Oil and gas executives, and the politicians who parrot their talking points, are looking out for corporate owners while using workers as cover. What workers actually need is a well-funded plan to help them transition from the oil and gas sector. This would allow Alberta to become less reliant on a single sector, which is in long-term decline.

Now that economic rethinking is on the agenda, argues Richard Swift, it’s a good time for those who see the ominous writing on the wall to challenge the growth consensus and promote a package of serious degrowth measures, some of which align with historic left demands and the Green New Deal which seems to have faded from view.

From economic war on long-time trading partners and allies, like Canada, to the threat of war or the support of war against adversaries, like Iran and Russia, the American public is misleadingly being told something very different by their government than their government is being told by its intelligence community.

Amidst Donald Trump’s belligerence Canada continues to assist the US military and arms industry. In response to the president’s hostility, writes Canadian Dimension columnist Yves Engler, Canada should cancel the Lockheed Martin F-35 contract, end officer exchanges, and cease our participation in NORAD’s missile defence program.

As the US redefines its global role and its approach to international relations with Trump at the helm, the world is going to become a far more unstable and threatening place than it already is. In this enormously challenging context, the pivotal but still uncertain question will be the scale and strength of working class resistance and the popular struggles that are taken up.

Whether Donald Trump’s tariffs remain for long, we must decouple our economy from the United States as much and as quickly as possible, writes political economist and University of Alberta professor emeritus Gordon Laxer. It will not be easy, but if we summon the resolve we showed in the Second World War, when we built whole industries from scratch, it can be done.

Engaging the United States did not work for Iran: Trump unilaterally and illegally withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear agreement. Engaging the US did not work for Canada: it did everything the Trump administration asked for, virtually eliminating the fentanyl crossing the border; yet it will now feel the harsh pain of 25 percent tariffs. Iran learned its lesson. Will Canada do the same?

Canada currently fulfills around 25 percent of American lumber demand, a drop from 35 percent in the 1990s. That number shrinks every time a Canadian sawmill gets dismantled and shipped to the US. It gets smaller every time a Canadian company transfers its made-in-Canada technology, financial earnings, and supermill know-how down south, too.

Poilievre had an easy time running against an unpopular incumbent he could use as a dart board for empty right-wing labels like “woke” or “authoritarian socialist.” But running against an out-of-control Trump administration that has its eyes on Canadian resources and the ideological sympathy of a large part of the national conservative movement? That has proven much harder for him.

The rise of the populist right in deindustrialized areas, like the US Rust Belt, is a legacy of neoliberalism and free trade. We need to break this cycle. If we want to turn the tide of deindustrialization and create manufacturing jobs for the economy of the future, we need to be bold. And it starts now, not in some distant future.