Mark Carney exposes the usually hidden fangs of capitalism
Photo courtesy Mark Carney/X I come to this as a student of occupational health and safety law and regulation. A comparison has drifted into view as the Carney government enthusiastically…
Harry Glasbeek
How the Liberals are eroding workers’ Charter-protected rights
Victoria Canada Post workers on strike in November, 2024. Photo courtesy CUPW. In mid-June, Minister of Jobs and Families Patty Hadju asked the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) to conduc...
The ‘elbows up’ campaign for a Canada the left does not want
Prime Minister Mark Carney. Photo courtesy Liberal Party of Canada/Facebook. Trump imposed tariffs, insulted us and threatened us. Unsurprisingly everyone wrapped themselves in the Canadian flag...
A lawyer’s perspective on the pro-Palestine encampments
Pro-Palestine encampment on the grounds of McGill University, Montréal. Photo courtesy Ellen Gabriel/X. A trite observation: One of the striking aspects of the fuss about pro-Palestine campaigns on university campuses…
Harry Glasbeek on how the law keeps workers’ aspirations firmly in check
Cartoon of American industrialist Andrew Carnegie, 1900. Illustration by Udo J. Keppler. Image courtesy Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons. The following is an excerpt from Law at Work: The Coercion and…
Ford, CUPE, class struggle and the Charter
CUPE education workers and other supporters amass at Queen’s Park to protest after the Ontario government enacted the notwithstanding clause to legislate a contract on the union. Photo courtesy CUPE.…
Canada’s eviscerated democracy
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a campaign rally in Vancouver, November 18, 2019. Photo from Facebook. On September 20, Canadians voted to hold the line. While forty seats changed hands,…
As slogans die, dots are joined
A man walks beside a mural portraying a person wearing a gas mask, Milan, Italy. Photo from Shutterstock. I have lived in a number of cities in different countries: a…
The pandemic and capitalism’s essential workers
When it comes to essential services, workers must continue to deliver them. On the other hand, capitalism sees the freedom of capitalists not to deliver essential services as sacrosanct. Photo…
Remembering Leo Panitch—an iconic figure of the Canadian left
Leo Panitch (1945-2020), Professor Emeritus at York University in Toronto. Photo from Wikimedia Commons. The numerous writings and comments spurred by Leo Panitch’s death have expressed shock, grief, gratitude and…
Divided health and the crisis of capitalism
The 16,000-square-foot Pandemic Response Unit at Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington, Ontario. The field hospital was built as a worsening wave of COVID-19 infections pushed the health care system to…
Meng Wanzhou, Huawei and Canadian Law
Huawei booth at the Mobile World Congress 2015 Barcelona. Photo by Kārlis Dambrāns/Flickr. One of the graver risks for big-time criminals is that investigators will be able to identify them…
The Pandemic From a Lawyer’s Perspective
A medical operations officer prepares test samples from the mobile laboratory parked at the Wyoming Public Health Laboratory in Cheyenne, Wyoming, May 4, 2020. Photo by Jacqueline Marshall/Flickr. “We are…
The Two Viruses: COVID-19 and Capitalism
We are living in a pandemic. These are unprecedented times. Not to worry: our political leadership is taking this all very seriously. They will do everything necessary, we are told,…
SNC-Lavalin: How Canada tilts the law toward protecting capitalists
SNC-Lavalin headquarters in Montréal. File photo courtesy of the Canadian Press. SNC-Lavalin got the deal it had been gunning for since 2016. By then it knew that the RCMP, embarrassed…
Trudeau and SNC-Lavalin: Of Hosts and Parasites
Photo by Jeangagnon Every now and again the sophisticated web of myths and fantasies that hides the brutality and ugliness of capitalism is ripped away by sleazy and rapacious actors.…
Oshawa and Postal Workers: Big and Small Lies We Accept
Photo by Dalson Chen In 1979, Canada’s postal union (CUPW) bargained and bargained with the employer. Eventually, having exhausted all possibilities, it made the decision, supported by a huge majority…
Parasites in paradise: behind the capitalist curtain
Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite Jake Dernstein Henry Holt & Co., 2017 Every year, sometimes several times a year, the…
The Presumed Innocence of Capitalism and Lac-Mégantic
“If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who creates the darkness.” — Monseigneur Bienvenu…