Tag: Canadian Politics, Economy and Foreign Policy

In the conservative quest to shape public debate in recent years, no tool has proved more useful than the think tank. Nobody understood this better than the director of the ultra-right wing U.S.-based ATLAS Foundation, who once stated that his mission was “to litter the world with free-market think tanks.”

The NDP’s announcement that it will push for a national minimum wage if elected is good news and suggests that the party may finally be overcoming its decades-long aversion to engaging its Liberal and Conservative adversaries on the question of the economy. It’s too early to tell if they will

Municipalities have long been sites of neoliberal policy experimentation and contestation. Since the onset of the 2008 recession, the local state has come under new pressures to privatize social services and reduce the costs of public administration, often through seeking wage and benefit concessions from unionized municipal workers. For proponents

For a city embraced by mountains on one side and ocean on the other, Vancouver can seem like an unhappy place. And with a civic election scheduled for November 15, smack in the middle of the rainy season, it will take some major mobilizing to improve the mood of left-wing

This piece was originally published on rabble.ca and was republished here with the author’s permission. “But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence… illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay sacredness

For years Stephen Harper often seemed at war with his own government, so consistently critical were reviews by its various independent oversight agencies. It seems that at least one “independent” body, the Parliamentary Budget Office, is now a little more PMO-friendly. A recent report from the PBO’s new chief Jean-Denis

The federal government, that is Stephen Harper, is expected to announce its long anticipated decision on Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline sometime in June. The decision could well determine whether or not the Conservatives can win the 2015 election. The momentum of opposition to the pipeline — and perhaps more importantly

The context of migration not only makes it easier for employers to exploit TFWs, it also serves to obscure the common core of labour solidarity that should be at the basis of responses to the greater labour discipline that the TFWP enables. The expansion of the TFWP and its increasing

Last month, more than 160 professors signed an open letter to express grave concerns about the damage to Canadian democracy that the “Fair Elections Act,” Bill C-23, would cause. Today, we the undersigned, an even larger group of professors who share a deep concern over this legislation, urge the government

The notion of “big ideas” periodically raises its head in Canadian politics and I recently criticized the NDP for taking a good idea – a national day of action – and wasting it in on, well, small ideas. Specifically I suggested that the party’s focus on excessive interest rates and

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” – Benito Mussolini With the announcement by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) of formal complaints against the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) for illegally spying on environmental groups opposed to

Budget days should be days when Canadians are encouraged to imagine the possibilities for one of the richest countries in the world. Not the possibilities of the shopping mall or the offerings of Netflix, but the possibilities of building – or rebuilding – community. At its best, that is what

Two very different provincial governments tabled their budgets this week. The freshly-elected BC Liberals and the seemingly election-ready Parti Quebecois both delivered what they termed “responsible” budgets. While the two governments identify with opposing ends of the political spectrum and face distinct political climates, these differences did not prevent their

In politics, meanness can go only so far. Ontario’s Mike Harris Conservatives discovered that — albeit only after Harris had stepped down as premier. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s federal Conservatives may be about to learn the same lesson. Up to now, meanness — or hardball politics as it is euphemistically

The federal government’s new citizenship bill is a Trojan horse. It is presented as an attempt to reduce fraud and rationalize the process of becoming a Canadian citizen, both of which are sensible aims. But it would also give Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government unprecedented authority to strip Canadians

‘Privatizing gains and socializing losses’ could be the motto for the neoliberal era. Alongside this and ‘there is no alternative,’ few slogans better capture the ideology that has been so successfully diffused throughout the world over the past several decades. Five years after latest financial crisis, this motto rings true

Toronto mayor Rob Ford is a political phenomenon deserving of close attention, but not for the reasons often cited. The mayor’s crack smoking, binge drinking and seemingly terminal foot-in-mouth disease grab headlines, but the media coverage seldom serves up anything approaching political analysis. Instead, it relies on simplistic, divisive explanations

Toronto mayor Rob Ford is a political phenomenon deserving of close attention, but not for the reasons often cited. The mayor’s crack smoking, binge drinking and seemingly terminal foot-in-mouth disease grab headlines, but the media coverage seldom serves up anything approaching political analysis. Instead, it relies on simplistic, divisive explanations

Here are some troubling facts that we should all know: 500,000+ homeless people across Canada; 4,000+ homeless people on Toronto streets and in overcrowded, disease-ridden shelters; 80,000-90,000 underhoused, at-risk families on Toronto’s “social housing” waiting list during last 5 years; 150,000+ people forced to use food banks in Ontario; 50,000+

Of all the hypocrisies revealed by Stephen Harper, perhaps none are so morally offensive as his sudden, solemn respect for Nelson Mandela. We will never know how Harper would reconcile his past attitudes towards apartheid with his trip to South Africa to honour the iconic statesman at his memorial. In