Doug McCallum was defeated as Surrey Mayor, losing to former colleague Brenda Locke. Locke has promised to reverse the establishment of a separate Surrey police force, which will add further burden Surrey’s budget. Neither the RCMP nor Surrey Police is the answer, what is needed is democratic control over the police. Locke on other issues […]
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The Coalition for Progressive Electors (COPE) – Vancouver’s political party for renters and workers – hosted a Rally for Rent Control, on October 2. Incumbent city councillor Jean Swanson (COPE) shared a platform with Seattle’s Socialist Alternative city councillor, Kshama Sawant and other COPE candidates. Jean offered “huge thanks” to “Kshama for the solidarity she’s […]
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Written by BC Public Sector workers. Two years ago, public sector workers, unable to work from home, were praised by the BC government as heroic, frontline, essential workers ensuring services, health care and K-12 education in the face of a deadly pandemic. Today these same workers are being offered contracts that will see their real […]
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One unelected Supreme Court judge has overturned the democratic decision of the City of Vancouver. The ruling backs the greed of landlords over the need of people. In November 2021, Vancouver council agreed, with only one vote against, to implement rent control on Single Room Accommodation (SRA). These small units, about 100 square feet and […]
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Workers Win Pay Raise and Cost of Living Agreement After 136 days, the strike of transit workers in the Whistler area ended on June 14. The lack of any public transit in the area caused real hardship, especially for low-paid workers, as well as to the 80 striking workers. The workers took strike action on […]
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Cost of Living Adjustment Needed Overwhelmingly, 33,000 BC Government employees have voted with a 94.6 percent majority, for strike action as they try to get the NDP government to agree wages that maintain living standards. The union, BCGEU, had an extensive campaign to reach members on the issues and to vote, taking the campaign to […]
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The recent announcement that possession of up to 2.5 grams of certain illicit drugs will be exempted from criminal prosecution in BC has rightly been called a historic “forward step” towards addressing the ongoing toxic drug deaths. But in emergency situations, “forward steps” are not good enough — not if they are too slow and […]
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Climate change is the foremost political issue on young people’s minds. We are the ones who will live with the full horrors of climate change and environmental degradation unless the world changes course. Yet, we see nearly everyone in a position of power acknowledges the crisis but does next to nothing to solve it and […]
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Capitalism’s overriding imperative is to extract wealth from the land and labour in order to enrich the elite. Workers struggle to survive or eke out a living as profits flow into the pockets of the wealthy. As capitalism replaced feudalism, the exploitation of both land and labour played out in countries around the world. As […]
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Now that the convoy has been cleared from Ottawa’s streets, it is worth remembering when desperate workers tried to take their protest to the federal government in Ottawa in 1935. The “On to Ottawa Trek” saw unemployed men housed in military relief camps travel by rail from Vancouver, stopping at towns along the way gaining […]
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