The emergence of the Omicron variant of COVID highlights the ongoing failings of governments around the world to tackle this pandemic. Vaccine hoarding by rich countries, companies putting profit before human need, governments failing to do outreach to hard-to-reach and hesitant communities and people have all contributed to this ongoing misery. The COVID pandemic drags […]
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The BC government announced a guaranteed minimum number of employer-paid sick days for most workers; there are exclusions. The Worker Solidarity Network, the BC Federation of Labour, and other allied groups, including Socialist Alternative, called for 10 paid sick days per year for all workers, as a minimum standard required to ensure the health and […]
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The BC Supreme Court made news in September by deciding not to extend an injunction against old-growth logging protesters at the Fair Creek watershed. This would have ended the ongoing RCMP enforcement of the injunction, had the BC Court of Appeal not granted a temporary injunction about a week later. Protesters have been in the […]
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Five weeks and $610 million dollars later, we have ended up more or less right back where we started. While some seats may yet flip as mail in ballots are counted, at time of writing no party has gained or lost more than two seats compared to before parliament was dissolved. Canada has another minority […]
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Within a few weeks, Haiti’s president was assassinated and the country was hit by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake that killed over 2,000 people, followed two days later by Hurricane Grace. The plight of the Haitian people is again in the news and on many people’s minds. Haiti is known to Canadians as a “poor” country, and many […]
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The hottest place in Canada, Lytton BC, has burned to the ground. The mayor of the small village in the Fraser Canyon said “it would be a miracle if everyone made it out alive.” On the evening of Wednesday, June 30, smoke was spotted, and 15 minutes later a full evacuation order was issued as […]
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BC Hotel workers are continuing their struggle to defend their jobs and their livelihoods against the ruthless hotel management. Affected hotel workers, many of them members of Unite Here Local 40, are fighting for the right of recall, which is the right to be rehired after a lay-off at their previous pay rate with the […]
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Aquaculture, Mismanagement and Climate Change In 2020 the Fraser River sockeye salmon run collapsed. This catastrophic and historic collapse is a real existential emergency for these fish and the people who rely on them. This follows a series of record-breaking bad years. Between 1980 and 2014, sockeye returns in the Fraser River fluctuated between a […]
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For decades now the Canadian telecommunications industry has been an oligopoly of “the big three,” Rogers, Telus, and Bell. These three companies each have over ten million subscribers and own essentially all of the infrastructure in the country. The next largest competitor, Shaw, has less than two million subscribers. But recently, Rogers announced that it […]
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This weekend the federal New Democratic Party is holding its national convention. The Liberal government has signalled its intention to call a general election sometime this year, so this convention will say a lot about how the NDP plans to present itself to voters in the campaign. The party leadership would like to focus on […]
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