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Canada

Articles

What Mission Accomplished? 10 Years Later, Canada’s Role in Afghanistan and Global War (Part III)

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The last of a three part series exploring Canada’s role in the war in Afghanistan and wider Global War on Terror after ten years. Part one can be read here, and part two here.

As always, we welcome any feedback you may have on this important and timely discussion.

By Michael Skinner 

What happened to the antiwar movement? Where do we go from here?

On 20 September 2001, George Bush announced his intention to launch a Global War on Terror. In the weeks before the invasion of Afghanistan, antiwar activists throughout the world poured into the streets to protest the impending global war. Again, when the Bush administration began to beat the war drums before invading Iraq, even greater numbers hit the streets.

Articles

What Mission Accomplished? 10 Years Later, Canada’s Role in Afghanistan and Global War (Part II)

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Part two of a three part series exploring Canada’s role in the war in Afghanistan and wider Global War on Terror after ten years. Part one can be read here.

By Michael Skinner

Afghanistan pried open for business – a new strategic bridgehead in the heart of Eurasia

Regardless of whatever the eventual outcome of the Global War on Terror, the bloody decade-long war continues to generate profits for investors in the defence and security industries. The ongoing warfare provides a practical proving-ground to develop and test new weapons and systems of warfare. The battlefield is the ultimate sales-floor for arms dealers. Profits for investors in the war machine will undoubtedly continue to grow as global warfare continues to escalate.

Articles

Could Election Reform Make a Difference?

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By Harold Lavender

In the May Federal election, Stephen Harper won a majority government without winning a majority of the vote. Only 39.6 percent of the population voted Conservative while 60 percent voted against. Much discussion has focused on the election results and what to do about the Harper majority. But relatively little of this has focused on the electoral system.

Articles

Reflections on the NDP at 50

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The gains by the NDP in the 2011 federal election have made the questions of what the NDP is today and how people opposed to the austerity agenda should relate to it even more important. The editors of New Socialist Webzine are glad to publish this contribution by Murray Cooke on the NDP past and present.

As always, we welcome constructive comments and other submissions that address these questions. Readers may also want to read the article, “After the Election 2011: Building our Movements on Shifting Ground.” 

Articles

What’s at Stake at Canada Post?

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By Cindy McCallum Miller

Canadians embrace the urban myth that postal workers strike regularly, usually at Christmas and always over money. That’s as far from the truth as believing Stephen Harper is a feminist. The last pan-Canadian strike by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) was in 1997 but that will soon change.

Articles

Canada’s Federal Election 2011: Should Radicals Care?

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By Alan Sears and James Cairns

Despite severe problems with electoral politics, radicals building movements for real social change need to engage seriously with elections. In this article, we look at the current Canadian election from a Toronto perspective.

Articles

Fighting Mayor Ford’s Austerity Regime (Part II)

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Wanted: A Left to Stop Ford

It will take a mighty movement to defeat the Ford agenda and turn back the age of austerity. We need a Left that can reach out to broad layers of the population, communicating a political alternative effectively and contributing to effective activism that really makes a difference.

Articles

Fighting Mayor Ford’s Austerity Regime (Part I)

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In the first part of a two-part article, Alan Sears argues that Toronto’s very right-wing mayor is no mere buffoon, but “the immediate face” of the “Age of Austerity” and a “bad cop” of neoliberalism.

By Alan Sears

Workers in Wisconsin have responded to attempts to destroy collective bargaining rights in the public sector with massive protest actions. These actions have galvanized workers in other states to confront their own employers and to support the movement in Wisconsin.

Articles

‘No Fare is Fair’: A Roundtable with Members of the Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly Transit Committee

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By Ali Mustafa 

The Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly (GTWA) is a promising new initiative aiming to build a united, non-sectarian, and militant anti-capitalist movement in the city among a diversity of rank-and-file labour unionists, grassroots community organizers, and youth alike. Since the GTWA’s inception in early 2010, mass public transit has emerged as one of the organization’s key political battlegrounds. In this in-depth roundtable discussion, members of the GTWA’s transit committee Jordy Cummings, Lisa Leinveer, Leo Panitch, Kamilla Pietrzyk, and Herman Rosenfeld explore both the opportunities and obstacles facing the campaign Towards a Free and Accessible TTC.

Articles

Military Coups are Good for Canadian Business: The Canada-Honduras Free Trade Agreement

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By Todd Gordon

Last week Canadian negotiators met with their Honduran counterparts in Tegucigalpa to discuss a free trade agreement (FTA). Negotiators from the two countries last met in Ottawa in December. According to the Honduran press, an agreement is close to being completed. This marks an alarming development in the efforts of the Canadian state and multinational corporations to deepen their relations with Honduras following the military coup of June 28, 2009.

Articles

30 Years On: The Toronto Bathhouse Raids and Sexual and Gender Liberation

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By Alan Sears

On February 5, 1981 150 Toronto cops busted into four gay bathhouses and arrested 306 people on charges of being found-ins or keepers of common bawdyhouses. These arrests were deliberately conducted so as to humiliate and terrify the men who were charged. Doors were kicked in and men were dragged out naked, verbally abused and beaten up.

Articles

“Getting the Poor to Manage Their Poverty Better”: Poverty Alleviation Strategies from the Top

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By Augusta Dwyer

An all-party report calling on the Harper government to pursue a vigorous poverty reduction strategy in Canada was recently introduced in the House of Commons. According to the Ottawa Citizen, “the report calls for pumping more money into affordable housing across the country, as well as increased supports to parents, seniors, people with disabilities and jobless and older workers.” The product of three years of cross-country consultations by a Commons committee, its recommendations were endorsed by all the opposition parties, but also—with some qualifications—by Conservatives.

Articles

Rob Ford in Toronto: Why the Ascendancy of Hard-Right Populism in the 2010 Mayoral Election?

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By Parastou Saberi and Stefan Kipfer

On October 25th, the citizens of Toronto voted decisively for a hard-right populist mayor: Councilor Rob Ford. With an unusually high voter turnout (52.6%), Ford received 47.1% of the vote, about the same as the combined vote for his main competitors, former Liberal cabinet minister George Smitherman (35.6%) and deputy mayor Joe Pantalone (11.7%). Among the city’s 44 wards, only 13 did not vote as a plurality or majority for Ford.

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