CUPW members strike at a Canada Post facility in Edmonton. Photo courtesy Edmonton and District Labour Council. For months workers at a Canada Post mail processing plant in Edmonton had been complaining of conditions that they felt jeopardized their safety and wellbeing in the workplace. Recent changes required employees to
Continue readingAuthor: Brett McKay
Canadian Dimension: Dismantling Canada’s deportation economy
Hundreds march in Toronto to call on the federal government to extend permanent status to undocumented people, September 17, 2022. Photo courtesy the Migrant Rights Network. With the Canadian government planning to deliver a regularization scheme that would provide a path to permanent residency for up to 500,000 undocumented migrants
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Far-right organizing in Alberta, on the streets and online
The confidence of far-right groups including the Soldiers of Odin and the Three Percent Militia is growing in stride with the increasingly emboldened anti-lockdown community. Photo by Nicholas Pescod/The News Bulletin. In the first year of the pandemic, Alberta has seen a rise in hate motivated attacks and the visibility
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Alberta’s paranoid outlook
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney addresses a crowd of supporters. Photo courtesy the United Conservative Party. A few dozen people are gathered in the North Plaza overlooking the grounds of the Alberta legislature in Edmonton. The crowd all seem to know each other, warmly greeting the few stragglers still showing up
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Why COVID-19 shows it’s time to consider prison abolition
Two residents at the East Coast Forensic Hospital in Dartmouth get what exercise they can as sunlight filters through the wire that prevents contraband from being thrown into the facility from the outside world. Photo courtesy of the Senate of Canada. There are five federal prisons for women in Canada,
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: From Atlantic fisheries to Alberta classrooms, we must confront the denial of settler violence
Two people hold the Mohawk Warrior Society Flag during the All Eyes on Mi’kma’ki Rally in front of a Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment in Saskatoon, October 23, 2020. Photo by Heywood Yu/The Sheaf. The attacks against Indigenous fishermen in Nova Scotia escalated rapidly this fall. Suspicious fires on fishing
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Alberta’s Bill 1 and the ongoing suppression of Indigenous movements
Premier Jason Kenney and Cabinet are sworn in at Government House, in Edmonton on Tuesday, April 30, 2019. Photo by Chris Schwartz/Alberta Government. The Alberta government’s Bill 1—the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act—will likely soon be law, implementing new restrictions on what is considered legal protest, along with severe fines and
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Organizing the unemployed in Alberta: Lessons from past depressions
William Dudley “Big Bill” Haywood during the Lawrence textile strike on the Lawrence Common, Lawrence, Massachussetts, March 14, 1912. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. Periods of mass unemployment, like the daily-worsening crisis triggered by COVID-19, overwhelm government relief systems, and they critically stress the ideological justifications for the normally austere distribution
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