Rabble

In 2011, the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute released a report analyzing whether “natural” gas could be considered a “bridging fuel” during the necessary transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. It concluded that Canada should focus on developing more renewable energy, not fossil fuels, including gas. Yet, after many years, as prices for renewable energy drop and technologies continue to improve, some are still touting fossil gas as a “bridge fuel” — or even a climate solution.

A couple of new reports, including one prepared for the David Suzuki Foundation, show that fossil gas is actually a costly bridge to more pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

Since 2011, we’ve learned more about fossil gas problems, especially considering that most is now obtained from “unconventional” reserves. That means hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for shale gas, in which difficult-to-extract gas is released and brought to the surface by pumping massive amounts of pressurized liquids and chemicals into the ground to break up rock and rock formations. It’s a relatively expensive process and uses enormous amounts of water.

One new report finds not only that fossil gas isn’t an adequate “bridge fuel” but that exported gas also has a greater climate impact than coal over a 20-year period. Production and liquefying shale gas to make liquefied natural gas, or LNG, uses a lot of energy. The gas is mostly methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over the short term. Leaks, deliberate venting and incomplete combustion during extraction, production and transport can cause significant climate impacts. Studies, including some by the David Suzuki Foundation, have found that methane leaks are far higher than industry and governments estimate.

The Cornell University report, published in Energy Science & Engineering, found that burning the gas accounts for 34 per cent of its greenhouse gas footprint, while “upstream and midstream” methane emissions make up 38 per cent. Including the energy required to produce LNG brings it to 47 per cent. The liquefaction process and tanker transport add to the total. The global warming potential of LNG as a fuel is 33 per cent greater than that of coal over a 20-year period (and is still equal to or greater than coal over a 100-year period), the report concludes.

“To think we should be shipping around this gas as a climate solution is just plain wrong,” report author Robert Howarth, an environmental scientist, told the Guardian. “It’s greenwashing from oil and gas companies that has severely underestimated the emissions from this type of energy.”

Focusing on timelines through the lens of election cycles, unimaginative politicians often see gas production as a quick and easy economic boost, and so they buy into industry propaganda and greenwashing. That’s led to support and subsidies to propel a possible LNG-for-export boom in British Columbia.

A new report from Carbon Tracker with the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute shows that’s not a viable solution. “Turning Tides: The economic risks of B.C.’s LNG expansion in a changing energy market” finds that continuing and expanding B.C.’s LNG-for-export industry is a risky investment. The International Energy Agency reports that LNG export capacity will exceed demand, which will “depress international gas prices and set the stage for fierce competition between suppliers.”

Whether the transition is fast or slow, returns will be minimal. As for global markets, large volumes can be supplied at lower prices from producers including Qatar, Australia and Mozambique. Asian markets are uncertain and appear to be contracting. That means the four LNG terminals in B.C. waiting for investment decisions will likely not be able to compete with lower-cost suppliers on global markets.

No matter how hard the fossil fuel industry and its supporters try to keep their destructive, outdated industry alive, it’s time to face reality. Fracking for more climate-altering gas is not a solution, for the climate or economy. We have cheaper, cleaner and healthier ways to produce energy. We also need to redouble efforts to improve energy efficiency, doing more with less and saving money in the process. There’s no room for more fossil fuel development — whether it’s coal, oil or gas — on a rapidly overheating planet.

It’s time to leave all fossil fuels in the ground — including gas!

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with David Suzuki Foundation Senior Writer and Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at davidsuzuki.org.

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With its surprise decision to cashier the entire board and the top executive of the supposedly independent Alberta Investment Management Corp., we see once again that the United Conservative Party (UCP) is determined to control everything, everywhere, all at once. 

And if you’re an Albertan, that includes your retirement savings in the Canada Pension Plan Investment Fund.

Indeed, we can be certain this shocking announcement has something to do with that scheme, because chronic underperformance by AIMCo, as the provincial Crown investment corporation is commonly known, has been a frequent target of critics of the UCP’s planned pension grab. 

Under the headline “Restoring confidence in AIMCo,” the government said in a terse and unexpected news release yesterday that “after years of AIMCo consistently failing to meet its mandated benchmark returns, the Minister of Finance will be making changes to restore confidence in Alberta’s investment agency.”

But why now?

The release complained about a 96-per-cent increase in management fees at AIMCo between 2019 and 2023 and a 29-per-cent increase in the number of employees while the Crown corporation managed a smaller percentage of funds internally – although the news release made no effort to explain exactly what that last point meant. 

“Alberta’s government has decided to reset the investment corporation’s focus,” the news release said mildly. “All board appointments have been rescinded and a new board will be established after a permanent chair is named.” That, according to the release, is supposed to take place within 30 days. 

“In the interim, President of Treasury Board and Minister of Finance Nate Horner has been appointed the sole director and chair for AIMCo, effective immediately” – which is not really reassuring for a supposedly arm’s length company managing $169 billion in pension investments. 

Notwithstanding the 30-day promise, a cabinet order set Horner’s term as chair of the AIMCo Board to run until the end of September 2025. 

Accusing the UCP of wanting to control everything, everywhere, all at once was a clever tribute to the 2022 comedy-drama movie of the same name first used by NDP Opposition Justice Critic Irfan Sabir last spring to describe the UCP fiddling with its own fixed election date law to give itself a little extra time in office. 

“Danielle Smith said during the election that Albertans were her bosses,” added Rachel Notley, who was leader of the Opposition at the time, “but it is clear now that she intends to be the boss of everyone.”

Those lines could certainly be applied with similar effect to yesterday’s bombshell. 

A comprehensive article in The Globe and Mail – which, sorry, is located behind a paywall – revealed that in addition to the 10 board members referred to but not named in the news release, Chief Executive Officer Evan Siddall and three other unnamed executives had been canned. 

Siddall, who was appointed CEO on July 1, 2021, with a mandate to turn the company around after its big trading losses during the pandemic, had been the long-time president and CEO of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Judging from his Wikipedia biography, he seems to have attended meetings of the World Economic Forum and the Bilderberg Group, which must have made certain MAGA-minded members of the UCP Caucus feel as if they had ants in their pants. 

Or maybe it was Siddall’s decision to let Alberta’s teachers have a limited role in the management of their pension fund, which had been grabbed by the UCP in 2019 and handed over to AIMCo amid great controversy. Indeed, some of those additional pension employees the government was complaining about likely came from the management arm of the teachers’ pension fund. 

Whatever happened, NDP Finance Critic Court Ellingson told the Globe that Siddall and some of his colleagues showed up at a public meeting of the standing committee on the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund on Wednesday and there was no hint anything was afoot. 

Ellingson said in a statement sent to media yesterday afternoon that firing the entire board and the CEO is too drastic a measure for this just to be about AIMCo salaries “when this government passed legislation to remove the caps on salaries for board members.”

“The premier herself appointed some of these AIMCo directors,” he said. “The finance minister himself said this spring that AIMCo was doing a good job.”

He also argued that even in a temporary role, having a partisan politician at the helm of a supposedly arm’s length agency investing 375,000 Albertans’ retirement savings is troubling.

It certainly seems to have unsettled some in investment circles. The Globe quoted the director emeritus of the International Centre for Pension Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Keith Ambachtsheer, saying the move “should be construed as a government takeover of (an) asset pool that belongs to the people of Alberta.”

Ellingson argued “AIMCo’s poor returns are a clear reflection of the UCP’s incompetence.”

“We have raised concerns about their poor returns for years, and we’ve noted AIMCo’s returns have been below that of the Canada Pension Plan,” he said. “Until now, the UCP even proposed using AIMCo to manage the proposed Alberta Pension Plan. Any such APP scheme should now be completely off the table.”

Count on it, though, the opposite is true. If this indicates anything, it’s that the UCP still covets the CPP’s investment funds and saw AIMCo’s returns as an impediment to that ambition. Nor does the party value independent minds in positions of oversight. 

Interestingly, another Order in Council published yesterday “approves the incorporation of a Provincial corporation for the purpose of managing and investing all or a portion of Crown assets.”

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Whoever forms the next Canadian government, no matter how sympathetic they may be right now to next January’s MAGA Restoration south of the Medicine Line, the next four years at least are bound to be interesting ones for Canada. 

Interesting, that is, in the sense of that famous folk curse.

This also goes for provincial governments like Alberta’s, whose leaders may think that with Donald J. Trump in the White House again it’ll be smooth sailing for oilsands bitumen all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Alas for all of us, the next president of the United States, just as when he was the next to last president of the United States, is a fellow who believes that every game must be a zero-sum game, with a clear winner and a clear loser. Every. Single. Time. 

And so Canada, and Alberta too, are sure to be cast in the role of losers, even if Trump didn’t mean that stuff he said about bitumen on Super Tuesday last spring. “I call it tar. It’s not oil. It’s terrible. … So for all of the environmentalists, you ought to look at that because all of that tar is going right up into the atmosphere!”

Yes, Alberta may finally get its Keystone XL Pipeline, but we’ll have to pay for it. Again. 

As for that billion and a half Loonies former Alberta premier Jason Kenney gave away to get it built almost five years ago, you can count on it to stay gone. Remember where you heard it first. 

Anyway, as the author of The Art of the Deal no doubt understands better than most, fanboys and girls who just can’t walk away from a deal make lousy negotiators. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party are straining like greyhounds in the slips to prove that all over again. 

We may have the longest undefended border on earth, but we can no longer assume for at least as long as Trump is president that the United States will automatically be our ally. Both our increasingly unpopular Liberal prime minister and his Conservative rival will try to persuade us that they have the secret sauce required to deal with Trump’s next administration. Neither is likely to have gotten that right. 

We can probably blame former PM Brian Mulroney for tying our economy so closely to the United States 36 years ago, and we will now have to live with the consequences of a relationship gone bad that critics of the deal warned us about. 

Oh well. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and, in truth, there might not have been much alternative even then. Why speak ill of the dead? Mulroney may have bought us some time. Too bad we didn’t use it very well. 

Trump’s planned 10-per-cent tariff may not do much good for the U.S. economy either, but it’s bound to do more harm to ours. That may just be fine with Trump’s supporters Stateside, as long as someone else is hurt even more than they are. Indeed, understanding that is the key to understanding Trump’s unlikely and undeniable success. 

Where there were once many guardrails to keep Trump from running off the road, now there will be none for the life of what numerous commentators are calling Trump 2.0.

So let’s just say Stephen Harper’s oft-reviled 2012 trade deal with China, despite the current brouhaha about foreign interference in Canadian elections and the former prime minister’s recent endorsement of Trump, may soon start to look wise and far-sighted!

I know, dear readers, that some of you don’t like it when I venture into geopolitics, but here are a few more hot-take predictions about the second Trump presidency in the aftermath of yesterday’s US presidential election.

First, there’s no need to do an Andrei Amalrik and wonder if the United States can survive another 15 years. It will certainly celebrate its 250th anniversary in 2026, despite the dire warnings made by Trump’s opponents in the leadup to Tuesday’s vote, and will likely last another half-century or so without changes to its borders. But there is no way Trump is going to make it great again. The U.S. is in an irreversible post-imperial slide, and we are living in a multi-polar world again. 

If you doubt me, watch what happens under the next Trump presidency to the carefully curated international agreements and institutions that did make America great. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for example, sure feels like it’s done for. Now, a great bureaucracy like NATO will never just disappear – but it may have to turn its headquarters in Brussels into a tourist attraction to justify its existence. The Wittelsbach monarchy of Bavaria is long gone, too, but you can still visit their Residenz in Munich. 

Letting the United States blow up the Nord Stream pipeline in 2022 is going to start to look like a hell of a mistake to Europe, and especially Germany, now that Old Unreliable is back in the White House. Will the Europeans take control of their own fate now that the U.S.A. is folding into itself, or will they fall to squabbling amongst one another like 1914? My crystal ball is cloudy, but change there will have to be over there if there is no change over here. 

How long will it take for the AUKUS nuclear sub scheme to fall apart, by most accounts a spectacularly terrible deal for Australia, now that the Biden Presidency is fading into history? Trump is no friend of China, but in addition to the costs and loss of Australian sovereignty, one imagines that the Aussies will realize that in a crunch it may be more dangerous to be America’s friend than it is to be its enemy, just as Henry Kissinger famously pointed out. (Or didn’t. The provenance of almost all great lines is disputed.) We’ll soon realize we were lucky not to get caught in that expensive trap. 

International courts? Currency trading deals? Your Visa card that works in Europe? All these things were designed in part to ensure the economic primacy of America and the status of the Greenback as the world’s reserve currency. Under Trump, all are likely to be at risk. 

And in what form will Trumpism survive when the undeniably charismatic Trump fails from dementia or dyspepsia before the end of his second term? In that event – quite likely, it is said here – his automatic replacement is scheduled to be the utterly uncharismatic J.D. Vance. Or will Ivanka step forward to be America’s first electable female president? 

One final prediction, hordes of disillusioned progressives are not likely to stream across the border to escape Trump, despite pre-election warnings, but enough well-heeled liberal Americans will buy a pied- à-terre in one of Canada’s nicer coastal cities to keep the housing and cost-of-living crisis here at a boil. They’ll come not just because the next president is an autocrat, or even a fascist, but because he’s an embarrassment.

The post Some post-election-night hot takes on the coming MAGA Restoration appeared first on rabble.ca.

As November 11 approaches, it can be disheartening to see the rise of militarism, war and genocide across the world. The annual White Poppy Campaign aims to recognize all of the victims of war, not just those who fought in uniform, but civilians and innocent bystanders as well.

Since 2009, Vancouver Peace Poppies have actively worked to promote the message of the white poppy in their community.

Teresa Gagné is a co-founder of Vancouver Peace Poppies. In an interview with rabble.ca, she explained that rather than being a symbol of remembrance, the white poppy symbolizes the need forpeace.

“Remembering is important, but it’s not enough,” said Gagné. “If we’re gonna stop and take a day to remember the costs and consequences of war, we gotta stop and be willing to remember all the costs and consequences, not just the ones that make us feel good about ourselves and our country.”

Remembering is not enough

After World War I, the Red Poppy Campaign was created to remember the allied soldiers who lost their lives in that conflict. The campaign was later extended to remember Canadians and their allies who fought in any conflict.

War has changed however. Gagné explained that in World War I, only about 10 per cent of the casualties in that war were civilians.

As we’re seeing in modern day conflicts in Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine, the number of civilian victims of war has grown significantly in the last century.

The White Poppy campaign is to remember all victims of war and to truly drive home the message of: Never Again.

“All those comfortable concepts like valor and patriotism and sacrifice, we gotta be willing to remember also the uncomfortable things, the wasted lives, excessive force, devastation, social trauma, and all those ruined lives. And we also think it’s important to look at the effect of war on the environment,” said Gagné.

The environmental cost of war

War is an environmental disaster. Not only does war destroy and scar beautiful natural landscapes, it also emits a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

According to a report by Scientists for Global Responsibility, in 2022, all of the world’s militaries combined accounted for 5.5 per cent of global emissions for that year. If the world’s militaries were a state, they would be the world’s fourth largest greenhouse gas emitter.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) monitors the impacts that war has on the environment. It has found that the war in Ukraine has led to a toxic poisoning of the ecosystems of that country. Not only has the landscape been devastated thanks to munitions that have been expended, but also due to spilled oil from destroyed refineries as well as other toxic chemicals and radiation released into the environment thanks to damage to nuclear installations and other facilities.

“The mapping and initial screening of environmental hazards only serves to confirm that war is quite literally toxic,” said UNEP executive director Inger Andersen in a UNEP report. “The first priority is for this senseless destruction to end now. The environment is about people: it’s about livelihoods, public health, clean air and water, and basic food systems. It’s about a safe future for Ukrainians and their neighbours, and further damage must not be done.”

Peace movement continues to grow

When Vancouver Peace Poppies began in 2009, they started with distributing just 500 white poppies.

Now, 15 years later, Gagné says they are distributing an average of 5,000 white poppies every year.

“It’s made a difference. It really opened up the discussion. When we started, it was quite controversial, and I won’t say that there’s no controversy anymore, but most people are quite accepting of the idea that we need to also be willing to count the civilian costs and not just remember the military,” said Gagné.

There particularly has been a growing interest in schools, where teachers have approached Vancouver Peace Poppies about having white poppies for their students, so that they can wear a white poppy alongside their red one if they choose.

Vancouver Peace Poppies will be holding a white poppy ceremony on Monday, November 11 from 2pm to 3:30pm Pacific time at the Vancouver Unitarian Centre.

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Well, it’s official: Donald Trump will be the 47th president of the United States.

So… now what?

For those in and out of the States, the news comes as a bit of a shock. Despite the presidential race being a tight one, particularly over the past few weeks, there were those who held out hope that Kamala Harris and her “new way forward” was going to win out.

But no. Instead, the convicted felon with a history of sexual abuse toward women won.

This week on rabble radio, rabble editor Nick Seebruch joins parliamentary reporter Karl Nerenberg by phone from France to discuss what Trump’s win means for America, Canada and beyond.

Karl Nerenberg is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and filmmaker, working in both English and French languages. He is rabble’s senior parliamentary reporter.

If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. 

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The United States has elected a fascist president with unchecked powers. What the effect on Canada will be. An interview with the president of Unifor, Lana Payne. The resistance against fascism in the US. The LabourStart Report about union events. And singing: ‘All You Fascists Bound to Lose’.

RadioLabour is the international labour movement’s radio service. It reports on labour union events around the world with a focus on unions in the developing world. It partners with rabble to provide coverage of news of interest to Canadian workers.

The post And now the resistance . . . appeared first on rabble.ca.

You couldn’t make this up, but you don’t have to because it’s happening. Sylvan Adams, a looney Zionist billionaire, unknown outside a circle of funders of McGill University in Montreal, thinks he can reunite Pink Floyd to promote and celebrate the genocide of the Palestinian people. Hmmm?

In a recent interview with The Canadian Jewish News, Mr. Adams, who in the past has paid both the pop singer Madonna and the Argentine National football team to whitewash Israeli apartheid, says he’s trying to have Pink Floyd reform to play a concert in Israel at one of the kibitzes affected by the attack on October 7, 2023. Mr. Adams is quick to avow that this plan would not include the “Nutball” Roger Waters. Well at least you got that right dopey.

Mr. Adams revealed his “fantasy” to reunite Pink Floyd, (AKA Nick Mason and David Gilmour) would be part of a concerted campaign to attack conscientious students at McGill University who are protesting the genocide of the Palestinian people. MrAdams, who has had business cards printed describing himself as “Ambassador for Israel”, is demanding that McGill expel all the students opposing genocide. Already, McGill forced the student union to suspend the student group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights and sought court injunctions to ban all protests on campus, but this isn’t enough for this heir to a fortune. Adams wants to destroy these conscientious young people’s prospects. Labeling student activists “antisemite fashionistas”, Mr. Adams claims they are funded by Iran, Qatar and China, countries who he claims have spent “trillions of dollars” to “infiltrate campuses”.

In response to Mr. Adams’ authoritarian pressure, I’ve signed a letter to McGill president Deep Saini, which the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute and Just Peace Advocates have turned into an e-mail campaign. Please support the students who have been organizing on their campus to promote international human rights and justice for Palestinians under international law.

In March 2022 seventy-one percent of McGill undergraduates voted to boycott “corporations and institutions complicit in settler-colonial apartheid against Palestinians.” In response the administration threatened to defund the student union if it ratified the vote. Even more impressive, last November 2023 78.7 per cent of undergraduates called on the administration to sever ties with “any corporations, institutions or individuals complicit in genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.” Still, the McGill administration refused to listen. So, now students have rallied, some have gone on hunger strike and together they organized a months-long encampment to push for divestment.

Increasingly the administration and Zionist donors are repressing student protesters. In his, ‘it would be funny if it weren’t so desperately sad,’ interview Mr. Adams proudly identifies a group of wealthy Zionist donors leveraging their wealth to suppress the McGill students’ brave opposition to Israel’s genocidal policy in all the occupied territories.

Mr. Adams also boasts that he and President Deep Saini “agree on everything.” Both men have demonstrated total indifference to Palestinian suffering. Over the past year in Gaza Israel has destroyed everything including almost all the hospitals, and schools and universities, everything then can in an onslaught that’s killed over 100,000. The Lancet medical journal recently reported that the situation in Gaza vis a vis lack of healthcare is so dire that pregnancy is increasingly becoming a death sentence for both mother and child. Yeah let that sink in.

Mr. Adams does not reserve his capacity for racism for his anti-Palestinian bigotry. In the interview he disparages the former Black woman president of Harvard as “incompetent” and a “DEI hire”. He rants about Muslim and Arab immigrants seeking “Sharia law” who fail to “assimilate” to Canadian society. Mr. Adams concludes that “all Western countries are doomed” because Muslim immigrants “are after conquest”.

Mr. Adams, like most racist supremacists, is most likely a coward. It’s a penny to a pound, this “self-described “ambassador for Israel” wouldn’t have the gall or the balls to debate either of these issues in public,

1. Whether Israel is committing genocide?

2. Whether wealthy donors should be allowed to dictate university policy?

I suspect Mr. Adams will demur, preferring to work behind the scenes with his wealthy friends to press McGill’s president to expel these courageous students for opposing this monstrous genocide.

Also, I wish him the worst possible luck in the world in his attempts to suborn the name Pink Floyd, a name I am proud to have helped create, to celebrate the obscene horrors that the state he is so proud to represent has wreaked upon this our hapless world. 

Sincerely,

Roger Waters

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Inflation fell to a rate of 1.6 per cent in September. As a result, the Bank of Canada has been lowering its interest rates. Federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland celebrated cooling inflation and decreasing interest rates on Wednesday, noting that wages in Canada have outpaced inflation for 20 months.

However, for many working Canadians, recent news of a recovering economy has had little bearing on their daily lives. 

Aaron Westaway, a retail worker living in Ottawa, said changes in inflation rates don’t mean much to him, despite the hopeful headlines he encounters. Westaway had to make major lifestyle changes to accommodate the record high prices in 2022, and the cooling economy has yet to bring his life back to normal.

Every month, after spending half his income on rent, Westaway must make a few hundred dollars last. Grocery prices hit him hard, so he has found other ways to save money. To save on transit costs, he walks for more than an hour between his house and his job.

“There’s definitely a fitness component to it, but the larger component is that it saves on money,” Westaway said.

The rich got richer

An early October report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) showed the purchasing power of Canada’s wealthiest households increased in 2023. Higher interest rates mean higher payments on loans, but it also means higher investment income.

A report from Statistics Canada, released in the same week, showed the gap in disposable income between Canada’s richest and poorest has become the highest it has ever been since the agency began collecting this data in 1999. Income from financial assets has led the wealth gap to widen as well.

D.T. Cochrane, senior economist at the Canadian Labour Congress, has previously told rabble.ca that interest rate hikes have led to weakening of the labour market from a worker’s perspective. He said he has been tracking several indicators which signal, to him, that recent interest rate hikes could ultimately do more harm than good. In September, there was a year over year increase in the number of people working part-time despite looking for full-time work. In addition, the youth unemployment rate sat at 13 per cent in September, a rate higher than it was at the same time last year.

“We all benefit when the total amount of labor power that’s on offer is being put to use,” he said. “There is a ton of work that needs to be done[…] We should be making sure that every single person who is ready, willing and able to offer their labor power is allowed to do so. We should be making use of all labor power to accomplish the socially necessary things we know need to be achieved.”

The Bank of Canada has taken too much credit for cooling inflation and not enough responsibility for unemployment, according to Mario Seccareccia, professor emeritus from the University of Ottawa’s economics department. He co-wrote a primer in 2020 that explored whether interest rates effectively target inflation. He and his co-author found that changes in interest rates directly impact income inequality and only indirectly affect inflation.

“It cannot have a direct impact on the inflation rate, because it’s people that are setting prices. There are all kinds of decisions taken by business firms in how they set these prices,” Seccareccia said. “To give you a simple example, the fact that the Bank of Canada raises interest doesn’t mean that the price of oil internationally is going to change as a result. There’s no connection whatsoever.”

Higher interest rates didn’t cool inflation

Jim Stanford, economist and director of the Centre for Future Work, wrote in 2023 that rising interest rates did affect inflation, just not in the way the Bank of Canada intended. He noted that between March and April 2023, there was a small uptick in inflation. The official Statistics Canada announcement said this uptick was mainly caused by rent prices and mortgage interest costs. Stanford said both of these factors are direct consequences of higher interest rates.

Seccareccia said interest rate hikes discourage spending, which is what the Bank of Canada intends. The nasty side-effect, however, is growth will slow significantly and unemployment will rise. This can eventually lead to a recession. Seccareccia said he knows for a fact this can happen because he witnessed it when the American central bank raised interest rates in the early 1980s. In 1981 and 1982, there was a subsequent recession.

“It’s like starving the patient to cure the disease,” he said.

The way to directly target inflation and increase consumer spending, he said, is to make full employment a priority. Full employment is difficult to pull off in the current situation because the Bank of Canada’s mandate is laser-focused on inflation targets.

Before the pandemic, Seccareccia signed onto a petition calling for the bank’s mandate to be amended to include other economic goals such as full employment.

“I’m old enough. I could tell you right now, I remember when Louis Rasminsky Fonds was the Bank of Canada governor from 1962 to 1973,” Seccateccoa said. “He was not afraid to pronounce the words full employment.”

The Bank of Canada has indeed shown their primary concern is inflation. When the inflation rate hit a record high of eight per cent in the summer of 2022, the Bank of Canada raised its interest rates ten times between then and today.

 “I’d emphasize that inflation control is the Bank’s primary mandate,” said Alex Paterson, a spokesperson for the Bank of Canada, “The Bank has long said that a healthy labour market and low, stable and predictable inflation go hand in hand.”  

He pointed to comments made by the bank’s governor, Tiff Macklem, in June. Macklem said labour market adjustments are never evenly distributed and monetary policy cannot target specific parts of it. He acknowledged the growing slack in the labour market during a Q&A in September. Now that inflation is closer to target, Macklem said the bank is hoping to see growth speed up.

Carolyn Rogers,  the senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, said in a speech on Wednesday that the last five years have been eventful. There has been a pandemic, the sharpest economic downturn in a century, followed by the fastest recovery on record, and a big spike in inflation, she said. 

“Lately, it’s been good to see inflation back to our 2 per cent target,” Rogers said. “Monetary policy worked, not painlessly, but it did get inflation under control without creating the sharp economic downturn that many feared.” 

Westaway, who sees himself as an average working Canadian, said he is not too interested in the debate around what should be included in the Bank of Canada’s mandate. What he wants is for his purchasing power to increase if inflation is down.  

“My main concern is I’m not able to save money,” Westaway said. “I’ve had multiple times in the last year where I’ve basically just had rice up until I get my next paycheck.”

As the winter months approach, Westaway said he knows he cannot keep walking to and from work for hours. Transit fares in the winter often cause him grief. He said he hopes he can see life become more affordable, until then, celebrations of cooling inflation rates are merely words.

“I’m hearing this mainly from political pundits or experts,” he said. “I want to see it really translate into my everyday life.”

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Over 33,000 Boeing workers in Washington state and Oregon,  represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM local 751 and W 24) have been on strike against the aerospace giant since early September. Despite US government pressure to settle the dispute and loudly voiced concerns from employer class spokesmen about the strike’s impact on supply chains and the larger US economy, the Boeing workers voted by a 64 per cent majority to reject the company’s latest offer. In an example of pro-business pressure for a settlement, the Republican governors of Missouri, Montana and Utah (Governors Mike Parson, Greg Gianforte and Spencer Cox), wrote a letter urging Boeing and the union to end the strike, expressing their concern as to the “far-reaching” impact on their states and on Boeing’s supply chain.

And Ken Herbert, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, after the contract rejection told investors that “the clock is ticking for Boeing.”

“The potential impact of the strike on the supply chain is becoming a greater concern,” he wrote.

While discussions between the union and employer reopened on October 29, Boeing workers seem determined to hold on until they get a settlement that restores pension entitlement lost in a hated giveaway contract a decade ago. They are also calling for other contract  improvements. Rank and file militants at Boeing are leading the fight and have called for international solidarity.

At a meeting held on October 27, 175 workers from Canada, Australia, Germany, Britain, Brazil, and from across the US, called on workers world-wide to support the Boeing strike.

The issues in this dispute have profound implications for Canadian workers. Daniel, a Canadian postal  worker who attended, told the meeting: “The fact remains that our unions are aligned in a corporate tripartite alliance with the government and with management. The cowardly union bureaucrats, IAM and CUPW (Canadian Union of Postal Workers)  included, would never dream of defying strike-breaking legislation, which would require the broad mobilization of workers across industry and across geographic lines, such as we are doing right now.”

Andy Niklaus, a bus driver from Germany, told the Boeing workers: “I would like to start by expressing our unreserved solidarity and support for your strike. We are very impressed that for the second time you have rejected, by a large majority, the miserable collective agreement drawn up and signed by the bureaucrats of the IAM. We must fight back all attacks on wages, working conditions and pensions. And we have to defend all jobs,” he said, noting that more than 120,000 jobs in the German auto sector were threatened.

The Boeing workers will need all the support they can muster. Boeing spokespeople have insisted that there is “no scenario” in which the company will restore the pension entitlements given away by union leadership a decade ago, and the company has already enacted a brutal  retaliation against strikers by cutting their health care coverage.

And the business press is buzzing with alarmist claims that the strike will cripple Boeing, despite the fact that wages and benefits for workers at the aerospace giant only represent five per cent of the company’s production costs, and despite the fact that Boeing’s current troubles have more to do with management’s cost cutting measures and the resulting disastrous safety issues with Boeing planes than with what the company pays its workers.

Apart from the general need for international solidarity when workers square off against big companies with global reach , there are ways that the strike at the aerospace multinational engages issues that are vital for Canadian workers. It is in our interest to support the Boeing militants, as well as being the right thing to do ethically. Although the IAM’s international membership of 600,000 workers give it some leverage, real questions exist about how far the union leadership is willing to go to win its stated demands.

For the Boeing workers, restoring the pension plans frozen a decade ago is a key issue, and Canadian workers, too, know what it is like to work without adequate pension protection, in both the public and private sectors. According to the National Association of Federal Retirees: “The percentage of public-sector employees who have DB (defined benefit) plans has declined by about four per cent over the past 20 years while the number of private-sector DB pension plans has dropped from 21.9 per cent in 1997 to 9.2 per cent in 2017, as many employers move toward defined-contribution plans, putting investment risk on employees’ shoulders. Two-thirds of Canadians do not belong to a workplace pension plan at all, and these numbers are not improving. Many argue that governments and public-sector employers should also move away from DB plans, as seen in New Brunswick where the provincial government moved public-sector pensions to “shared-risk” plans. Other provinces, such as Nova Scotia and Manitoba, are considering similar moves.”

Although Canadian levels of unionization are higher than those in the US, and consequently workers here do enjoy more union benefits than workers in the States, our levels of union membership are lower than they used to be and the dire, looming prospect of a Conservative win in the next federal election may well lead to new attacks on unions and the rights Canadian workers have won over the last century. And as the Canadian postal worker quoted above suggests, we cannot always count on union leaders to fight as hard as they should to forestall such attacks and develop fightback tactics. Canadian workers should find ways to support the militants spearheading the Boeing struggle directly by linking to organizations like the Boeing Workers Rank-and-File committee at boeingworkersrfc@gmail.com and by pushing our unions to support the Boeing struggle. We are all in the same boat on both sides of the border, and the employers mean to sink it if they can.

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After the discovery of 215 unmarked graves of children at Kamloops Indian Residential School, British Columbia in 2021, the Survivor’s Secretariat was established to search for unmarked graves in the 600 acres of land around Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ontario.

This institute operated from 1831 until 1970 and was the site of immense suffering for some 15,000 Indigenous children who were forced to attend the facility. The explicit intent was to separate these children from their families and cultures. 

The federal government established the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in 2021, which is held annually on September 30. This is to acknowledge that the current state of Indigenous education, health, living, and welfare in Canada is a direct result of previous Canadian governments’ policies.

The present government is trying to atone for past mistakes, to right such horrifying wrongs, and move forward with Canadian and international law, the Charter of Human Rights and implementing the treaties. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its final report in 2015 and recommended 94 calls to Action for the Canadian government to act. These are recommendations meant to help the healing process in two ways: acknowledging the horrifying history of the residential school’s system and creating new systems to prevent these abuses from ever happening again in the future.

But the Indigenous communities searching for missing children are still seeking answers in 2024, to the question, what happened to children who never came home?

Like all other human beings, the residential school children were also descendants of the same creator created them. They had the same ambitions, desires, and dreams to enjoy this beautiful world, but they were denied a happy life and saw only tensions and tortures. Unfortunately, all this happened in one of the so called most civilized parts of the world, North America. 

What happened at residential schools was genocide. To understand its depth and intensity, it’s important to peep into the minds of Indigenous intellectuals and writers.

Three Indigenous writers, Dr. Suzanne Shoush, Chyana Marie Sage, and Keisha Erwin when asked how Canada can move forward by changing the way people feel about the tragedy of residential schools, they explained the reality.

Dr. Suzanne Shoush, said, as a country we have struggled to find solutions that would open the road to reconciliation. The findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the result of the great strength of Indigenous people. It is the voices of those who survived through centuries of transgenerational atrocities with the determination to hold this country to account, honour the truth and change the future. She believes Canada relied on widespread philosophies deeply rooted in anti-Indigenous racism to colonize the land, claim ownership of resources, and develop a legalized system for racial oppression within a democracy, known as the Indian Act, which still stands with some amendments. This law created the Indian residential school system.

Chusna Marie Sage said that around 1835 when the residential school system was implemented the RCMP was established at the same time to control Indigenous populations. This all was done under Prime Minister John A. MacDonald, who used all tools to segregate and “kill the Indian in the child,“ in his own words. She adds these reflections are still seen in the prison system today.

Keisha Erwin said, despite the vital role the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has played in unraveling the injustices done in the past, we are far from reaching reconciliation. The chapter is not closed, and colonialism is still alive and well in Canada. As of right now, the government might say these are “completed “on their website but talk is cheap, and we have a long way to go.

In the light of the above views, we can say government is working in the right direction, but still we need to bring Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians together in a concerted effort to help repair the harm caused by residential schools and move forward with reconciliation. This will restore the trust of Indigenous Canadians and let them completely know what happened to their children.

Not only parents, but also Indigenous poets and thinkers keep remembering missing them, as Sidney Lynn writes in her famous poem” Missing children.”

“No laughter in the streets, just wind.

Where all children have been?

Once so cozy in their beds. Now all have been left for dead.

Where are the children that played in the street? 

Why did all of them have to leave? 

Where are the kids, will they be found?

Ghost town, silent, not one sound.”

(Missing children By Sidney Lynn, published in All poetry.com).

The post Children who never came home  appeared first on rabble.ca.

All Hookers Go to Heaven is the debut novel of Canadian writer Angel B.H. The novel is a twist on the classic coming of age genre, exploring it through sex work. The protagonist, aptly named Magdalena, or Mag for short, was raised in a strict Christian home in the Maritimes, and moves to Montreal to pursue her studies, runs out of money, and begins dancing at the now closed infamous Club Supersexe. She later transitions to full-service sex work and takes the readers along while she tours (the sex work equivalent to a business trip) across the world. 

The prologue of the book enthralled me; it is a magical realism-filled meditation on what happens to strippers when a club closes. The author employs this literary technique and imbues strippers with magic so that they are able to change rigid societal structures. Otherwise social change can feel inconceivable. I remember the surprise I felt when Supersexe closed down: According to stripper lore, the club was being audited, which the owners refused, and then the club mysteriously burned down. The author of this new style coming of age also addresses the magic of strippers, in the prologue and what she refers to as “the Hustler’s Curse”. 

“Strippers aren’t witches, nor is hustling a curse. But there were times when it certainly felt like it” —this sentence from the book moved me to tears. Strippers metamorphize in the changing room from a girl next door, to a glamazon that enthralls and enchants men, and what is a witch if not a badass woman in charge of her own fate, a woman who turns her desire, in this case the desire for cold hard cash, into existence? 

As for the Hustler’s Curse, in a way, the curse is that with the beginning of every shift, there is a chance for magic, a chance that your life will be better than before you walked in, a chance that maybe today is finally the day that a wealthy and generous client will bestow upon you the money that you need to escape the socioeconomic circumstances that brought you to the club in the first place. If that mythical client doesn’t materialize, the Hustler’s Curse compels one to keep hustling with the promise that bit by bit, you’ll be able to escape your circumstances.

After a year working at the Supersexe, Mag decides to try her luck in New Orleans. But she lacks a work visa, and is unable to get hired by any of the local clubs, turning instead to sugar dating. She meets Tim, who pays her to go to a swinger’s club called Colette with him, and pays her based on the number of people they manage to swing with that given night. While this is initially lucrative, Tim is increasingly problematic with more and more demands on her time. Their outings also make Mag question what it means to do sex work as a queer woman. B.H. writes: 

“More and more, it felt as if I was engaging in some kind of public porn theatre. It came to irritate me that, inside Colette, lesbian action existed as a fantasy of, and not a threat to, the heterosexual norm. I found my sexuality there both exploited and trivialised—especially because, unsurprisingly, there was little to no sexual contact between the men.”

Things with Tim come to an end when he convinces Mag to join him for a weekend at a swinger’s club in Jamaica, and when she returns,  she’s caught with the cash she made at the US border. Unable to explain her income, she gets deported back to Canada and banned from entering the US for five years. 

From there, Mag follows the money based on a trail of whispered recommendations from other sex workers. Their advice in a way reiterates the Hustler’s curse—the whispers compel her into action as she travels to Berlin, Australia, Singapore, Thailand. In the course of her (mis)adventures, Mag does full-service sex work under different legal approaches to sex work: From the fully legalized brothels in Australia, to picking up men in fancy hotel bars in Singapore, where sex work is heavily criminalized. She’s in Berlin when the escort site Backpage closes down, and feels the chilling effect of FOSTA-SESTA legislation, which instead of preventing human trafficking like intended, actually pushed sex workers further underground and made it harder to screen clients for safety.

Her whirlwind tour, often filled with sex, drugs and problematic clients ends with her booking a vacation with a friend she just finished touring with, where they share their hopes and dreams for the upcoming New Year. This bittersweet ending reminded me of a vacation that I took to Panama with a colleague when she was fresh off a break up, and I was burnt out from working and going to university full time. 

Like Mag, we hung out on the beach, did a little ritual, set our intentions and let the ocean do its magic and help make our dreams come true. Because in the end, it’s really us girls who have each other’s backs, and the sex worker friendships and community forged along the way in this book, like in life, are the best part!

I highly recommend this book, it’s a meditation of self, of queerness, friendship and chasing money in a capitalist system. B.H. writes: “Possessed by the spirit of capitalism, we create our own Mythologies.”

All Hookers Go To Heaven does exactly that—it shows how sex work turned a regular, small town Christian girl into a woman who forged her own path and wrote her own story.

The post Canadian writer explores coming-of-age through sex work appeared first on rabble.ca.

This month on our Off the Hill political panel, we ask the question: how just is Canada’s justice system? Who is it serving and protecting – and who gets left behind? Does our justice system truly respect everyone’s rights and freedoms? 

From the ongoing federal Black Class Action lawsuit alleging systemic anti-Black racism in the federal public service, to a history of policing and silencing Palestinian voices, and more, clearly we can tell something isn’t working. 

Join us on Wednesday, November 20, 2024 as we dive into this discussion with poet and activist El Jones, policy analyst Chuka Ejeckam and rabble’s own parliamentary reporter Karl Nerenberg. Panel starts at 4:30pm PT / 7:30pm ET. Co-hosted by Robin Browne and Libby Davies. 

Register today to join us for this free political panel! Sign up today here.

Meet our guests this month

El Jones is a poet, author, journalist, professor and activist living in Halifax. She is the author of Abolitionist Intimacies (2022) and Live from the Afrikan Resistance! (2014).

Chuka Ejeckam is a writer and policy researcher. His work focuses on inequity and inequality, drug policy, structural racism, and labour. He is also a columnist for rabble.

Karl Nerenberg is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and filmmaker, working in both English and French languages. He is rabble’s senior parliamentary reporter.

About Off the Hill

Since 2019, Off the Hill has been rabble.ca’s live monthly panel. Through this series, we break down important national and international news stories through a progressive lens. 

This webinar series invites a rotating roster of guest activists, politicians, researchers and more to discuss how to mobilize and bring about progressive change in national politics — on and off Parliament Hill. Co-hosted by Robin Browne and Libby Davies.

Join us the third Wednesday of every month at 4:30pm PT / 7:30pm ET. The live, digital show is one hour long – 45 minutes of moderated discussion followed by 15 minutes of audience participation.

Want to help projects like this going? rabble runs on reader support! Visit rabble.ca/donate today. 

The post How just is Canada’s justice system? appeared first on rabble.ca.

Remember, here in Alberta, if the oilpatch ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Still, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s theatrical extended temper tantrum in the Legislature Building’s media room yesterday in response to the federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s release of draft rules to cap oil and gas emissions 35 per cent below the level of 2019 was a remarkable performance by any measure. 

It’s hard for anyone to keep up with what’s changing these days with United Conservative Party (UCP) chaos muppets in charge of Alberta, but the transformation of Smith from ecstatic triumph after her party’s leadership review vote Saturday night to Monday’s unhinged fury was positively startling. 

If it was a performance, it deserves an acting award. If it wasn’t, it may require an intervention. 

At times profane – I’m pissed. I’m absolutely angry! she barked at one reporter – and unrelentingly hyperbolic, Smith looked as if she were ready to blow a gasket when she accused Guilbeault of pursuing “a deranged vendetta against Alberta.” 

Flanked by her like-minded cabinet colleagues – that is, her former leadership opponents Energy Minister Brian Jean and Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz, to use their official titles unironically – she appeared at times to be about to burst into tears.

“We will not stand idly by while the federal government sacrifices our prosperity, our constitution and our quality of life for its extreme agenda,” the trio jointly said in a screechy official statement on the government’s web page. 

The statement also trotted out as evidence the same old discredited studies by right-wing think tanks and consulting firms, one of them famously commissioned by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, used in the bumf accompanying the government’s Scrap the Cap advertising campaign, which uses taxpayer funds to campaign against the federal Liberals. 

In person, speaking from the Legislature Building’s media room, a snarling Smith claimed “ultimately this cap will lead Alberta and our country into economic and societal decline.” (Readers who doubt my colourful descriptions are encouraged to watch the video of the news conference.) 

“Once again,” she continued, hoarsely shouting, “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is putting reckless policy ahead of the needs and concerns of everyday Canadians.” (This can be disputed, but it’s a fair comment.)

“I made note that he would do this on his way out the door,” she went on. “It’s like a bad renter who’s burning the furniture on their way out.” (This is over the top.)

The presence of an official photographer, primed to get some good shots of the premier, eyes blazing, suggests this was a considered performance. 

If so, one supposes it makes a nice distraction from the way the UCP is burning the furniture over at Alberta Health Services, as it pursues its vendetta against anyone involved in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the problems the government encountered last week defending its cruel and unneeded anti-transgender legislation. 

If it was a genuine outburst, it is not exactly reassuring, especially with the premier threatening extra-constitutional use of her government’s unconstitutional Sovereignty Act as some sort of magical instant Notwithstanding Clause to block the federal regulations. 

Since all the auguries suggest Trudeau and Guilbeault are in fact on their way out the door, if not quite as quickly as Smith and the federal Conservative Party would like, this reaction seems overwrought to say the least.

Well, perhaps Smith overindulged a little when she celebrated her carefully managed leadership review victory Saturday and was still a bit under the weather. 

Or maybe she senses that this policy announcement, assailed by the oil industry and the federal Conservatives but also criticized by environmental groups and the federal NDP for not going far enough, might prove a boon to the foundering Liberals in parts of the country more concerned about global warming and less about oilpatch profits than Alberta. 

Well, the result of today’s events south of the 49th Parallel are bound to give Smith something else to be either infuriated or ecstatic about. This time, though, more of us are likely to feel the same emotions, one way or the other. 

The post Alberta government outraged at federal emissions cap appeared first on rabble.ca.

A statement from the family of Murray Sinclair announced that the former senator, judge and lawyer passed away on Monday morning, November 4 “peacefully and surrounded by love,” the family said in a statement. He was 73-years-old.

Sinclair was of the Anishinaabe Indigenous peoples and his family said that he dedicated his life to public service.

“Mazina Giizhik (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky) committed his life in service to the people: creating change, revealing truth, and leading with fairness throughout his career,” reads the family’s statement. Mazina Giizhik was Sinclair’s Indigenous name.

Manitoba’s first Indigenous judge, Sinclair served for five years as a Canadian Senator.

A cause of death has not been made public, and the family is asking for privacy at this time.

Truth and Reconciliation

Perhaps what Sinclair will most be remembered for was presiding over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Setup in 2009, the TRC was aimed at reconciling Canada’s past with Indian Residential Schools.

For more than six years, the TRC interviewed over 6,000 residential school survivors and documented the physical, sexual, and emotional violence that Indigenous peoples suffered at these institutions.

In the conclusion of the report, the TRC found that those responsible for Indian Residential Schools, including the government of Canada, had committed cultural genocide.

The TRC issued 94 Calls to Action to help heal and reconcile the history of residential schools. 

When the report was released in 2015, Sinclair said that the process of reconciliation would be a long one.

“Achieving reconciliation is like climbing a mountain — we must proceed a step at a time. It will not always be easy. There will be storms, there will be obstacles, but we cannot allow ourselves to be daunted by the task because our goal is Just and and it also necessary,” he had said at a press conference following the report’s release.

Of the 94 Calls to Action, 10 years later, 11 have been completed, with 39 underway and the rest not started yet.

LISTEN: Truth and reconciliation: How is Canada doing?

A life celebrated

Indigenous writer and activist Cindy Blackstock remembered Sinclair as someone who was unafraid to shine a little on injustice.

The Honourable Murray Sinclair always walked into dark places with a flashlight so that we can safely follow. A beam of light that cut through injustice and shows the way to hope.Sending prayers and gratitude to his loving family pic.twitter.com/hOWnFy3ZBc

— Cindy Blackstock (@cblackst) November 4, 2024

Manitoba premier Wab Kinew issued a statement celebrating Sinclair’s career and lifelong commitment to the truth.

“It will be a long time before our nation produces another person the calibre of Murray Sinclair. He showed us there is no reconciliation without truth. We should hold dear in our hearts his words that our nation is on the cusp of a great new era and we must all ‘dare to live greatly together,’ reads a statement from Kinew.

Sinclair was passionate about his community, and in his memory, his family is asking that in lieu of flowers, that members of the public donate to a fund setup in his memory.

“In lieu of flowers, and if you are able, please donate to The Murray Sinclair Memorial Fund at The Winnipeg Foundation. Our dad loved and supported many community organizations and your funds will prioritize Indigenous women, children, families, and Survivors,” reads a statement from his family.

Furthermore, a sacred fire will be lit in Sinclair’s memory in front of the Manitoba Legislature.

“Everyone is welcome to visit his sacred fire to make an offering of tobacco and send him your best wishes. Out of respect for his journey for the next few days, the family respectfully asks others across the country to please DO NOT light any other fires for him,” the family’s statement concludes.

The post Murray Sinclair, who led Truth and Reconciliation Commission, dies at 73 appeared first on rabble.ca.

A year has elapsed since Israel began its relentless bombardment of Gaza. As of August 2024, 40,000 people were confirmed to be dead, though the actual death toll was estimated to be as high as 186,000.  Approximately 1.7 million people have been displaced. Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure has been all but destroyed and Gaza now has the highest rate of child amputees in the world. The destruction of Gaza’s wastewater management systems and blockade on humanitarian aid has contributed to rising rates of famine and disease. 

These horrors have unfolded with the knowledge and complicity of the international community, including Canada, who continues to supply arms to Israel. Though Canada voted in favor of the UN resolution for a humanitarian ceasefire in December 2023—a decision that was applauded by numerous human rights organizations—it has taken few, if any, meaningful steps to bring an end to Israel’s siege on Gaza and killing of Palestinians. 

The same month as it voted in favour of a ceasefire, Canada also opposed South Africa’s application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023 seeking the imposition of provisional measures to prevent Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Despite being a signatory to the Genocide Convention, Canada stated that “compelling evidence” would be required to demonstrate an intention to destroy or partly destroy a group because of nationality, ethnicity, race or religion. 

In January 2024, the ICJ ordered six provisional measures including an order for Israel to refrain from acts under the Genocide Convention, prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to genocide, and take immediate and effective measures to ensure the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza. Canada maintained its objection to the ICJ application, reiterating that its “support for the ICJ does not mean that we accept the premise of the case brought by South Africa” while counter-intuitively registering its position that “parties to any conflict must protect civilians and respect international law”. 

Despite the ICJ’s follow-up report in March 2024 in which it ordered Israel to take all necessary steps to ensure the unhindered provision of food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and medical supplies to Palestinians, Canada has maintained its opposition to the application.

In addition to preventing Israel from being held accountable before the ICJ, Canada has continued to lend financial support to Israel. In the first two months of Israel’s attack on Gaza, Canada is estimated to have authorised $28.5 million of new permits for arms exports to Israel. As one report notes, this exceeds the 2021 record high of $26 million in Canadian military exports to Israel in 2021. More recently, Canada was said to have “blocked” arms exports to Israel; however, this does not include the cancellation of existing permits, which may be in the range of 200.

As long as America continues to supply Israel with military aid (which is estimated to be in the range of $3.8 billion, annually), the actions of other global actors are unlikely to bring an end to the cycle of violence. But that is no excuse for the continued contravention of international law. As a party to the Genocide Convention, Canada is obligated to take measures to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. Customary international law and the Geneva Convention prohibit states from transferring weapons or parts if it is expected that they could be used to violate international law. Canada must make good on its commitment to ensuring the protection of human rights by immediately ending the transfer of weapons to Israel and advocating for the protection of human rights in Gaza.

The post Canadian Complicity in Israel’s Siege on Gaza appeared first on rabble.ca.

No one should be shocked by the fact Alberta Premier Danielle Smith not only survived her leadership review vote but posted an absurd sounding 91.5 per cent approval rating. 

The explanation is simple and obvious on its face, and not necessarily good news for the United Conservative Party (UCP). 

To wit: There’s almost no one left in the UCP except the extremists.

The “lunatics,” as former premier Jason Kenney called them not long before they skidded him, now utterly dominate the party.

And of course they’re happy with Smith’s performance – for the most part, she’s delivering precisely the policies they demand. And when she doesn’t, a tip of her tinfoil cap to the chemtrails above or a boot aimed at a lonely transgender athlete below is sufficient to distract them. 

So when Smith told her jubilant supporters – essentially everyone in the hall in Red Deer last night – that “our party is more united than it has ever been,” she spoke the unvarnished truth. 

But agreeing with the first part of her statement – “our conservative movement is stronger than it’s ever been” – requires a little more nuance.

You could make a case it’s true if you go by the obvious unity of what’s left of Alberta’s big-tent Conservative movement of yore. But a large percentage of the old-style Progressive Conservatives and not-so-progressive but still sane Conservatives have abandoned the ship. 

How they will vote in the next general election remains an open question, but the MAGAfication project that really got under way when Kenney was booted to make way for Smith is now for all intents and purposes complete. And it does not guarantee the UCP a victory in an election as the UPC would like you to believe. 

Albertans were not well served by local media in the lead-up to this relatively meaningless vote, thanks to the addiction of lazy journalists to portraying any event in which a ballot is cast as a horserace. Where was the other horse in this race? 

A leadership review is like a North Korean election. The leader is essentially running without opposition – although with the theoretical ability of eligible electors to vote no. 

Thankfully, there’s still a little more freedom in the Democratic People’s Republic of Alberta than the DPRK, so Smith had to be satisfied with a mere 91.5 per cent. She still has a little way to go to catch up to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who the last time he faced a similar ballot seems to have captured 100 per cent of the vote. 

Well, it’s a benchmark Smith can strive for next time. 

Meanwhile, for Smith’s fan club at Postmedia to suggest that a 91.5 per cent victory in a race against no one is somehow the equivalent of NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi’s 86 per cent victory against several credible candidates, each with a base of support in the Opposition party, is preposterous and a little sad.

Likewise, when former Progressive Conservative deputy premier Thomas Lukaszuk noted last night that at the peak of their popularity, neither Peter Lougheed nor Ralph Klein received 95% approval, we need to remember that the PC Party in the heydays of those two premiers was a true brokerage with a moderate ideology and broad appeal. Of course the leaders of such a party couldn’t marshal that kind of support. 

“All leaders with totalitarian tendencies get +90% support scores. Yet on the outside crowds of millions gather to oppose them. It’s funny how that works,” tweeted Lukaszuk, who grew up in Poland when it was part of the Soviet bloc. “It reminds me of my childhood.”

The UCP is not the next iteration of the Progressive Conservative Party. It is a lineal descendent of the Wildrose Party, and a successor to the Social Credit League – which under William Aberhart arguably formed an even crazier government, at least so far. 

I imagine in 1935 or ’36, though, that Bible Bill could have summoned up a 90-per-cent-plus leadership review vote too.

By 1937, though, not so much. That year the voters in Premier Aberhart’s Okotoks-High River riding tried to recall him. His government repealed the Recall Act poste haste. Expect history to repeat itself if anyone looks as if they could have a chance of using Jason Kenney’s legislation of the same name to unseat a UCP leader. But I digress.

The Red Deer AGM passed all 35 of the policy resolutions put on the agenda for debate, including recognizing “the importance of CO2 to life and Alberta’s prosperity” by abandoning all net-zero targets and stating “CO2 is a foundational nutrient for all life on Earth.” 

You can’t make this stuff up. The UCP has gone deep into climate change denialism and it’s likely to go deeper. 

Readers may have seen suggestions in media that now Smith’s leadership review is successfully concluded, she will start to act more seriously. 

Don’t believe it. The extremists are going to continue to call the tune and, insomuch as she might disagree with them, Smith can be expected to continue to dance to it.

The post AB Premier’s 91.5% party approval rate shows there’s almost only extremists in UCP appeared first on rabble.ca.

Can Danielle Smith be trusted about anything she says? 

Now that Alberta’s premier has introduced what is widely acknowledged to be the harshest anti-transgender legislation in Canada, rivalling that in some of the more benighted corners of the Republic to our south, we all need to pause and reflect on that question.

A CBC commentator called the suite of bills introduced by the United Conservative Party (UCP) “Canada’s most restrictive and wide-ranging set of policies governing the rights and aspirations” of transgender young people. The three bills, wrote Jason Markusoff, “put Smith on the hard edge of Canadian reforms.”

Senator Kristopher Wells, recently appointed to Canada’s Upper House for his advocacy for sexual minority rights, described the legislation as “the most discriminatory and anti-2SLGBTQ+ legislation in Canadian history.”

When passed by the UCP majority in the House, Bill 26, the Health Statutes Amendment Act, 2024, will prohibit physicians from treating young people under 16 seeking transgender treatment with puberty blockers and hormone therapies.

Bill 27, the Education Amendment Act, will force students under 16 to get their parents’ permission if they want to change their names or pronouns at school. Bill 29, tendentiously named the Fairness and Safety in Sport Act, will ban transgender athletes from competing in leagues not designated as co-ed, among other things.

When Bill 26 is passed by the United Conservative Party majority in the Legislature, it will interfere directly with medical decisions for strictly political reasons – principally the premier’s need to pacify her party’s radical MAGA base at leadership review vote taking place today in Red Deer.

So even if your medical concern is something more commonplace – say, getting your seasonal COVID-19 vaccination or reproductive health care, both of which like gender-affirming treatment have because obsessions of the American MAGA movement that now drives the UCP – you have to wonder what will become the next medical target for the social conservative busybodies of the premier’s caucus. 

“This legislation will dictate what health care services Albertans can and cannot access,” said Friends of Medicare Director Chris Gallaway. “It is an appalling abuse of government power. Health care decisions are between patients and their doctors. The premier reaching in to set health policy like this sets a dangerous new precedent which should be of deep concern to all Albertans.”

Not so long ago, Smith stoutly defended the rights of citizens that she now wants to brush aside. 

A decade ago, a Calgary Sun political columnist described Smith, then the Wildrose Party leader, choking up about the need for gay-straight alliances.

“Wildrose leader Danielle Smith stands in the Legislature Tuesday and talks about meeting kids at gay-straight alliances,” Rick Bell trowelled it on. “It doesn’t take long for her to choke up as she speaks.”

But, hey, it’s been 10 years! 

Just last year, though, in a statement on Pride Month during the 2023 election campaign, Smith was still insisting “everyone deserves to feel safe, welcome and respected in our province.”

“That’s why we will continue to listen to 2SLGBTQIA+ Albertans’ concerns and find ways to strengthen our relationships through dialogue and tangible action,” Calgary Herald political columnist Don Braid quoted her saying in a column headlined, “Why Danielle Smith will lean away from past flakiness, toward sensible government.” 

It would appear Braid has come to regret that assertion. Well, good for him for admitting it. 

Soon after last year’s election, Smith even trotted out a sympathetic story about a non-binary relative, real or imagined. 

“I have a non-binary family member, and I believe these decisions are very personal, and it should not be debated in public,” she said. “We shouldn’t be making any child feel like the issues they’re struggling with are something that’s a political football.” (Emphasis added.) 

Well, that was then, and this is a whole year later. Gender identity issues are personal? Forget about it! Now they’re among the biggest political footballs in Alberta history – and this is a province that’s had a quarterback and a punt returner as premiers! Now Premier Smith is doing the punting. 

Aggressively defending her policy at a press conference on Halloween, the premier barked to a journalist that “we’re going to be making sure that our medical professionals know that this is a treatment that’s available for adults only.”

“Look, doctors were given a lot of latitude to prescribe opioids and now we have a fentanyl crisis as a result of inappropriate prescribing,” she told another reporter by way of explanation, defaming physicians in passing. “And we have had to put guardrails around who can prescribe opioids, how they can be delivered. And I would say doctors aren’t always right.”

She continued, claiming that puberty blockers and hormone therapies will have life-long consequences: “This has supreme consequences on young people,” she insisted. “… If you’re medicalized for life, it has consequences. If you are medicalized too early, it has consequences on fertility. And we believe that sometimes you have to step in and make sure you’re preserving choice and protecting the rights of kids so they can make those decisions as adults.”

This is sophistry, needless to say. “She doesn’t have the medical expertise to be able to make that decision about whether gender-affirming care is appropriate,” an Edmonton pediatrician and University of Alberta professor told The Canadian Press. “Secondly, calling some of these things irreversible or harmful is simply false,” added Dr. Tehseen Ladha.

Readers can decide whom they believe on this hitherto esoteric topic.

But there’s no argument to be made that Smith can be trusted to stand by anything she says. 

Not every conservative politician would fail to do the right thing regardless of the consequences, but Smith has shown us clearly what she does when political expediency demands.

Don’t expect her to change after today’s vote in Red Deer. 

The post Danielle Smith introduces harsh anti-trans legislation appeared first on rabble.ca.

Since the Sudanese civil war erupted in April 2023, there has been no sign of an end to conflict. This month, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) doubled down on an offensive against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). 

Civilian deaths are mounting. War crimes are being committed with impunity. The UNHCR reports that both parties, and their respective allies, have deliberately targeted civilians, used rape as a weapon of war, and are responsible for “patterns of large-scale violations, including indiscriminate and direct attacks carried out through airstrikes and shelling against civilians, schools, hospitals, communication networks and vital water and electricity supplies.” The RSF has been accused of ethnic cleansing of the Masalit people in West Darfur. 

Airstrikes on the capital have continued through October, with shelling of a market on October 12 by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) killing at least 23 people and injuring more than 40 others.

Issues with the pathways to Canada

The Canadian government has offered few options for Sudanese refugees. 

Though the true death toll is difficult to establish, 20,000 people have lost their lives in the war since April 2023.

In February 2024, the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship department of Canada (IRCC)  launched a family reunification program that allows asylum-seekers who are Sudanese nationals to seek admission into Canada and pursue permanent residency if they are sponsored by family members already in Canada.

This program has been criticized as financially inaccessible and, with a cap of 3,250 applications, insufficient for the scale of a conflict that has displaced nearly 11 million people. 

When the IRCC opened the program, applications flooded in. But by May, the cap had been met and the program temporarily closed. 

As of October 2024, there is still no government-sponsored humanitarian pathway in Canada for Sudanese refugees, as has been the case for victims of other wars not on the African continent. 

The inadequacy of the IRCC’s response and the ongoing hurdles facing Sudanese refugees have brought the community together. On Sunday October 20, a demonstration by Sudanese-Québecois and the Sudanese Canadian Association of Québec (ASCQC) at Philips Square in downtown Montréal gathered around 30 people to demonstrate for humanitarian action and attention to the war in Sudan.

Amged Khalil, a Sudanese-Canadian who has rebuilt his life as a software developer in Montréal, was one of the organizers. Khalil is celebrating a year of Canadian citizenship, though he came to Montréal seven years ago as a refugee during former President Omar al-Bashir’s dictatorship. 

According to Khalil, five people received approval through the re-unification program during the week of October 21, 2024, with others receiving approval the following week. No one has arrived in Canada to date. 

One of the causes of delay is the federal requirement for biometric data collection in Sudan. Khalil explained that this requirement has not adapted to the reality of a war-zone.

Without a biometric centre in Sudan, refugees are unable to submit the required data to the IRCC. “We have been advised by the government that it is under negotiation,” he explained, adding that a centre may be operational by early 2025 at an International Organization for Migration (IOM) centre. 

He says the Sudanese Canadian Association of Québec is also pushing for data to be collected in Canada: “We cannot afford to lose more lives.”

Québec’s exclusion from humanitarian pathway

Under Premier François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) administration, Sudanese-Québecois are facing unique challenges from the rest of the country, as Québec had been excluded from the IRCC’s program. 

In June, the Québec government halved the threshold on all family reunification programs, with a maximum of 13,000 people until June 2026. 

As Khalil explained, the Sudanese Canadian Association of Québec was created at the beginning of this year to raise visibility for the humanitarian crisis and address the concerns of Sudanese-Québecois who have been excluded from the federal program. 

“We were surprised that Québec was not included because this is not a normal program. This is a humanitarian program,” Khalil said of the reunification program.

Over the fall, national media reported that several people in Sudan who were sponsored through the program had lost their lives while waiting for a response.

“We are watching our families die over there and cannot do anything,” he said.

Residents of Québec may soon be included in the federal program, Khalil said, although relatives are not permitted to live in Québec. There might also be up to 800 additional spots allocated to the federal family reunification program; but these spots also include people who applied in the first round. 

Where is Canadian diplomacy? 

Dr. Emad Tahir is a public health resident and family doctor, who also works with refugees at the Clinique des réfugiés (Montreal Refugee Clinic). Originally from Khartoum, Tahir had worked as a medical resident in North Kordofan state, amid a huge displacement crisis across the country and influx of people fleeing war in South Sudan. Arriving in Canada in 2014, Tahir explained that it took eight years to get into the system amid bureaucratic hurdles that were not the case in other countries like the UK and Ireland. Today, he is raising a family and continuing his medical practice. 

“We expected the Canadian government, and all the Western governments, to have a quicker response to this human tragedy,” Tahir said. “We are speaking about a war. They are dying because of food insecurity. They are dying because of diseases. They don’t have access to healthcare. They die from bullets and shelling. I think it’s nonsense to delay like this.” 

Sudanese asylum-seekers don’t have many options in Canada or abroad.

In the U.S., a humanitarian parole program had not yet been established as the armed conflict escalated in Darfur state over the summer. Around 6,000 Sudanese people arrived in Italy in 2023 amid an increase facilitated by the decriminalization of migrant smuggling by Niger’s coup leaders last winter. 

Providing shelter and assistance to Sudanese people fleeing the war has fallen primarily onto neighboring countries that are also scarred by conflict. 

Within Sudan, people end up in internal displacement camps like Um Rakuba and Tunayadbah near the Ethiopian border. Up to last year, it was here that Sudan had given shelter to Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees from the Tigray war.

In North Darfur, half a million people are facing famine and unsanitary conditions in the Zamzam camp amid worsening outbreaks of cholera, malaria, dengue fever, measles and rubella. 

At the border with Chad, people are shuffled between the Adré and Farchana camps, which grow daily despite being unable to provide water and healthcare. In Egypt, Sudanese refugees including journalists are being deported back into a war-zone. 

Despite the dangers, many who have fled Sudan want to return. Khalil shares that his wife’s elderly parents are among those who insist on going home. They left for Egypt and were lucky to have documents, but they live every day with the stress of leaving their home behind.

Previous ceasefires with the RSF that had been negotiated by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, failed because both warring parties failed to withdraw troops out of civilian areas. Peace talks by a coalition consisting of Saudi Arabia, the US, Switzerland, the UAE, Egypt, the African Union, and the UN—continue to drag on with fighting continuing through October. Canada is not a member of the peace talk coalition.

Eighteen months into the war, the Sudanese Armed Forces launched what ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data) has called “the most significant SAF offensive in the capital, Khartoum”. The Global Protection Cluster has reported civilian deaths in eighteen villages, with chaotic displacement of civilians, assault, intimidation, humiliation, indiscriminate shooting, and the bodies of the dead left in streets. By October 26, at least 124 people were killed in an attack by the RSF on the village of Al-Sireha. 

“We can go back to the root of the issue. [Canada] can play a bigger role,” Khalil said, stressing Canada’s diplomatic silence. 

Simply put, people want peace.

The post Canada turns its back to Sudanese refugees appeared first on rabble.ca.

Now that we have before us an actual copy of the United Conservative Party (UCP)’s first bill of the fall 2024 sitting of the Legislature, the new and improved Alberta Bill of Rights with secret sovereignty sauce, serious commentators are bound to start commentating seriously about it.

Indeed, to set the tone, the government’s press release about Bill 24 began by talking about the importance of protecting of fundamental rights. 

So it bears repeating that that Alberta Bill of Rights Amendment Act, 2024, is a fundamentally unserious document. 

Whereas the 1972 Alberta Bill of Rights passed in Premier Peter Lougheed’s first term was well meaning and aspirational, although not of much significance as history has proved because it was not a constitutional document that outweighed other legislation in any way, the 2024 amendments are merely performative, intended to appeal to a UCP fringe that now holds Premier Danielle Smith’s political fate in their hands. 

And while the 1972 bill indeed talked about timeless and universally acknowledged fundamental rights, even if it did little to actually protect them, the 2024 version would have us believe it has added fanciful new categories of rights driven by the ephemeral fashion of the perpetually aggrieved American Right. 

So in 1972 we tipped our provincial cap to freedom of speech, religion and assembly; in 2024, the UCP would have us salute the right to say no to vaccinations we need, no matter whom we infect, and yes to owning assault rifles we don’t, as long as we do so “in accordance with the law.” (Whatever that means, it would be fair to add.) 

“The proposed amendments to the Alberta Bill of Rights address issues important to Albertans and reinforce that Alberta’s government is committed to protecting their rights,” said Justice Minister Mickey Amery in the government’s press release, a quote about as meaningful as this entire exercise. 

Alas as for the would-be law-abiding assault-rifle collectors fooled by this performance, University of Alberta law professor Eric Adams told the CBC, “really nothing is being provided of substance that I can see.” 

He did, however, suggest the prohibition on requiring immunizations could lead to legal challenges against vaccine mandates, although such mandates seem unlikely as long as the UCP continues to cart off the furniture and pull out the phone lines at Alberta Health Services. 

Surely the risk of legal consequences is greater from people infected or otherwise made to suffer by irresponsible unvaccinated health care employees who come to work when they’re ill, and the negligent bosses who allow such behaviour, just sayin’. 

Anyway, these fashionable new “rights” seem fundamentally contrary to the notion of peace, order and good government that is firmly entrenched in the actual Canadian Constitution – so they would likely prove ephemeral even if they were included in a constitutional document, which the Alberta Bill of Rights emphatically is not. 

So while the commentariat may be tempted to wring its hands about the possibility of costly legal challenges caused by the changes to the Bill of Rights, it is said here, again, that the risk is low, and likely to be short-lived.

Meanwhile, the drafters of the bill appear to have contorted their language into legal pretzels to find ways to allow the UCP keep coercive policies that violate fundamental rights  – for example, imprisoning people in “drug treatment” centres and forcing them to take treatment – while insisting they must be able to refuse vaccinations. 

Regardless, no matter how fine its words are, and they aren’t all that inspiring, Alberta’s Bill of Rights remains just another organic statute, passed by a simple majority by a provincial Legislature, without any logical legal reason whatsoever for a court to give it precedence over another provincial law, let alone a federal one. 

As I noted last month, prime minister John Diefenbaker’s 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights suffered from the same fatal flaw. Courts can only strike down a law by appealing to a higher law, and the Alberta Bill of Rights does not meet that standard.

In real life, you don’t draft a constitution – even for a country that will never exist – by giving three goofs from the Free Alberta Strategy word processors and letting them sit down and start typing. You might even get a better result if you tried to implement the Infinite Monkey Theorem instead of leaving to job to Ms. Smith’s new chief of staff Rob Anderson and his pals. 

Thankfully, as NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi pointed out back in September, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms remains the supreme law of the land, including the Alberta part of it, so that will continue to be the best place to challenge unconstitutional laws, including the ones passed by the UCP majority in the Alberta Legislature.

The post The Alberta Bill of Rights Amendment Act is a fundamentally unserious document appeared first on rabble.ca.

Thomas et al v. Canada is a class action lawsuit which was filed in the Federal Court of Canada in 2020 on behalf of Black Canadians employed in the Public Service of Canada.

The action seeks to address and dismantle the systemic racism and discrimination within the Public Service of Canada. Specifically, for Black individuals who applied for employment with the Public Service and were denied entry based on their race, and those who were employed but were denied promotions based on their race (including those who have been employed within the past five decades).

rabble.ca and labour reporter Gabriela Calugay-Casusa have been following this story as it develops, and this week Calugay-Casuga sat down with Bernadeth Betchi, a representative plaintiff who shared why seeking justice through the court is meaningful to her.

About our guests

Bernadeth Betchi is a representative candidate for the Black Class Action lawsuit.

In 2023, Betchi ran for the position of president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE). Her candidacy was historic, she was the first Black woman to ever put her name forward for the position. Betchi is also a co-founder of the Ottawa-Gatineau Black Breastfeeding week. This week aims to bring awareness to the realities of Black parents and their access to support when it comes to breastfeeding. Outside of organizing, Betchi is a PhD candidate in her fourth year of studying philosophy, feminist and gender studies.

If you like the show please consider subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube or wherever you find your podcasts. And please, rate, review, share rabble radio with your friends — it takes two seconds to support independent media like rabble. Follow us on social media across channels @rabbleca. 

The post Demanding justice for Black federal employees and the power of collective healing appeared first on rabble.ca.