For Canada to ratify OPCAT, or introduce any oversight over federal institutions, would need to go hand-in-hand with the introduction of national standards, against which Canada’s compliance can be measured. Yet, the foot-dragging of Canadian legislators on the issue of torture prevention has received little coverage. As a result there is a lack of public awareness of the effects that this international law might have across different sectors of society.

Nuclear weapons remain a serious threat to humanity and the TPNW represents an important step toward abolishing them. Canadians of conscience must press the Trudeau government to sign the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty. Simply put, it’s time for the Liberals to put up or shut up. Their action, or lack thereof, will prove if their anti-nuclear talk is empty rhetoric or principled opposition to one of the great scourges of humanity.

Desperate for sponsorship, Canadian newcomers often pay recruiters to find employment. This process can not only be costly, but it can lead to employment characterized by exploitation. With immigration targets set at record numbers, migrant exploitation will be more widespread in the coming years, enabled by flaws in current immigration policy and a lack of government oversight that make exploitation possible.

Jagmeet Singh is the only Canadian federal leader who took a stand in favour of US President Donald Trump’s impeachment. Despite criticisms from Liberals and Conservatives that it was inappropriate for a Canadian politician to question a president’s legitimacy—or that such actions endangered the Canadian economy—Singh has been proven unequivocally correct by the passage of recent history.

Governments, even with liberals in charge, won’t stop the right today anymore than Hindenburg stopped Hitler. Governments of the discredited neoliberal centre won’t contain the social dislocation and discontent that feeds the growth of fascism. The threat will only be stopped by powerful working class action that drives the fascists off the streets and challenges the system that produces them.

Strikes remain the most powerful tool available to regular people under capitalism, and the general strike is the most powerful kind of strike. Even if it takes a half century or more, it is better to begin today than tomorrow in working towards the point at which the working class “shall demand, not the half-loaf which is said to be better than no bread, but the whole bakehouse.”

The Pallister government expects Manitoba’s workers to pull themselves up by the bootstraps while it actively steals their boots from under them. The labour movement has been losing its war with employers and the state since the radical wings of Canadian unionism dissolved. Reformism lacks the leverage needed to earn a seat at the negotiating table. A better world is possible, but it is achievable only through direct action from below.

The Trudeau government’s policy of backing Venezuela’s self-declared “interim president” Juan Guaidó, an individual without an electoral mandate or control over any government institution, has backfired spectacularly. One can understand why the incoherent and belligerent Trump administration would continue with this farce, but why are the Liberals still going along with it?

The upcoming virtual convention in April 2021 provides an opportunity to expand the NDP’s internal democracy and affirm the active voice that members have in steering the party. For too long, the NDP has allowed a small circle of party insiders to wield undue influence over party policy and subvert the will of its membership, while actively working against attempts to strengthen internal party democracy.

If austerity is to be fought, we need to look at the recent history of labour and student organizing to identify some high points of resistance. History does not necessarily repeat itself, but it does provide lessons that point towards the possibility of alternatives and the belief that another way is possible, even if movements in the past failed to achieve it.