The unassailable power of Big Tech is the subject of economist and professor Rob Larson’s latest book, Bit Tyrants. In this wide-ranging interview, Canadian Dimension spoke with Larson to discuss the anticompetitive practices of the world’s biggest tech corporations, renewed pressure to rein them in, and his vision for a transparent, publicly-controlled and socialized internet.

Few Canadians may be aware that the cenotaph at the St. Volodymyr Cemetery in Oakville honours the Ukrainian Galician Division of the Waffen-SS. Fewer still may connect it with a more insidious form of far-right nationalism—one that quietly glorifies Nazi collaborators while giving credence to a far-right brand of historical revisionism.

Canadian Dimension spoke with Robyn Maynard, academic and author of Policing Black Lives: State Violence from Slavery to the Present, about her seminal research on the history of anti-Black violence in Canada, and how we can use it to understand the present moment—one in which calls for police divestment and abolition are growing stronger by the day.

The ideological approach to education reform promoted by DeVos and Cruz, two of America’s leading advocates for dismantling and defunding public schools, echoes Manitoba’s creation of a commission in 2019 to review the provincial school system and propose a “renewed vision for kindergarten to Grade 12 education,” and “ignite change” to existing systems and programs.

Dimitri Lascaris is intent to push the Green Party to the left, and to dispense with the notion that ideological camps on the right or the left have lost their meaning. He also wants to give progressives a place to stake their long-term future, and give the majority of Canadians who hold progressive views a real voice in parliament. Canadian Dimension spoke with Lascaris on Saturday, April 11.

Canadians hoping to see bold ideas and a more radical orientation emerge from the federal New Democrats’ February convention in Ottawa are surely feeling disappointed. Four months after Jagmeet Singh’s first ballot victory, a party still struggling to regain its balance following electoral demolition in 2015 again failed to capitalize on a historic opportunity to distance itself from and challenge the Liberals with a transformative left-wing vision.

The Olympic Winter Games have offered a glimpse of hope for North Korea and its relationship with the rest of the world, but diplomatic solutions will require a deeper level of awareness about the policies, actions, and mistakes that have brought the international community to this moment. For that, Canadian Dimension turned to Bruce Cumings the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History at the University of Chicago.

Low pay and instability keeps workers wondering if there isn’t a better deal somewhere else. Capitalism from the beginning has been driven by monopoly and efficiency. The digital job brokers of the sharing economy embody that same ethos. So while companies like SkipTheDishes suggest the inevitability of indentured digital labour, it’s up to the rest of us to organize and demand a future where technology and work are not needlessly contradictory terms.

As Pallister swings the axe in the spirit of cost savings, many Manitobans are concerned about the breadth of change to some of their most cherished services. What’s at stake is nothing less than the foundation of a healthy and equitable society, one in which ‘efficiencies’ matter less than the imperative of providing higher quality care for all, without exceptions.

After sixteen years in power, British Columbia’s Liberal government is teetering on the brink of collapse. On May 31, 2017, the BC NDP inked a deal with the BC Greens and set in motion a process that will all but certainly end with the toppling of Christy Clark’s premiership. We asked sixteen researchers and organizers to reflect on the campaign that got us here, and what might come next.