By rosalind hampton
Action guided by anti-racist and anti-colonial analysis is essential to imagining and building liberating alternatives to our current social order. The experience of the inspiring movement ignited by Quebec students this year confirms this belief, as questions about its diversity and about incidents of racism have increasingly emerged.
By Xavier Lafrance and Alan Sears
The Charest government has turned to repression to try to break the largest and longest student strike in Quebec history. Students had already endured heavy-handed policing, including hundreds of arrests and brutal attacks by riot cops on campuses and in the streets. The new strikebreaking legislation, Bill 78, is a brutal clampdown on the right to organize collectively and on freedom of expression. The protest plans for any demonstrations of more than 50 people must be cleared with the police in advance of any gathering, or the action will be considered illegal. Individual students, staff or faculty members who advocate the ongoing strike action risk harsh penalties, and student unions or university employees unions who organize or support ongoing strike activity will face heavy fines.
By Pierre Mouterde
There is no doubt that with the 2012 student strike, Quebec is going through a decisive moment in its history. But we must now try to measure its exact reach, if only to understand in which direction we should look for a solution to what is increasingly looking like a major educational, but also social and political crisis.
By Richard Fidler
A crowd estimated at 250,000 people or more wound its way through Montréal April 22 in Quebec’s largest ever Earth Day march. They raised many demands: an end to tar sands and shale gas development, opposition to the Quebec government’s Plan Nord mining expansion, support for radical measures to protect ecosystems, and other causes. And many wore the red felt square symbolizing support to the province’s students fighting the Liberal government’s 75 per cent increase in post-secondary education fees over the next five years. The Earth Day march was the largest mobilization to date in a mounting wave of citizen protest throughout the province.
By Zac Saltis
The contents of the federal budget unveiled by the Conservatives on March 29, 2012 are hardly shocking. In fact, this voluminous document sheds light on what strategies the Canadian state will be adopting to promote and facilitate capital accumulation in this era of economic stagnation and austerity for the working class.
By James Cairns
A lot of people are angry about the robocall scandal. Even by the low standards of the Harper Conservatives, the covert attempt to block thousands of people from voting in the 2011 federal election is pretty disgusting.
By Russell Diabo
On January 23-24 a Crown-First Nations Gathering (CFNG) was held between the Prime Minister and First Nations representatives.
On February 14, demonstrations commemorating hundreds of missing Indigenous women will take place in cities across Canada. In this article, activist Audrey Huntley reflects on the shameful reality of the way in which violence against Indigenous women is normalized in our society, and describes movement-building being spearheaded by organizations and coalitions across Canada, with a focus on the Toronto-based No More Silence — NSW
By Audrey Huntley
By Murray Cooke
For the first time, the NDP is holding a leadership race that involves picking the leader of the Official Opposition and someone that can, with some credibility, claim a decent shot at becoming the next Prime Minister of Canada.
By Fathima Cader and Sumayya Kassamali
The high-profile Shafia quadruple-murder trial and the media coverage of the trial and its verdict make this article very timely. They only confirm the authors’ argument that the Islamophobic outlook sees Muslims as uniquely sexist and violent. — NSW
By Alan Sears
We are still very early in 2012 but so far it seems to be shaping up as the Year of the Lockout.
Over 25 000 unionized workers at the City of Toronto, members of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Locals 79 and 416, along with Toronto Public Library workers in CUPE Local 4948, are under attack by right-wing mayor Rob Ford. A lockout seems likely and will be a “historic test for labour.” In late December 2011, David Camfield discussed the situation with two members of CUPE 79, Julia Barnett and Peter Lynch.
By Joan Ruzsa
I remember when the Harper government first introduced a bill (then called C-15) to create mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. I was struck by something when reading the parliamentary debates on the issue. Not only did the opposition parties point to numerous position papers that discounted the efficacy of mandatory minimums, but even the Conservatives’ own research clearly showed that harsher sentences have no deterrent effect on crime.
By Harsha Walia
The very same grassroots community of women who have been advocating for a public inquiry into the deaths and disappearances of women in the Downtown Eastside for over two decades are now denouncing the BC Missing Women’s Commission of Inquiry as an insult to the women of this Vancouver community.
By members of No One Is Illegal-Toronto
Though the House of Commons is not in session, the Harper majority has been churning up anti-migrant frenzy all summer in the lead-up to the reintroduction of Bill C-4 (previously Bill C-49).
By Murray Cooke
With the death of Jack Layton, the federal NDP has been thrust into an unexpected leadership race, its future in question.
By Dave Vasey
From August 30 to September 3, a Tar Sands Action took place at the White House in Washington, DC, with solidarity actions in a number of places across North America, and at Canadian and US embassies in a number of places around the world.
By Harold Lavender
Review of Todd Gordon, Imperialist Canada (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2010).
Over the last decade Canada’s carefully constructed if largely mythical image as a peaceful force in the world has rapidly unravelled. This image completely flies in the face of the Canadian state’s support for coups, invasions and occupations. Involvement in the decade-long counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan has become the symbol of a more aggressive and militarist Canada.
By Maryann Abbs
Review of David Camfield, Canadian Labour in Crisis: Reinventing the Workers’ Movement
(Winnipeg: Fernwood, 2011).
