Defund the Coastal GasLink Pipeline! On a cold grey December 21, sixty people rallied outside the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) branch on 1st Avenue and Commercial Drive in Vancouver. All of Canada’s major banks invest heavily in the oil and gas sector; RBC leads the pack in pushing climate change. It owns 8 percent […]
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No to Corporate Profiteering Socialist Alternative Canada joins organizations across Canada and the US in calling for the big banks to divest from the Coastal GasLink (CGL) pipeline. Supporters and allies of the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs have called for the December 20th Week of Action to #DefundCoastalGasLink. In 2020, 27 banks from around the world […]
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James McCabe is a member of the Socialist Party (ISA in Ireland). Amazon has announced it will establish a Data Centre in Calgary, news much welcomed by politicians as a job creator and sign of a tech future for Calgary. No reality check of the huge use of electricity or water, both issues in Calgary. […]
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Some people have been fooled into thinking that recent policy announcements by the Conservative government of Doug Ford have made him an advocate for working-class interests. Ontarians have seen a slew of announcements this fall about temp workers, gig workers, injured workers, being able to “disconnect from work” and the minimum wage. Ford is obviously […]
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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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New Brunswick’s public sector general strike has come to an end. A majority of CUPE locals voted last week for a contract that will see a 2 percent pay raise each year of the five-year agreement. On top of this, workers will receive a 25 cent per hour wage increase per year. Crucially, casual workers […]
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Paramedics face crises everyday as a basic part of their job. In British Columbia, they are also facing entirely avoidable crises of understaffing, low pay, and burnout. All of this was cruelly exposed in the summer heat dome, with soaring distress calls, long waits for ambulances and unnecessary deaths. It wasn’t always this way. BC’s […]
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Southern British Columbia has been hit by two catastrophic weather events in a few months. First was heat and fire, now rain and floods. On November 13 and 14, the skies opened as an “atmospheric river” flowed across much of southern BC, resulting in overflowing rivers, landslides, mud slides, and ruptured railways and highways. This […]
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On Friday, November 5, there was a demonstration at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon campus, predominantly involving Indigenous students. The second demonstration within a month was this time centred on the scandal involving Dr Carrie Bourassa who had been feigning Métis heritage while a professor in the department of community health and epidemiology at the […]
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On Friday November 12, the last day of COP26, a peaceful rally of several hundred for climate justice was disrupted by over-the-top action of the Vancouver Police Department. An Indigenous man, as part of a ceremony, placed red handprints, representing Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, on the building that houses Canada’s Department of […]
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