Governments across Canada have once again proven whose interests they serve — and it’s not those of working people, Indigenous communities or the environment. The federal Bill C-5, Ontario’s Bill 5 and BC’s C-15 are all assaults on democracy, land rights, and ecological protection in favour of corporate profit and unchecked development. The Carney Liberals, […]
Continue Reading
The public post office has been set up to fail. Its high-paid executives have mismanaged it, provoking a labour dispute and spending $470 million on an unnecessary new high-tech processing facility in Scarborough, Ontario. Successive federal governments have encumbered it with various restrictions and mandates, forcing it to compete with multinational corporations like Amazon. They […]
Continue Reading
Donald Trump has called “tariff” his favourite word, showing that he must have a limited vocabulary. When he imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports in 2018, he claimed it was protecting American industry. In reality, these tariffs were a nationalist smokescreen for a deeper capitalist crisis — one where working people, not corporate elites, […]
Continue Reading
Update: March 1 Unsurprisingly, Doug Ford won his third election. All the campaigning and voting resulted in very little change. With the results in a few seats likely to go to a recount, Ford’s Conservatives increased their share of the vote slightly to 43 percent, compared to the last election in 2022 but their number […]
Continue Reading
Last April 1st, the Alberta-based Western Standard ran a story with the headline: “Federal budget commits funding to convert one lane of Trans-Canada Highway for bicycles.” The story continued to relate how the Liberal budget had set aside $100 billion to build bike lanes along the entire length of the Trans-Canada. Hard to believe, eh? […]
Continue Reading
Cities are the world remade by society. So why are they so inhospitable? The high cost of living, air and noise pollution, the many barriers to accessibility, the scarcity of communal gathering places and green space, the high rate of traffic accidents, washrooms and drinking water for customers only, narrow or no sidewalks — all […]
Continue Reading
LCBO Update, July 24 The strike at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) is over. The workers in the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) ratified the new agreement. Premier Doug Ford’s odd response to the end of the strike: “We learned many things with this strike — people were still able to get […]
Continue Reading
The False Hopes of Carbon Capture Schemes Some of the biggest polluters in the world, along with governments, have been betting the house on a quick technical fix to solve the problem of ever-increasing carbon emissions. That fix has been around a long time and goes by the name of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). […]
Continue Reading
Ford Canada announced in April that it would postpone all electric vehicle production at its Oakville assembly plant in Ontario by two years until 2027 due to “softening demand,” meaning that people aren’t buying EVs because their price is too high. “We are committed to scaling a profitable EV business, using capital wisely and bringing […]
Continue Reading
“Axe the (carbon) tax” argues Pierre Poilievre. Given the source, one could be tempted to automatically respond, “keep the tax. Taxes are never popular but, along with death, they are said to be the only certainties in this world. So, what is the carbon tax? A carbon tax directly adds a surcharge on top of […]
Continue Reading