A crowd estimated at 250,000 people or more wound its way through Montréal April 22 in Quebec’s largest ever Earth Day march. They raised many demands: an end to tar sands and shale gas development, opposition to the Quebec government’s Plan Nord mining expansion, support for radical measures to protect
Continue readingAuthor: Richard Fidler
Canadian Dimension Feed: Overshadowing the Cartagena Summit: the militarization of Central America
Stephen Harper and Barack Obama will be attending the Sixth Summit of the Americas this weekend in Cartagena, Colombia. Expected to attend will be 33 heads of government representing all the members of the Organization of American States (OAS) except Ecuador, whose President Rafael Correa is courageously abstaining primarily on
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Mulcair’s victory: A new direction for the NDP?
There is a lot of speculation going the rounds about whether or to what degree Thomas Mulcair will change the direction of the federal New Democratic Party. Mulcair, as everyone who pays attention to Canadian politics knows by now, emerged the winner in the NDP’s contest to replace deceased leader
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Québec solidaire struggles to define its space in shifting political landscape
MONTRÉAL – About 400 members of Québec solidaire met here December 9-11 in a delegated convention to debate and adopt positions on major social and cultural questions. The convention capped the third phase in a lengthy process of developing what the left-wing sovereigntist party describes as a program of social
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Massive protest in Quebec against huge hike in tuition fees
About 200,000 university and college students across Quebec shut down their campuses on November 10 to protest a projected 75% increase in tuition fees in the recent budget of the Liberal government headed by Jean Charest. Up to 30,000 students and sup…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Ottawa tar-sands protest: reports and impressions
I participated in the demonstration against the Alberta tar sands outside the Canadian Parliament here in Ottawa on September 26. As was widely reported, the civil disobedience component of the action resulted in over 200 arrests.
I am cross-publishin…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: The North, the Arctic and the Indigenous national question—A Québécois perspective
Introduction
In the September issue of the pro-sovereignty newspaper, L’aut’journal, editor Pierre Dubuc writes an interesting account of the geopolitics involved in the northern and Arctic development plans of the Canadian and Quebec gove…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Daniel Tanuro: The Delusion of Green Capitalism
Further to yesterday’s post, “Foundations of an ecosocialist strategy,” here is an interview with the same author, Daniel Tanuro, based on his book, soon to be published in English. Its working title, I am informed by the publisher Re…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Daniel Tanuro: Foundations of an ecosocialist strategy
The following article by a leading European ecosocialist, Daniel Tanuro, was written especially for the latest issue of the Montréal-based journal Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme (NCS), which features a number of articles on what is commonly referr…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Québec Solidaire: A Québécois Approach to Building a Broad Left Party (Part II)
This article is scheduled for publication in a forthcoming issue of the journal Alternate Routes. It is an expanded and updated version of a presentation to the third annual conference of the Critical Social Research Collaborative, held March 5, 2011 a…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Québec Solidaire: A Québécois Approach to Building a Broad Left Party (Part I)
The following article is scheduled for publication in a forthcoming issue of the journal Alternate Routes. It is an expanded and updated version of a presentation to the third annual conference of the Critical Social Research Collaborative, held March …
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Some Québécois reactions to the Turmel affair
“L’affaire Turmel”[1] continues to make waves, and not just in English Canada. But unfortunately, the NDP has so far failed to mount a defense of its interim federal leader Nycole Turmel.
The disclosure that Turmel had until very rec…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Nycole Turmel’s induction in the federalists’ wonderland
Surprise, surprise! Belatedly, the Globe & Mail “discovers” that an elected NDP member of parliament — in this case interim party leader Nycole Turmel — has been a member of a Québec sovereigntist party. And not just on…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Behind those resignations from the Parti Québécois
It’s “an earthquake that could become a tsunami,” said former Parti québécois leader Bernard Landry, reacting to the sudden resignation of three prominent PQ members of the National Assembly from the party’s caucus Jun…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: Some further thoughts about the federal election and its implications for the left…
A reader asked me what I thought about the significant decline in the combined votes for the capitalist parties over the last decade—from 78.5% for the Liberals, Progressive Conservatives and Alliance in 2000, to 59% for the Liberals and Conserva…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: The federal NDP’s electoral breakthrough in Quebec: A challenge to progressives in Canada
If Jack Layton’s election-night speech to his Toronto supporters is an indication of what lies ahead, the NDP is going to have a hard time coming to terms with a parliamentary caucus now composed of a majority of MPs from Quebec.
To a crowded ro…
Continue readingCanadian Dimension Feed: ‘Beyond capitalism’? QS launches debate on its program for social transformation
MONTRÉAL—At a convention held here March 25-27, Québec solidaire concluded the second round in the process of adopting its program. More than 350 delegates from party associations across the province debated and adopted the party’…
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