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Canada

The Case For A (Mostly) Car-Free World

I grew up in Los Angeles, one of the most sprawling, car-dependent cities in the world. It’s easy to find highway-sized lanes in residential areas and signposts right in the middle of tiny sidewalks in my hometown. Although I regularly cycled and took public transit right up until I was 18 and moved away, the state of my city and the way people moved through it was normal to me, a mundane fact of life—I didn’t see that it could be another way. I also didn’t understand just how systemically marginalized pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit users were until I watched a video about “stroads” by the YouTuber Not Just Bikes.

First Nations At The Frontline Of Canada’s Fires

As he watched the last plane lumber down the runway, Chief Allan Adam was finally able to breathe freely again.  He had just posted a live video from the Fort Chipewyan airport on the evening of May 31, documenting the last flight out with evacuees fleeing impending disaster. A wildfire was advancing approximately seven kilometres from his remote community, which is accessible only by boat or plane. But the relief was short-lived. The straight-shooting leader of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, one of three Indigenous communities in Alberta who call Fort Chipewyan home, was abruptly hit with biting pain.

Activists Block The CANSEC Weapons Show In Ottawa

As more than 100 activists blocked the entrances to the parking lots of the CANSEC weapons show in Ottawa yesterday, traffic was snarled for a distance on Uplands Avenue and the Airport Parkway delaying many attendees getting inside the EY Centre. Canada’s Defence Minister Anita Anand, who was scheduled to speak at 7:50 am, tweeted at 9:51 am that she had “just delivered [her] remarks”. There was also a tweet at 9:17 am that suggests she was just then “officially open[ing] the event”. After Anand’s speech, U.S. Ambassador David L. Cohen visited the booth of Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons company.

Group Of Seven Should Finally Be Shut Down

During the May 2023 Group of Seven (G7) summit, the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, near where the meeting was held. Not doing so would have been an act of immense discourtesy. Despite many calls for an apology from the US for dropping an atomic bomb on a civilian population in 1945, US President Joe Biden has demurred. Instead, he wrote in the Peace Memorial guest book: ‘May the stories of this museum remind us all of our obligations to build a future of peace’. Apologies, amplified by the tensions of our time, take on interesting sociological and political roles.

Call For Solidarity From The #EkoniAci Movement

In order to enforce the moratorium on logging on their territory, Nitaskinan, members of the Atikamekw of Manawan are currently setting up a new blockade. It is located at km 16 on the road to Manawan, north of St-Michel-des-Saints. Logging companies have been informed that they will not be able to return with their machinery when the thaw occurs on May 19th. We need to be many to ensure that they respect this instruction. It is possible to come now to help set up the camp. Those who can free themselves, the most sensitive moments are likely to be from May 19 to 26. The blockade will remain in place afterwards and solidarity will still be necessary.

Canada: Federal Employees Reach Tentative Agreement, Strike Continues

Most Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) employees returned to work on Monday, May 1, after a tentative agreement was reached between the union and their employer, the Treasury Board, in the early hours of Monday morning. Under this tentative deal, the union had secured for its members a wage increase of 12 per cent spread over four years, while members who are close to retirement age will receive a lump sum payment of up to $2,500 in lieu of the wage increase that they would have received. “During a period of record-high inflation and soaring corporate profits, workers were told to accept less – but our members came together and fought for better,” said Chris Aylward, PSAC national president.

Canada’s Largest-Ever Strike Against A Sole Employer Is Underway

Canada is in the midst of the largest strike against a single employer in the country’s history. On April 19, 155,000 public sector workers — who have been without a contract for more than two years — walked off the job, setting up 250 picket lines across Canada. Thus far, the government’s approach to negotiations with the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) has been, at best, ham-fisted. The bulk of the workers — 120,000 employees of various government departments who answer to the Treasury Board — are asking for an annual 4.5 percent wage increase retroactive to June 2021, when negotiations with the government began.

Environmental Racism And Corporate Colonialism Revealed At Canadian Bank

Thanks to Canadian BDS Coalition member, Human Rights for All,  for their solidarity  at the Royal Bank of Canada's Annual General Meeting (RBC AGM) on April 5, 2023, in Saskatoon. With vehicular access blocked and two snipers on the roof, at least 150 environmental and Indigenous  rights activists rallied in front of the Delta Bessborough Hotel in  Saskatoon where RBC was holding their AGM. They were there to protest against RBC’s putting  99% of their energy investments in fossil fuels. Since the Paris climate agreement was signed, RBC has provided over $270 billion to fossil fuel companies, with last year representing a 45 per cent increase in fossil fuel funding from the year before.

Over 100,000 Canadian Government Workers Are Now On Strike

One of the largest strikes in Canadian history kicked off Wednesday morning. Federal workers within two bargaining units, the Canada Revenue Agency and the Treasury Board, who are members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and spread across 20 departments, began a legal strike at 12:01 AM on Wednesday, April 19. The two PSAC bargaining units make up 155,000 federal workers across Canada. Over 100,000 workers will participate in the strike, while 47,000 workers deemed “essential” will remain on the job. PSAC has released a list of 250 picket line locations across Canada, including government buildings and MP’s offices.

Court Case Could Change The Future Of Mining In British Columbia

Imagine finding someone you’ve never met digging through your backyard, looking for gold. You tell them it’s your property, but they don’t leave. Instead, they tell you they’re allowed to be there because they’ve made a mineral claim on your land — and they’re right. B.C.’s current system, governed by the Mineral Tenure Act, allows almost anyone to make an online mineral claim to explore an area for minerals and have rights over what they find. They don’t have to consult or alert First Nations or private property owners if the claim is on their land.  The Gitxaała Nation and Ehattesaht First Nation are fighting to change that.   The two First Nations start presenting their case against how the province gives out mineral titles on their land Monday at the B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver.

Beyond Fatalism: Renewing Working-Class Politics

“We need to ask ourselves,” Leo Panitch and Donald Swartz stated in the third edition of From Consent to Coercion, “whether free pertains to those who do business or whether it pertains also to the majority of Canadians who do not do business.” Their book, now a classic, focused on a critical expression of the tension between liberal democratic principles and capitalist realities: the substantive right of workers to strike. Canadian workers were officially granted the basic democratic right to form unions, but the substance of that right – the withdrawal by workers of their labour power – was regularly suspended when workers successfully used it.

Indigenous Group Fighting Emissions Cap Supported By Oil Company

A national Indigenous group is fighting a proposed federal limit on oil and gas sector emissions by arguing it will harm First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities. But the group has a powerful non-Indigenous ally, according to corporate documents from Canada’s second-largest oil and gas producer. Cenovus, a Calgary-based oil sands company that last year had net earnings of $6.5 billion, says in those documents that it has paid for membership with the Indigenous Resource Network (IRN). Yet a spokesperson for the network called that a “misrepresentation.”

How Canadians Are Losing Medicare

Ontario’s Bill 60 has delivered a potential death blow to public Medicare. If it becomes law, the provincial medical system will no longer operate as a public service but as a profit-taking business managed by the private sector. While defenders of public Medicare blame Conservative Premier Doug Ford, British Columbia, Quebec and Saskatchewan are going down the same road. If we hope to reverse this disaster, we need to know how Canadians won Medicare in the first place, and why they are losing it. World War II saw a global upsurge of labor protest. 

The US And Canada Woo Latin America And The Caribbean To Invade Haiti

At the behest of Washington, Canada has begun a “significant military deployment in Haiti,” according to Canadian Ambassador to Haiti Sébastien Carrière. Despite US pressure since last October, Canada played hard to get in accepting the responsibility for leading the third foreign invasion of Haiti in the past three decades. But now, it has relented. “We took over,” Carrière told journalist Madeleine Blais-Morin on the program Les Coulisses du Pouvoir on February 19. “We delivered armor. There have been two deliveries since October. There would be a third delivery in the next few days, and another one later in February.

The Right Wing Is Organizing In Canada; Can The Left Stop Them?

Since the start of COVID-19, workers have coupled innovative new organizing models with traditional “ground game” to gain incredible wins at worksites around the world. These have ranged from Amazon to Trader Joe’s in the United States, Indigo Chapters Bookstores  to Second City (AICE Union) in Canada, and  of course the historic farmers strike in India. Each of these campaigns amplified their voices through the use of social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and, YouTube. These workers also had something else on their side—a captive audience.
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