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Rachel Notley’s war cry against B.C. is an ill-fated strategy
Canadian PoliticsSo what is the alternative? Alberta’s problem is all of Canada’s problem. Canada needs to reduce its GHG emissions rapidly and deeply, if we are to do our fair share to stave off the worst scenarios of global warming. We must do this, because it is simply unethical to shift this burden onto future generations and onto people elsewhere in the world who have fewer means to make this transition and who will suffer far more from the consequences of failure. We are all in this together.
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Pension funds fuel privatization in Canada and Québec
Canadian PoliticsA peculiar but important aspect of this destructive policy is the central involvement of workers’ pensionfunds in the process. It is not widely reported that the large Canadian and Québec public pension funds have become key institutional forces supporting and reaping profits from the privatization and financialization of public infrastructure, both here and, to even greater degree, internationally.
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Barbara Perry on the Far Right in Canada
Canadian PoliticsBarbara Perry is co-author of Uneasy Alliances: A Look at the Right-Wing Extremist Movement in Canada, a three-year study involving interviews with Canadian law enforcement officials, community organizations and right-wing activists, as well as analyses of open source intelligence. She has written extensively on social justice and hate crimes, and has published several books spanning both areas.
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Noxious weeds: The growth of the far right in Canada and Québec
Canadian PoliticsHate crimes against Muslims in Canada increased by 253 per cent between 2012 and 2015, according to Statistics Canada, and this abhorrent trend has continued, as evidenced this year by the horrific mass shooting by Alexandre Bissonnette on January 29 at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Québec City which left six dead and 19 injured.
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Open Letter to Jagmeet Singh: NDP’s reactionary foreign policy positions must be changed
Canadian PoliticsIt is absolutely certain that those Canadians who have taken the trouble to discover the truth about Canada’s minister of foreign affairs are dismayed and perplexed. But where is the NDP on this matter? From what I know, there hasn’t been a word from them on this issue. Mr. Singh, could you possibly do something about this? In this letter I have presented several matters that require the NDP’s attention.
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Trudeau’s forked tongue reconciliation at the UN
Canadian PoliticsWhile Trudeau’s speech ignored his actions at home, the most offensive part was holding up First Nation suffering as a prop to bolster his desire for a seat on the UN Security Council. Canada has a great deal to account for and other countries are starting to take note of its hypocrisy. Canada is before no fewer than four UN treaty bodies for “grave,” “alarming” and “crisis-level” human rights violations of Indigenous peoples, including land rights, treaties and self-determination.
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On the Rails: A Case for Renewed Leftist Infatuation with Transport
Canadian PoliticsThe basic ability for people to get from one place to another has been totally gutted in recent decades. We’re now almost entirely reliant on the neoliberalized “solutions” of privatized cars and airplanes, marked by rabid union-busting in the workplaces, the emitting of massive amounts of greenhouse gases and considerable financial costs to people who have no other reasonable option available to get around.
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Is Trudeau ready for a Middle East war?
Canadian PoliticsThe world is now at the mercy of a coalition of three of the most dangerous autocrats on the planet: Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia’s new absolute ruler Mohammad bin Salman, a name that will become increasingly familiar as the months go by. These three “leaders” are now collaborating in an incredibly reckless plan to permanently reshape the Middle East.
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The federal government can’t stand by when minority rights are being trampled
Canadian PoliticsBy now Quebec’s Bill 62 has been fairly comprehensively discredited, in all its nastiness, its contradictions and its dishonesties. A law passed in the name of the secular state would leave intact such overtly religious symbols of the state as the cross on Quebec’s flag, or the crucifix on the wall of the National Assembly. In the name of religious neutrality, it bans the wearing of some religious symbols.
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Two Years of Liberal Government: A Voices-Voix Report Card
Canadian PoliticsIn 2017, what with Trump-and-May fueled disasters in the US and the UK, not to mention Rolling Stone covers, political complacency tempts Canadians (and sometimes prompts international hyperbole). Decent poll numbers for Trudeau and the Liberals understandably reflect relief they get things occasionally right and equal relief that we aren’t Yanks or Brits.
