issue

It is clear that in the November 27 London-Centre by-election, Elizabeth May drew votes from past supporters of all political parties, but especially from the NDP. With her as Leader, the Greens are increasingly likely to draw support from the NDP across the country. Through cooperation rather than competition, however, the prospects of both parties could be enhanced. (Keep reading…)

Globe and Mail January 26, 2007

It haunts us still. The Cold War I mean, though you rarely hear it mentioned, it’s not a reference point. Students starting university now were born the year it ended. It isn’t a touchstone for them the way it was during the “short 20th century,” as Eric Hobsbawm called it, when people were born and died in the shadow the Cold War cast. (Keep reading…)

Special to Canadian Dimension. An edited version of this article will appear in a future issue of Relay magazine. (Keep reading…)

The Liberals have governed from the right for long enough that they have limited ability to mount a credible campaign addressing workplace, and pay-cheque issues. (Keep reading…)

Special to Canadian Dimension magazine

The left and the workers’ movement, broadly defined, had no horse in the Liberal Party leadership race that was run at Montreal’s Palais des congres on the first weekend in December 2006. Certainly no left dollars were plunked down on the odds-on-favorites, the jet-setting public intellectual for hire, Michael Ignatieff, and the disreputable architect of Ontario social democracy’s sorry demise, Bob Rae. (Keep reading…)

Special to Canadian Dimension magazine December 10, 2006

MONTRÉAL – Quebec’s new party of the left, Québec solidaire, held its first policy convention here on November 24-26. The 320 delegates — 48% of them women — debated, amended and adopted a draft platform for the next general election in Quebec, expected in 2007. (Keep reading…)

Canadian Dimension, November/December 2006 Issue

She’s everywhere. Less than a week after she was elected leader of the Green Party, Elizabeth May was on key political-pundit television programs exuding her trademark charm and energy, and sounding supremely confident. The media honeymoon with May will no doubt continue for some time. Stephen Harper, almost pathologically arrogant, won’t engage the media. The Liberals are leaderless and their leadership campaign is pretty boring. Jack Layton is all tactics and no vision his call for withdrawal from Afghanistan being the exception as he tries to implement a long-term (twenty-year?) strategy of replacing the Liberals. He is therefore all caution and no risk. Elizabeth May looks pretty interesting at the moment. (Keep reading…)