Canada

Business declared ‘apartheid-free zone’

May 19, 2021 CTV News London Resist! Canada, Israel, Israeli Apartheid, Palestine

Reimagine Co business owner Heenal Rajani declared his grocery store an 'Apartheid Free Zone'. “What it means to be an apartheid-free zone, is we commit not to sell products from the illegal Israeli settlement or any country that violates Palestinian human rights.” The declaration is being made in solidarity with residents in the Palestinian Territories where there has been ongoing violence.

A national public intercity service, especially if supported by regional public services, would make for a welcome system dedicated to the public interest rather than the profit motive. Image by Canadian Dimension

With Greyhound Gone, Let’s Replace It With A National Public Operator

May 18, 2021 David Moscrop, Canadian Dimension. Create! Canada, Corporatism, Public investment, Transportation

After serving Canadians with varying degrees of success for the better part of a century, Greyhound Canada has elected to cease serving them at all. On May 13, the intercity coach service ended its routes in the country for good. The national press release discussed the “decision rationale” for closing up shop. The company looked back to 2018 and its suspended services in the west, citing “years of declining ridership and the impact of a changing and increasingly challenging transportation environment, including de-regulation and subsidized competition such as VIA Rail and publicly owned bus systems.” Then, it pointed the finger at the pandemic and a 95 percent drop in ridership along with “negligible” support from the public purse. In short, the private market space was untenable.

An Environment Of Anti-Racism Is How We Win

May 13, 2021 Janelle Lapointe, National Observer. Strategize! Canada, Environmental Justice, Police violence, Racism

Canada - Spring has always been a time of renewal and hope. I’m filled with a sense of wonder and possibility as I watch new life sprout from the soil and cherry blossoms bloom along streets. But this spring, I feel a prevailing heaviness. For many of us, this season marks a year since COVID-19 restrictions were put in place. March 13 marked one year since Breonna Taylor was shot in her sleep by police in Louisville, Ky. As the season progresses, and as we pass through solemn anniversaries, I continue to be reminded of where we were a year ago. Last spring, the COVID-19 pandemic started to unmask the inequalities in society, with the virus disproportionately affecting racialized communities. Headlines were filled with stories of police violence as mass protests erupted around the world.

Are Canadian Police Providing Training To The Colombian police?

May 3, 2021 Brent Patterson, PBI Canada. Educate! Canada, Honduras, Police, State Repression

On May 1, the British independent media outlet The Canary reported: “Over recent days, the Colombian national police have killed a number of civilians protesting a proposed tax hike on basic goods. Many more civilians have been injured, and Colombia’s riot police reportedly sexually assaulted a woman.” The article by independent journalist John McEvoy further notes: “Documents obtained by The Canary can reveal that the UK’s College of Policing has been training Colombian police over the past three years.” Is there a similar relationship between Canada and Colombia? On October 30, 2017, the Canadian Press reported on a “bilateral police initiative” between Canada and Colombia.

Montreal Dockers Strike: Defy Back-To-Work Legislation

April 28, 2021 La Riposte Syndicale, Fightback. Resist! Anti-Labor, Canada, Strike, Worker Rights

Since the end of the seven-month truce on March 21, the bosses have been in attack mode. On April 12, the Maritime Employers Association (MEA) decided to suspend the job security plan. The dockers organized in CUPE 375 retaliated with an overtime and weekend strike. Then, on April 23, another slap in the face: the MEA changed work schedules to increase hours worked and implement “shift schedules” that make it harder to balance work and family—which is one of the main issues in the negotiations! This tactic of changing schedules is a contemptuous frontal attack. This was also implemented in the fall of 2018, before the dockers had a strike mandate. Michel Murray, spokesperson for the union, said in his press conference on Friday that the anger of the membership had to be contained to avoid an illegal strike at that time.

Canada: Supreme Court Upholds Sinixt Nation’s Right To Land Across Border

April 25, 2021 Olivia Stefanovich, CBC.ca. Resist! Canada, Indigenous Sovereignty, Land Ownership, Legal System

Canada's highest court has upended the federal government's 65-year-old claim that an Indigenous nation from British Columbia's Interior no longer exists. In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada said the Sinixt Nation, whose reservation is in Washington state, has constitutionally protected Indigenous rights to hunt in their ancestral territory north of the border. The ruling means that if Indigenous groups outside of modern-day Canada can prove they descended from a pre-contact society in what is now Canada, they can claim Section 35(1) rights under the Constitution, which recognizes and affirms the rights of Indigenous Peoples. "Persons who are not Canadian citizens and who do not reside in Canada can exercise an Aboriginal right," the decision said.

Saving The Salmon

April 18, 2021 Matt Simmons, The Narwhal. Create! Canada, Indigenous Sovereignty, Salmon, Water

Canada - B.C.’s free-entry mining system allows any individual or company to stake a claim — and subsequently explore for minerals on that claim — anywhere in the province that is not already set aside as a protected area. This includes private land and Indigenous territory. Under provincial laws, which date back to the mid-1800s, no consent or consultation is required. “It’s so archaic. It’s so colonial,” Marsden says. In the mid-2010s, mineral exploration and mining companies started staking claims on Gitanyow territory. A tenure allows a company to conduct exploratory work, and if it finds enough evidence of minerals, it can then propose a mine. But even exploratory work has impacts on the landscape, Marsden says.

Does Canada’s Unilateral Sanctions Regime Violate International Law?

April 12, 2021 Yves Engler, Canadian Dimension. Educate! Canada, International Law, Sanctions, United Nations Charter

Is Canada breaking international law when it applies to unilateral coercive economic measures, commonly referred to as sanctions? Most countries and international law experts believe sanctions are only legitimate when approved by the United Nations Security Council or the World Trade Organization. Economic sanctions outside the framework of the UN Charter are generally considered “unilateral” and unlawful. According to a report by the Asian-African Legal Consultative Organization, “the imposition of unilateral and secondary sanctions on countries through application of national legislation is not-permissible under international law.” This means that US sanctions on Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria and elsewhere clearly violate the UN Charter.

Echoes Of B.C.’s War In The Woods As Fairy Creek Blockade Builds

April 11, 2021 Jesse Winter, The Narwhal. Resist! Canada, Fairy Creek, Forests, Timber Industry

British Columbia - Hundreds of activists are digging in at logging road blockades across a swath of southern Vancouver Island, vowing to stay as long as it takes to pressure the provincial government to immediately halt cutting of what they say is the last 3 per cent of giant old-growth trees left in the province. The situation echoes the 1993 “war in the woods” in nearby Clayoquot Sound, which saw nearly 1,000 people arrested at similar logging blockades in the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. Tensions are rising. Just this weekend, the activists stopped a team of old-growth tree cutters — called fallers — from entering a logging area in the Caycuse watershed.

‘This Is A War In The Woods 2.0’

April 9, 2021 Brendan Strain, Vancouver Island CTV News. Resist! Canada, Fairy Creek, Forests, Timber Industry

Port Renfrew - “Activist headquarters” is an encampment just outside of Port Renfrew, Vancouver Island. That is where the fight to prevent 200 hectares of ancient old-growth forest from being cut down continues. “We haven’t been served (with an injunction), no,” said Molly Murphy, one of the many people calling the encampment home on Monday. The injunction was granted by the B.C. Supreme Court on April 1. It orders the demonstrators to take down the blockades that they had set up to prevent forestry company Teal-Jones from accessing its logging operation in the area. “We’re waiting for Teal-Jones to serve the injunction and then the police need to enforce it,” said Murphy. “That’s kind of what we are waiting for.”

Fairy Creek Blockade Demonstrators Call In More Protesters

April 5, 2021 Julian Kolsut, Chek News. Resist! Canada, Fairy Creek, Forests, Timber Industry

The blockade has been in place since August 2020, organized in part by members of the Rainforest Flying Squad, to stop the logging company Teal-Jones from building a road into the Fairy Creek area and prevent old-growth logging. Demonstrators say they are extremely disappointed with the decision, and that now is the last chance to save the area. “This is the last stand, literally last stand of old-growth. Ninety-seven per cent of the forests of British Columbia are tree farms,” said Shambu. “The last time trees were saved, it took how many arrests to make that happen [in the Clayoquot protests]?” Protesters say due to the Easter weekend, they expect a big boost in numbers of around 150 people showing up by early next week.

Haitians March On Canadian Embassy

April 1, 2021 Yves Engler. Resist! Canada, Haiti, Imperialism, Occupation

People everywhere around the world love and respect Canadians, or so we’re told. So how do you explain what’s going on in Haiti? On Sunday protesters in Port-au-Prince marched on the Canadian Embassy. “Madame Boukman — Justice 4 Haiti” posted a video to Twitter showing police in front of Canada’s diplomatic representation in Haiti. Madame Boukman quoted two men waving a Russian flag saying, “Long live Russia. Canada go home.” (In an indirect criticism of US/Canadian backing for dictator Jovenel Moïse, Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister recently said they were concerned about “political instability” and “ready to help Haitians restore political stability, maintain internal security and train personnel.”)

Government Offices Occupied Across Nova Scotia

April 1, 2021 Robert Devet, Nova Scotia Advocate. Resist! Canada, Environment, Forests, Hunger Strike

Kjipuktuk (Halifax) – After 23 days Jacob Fillmore is ending his hunger strike in support of a temporary clearcutting moratorium on Nova Scotia Crown lands. He made the announcement during a well-attended rally at Province House, the third one in as many weeks. “I am feeling increasingly weaker, especially mentally things are getting harder and harder,” he told an appreciative and grateful crowd. This fight is far from over. As I take a step back folks across the province are stepping up,” he said. “If asking politely doesn’t work, we are not afraid to resort to peaceful nonviolent direct action. When I started my hunger strike, I was in despair. I saw the destruction of the environment happening around me and I could not figure out how to change it.

Victoria’s ‘Big Idea’ Pays Off In Housing For People In Need

March 29, 2021 Lindsay Kines, Times Colonist. Create! Canada, COVID-19, Housing, Housing First

Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps and councillors Ben Isitt and Jeremy Loveday were met with a heavy dose of skepticism back in 2015 when they proposed that the Capital Regional District borrow $50 million to build supportive housing for people without homes. Helps recalled Friday that their “big idea” was mocked by some and discounted by others as unworkable or too costly. More than five years later, however, their proposal — later scaled back to $30 million — has pried matching money from the federal and provincial governments, and continues to produce results. On Friday, the CRD’s Regional Housing First Program announced the completion of its latest project — 120 new affordable homes in a six-storey rental building on Hockley Avenue in Langford.

The Fairy Creek Blockaders

March 27, 2021 Serena Renner and Zoë Yunker, The Tyee. Resist! Blockade, Canada, Forests, Police

Simon Frankson emerged from his sleeping bag at 4 a.m., just in time to join the fray. The day before, a balmy afternoon in early August, he and about a dozen campers had studied a satellite photo of the area: a mountainside sheathed in deep green cedars and Douglas fir trees, many of them hundreds or thousands of years old, in a watershed known as Fairy Creek in the southwest corner of Vancouver Island. The telling grey stripe of a logging road was creeping up from the left side of the image. It was the same kind of road that has, over the past century, made way for logging companies to cut down 80 per cent of the ancient forest on an island larger than Belgium.

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