In an unprecedented move in the history of collective bargaining at the federal level in Canada, Minister of Jobs and Families, Patty Hajdu, agreed to a request from Canada Post that she use her power under the Canada Labour Code to order a vote on the final offers that Canada Post submitted to the Canadian Union of Postal Workers on May 28, 2025.

Carney is quite prepared to ensure that capitalism becomes considerably less “inclusive” in order to weather the storm. At this relatively early stage of the game, he is leaving no doubt as to the course his government will chart. A highly interventionist state power will be subordinated to the imperatives of capital regardless of the broader consequences.

To hear a Liberal prime minister speak so sceptically about free trade would have been unthinkable just months ago, but Donald Trump’s trade war is an occasion for assessing what kind of industrial policy Canada should pursue. Greater economic nationalism benefitted Canada in the past. Maybe it’s time to chart a new course.

The dominant class and its cheerleaders, intent on doubling down to maintain a social system which proudly features gross inequality and inequity, are out on top. The working class and its leftist protagonists, hoping to fuel a movement for a radical rethinking of our polity to get closer to a social system which advances equality and altruism, find themselves at the bottom.

Carney has made it clearer than ever that he will be a conservative prime minister, governing on behalf of the rich and powerful to maintain their grip on Canadian society. Many thousands of progressive voters were clearly misled into thinking otherwise. This underscores that even as Poilievre lost the election, he won the ideological debate within the Liberal Party.

In our fast-paced, consumer culture, it may seem like ordering lunch and dinner several times a week, paying a premium for a personal grocery shopper, or having a meal-prep kit delivered to our doors is a savvy, efficient way to make room for tasks deemed more important. But whom do these more important tasks benefit?

In the 1960s, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Canadian Labour Congress forged a bond and came together to form a new political party—the NDP. Both organizations need to rediscover that fighting spirit to become a political force once again. Otherwise, they will wither and fade into irrelevance and oblivion.

There are multiple theses competing for narrative leadership to explain dealignment and surging working class support for right-wing populism. One less discussed factor in the drift of working class voters away from traditional values and politics is the problematic role and capacity of the labour movement to influence working class political outlooks and choices.

In 1995 I moved to St. Petersburg and lived there for ten years. Although my antennas were always up for signals of a socialist spirit, or even just the memory of one, they registered none. My reaction was to dive deeper into the history of the 1917 revolution, and I began noticing things about it that were out of sync with my reading of Marx and Engels.

Pretty much everything that we might find redeemable about Canadian society has come as a result of community-based struggles and social movements. Yet, most people have little awareness of the historical significance of collective action because public memory practices rarely recollect, never mind detail, histories of activism.