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Currently viewing articles tagged with Canadian Politics.
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Dissent and Democracy
For a while it looked like the 2007 CUPE national convention was going to be a placid affair. As in 2005, the majority of delegates voted in favour of increasing the representation of women on the National Executive Board. But once again, nothing will change because the vote was not quite sufficient to break the two-thirds threshold required by CUPE for constitutional changes to be adopted.
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Canada Needs a Real Public Health Care System
Many people like to think of Canada’s health care system as an example of “socialist” medicine. In reality, however, this label does not accurately reflect the true nature of the system.
Of course, it is certainly true that aspects of Canada’s health care system are publicly owned and/or publicly regulated. The public or social character of the health care system is most clearly seen in the principles of universality and distribution according to need (rather than according to wealth or social status). Not surprisingly, the principles of universality and needs-based distribution enjoy the broadest support amongst the Canadian people. They are what Canadians have indicated they are determined to fight to preserve.
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A Multi-Faced Crisis
In Canada, the political system has long been based upon the illusion of choice provided by a ruling party in power and an opposition party waiting in the wings. However, the Liberal corruption crisis in Quebec, together with the failure of the Liberals to make significant headway in the West, has stripped the ability of the Liberal Party to form a majority government.
Meanwhile, despite the fact that the Liberals are embroiled in the worst scandal of the past half-century, the Harper-led Conservatives have not been able to get beyond 35 per cent of popular support. The defection of Belinda Stronach, the Conservatives’ most visible moderate and urban member, together with the successful efforts of the religious right to win Conservative nominations throughout the country, confirms widely held suspicions that this party harbours a socially conservative agenda of intolerance. Harper’s Conservatives are thus condemned to their rural, small-town western base.
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Newfoundland Women Want Pay Equity Too
More than 25 years after the adoption of the Charter, the obligation to implement pay equity is still unmet. A test case for why the legal obligation to implement pay equity remains unfulfilled has recently been played out in Canada’s courts and federal/provincial system involving unionized female health-care workers in Newfoundland.
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The Heart of the Taku
Today the Taku is best known as a salmon stream, with commercial and sport fisheries in both B.C. and Alaska, and also as an endangered river, popular with eco-tourists and adventurers. But before it was any of these things, the Taku was the traditional hunting grounds of the Taku River Tlingit First Nation (TRTFN).
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G Stands for General Strike
The July/August issue of CD suggested that it was high time for activists and the Left in the labour movement to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of significant political struggles including mass work stoppages. The point is not to reminisce, but to participate in a debate around how to build resistance to the right-wing hammerings we continue to endure, with, frankly, no end in sight.
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Road Bloc or Building Bloc?
The Bloc Québécois is on a roll. For the last year, polling has predicted a major setback for the BQ in the coming elections owing to Paul Martin’s popularity and the Parti Québécois’ defeat in the April, 2003 provincial election. Yet, the sponsorship scandals have given the BQ a bounce by adding the injury of self-serving corruption to the insult of the sponsorship program, which believed national grievances could be overcome by papering Québec with the Canada logo. While it is too soon to predict the election outcome, the Bloc should more or less match its 2000 electoral results.
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