Carbon pricing is far from an ideal policy, but the shift away from directly challenging any part of Canada’s emissions-intensive mode of living may be disastrous for achieving our already weak international climate commitments. The government’s focus on “big polluters” conveniently ignores the urgent task of widespread decarbonization for crude political gain.

Of the more than 100 companies in Canada that produce components for the F-35 combat aircraft, Mississauga-based Magellan Aerospace is one of the largest. Notably, it is also majority owned and chaired by billionaire N. Murray Edwards, the 35th richest person in Canada, who controls mining company Imperial Metals, responsible for the catastrophic Mount Polley tailings disaster.

Many vital left-wing books about global oil politics have been published over the last decade: Mazen Labban’s Space, Oil and Capital, Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy, and Simon Pirani’s Burning Up. Perhaps none have provided quite as sweeping and synthetic of an analysis as Adam Hanieh’s Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market.

As geographer Brett Christophers shows, many people now live in homes and rely on infrastructure like toll roads, hospitals, gas pipelines, data centres, water and sanitation services, telecom towers, and electricity generation facilities that are ultimately owned by pension funds, insurance companies, and banks through highly complex asset management schemes.

One policy terrain on which Wab Kinew’s NDP has been unambiguous is law and order. Building on its already dubious legacy on this file—both during its time in power between 1999 and 2016 and while in opposition between 2016 and 2023—the Manitoba NDP is accelerating a reactionary program of policing and jailing driven largely by the interests of cops and the city’s business community.

Reducing alcohol harms is about recognizing that risk exposure exists on a spectrum, with even marginally less regular consumption leading to significant health improvements. Conversely, further unleashing the rapacious forces of capital through this massive privatization scheme will only increase alcohol consumption and resulting harms.

During the lead-up to the last Manitoba election in October 2023, the provincial NDP consistently and correctly attacked the reigning PC government for its countless privatization efforts. Yet, as James Wilt details, there are now troubling warning signs that the New Democrats are opting for their own covert privatization agenda in important areas.

Greater numbers of police will not improve public safety and will further destabilize the lives of people targeted by police for surveillance, intimidation, harassment, and formal criminalization. The Manitoba NDP’s public safety strategy does not take into account the fact that the same people who are most vulnerable to violence are also most vulnerable to criminalization.

This intensifying conflict can only be resolved by reversing course, calling off the injunction and police, and committing to fully fund the landfill searches as an initial step towards justice for the families of MMIWG2S. Failing to do this will mean that any ensuing impasse falls at the feet of Mayor Gillingham, Premier Stefanson, and Prime Minister Trudeau.

John Smith’s Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis argues for a theory of contemporary imperialism grounded in super-exploitation, outsourcing, and global labour arbitrage. It is a highly readable and clarifying text that offers a comprehensive analysis of the global shift of production to the South in recent decades.