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The rise of the Right & the challenge of building a Left alternative
Social MovementsEurope and North America had been relatively sheltered from the crisis until recently, mainly because of their position of dominance vis-à-vis the global south, gained through economic exploitation and militaristic policies, with the U.S. leading the way and Canada following. The resulting permanent environmental and economic crises have now reached our shores. The lasting recession that has taken hold in Europe, and the United States is now knocking at our door, both in Canada and Québec.
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Turning Doug Ford’s Attack on Toronto into a Movement for Democratic Renewal
Canadian PoliticsAn open letter about Bill 5 Better Local Government Act. We, the undersigned group of scholars and teachers, deplore the autocratic and arbitrary reduction of ward representation for Toronto city council contained in Bill 5 being rushed through the Ontario Legislature by the just-elected Doug Ford-led Conservative provincial government. There are numerous problems with this initiative – both in terms of policy and process – that cannot be squared with democratic values or procedures.
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Conjuring Up the Next Depression
Economic CrisisThis manufactured financial tsunami will transform the United States, already a failed democracy, into an authoritarian police state. Life will become very cheap, especially for the vulnerable—undocumented workers, Muslims, poor people of color, girls and women, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist critics branded as agents of foreign powers—who will be demonized and persecuted for the collapse. The elites, in a desperate bid to cling to their unchecked power and obscene wealth, will disembowel what is left of the United States.
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Learning from the past, fighting in the present
Social MovementsFacing an urgent present, why dig into history? The short answer is that it’s invaluable for helping us to struggle more effectively. In the pace of movements and mobilizations, years can sometimes feel like decades and, with frequent activist turnover, we all too easily end up repeating similar mistakes and debates over and over again. Coming to know movement history can help us to learn from our missteps.
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Lessons from the 70th birthday of the National Health Service
Human RightsThis summer marks the 70th anniversary of the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS). When it was established in 1948, the NHS was the world’s first universal healthcare system. It quickly became a beacon of what a decommodified public service could be: open to all, free at the point of service and paid out of taxes. Healthcare was dispensed according to need and funded according to ability to pay.
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Milking Trump’s Trade Dispute With Canada
Canada-USAInstead of the U.S. government propping up milk prices, increased sales to Canada will prop up milk prices. There will be a saving to the U.S. government in this story of the $260 million a year or so it spends in direct subsidies. This is equal to roughly 0.005 percent of federal spending. That is probably enough to cover the cost of Donald Trump’s golfing vacations, but not much more.
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Trudeau clings to Chapter 19 in NAFTA, but why?
Canadian PoliticsLet us also remember that the NAFTA talks not only lack transparency and genuine public input, but they are now being rushed, in part, so that they can be concluded under outgoing NAFTA-friendly Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, rather than Andrés Manuel López Obrador (who was elected on July 1 and is to be sworn into office on December 1). NAFTA is part of the architecture of corporate rule, the Chapter 19 provision doesn’t change that fundamental truth.
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The People’s Pipeline
EnvironmentIn an era of neoliberal privatization when governments the world over are hastening to sell off state owned assets, Justin Trudeau bucks the trend by ponying up $4.5 billion to buy the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, with complete disregard for the resolute opposition by the B.C. government, many Indigenous groups, most environmentalists and thousands of citizens across the country deeply worried about the ecological impact and risks of both the pipeline expansion and the ensuing escalation of tanker traffic.
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Appropriated identities and the new wave of dispossession
Canadian PoliticsThis new wave of dispossession is something completely different. French settlers and indeed other non-Indigenous peoples will quickly be able to= undermine our Indigenous efforts to reassert our identities and rights if we allow reconciliation to become the shield under which white supremacists hide. We must confront this threat head-on despite the inevitable claims of “lateral violence,” “colonial mentality” or “unsafe space” every time someone questions the appropriated identities of these groups.
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Will the Ontario Labour Movement Return to Class Struggle as Austerity Deepens?
Canadian PoliticsThe Ontario labour movement is in deep crisis, and has been staggering since the end of the 1990s. Given the labour movement’s historic role in leading and supporting progressive change, its current disorientation should be a matter of alarm to its members of course, but also to anyone concerned with countering the insatiable greed and social destructiveness of capitalism.
