No longer can BC NDP leader John Horgan and company blame their narrow margin of power for their inability to enact progressive legislation. Now is the time to be bold, and to usher in a program that not only improves the lives of people in Canada’s third largest province, but offers a blueprint for the rest of the Confederation to follow on the climate emergency, the COVID-19 pandemic, and capitalism.

50 years ago this month, the federal government, invoking the War Measures Act, occupied Québec with 12,000 troops, arrested almost 500 citizens without a warrant, and carried out 36,000 police searches of homes, organizations and publications. That year marked a turning point in the federalist response to Québec’s “Quiet Revolution” and the rapidly growing popular mobilization in favour of making Québec an independent state.

To make the most of its historic mandate while addressing concerns like housing, poverty and homelessness, the BC NDP needs to ensure that its program over the next four years is focused on implementing lasting changes that make a clean break from the disastrous neoliberal dogmatisms of yesteryear. This will require more ambitious measures than the party offered in its election platform.

The recent victory of Bolivia’s Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party on October 18 was a rejection of last year’s Canadian-backed coup against Evo Morales, an event that resulted in a year of violent repression by the military-backed interim government. The vote was also a blow to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s complicity in the efforts of the United States to overthrow left-wing governments across Latin America.

One can go on ad infinitum to list the issues with Trump, his coterie and hangers-on in the Republican Party, and his supporters. But while Trump’s administration and domination of one of the two major political parties in the US is horrible enough for the American people—especially working class folks—his power, ideology, policies and social base threaten people in other countries, particularly Canada.

Last week, hundreds of people gathered in Winkler, Manitoba to publicly oppose their school division’s COVID-19 precautions. This was the latest anti-mask rally in a string of demonstrations across Canada in recent months. While the rallies themselves aren’t particularly threatening, the messaging being used by demonstrators is plucked straight from the lexicon of progressive social justice movements. And that is cause for concern.

Despite a year of unbridled state repression, including massacres committed against supporters of former Bolivian President Evo Morales, who was deposed just weeks after being declared the victor in the country’s October 2019 election, the left-wing Movement for Socialism (MAS) secured a resounding victory on October 18 for candidate Luis Arce, Morales’s former finance minister.

The actions taken by Europe and China will plummet global demand for petrochemical production. The technological and economic paradigms in these countries will no doubt spread to the rest of the globe while encouraging Canada to do a lot better than its recent plastics proposal, one that falls short of expectations and does little to address one of the most pressing ecological dilemmas of our time.

There’s a Canadian law that makes it illegal for the armed forces of any foreign state to recruit soldiers within our borders, but you’d never know it the way Israel and its supporters operate within this country. For three quarters of a century Canadians have been recruited inside this country to fight in Israel’s military. Finally, however, there is an organized effort to stop this practice.

Despite Justin Trudeau’s promise to support a global ban on lethal autonomous weapons systems, Canadian companies continue to profit from exporting software or components for killer robots. There is still no domestic regulation around the manufacture of these technologies, and little in the way of public debate around their development and export.