Social Movements Making an Impact in Quebec

By Yves Engler

Dissident Voice

October 2nd, 2012

Usually it takes social movements years, even decades, to significantly affect public policy. The movement unleashed by Québec students last spring has had a much quicker impact.

Beyond politicizing a generation, it has spurred a more socially and ecologically progressive political climate. It is within this context that Pauline Marois’ government has adopted more progressive reforms in its first days in office than any other provincial government in recent Canadian history.

After rescinding the Charest government’s special bill that criminalized student demonstrations, they abolished the tuition increase that universities had already begun charging (many students have received a rebate). The Parti Québecois also eliminated a highly regressive two hundred dollar per person health tax and have moved to shut down a controversial nuclear power plant. In another decision prioritizing the environment and people’s health, they placed a long-term moratorium on hydraulic fracking and eliminated subsidies for asbestos mining, which prompted the federal Conservative government to announce it would no longer block the Rotterdam Convention from listing chrysotile asbestos as a toxic product.

Electoral Platform of Québec solidaire

Thanks to Socialist Project.

In the spirit of a resolution adopted by the 5th Congress of Quebec Solidaire, the positions in the platform are arranged thematically, following the alphabetical order of the French original, which does not denote a priority or order of importance.

Download pdf  HERE.

John A. Macdonald wanted an ‘Aryan’ Canada

BY TIM STANLEY
OTTAWA CITIZEN
AUGUST 21, 2012

In 1885, John A. Macdonald told the House of Commons that, if the Chinese were not excluded from Canada, “the Aryan character of the future of British America should be destroyed …” This was the precise moment in the histories of Canada and the British Dominions when Macdonald personally introduced race as a defining legal principle of the state.

He did this not just in any piece of legislation, but in the Electoral Franchise Act, an act that defined the federal polity of adult male property holders and that he called “my greatest achievement.”

Macdonald’s comments came as he justified an amendment taking the vote away from anyone “of Mongolian or Chinese race.” He warned that, if the Chinese (who had been in British Columbia as long as Europeans) were allowed to vote, “they might control the vote of that whole Province” and their “Chinese representatives” would foist “Asiatic principles,” “immoralities,” and “eccentricities” on the House “which are abhorrent to the Aryan race and Aryan principles.” He further claimed that “the Aryan races will not wholesomely amalgamate with the Africans or the Asiatics” and that “the cross of those races, like the cross of the dog and the fox, is not successful; it cannot be, and never will be.” For Macdonald, Canada was to be the country that restored a pure Aryan race to its past glory, and the Chinese threatened this purity.

Canada: “Big Players in NATO”

By Yves Engler 
Dissident Voice
August 15th, 2012

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen meets with Stephen Harper

Harper’s Conservatives are enamored with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Canada played a central role in last year’s NATO-led bombing of Libya and nearly 1000 Canadian military “trainers” continue to participate in a war the organization is waging in Afghanistan. Last year Defense Minister Peter MacKay justified a plan to establish 7 Canadian military bases around the world, partly on the grounds that “we are big players in NATO.”

The Conservatives’ position is a throwback of sorts. For the first two decades of the organization NATO was at the heart of this country’s foreign policy. Only exaggerating slightly, Pierre Trudeau claimed that in the years prior to him becoming Prime Minister in 1968 “we had no defence policy, so to speak, except that of NATO. And our defence policy had determined all of our foreign-policy. And we had no foreign policy of any importance except that which flowed from NATO.”

Undesirables: White Canada and the Komagata Maru, An Illustrated History

By Matthew Behrens

Pambazuka News
2012-07-18, Issue 594

A review of Ali Kazimi’s new book (Douglas & McIntyre, 2012; $39.95)

As Parliament passes sweeping, repressive immigration legislation, Toronto filmmaker Ali Kazimi's timely book, Undesirables, is a welcome and necessary contribution that should be required reading not only for Jason Kenney and his cohorts, but also those good-hearted folks who claim the new law violates Canada's mythic "humanitarian traditions."

The Komagata Maru was a shipload of South Asian immigrants forced to dock a half mile off the B.C. coast for two months in 1914 as a battle to determine whether they could land played out in the media, the courts, on the docks and in a variety of communities. Denied access to counsel, blockaded from receiving food and water, demonized in the press, and eventually forced to leave when a Canadian court ruled that race could be a grounds for excluding newcomers, their struggle was a signature moment reflecting an ingrained xenophobia that undergirds contemporary Canadian policies.

Democracy in the Age of Austerity: Beyond the Robocall Scandal

By James Cairns
New Socialist webzine
19 April 2012

A lot of people are angry about the robocall scandal. Even by the low standards of the Harper Conservatives, the covert attempt to block thousands of people from voting in the 2011 federal election is pretty disgusting.

In a recent poll, 75 percent of respondents said they want a formal inquiry into the Conservative Party's dirty campaign tricks. Anti-robocall rallies have been held in more than 25 cities. At a rally in Saskatoon last month, protestor Nayyar Javed told the crowd: "Democracy is very important to me. […] We are complacent or are in denial about the erosion of democracy."

To people who recognize that real social change isn't going to happen through the existing democratic system, being concerned about robocall can seem like a waste of time and energy. But when robocall is viewed from a broader perspective, it can begin to take on real significance. In fact, there are good reasons for viewing robocall as but one covert episode in a whole series of attacks on democracy that are happening right out in the open.

Fidel Castro on Stephen Harper

Stephen Harper’s Illusions

I think -and I do not intend to offend anyone- that this is how the Prime Minister of Canada is called. I deduced it from a statement published on “Holy Wednesday” by a spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry of that country. The United Nations Organization membership is made up by almost 200 States -allegedly independent States. They continuously change or are forced into change. Many of their representatives are honorable persons, friends of Cuba; but it is impossible to remember the specifics about each and every one of them.

During the second half of the twentieth century, I had the privilege of living through years of intensive erudition and I realized that Canadians, located in the northernmost region of this hemisphere, were always respectful towards our country. They invested in areas of their interest and traded with Cuba, but they did not interfere in the internal affairs of our State.

Canada's Austerity Budget Wonderland

By Dave Broad
Monthly Review
February 2, 2012

Canada's federal and provincial governments are falling in with other Western countries in delivering austerity budgets that foist costs of the global capitalist crisis onto the backs of workers and the poor.  Canada's federal government is trying to package its latest austerity budget as something that must be done to reduce government debts and deficits but really won't hurt too bad.  Listening to the spin put on this is much like a trip through Alice's surreal Wonderland.¹

Before Canada's federal budget was released, Canada's Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tried to reassure Canadians that his government was out to create jobs and sustainable social programs, and that job and program cuts would be "moderate."²  The March 29, 2012 budget announcement itself was that $5.2 billion per year would be cut from federal programs, and 19,200 federal jobs would be slashed over three years, along with further cuts and privatization of public programs over the longer term.  Minister Flaherty still asserts that his budget cuts are "modest" and not "draconian."³  He obviously shares with Humpty Dumpty the notion that a word can mean whatever he wants it to.  While doing the opposite of what most people want and need, the Tories are trying to convince us that what they are doing is in everyone's best interests.

CIDA hammers Development and Peace

By Dennis Gruending
March 19, 2012

The hammer that had earlier landed on faith-based organizations such as KAIROS and the Mennonite Central Committee has now fallen on the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (D&P).

Michael Casey, D&P’s executive director, has just written an emergency letter to the organization’s local volunteer leaders in Catholic dioceses throughout the country. He informs them that D&P has just heard from CIDA on a funding proposal made back in July 2010. “We have finally received the government’s response,” Casey writes. “It is not exactly what we were hoping for.” That is a considerable understatement. Casey writes that CIDA, which had provided D&P with $44.6 million in the years 2006-11, has chopped that amount by two-thirds, to a total of $14.5 million over the next five years.

Quebec Solidaire Proposes a budget for the 99%

Quebec Solidaire
March 18, 2012
(Google translation)

A few days after the budget 2012-2013, QS invited the Minister Bachand to abandon what has been disastrous in the past. "The PQ and Liberal governments have made ​​religion a zero deficit for 15 years and it does not work not "said Amir Khadir, MNA for Mercier.

 "Cut in services, tax the sick, raise rates and fees, to give billions of tax cuts for the wealthiest, that will not bring prosperity to our society. Reduce the deficit at all costs and too quickly on the back of the middle class and low income people, increases economic inequality. It has to stop. We need tax fairness and good public services for a greener economy and more prosperous "adds Francoise David, spokesman for QS.

Alternative Federal Budget 2012

By Erin Weir 

Progressive Economics Forum
March 15th, 2012

The following is a ten-point summary of the CCPA Alternative Federal Budget released today:

The federal government is planning an unprecedented fiscal austerity budget, claiming that massive cuts to public sector jobs, services, and social programs are necessary to pave the way for jobs and growth. But in fact the opposite is true. Austerity programs weaken the economy, and their implementation in many European countries has tipped the EU back into recession, fueled unemployment, and increased their debts and deficits.

There is a better way to make the federal budget work for the rest of us. The Alternative Federal Budget proposes a sweeping anti-austerity agenda that will yield high returns, boost productivity, stimulate private investment, and create high value-added jobs in activities that improve living standards and reduce income inequality.

1.) Reduce Poverty and Inequality

Income inequality in Canada is at a 30-year high, rising at a faster pace than in the U.S. There are important aspects to income inequality that our government needs to address: the richest 1% of Canadians are now taking home a bigger share of income growth than since the 1920s; middle-income Canadians have seen their incomes stagnate; and nearly one in 10 Canadians—including one in 10 children—still lives in poverty. The poverty rate is even higher for Aboriginal peoples, women, and racialized Canadians.

Robocall affair vaults Canada into big leagues of political scandal

By Linda McQuaig 
The Star
Mar 12 2012

Perhaps it’s our Canadian modesty that prevents us from thinking we could have a scandal as big-league and important as Watergate. But that modesty may be misplaced.

When it comes to democracy, nothing is more basic than the citizen’s right to vote. So the deliberate attempt to prevent voters from casting their ballots amounts to a stake through the faintly beating heart of democracy as surely as attempting to wiretap the headquarters of a rival political party.

Of course, Watergate became a world-class scandal because the break-in and coverup were linked to the highest political levels in the U.S.

Is something like that possible here?

The Conservatives, who’ve been fending off charges of trying to deter non-Conservative voters from making it to the correct poll on election day, are presumably hoping that the voter suppression can be blamed on a rogue operating without the approval or awareness of the Conservative party.

Protests launch campaign to stop war on Iran

BY JAMES CLARK
Rabble.ca
March 9, 2012

A series of anti-war demonstrations took place across Canada last week that marked the beginning of a co-ordinated campaign to oppose sanctions and war on Iran. A total of seven actions were organized in Toronto, Ottawa, London and Vancouver, including rallies, marches, information pickets and a "die-in," with support from the Canadian Peace Alliance (CPA). The protests coincided with a three-day visit to Canada by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who arrived in Ottawa on March 2 to drum up support for an Israeli attack on Iran. Netanyahu's stopover in Canada was followed by his meeting in Washington with Barack Obama to press the case for war.

The first action was on February 23, when the Ottawa Peace Assembly (OPA) held a march and die-in to challenge the annual meeting of the Conference of Defence Associations (CDA), a gathering of war profiteers, Harper government cabinet ministers, and military commanders (from Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.) that is co-sponsored by NATO. The CDA, little known outside Ottawa, is an influential umbrella lobby group for the arms industry that is lobbying for war on Iran, just as it supported Canadian military participation in Afghanistan.

Stephen Harper reviewed

BY STEVE PATTEN
Socialist Studies / Études socialistes 8 (1) 
Winter 2012

Martin, Lawrence. 2010. Harperland: The Politics of Control. Toronto: Viking Canada. ISBN 978-0-670-06517-2. Hardcover: 35.00 CAD. Pages: 301.

Nadeau, Christian. 2011. Rogue in Power: Why Stephen Harper is Remaking Canada by Stealth. Toronto: Lorimer. ISBN 978-1-55277-730-5. Paperback: 22.95 CAD. Pages: 159
.
A lot has been written about Stephen Harper over the years. He first caught the attention of followers of Canadian politics when he was Chief Policy Officer for the fledgling Reform Party of Canada. He subsequently served as a Reform MP from 1993 to 1997, before stepping aside from partisan politics to head the uncompromisingly right wing National Citizens Coalition. When Harper returned to politics in 2002 it was to lead the Canadian Alliance. But, a little over a year later he was at the helm of the newly unified Conservative Party of Canada. The Harper Conservatives unseated Canada’s Liberal government in 2006, and for the next five years Stephen Harper was the successful head of a minority Conservative government. Then, in May 2011, Harper and the Conservatives won a majority of seats in the House of Commons, and today Stephen Harper governs with the absolute sense of political security that our parliamentary system affords majority governments. It is now more important than ever that Canadians understand Harper, his motivations, goals and approach to governance.

The popular press and most of the books about Stephen Harper portray him as a reasonably pragmatic right-of-centre politician whose values speak to a significant and growing minority of Canadians.1 To be sure, Harper’s desire to control political messaging has been criticized, he was condemned for using prorogation to skirt the will of Parliament, and his refusal to accept and respond to expert opinion on law and order issues is regularly put in a negative light. But, until recently, the most widely read books on Harper tempered their criticism; in those volumes his politics were seldom characterized as ideologically extreme or overly undemocratic.

Two recent books paint harsher portraits of Stephen Harper. Lawrence Martin’s Harperland and Christian Nadeau’s Rogue in Power suggest Harper is a radical right wing social conservative, an aggressive partisan, deeply authoritarian, secretive, and aiming to bring fundamental social and political change to Canada. This essay takes a look at these books, their analysis of Harper’s social conservatism, his partisan and authoritarian character, and his efforts to entrench a new politics of Conservative dominance.

Read more HERE. (pdf)

Canada’s Defrocked Prince of Peace

By Kim Petersen
Dissident Voice
February 29th, 2012

Lester Pearson enjoys iconic status in Canada as a former prime minister, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and particular acclaim as the father of peacekeeping. The Nobel Prize site notes “his diplomatic sensitivity, his political acumen, and his personal popularity.”1 The myth of Pearson is so ingrained that most Canadians have bought into it.

Noam Chomsky, however, considers Pearson a “major criminal, really extreme.”2 Chomsky wrote the foreword to Yves Engler’s latest book: Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping — The Truth May Hurt.

Engler presents Pearson’s words and record, but an image other than that of an altruistic world statesman emerges. He deconstructs the myth of Pearsonian peacekeeping. Engler holds, “There is, in fact, a strong case to be made that he should be posthumously charged with abetting war crimes.”

The Disastrous Consequences of the Omnibus Crime Bill

By Paula Mallea 
CCPA
February 22nd, 2012

Canada is one Senate vote away from becoming the most regressive Western democracy on criminal justice. That unenviable position has most recently been occupied by the United States. But even though some of the most conservative Republicans are now arguing against over-incarceration, Canada continues to pursue that objective.

Americans have recently recognized that incarcerating 2.3 million people does not reduce the crime rate. Consequently, state after state has rolled back mandatory minimum sentences, draconian penalties, harsh parole eligibility and so on. Canada, on the contrary, is implementing all of these, plus mean-minded pardon and international prisoner transfer provisions.

A variety of constituents, including some surprising ones, have pleaded with the Conservative government to rethink its tough-on-crime agenda. Correctional officials, police chiefs, medical associations, victims advocates, prison guards, former attorneys-general and justice ministers, lawyers and judges and criminologists, people who have spent their lives learning what works to reduce crime—all of these have warned against the consequences of Bill C-10.

How Harper seized control of pipeline and health-care debates

BY JENNIFER DITCHBURN
The Canadian Press
 Jan. 20, 2012

Building a storyline that sticks helped the Conservatives sink two successive Liberal leaders and they are using the same strategy early in 2012 on a pair of major policy debates facing Canadians.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's team has attempted to leap out in front of its opponents and shape the narrative on the hot-button issues of health-care funding and oil pipeline construction.

When Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver came out guns blazing over “environmental and other radical groups” and foreign interests who he said were trying to hijack the domestic debate, discussion immediately shifted away from the very concerns environmental groups have been voicing.

Canada to revive anti-democratic “counter-terrorism” powers

By Vic Neufeld
WSWS
14 January 2012

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has repeatedly vowed that in the coming year he will use his Conservative Party’s parliamentary majority to push through major changes in socio-economic policy. His government has also made no secret of the fact that it is determined to strengthen the coercive powers of the state.

Although the press has accorded it little attention, the Conservatives have proclaimed their intention to push through legislation reviving the police’s power to detain terrorism suspects without charge and compel persons deemed of “interest” in a terrorism investigation to provide them information.

Predator Drones Quietly Patrol Canada's Southern Border

By John W. Warnock
Act Up In Sask
10 January 2012

Last week the U.S. government announced that the ninth Predator Drone will be deployed protecting the borders of the United States against the infiltration of terrorists, criminals, drug traffickers and economic refugees. Six of these unmanned attack aircraft are based in Arizona and Texas and operate along the border with Mexico. The other three operate along the northern border, between Minneapolis and Seattle. They are stationed at the Grand Forks, ND U.S. Air Force base. When the program of U.S. government monitoring the “undefended border” began it had the full support of the Harper government.

The Predator drones operate high in the sky and cannot be seen or heard from the ground. They are active far from the bases where they are stationed and directed. They can monitor individuals well across the border into Canada. The U.S. government insists that so far they have not been armed with missiles. President Obama’s favourite weapon.

Neoliberal Rampage in Canada

By Dave Broad
Mrzine
December 23, 2011

Like the Grinch who stole Christmas, the Conservative government of Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper has just left a lump of coal in Canadian workers' stockings. A cover story in the Globe and Mail of December 22, 2011 announces that federal public pension programs are being targeted for cuts to reduce the federal deficit.1

The previous day the Globe and Mail ran a cover story announcing that the federal government will be reducing funding for health care programs and eliminating national standards for health care.2 In essence, this will gut the Canadian Medicare system. Mr. Harper has been pushing a series of recent neoliberal economic and socially conservative policy changes designed to undo the last elements of post-WWII Keynesianism in Canada.