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Major decisions face Québec solidaire at its forthcoming congress
Canadian PoliticsQuebec’s broad party of the left, Québec solidaire (QS), will open a four-day congress on May 19 in Montréal. The delegates face a challenging agenda. It includes the final stage of adoption of the party’s detailed program, a process begun eight years ago; discussion of possible alliances with other parties and some social movements including a proposed fusion with another pro-independence party, Option nationale; and renewal of the party’s top leadership.
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Canada’s Effort to suppress “Popular Protests” against Israeli Occupation
Canadian PoliticsAround 1,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons have been on hunger strike since April 17. In the occupied West Bank thousands of protesters have taken to the streets and gone on strike in solidarity with the 6,500 Palestinians currently imprisoned by Israel. The Canadian media should cover the prisoners’ hunger strike and its challenge to PA security cooperation with Israel. Even better, it ought to report on Canada’s role in entrenching Israel’s 50-year-old occupation.
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Canada’s 150th: A Québécois View
Canadian PoliticsSo Canada celebrates two national holidays: the United Kingdom’s and the one called Canada Day, referring to “Confederation,” (which was a confederation in name only), on July 1. Neither has any relation to its independence. Canada does not celebrate the date of its accession to independence, which legally occurred on December 11, 1931 through the adoption of a British law called the Statute of Westminster. Why?
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Canada and the pirates of the Caribbean
Canadian PoliticsCanadian imperialism in the Caribbean is no joke. By the early 1900s, Canadian policy supported annexing the British Empire’s Caribbean possessions (the various islands as well as today’s Belize and Guyana). At the end of WWI, Ottawa asked the Imperial War Cabinet if it could take possession of the British West Indies as compensation for Canada’s defence of the Empire. London balked.
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Unravelling the secrets of the National Inquiry
Canadian PoliticsThe inquiry’s secretive process has resulted in a loss in faith by many would-be participants. Several commentators have said that being trauma-informed should not be an excuse for not getting started. Some family members feel that all this secrecy is re-traumatizing them. Even the former Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Murray Sinclair, told the Inquiry to just start already.
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As B.C. Election Approaches, Greens Get Cozy With Liberals
Canadian PoliticsThe Greens are so desperate to get beyond the one seat they have they’re happy to make backroom deals with the devil. And the devil will make deals with anyone to stay in power. It reminds me of the federal election when an equally desperate Elizabeth May used phoney opinion polls to suggest that the race was between the Greens and the NDP on Vancouver Island. It seems the Greens have a chronic integrity problem.
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The 2017 Ontario NDP Convention: Lessons Learned, Steps Forward
Canadian PoliticsIn June 2014, The Ontario NDP wrapped up a fairly disappointing election. While the results on the surface were acceptable for Andrea Horwath and the ONDP—maintaining their 2011 seat total, and adding one percent of the popular vote—the end result was a Liberal majority government built on the relative collapse of Progressive Conservative support, which was driven by strategic voters looking to reject the politics of extreme austerity.
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Trudeau runs risk keeping flawed politician as foreign affairs minister
Canadian PoliticsNow Canada is demanding that “Assad must go” (via Freeland) – pure posturing especially given there is no evidence yet of who used gas against Syrian civilians. Then Trudeau added to the embarrassment by demanding Russia abandon Assad. Someone should ask Trudeau just who he is trying to please by keeping this flawed politician in such a powerful post.
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Justin Trudeau’s dangerous Syrian Trump gambit
Canadian PoliticsThe fact that Trump is a megalomaniac whose motives for this attack are anything but humanitarian, that supporting his actions helps to normalize his vile administration, and that these same liberals were denouncing Trump on every front right up until they got to get in on the political boost that seems to come with a certain kind of media endorsed violence, does not factor into their amoral, opportunistic, sad thinking at all.
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‘Anti-Terror’ Laws Already Eroding Free Speech, Debate
Canadian PoliticsLess than six months after Canada introduced new travel restrictions to bring its policies in line with the U.S., they are already being used to limit the free flow of ideas and academic debate in this country. The government has barred Antonio Negri, one of the foremost philosophers of our time, from entering the country.
