International economic power is increasingly dispersed between the competing major power blocs. However, one power centre – the U.S. – has greater domination over more sectors than the other power blocs.

Movies and television programs regularly invoke imagery of big cities as sites of pleasure and prestige – places for people to wear glamorous clothes, flag a cab in rhinestone-clustered stilettos, and taste the culinary delights of the latest trendy “fusion” restaurant. While the image of cosmopolitan opulence certainly does not convey the full story of Canadian cities, this type of “urban evolution” does provide a glimpse, at least in part, of what an ideal capitalist city aspires to be – a mecca of entrepreneurial opportunity, individual prosperity and rampant consumerism.

he last election might be viewed as the Greens’ first real kick at the can. It was the first time the party ran candidates in all federal ridings, the first time they were considered for inclusion in the leaders’ debates and the first time they garnered significant media attention. On election night, it won 4.3 per cent of the popular vote, making it eligible for public financing. Most voters look at the “green” moniker and seem to think they have a pretty good idea of what the Green Party stands for. Many Canadians assume that the Green Party of Canada is like the Green parties of Europe and the U.S. However, in their recent convention, the Canadian Greens seem to have opted to continue in a direction that is not entirely in keeping with progressive values.

Nine years after the 1995 referendum and the numbness that followed it, Québec is returning to the debate on the national question. The sovereignty movement has never been a monolithic block behind the PQ. Support for sovereignty (around 45 per cent, according to the latest polls) cuts across political positions from right to left. In such a context, a wide debate on strategy is necessary, a debate that could have repercussions on the next electoral campaign, expected in 2007.

Strong community organizations are an important feature of Montréal that contribute to its social and political fabric. Recently, the relationship between the community sector and the provincial government has been gradually formalized through regional- and provincial-level tables representing the diversity of the community sector.

We’ve lost ground in Toronto. Yes, we’ve made significant gains on a number of issues and in electing a progressive mayor and council. But the gauge that we used to determine what we are fighting for has shifted backwards over the last 20 years. We need to recognize this to move forward.

am part of the massive migration of Aboriginal peoples to the city. I was raised by a single mother who moved us to Edmonton (and many other places) from the Heart Lake First Nation to avoid residential school for my siblings and me. Since then, and I have been on my own since I was 16 years old, I have lived in many sites: small towns, the bush and the highways, but the longest period of my life has been in the Urban Rez, especially Winnipeg and Edmonton.

Poverty is the women’s biggest challenge, and even their tough resourcefulness cannot overcome the impossibilities this condition creates in their lives. Yet the women, many of whom are racialized immigrants, have insistent dreams of better and more independent lives. Managing rising levels of stress and ill health, Toronto’s low-income women try to make the impossible possible.

The barrier to popular resistance today is neither that people think the world is fine, nor that people are passive; rather, it is that, with no reason to believe that real change is on the agenda, people actively pursue other survival options.

We agree with the Canadian Labour Congress’s controversial position paper that free trade has not been a total “economic disaster.” But we disagree that economic integration has gone so far that measures to reduce our dependency and challenge this right-wing direction cannot be contemplated. In this sense, the Canadian Labour Congress’s new industrial policy paper is a deep disappointment. Instead of insisting on new directions in economic policy, the CLC’s new paper lacks critical leadership, merely offering new concessions to free trade and the rule of the market.