Dr. Margaret Mahood fought for Medicare in Saskatchewan

Just in case you missed this fine obituary in the Globe - NYC

BY PATRICIA DAWN ROBERTSON
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Jun. 17 2013

Dr. Margaret Mahood was the deputy superintendent of the North Battleford Mental Hospital when she was recruited to work at the new Saskatoon Community Clinic. As a socialist and a psychiatrist, Dr. Mahood supported the Medicare plan and relocated to Saskatoon. She put on her general practitioner’s hat and set up her practice at the so-called “commie” clinic.

The idealistic psychiatrist joined forces with Dr. Joan Witney-Moore, and on July 3, they opened the doors to the clinic with only their medical bags, and folding tables topped with mattresses employed as examining tables.

Socialized medicine in Canada was ahead of its time, and the Medicare program wasn’t granted an easy birth. Neither was the wife of Allan Blakeney, the health minister. He scrambled to get services for his very pregnant wife, Anne. But her Medicare-supporting doctor wasn’t afforded hospital privileges, so their baby was born at home.

Fred Gudmundson: A Life of Justice

By Don Kossick and John Loxley
Briarpatch Magazine

December 01, 1996

Thanks to Don Kossick for posting on his facebook page "As we go though our stuggles today it is good to remember those those who came before. Fred Gudmundson was a great thinker and organizer for justice and compassion." - NYC

Fred Gudmundson, grass roots educator, militant, community organizer, critical writer and researcher, shit disturber, social visionary, and a good friend and mentor to many across this land, died in Prince George, BC on October 5.

Born in Mozart, Saskatchewan in 1934, Fred became a farmer who honed his organizing skills in the struggle for socialized medicine in the early sixties. He was a member of the provincial organizing committee that was instrumental in developing a community health clinic movement to create cooperative alternatives to privatized medicine.

Fred was deeply committed to preserving agriculture based on the family farm and building grass roots democracy in Canada. He believed in knowledge as power and in his organizing work with farm communities, he had a vision of farm people researching and learning about the forces acting upon them, and then acting on that knowledge.

Co-operative pioneer, 95, pens best-selling book

By Jason Warick

The Star Phoenix

August 9, 2012

95-year-old author Harold Chapman in his Saskatoon home Thursday, August 09, 2012
Photograph by: Greg Pender, Saskatoon Star Phoenix

Harold Chapman steps out onto the 12th floor balcony of his Lakewood-area apartment.

“You can see the horizon. It really is beautiful,” Chapman said Thursday.

At 95 years of age, the Saskatoon man is still looking outward.

In his living room, Chapman discussed his recent projects, which include a brief to a parliamentary committee and penning his bestselling book, Sharing My Life: Building the Co-operative Movement.

“I’m very happy with what I’ve been able to do. I’m fortunate my memory continues to function well,” Chapman said.

The Day the Wheat Board Died

By Gavin Fridell 

Socialist Project

E-Bulletin No. 671
July 27, 2012

On August 1, 2012, the Conservative government will bring an end to a major Canadian institution and one of the world's largest, longest-standing, and most successful “state trading enterprises.” After 70 years as the state-mandated monopoly seller of most Western Canadian wheat, the Canadian Wheat Board will officially become “voluntary,” meaning the death of anything resembling what it has been.



The board has been widely praised and defended by many grain farmers and progressive supporters, as well as relentlessly attacked, even despised, by others. In the end, those opposed to the Board, although highly vocal and backed by powerful corporate interests, would appear to be in the minority. This minority, however, has won the day. The Canadian Conservative government of Stephen Harper legislated the end of the board in December 2011 without holding a vote among prairie grain farmers even though it is required by the Canadian Wheat Board Act. Despite a recent Wheat Board plebiscite in which the majority of farmers voted in favour of maintaining the Board's status, and despite a Federal court ruling at the end of 2011 that determined the government's actions were illegal, the Conservatives have continued unabated in their moves to dismantle the Board, with Harper arguing that when western farmers voted Conservative in the last election (which the majority did) they voted for “marketing freedom.”[1]

A different way of doing things

Robin Murray explores the potential of co-ops to form the basis of an alternative economy

Red Pepper

May 2012

The first great surge of co-operation took place in Britain at the dawn of the age of railways in the 1840s. It was a consumer co-operation of the industrial working class. Within 50 years it had grown into a network of more than 1,000 retail co-ops and a wholesale society that had become the largest corporate organisation in the world. By the first world war, British co-ops accounted for 40 per cent of food distribution. They owned their own factories, farms, shipping lines, banks, an insurance company and even a tea plantation in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The co-operative movement was, in the vision of one of its inspired organisers J T W Mitchell, on the way to developing an alternative economy.

There were similar movements of small farmers and artisans on the continent and in North America, and later in Asia. Common to them all was an emphasis on civic and workplace democracy, autonomy, the quality of work and on small-scale units gathered into large federated organisations where a larger scale was necessary.

Federal budget slashes co-op support

Agriculture Canada cutbacks contradict federal focus on jobs and innovation.

The Canadian Co-operative Association
April 13, 2012

Representatives of Canada's co-operative movement say cutbacks at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada run counter to the government's stated goals of creating jobs, promoting partnerships between the public and private sectors and fostering innovation. The announcement also calls into question the government's support for the United Nations International Year of Co-operatives, which Canada publicly endorsed when the UN resolution was adopted in 2009.

Canada's national co-operative associations have learned that the Co-operative Development Initiative (CDI), a program that has provided financial support for new and emerging co-operatives since 2003, will not be continued — and that the Rural and Co-operatives Secretariat, the government office that administers programs related to co-operatives, will be significantly reduced in size.

Credit union switch fizzles

By Doug Henwood
March 10, 2012

Last fall, there was a lot of buzz about moving money out of banks and into credit unions. Grand claims were made about results. I had my doubts—politically (see here) and financially (see here). One can disagree with me on the politics, but it turns out that not much money was moved.

The Federal Reserve is out with its flow of funds accounts for the fourth quarter. These are a detailed accounting of assets, liabilities, and money flows throughout the U.S. financial system. And before anyone says that the Fed is lying to defend its Wall Street constituency, consider that the main audience for these accounts is banks and bourgeois economists. You could probably count the number of radicals who study these accounts seriously without taking off your shoes.

So, here’s the verdict. In the fourth quarter of last year, credit union deposits increased by $9.9 billion, or 1.2%. In the same quarter, commercial banks increased their checking and savings deposits by $232.2 billion, or 3.5%. The increase in bank deposits (and my measure of this excludes deposits exclusively used by large financial institutions) was 23 times the increase in credit union deposits.

And what did the credit unions do with their very modest windfall? They actually reduced their consumer lending (things like credit cards and auto loans). They increased their mortgage lending, but they increased their purchases of federal agency (e.g. Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae) and Treasury bonds considerably more. They also increased their short-term lending to commercial banks via the federal funds market—in fact, more than a quarter of their increase went there. As I’ve said before, they already have more money than they know what to do with. Put your money in a credit union and it’s more likely than not to end up in very orthodox pursuits.

Sure, we need a better financial system. We need tighter regulation of the old one and new institutions that can lend preferentially to worker co-ops and other non-capitalist enterprises. But this credit union thing won’t cut the mustard. As I’ve said before, it’s a matter of politics, not individual portfolio allocation decisions.

Co-operative and State Ownership in Northern Saskatchewan Under the CCF Government

By Karla Radloff
University of Saskatchewan
Fall, 2004

Co-operative Fisheries Limited, October 1959.
Saskatchewan Archives Board

Government” examines the use of social ownership as a policy instrument by the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) government in Northern Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1964. Led by Tommy Douglas, the new government defined numerous policy problems in the North stemming from both an economy dominated by private ownership and unstable natural resource based industries.

Using two types of social ownership, crown corporations and co-operatives, the CCF sought to rectify these problems and improve the standard of living in Northern Saskatchewan. This study intends to determine whether the CCF government achieved its policy goals in Northern Saskatchewan and concludes that it accomplished its policy-specific goals. Although the CCF may not have revolutionized the Northern economy, it did realize some of its policy goals in the North.

This study is significant because it is the first to focus solely on the program of social ownership that the CCF government implemented in the North and assess the success of the program on the CCF’s terms. Moreover, this thesis offers a comprehensive review of the political origins and development of co-operatives in Northern Saskatchewan.

Read paper HERE.

Cooperatives and Socialism in Cuba

Cuba's Socialist Renewal
September 26, 2012

Cooperatives and Socialism: A Cuban Perspective is a new Cuban book published in Spanish earlier this year. This important and timely compilation is edited by Camila Piñeiro Harnecker. Avid readers of my blog will recall that I translated and posted a commentary by Camila, titled "Cuba Needs Changes", back in January. Camila lives in Cuba and has a degree in sustainable development from the University of Berkeley, California. She is a professor at the Centre for Studies on the Cuban Economy at Havana University, and her works have been published both in Cuba and outside the island.

Camila hopes her book may be published in English soon. In the meantime, she has kindly agreed to allow me to translate and publish this extract (about a third) from her preface to Cooperatives and Socialism with permission from a prospective publisher. I hope that sharing this extract with readers of my blog will make you want to read the whole book. If it does become available in English I'll post the details here. If you read Spanish you can download the 420 page book as a PDF here.

At the end of the text you'll find the footnotes, translated from the Spanish, followed by the table of contents.

Cooperatives and Socialism: A Cuban Perspective

Preface (extract)

By Camila Piñeiro Harnecker
Translation: Marce Cameron

This book arises from the urgent need for us to make a modest contribution to the healthy “birth” of the new Cuban cooperativism and its subsequent spread. Given that cooperatives are foreshadowed as one of the organisational forms of labour in the non-state sector in the Draft Economic and Social Policy Guidelines of the Sixth Cuban Communist Party Congress, the Dr. Martin Luther King Memorial Centre approached me to compile this book. The Centre has made an outstanding contribution to popular education aimed at nurturing and strengthening the emancipatory ethical values, critical thinking, political skills and organisational abilities indispensable for the conscious and effective participation of social subjects. The Centre considers it timely and necessary to support efforts to raise awareness about a type of self-managed economic entity whose principles, basic characteristics and potentialities are unknown in Cuba. There is every indication that such self-managed entities could play a significant role in our new economic model.

Co-operative Capitalism in Saskatchewan

Next Year Country
Dec.-Jan., 1977-78

Saskatchewan's cooperative past has often been lamented for its passing. NYC cast a critical eye on Saskatchewan cooperatives in a series of articles beginning with these in 1997-78.

Open publication - Free publishing - More co-operatives

Co-ops in Saskatchewan and Quebec: A Comparative Analysis

GLOBALIZATION, SOCIAL INNOVATION, AND CO-OPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF QUÉBEC AND SASKATCHEWAN FROM 1980 TO 2010

By Mitch Diamantopoulos
July 2011

Workers bottling milk, Saskatchewan Co-operative Creamery, Moose Jaw (Ca. 1950s)

This study examines the development gap that has emerged between the co-operative sectors of the Canadian provinces of Québec and Saskatchewan since 1980. It harnesses historical research, textual analysis, and semi-structured interviews to better understand how some movements are able to regenerate their movements in the face of crisis.

The study finds that the regeneration of the Québec movement reflects the concertation (concerted action) of social movement, sector, and state actors. Deeply rooted in a collectivist tradition of cultural nationalism and state corporatism, this democratic partnership supported the renovation and expansion of the co-operative development system in a virtuous spiral of movement agency, innovation, and regeneration. Concertation of social movement and state actors created momentum for escalating orders of joint-action, institution-building, and policy and program development.

By contrast, the degeneration of the Saskatchewan movement reflects the decline of the agrarian economy and movement and a failure to effectively coordinate the efforts of emerging social movements and the state for development action. This has yielded a vicious spiral of movement inertia, under-development, and decline. Although green shoots are in evidence, regeneration efforts in Saskatchewan lag Québec’s progress in rebuilding the foundations for effective democratic partnership.

The study concludes with a detailed comparison of these diverging movements, offering conclusions and recommendations for the repair of the Saskatchewan development system and the regeneration of its co-operative movement.

Read paper HERE.

Co-operatives in Saskatchewan

Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan

George and Mary Farnsworth proudly display Co-op products, Admiral, Saskatchewan, August 1950.

Everett Baker (Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society)

Like its counterparts in England and Europe, the co-operative movement in Canada arose from a sense of exploitation. On the prairies, farmers were frustrated by the high prices being charged by bankers, railroads, elevator companies, implement manufacturers, and shopkeepers. Individuals had little control over what they paid for goods and services, or the prices they received for their products. The formation of the first co-operatives was thus fuelled by the desire of farmers to gain control over their local economies, coupled with a shared sense of the necessity for collective action.

While agitating for change in the political arena, farmers at the same time began to use co-operatives to supply themselves with goods and to help them take control of handling and marketing their produce. They formed buying clubs to make bulk purchases of farm supplies and basic commodities, and in 1906 banded together to establish the Grain Growers’ Grain Company to market their grain. In 1911, farmers launched the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company, with the aim of building an elevator system owned and controlled by farmers.

Marx, Marxism and the cooperative movement

By Bruno Jossa
Cambridge Journal of Economics
Vol. 29,No. 1, 2005

2012 has been declared the International Year of Cooperatives by the United Nations. NYC will be posting articles relating to cooperatives and the socialist movement throughout the year. The paper below kicks off this series.

Introduction

On several occasions Marx declared himself strongly in favour of cooperative firms, maintaining that their generalised introduction would result in a new production mode. At different times in his life, he even seems to have been confident that cooperatives would eventually supplant capitalistic firms altogether. Lenin also endorsed the cooperative movement and, in a 1923 work (entirely devoted to this subject), he went so far as to equate cooperation with socialism at large. More precisely, besides describing cooperation as an important organisational step in the transition to socialism, he explicitly argued that ‘cooperation is socialism’ (Lenin, 1923). All the same, ever since the time of the Paris Commune the cooperative movement has received little attention from Marxists.

One argument we intend to put forward in our analysis is that this scant attention for the cooperative movement is due at least in part to the kind of cooperative—a firm in which workers are ‘their own capitalists’ (Marx, 1894, p. 571)—that has asserted itself in history, because this tends to endorse the view that a system of producer cooperatives is not a genuine form of socialism.

However, modern economic theory has shown that the pure cooperative is Vanek’s LMF (see Vanek, 1971A, 1971B), which does not self-finance itself and whose workers can consequently not be correctly described as ‘their own capitalists’. And this consideration disproves the arguments of thoseMarxists who maintain that cooperatives are, by their very nature, an intermediate form in between capitalism and socialism.

But what are the implications of the above reflections? Once we have made it clear that Marx looked upon cooperation as a new production mode superseding capitalism, Marxists fall into at least two distinct groups: those who maintain that in Marxian terms socialism must be identified with a system of self-managed firms and those who equate socialism with a state-planned command economy.

Read more HERE.

Saskatchewan's Farm Movement (1901–49)

By Stuart A. Thiesson
Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan

 Ox cart of wheat and straw, Saskatchewan, 1905

Agricultural settlement was well advanced before the formal creation of the province of Saskatchewan in 1905. Wheat was king: this reality had not escaped the attention of the open- market trade members of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange, who, in collaboration with the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), were unchallenged in actively exploiting export grain buying opportunities. Farmer grievances began to build over complaints of unfair grading practices, excessive dockage, short weights, and unreasonable and monopolistic pricing and shipping practices.

Farmer anger had been building when W.R. Motherwell and Peter Dayman called a general meeting in Indian Head for December 18, 1901. It was unanimously resolved that united action was needed; and after drafting a constitution and by-laws, the Territorial Grain Growers Association (TGGA) was organized. Following a rapid expansion in membership, the first convention of the TGGA was held on February 12, 1902, where Motherwell was elected president and John Miller secretary. The fledgling organization soon had its first court challenge against the CPR agent in Sintaluta, who had refused to honour a “Car Order Book” provision under the Manitoba Grain Act, whereby a farmer might independently obtain a grain car, and load and ship his grain to market. The organization won the case, which was then appealed to the Supreme Court by the CPR; the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision, establishing for all time the farmers’ right to the use of the Car Order Book. The Sintaluta trial represented the first major victory for the organized movement.

Cuba: Cooperatives wait for their chance

By José Alejandro Rodríguez
Progreso Weekly
07 December 2011

With the promotion and expansion of self-employment, which is already showing overt signs of diversity and strengths in the market of supply and demand, Cuba is deactivating the dogma of the monolithic state hegemony in its socialist economy.

While state ownership will remain the backbone, especially in strategic sectors of development, there is increasing room for the citizens' initiative on commerce, services, food and many everyday trades and jobs that are not necessarily permanent and never were able to progress under the top-to-bottom aegis of businesses and ministries.

From Paternalism to Adversarialism: Labour Relations in the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool

By Larry Hubich
President
Saskatchewan Federation of Labour

Presented at an MMCCU Symposium
The Co-operative and its Workers
Saint Mary's University
Halifax, Nova Scotia
June 16, 2006

In preparing to write this paper and to put together the presentation for this conference I read a bit, and analyzed some ofthe history of Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (SWP), and some of the history ofthe Grain Services Union (GSU).

But for the most part, I confess, I cast my mind to my own personal experience with both of these organizations. And also, to thoughts of my own childhood. Because you see, my roots in Saskatchewan Wheat Pool run very deep.

And I think, while this paper and accompanying presentation will not be steeped in research and will not be replete with references and citations, as is often customary with more scholarly efforts, it will be informative, and accurate.

Much of it is a personal reflection of a company over a period of approximately 50 years. In order to set the context, I think you should understand a bit about the author.

New Paths to Socialism

How can the Mondragon Cooperatives, the Solidarity and Green Economies, with an assist from Gramsci and Marx, clear pathways to a new socialism of the 21st century?

Get a copy of Carl Davidson’s new book on the topic: 
New Paths to Socialism

 

Contents:

• The Mondragon Cooperatives and 21st Century Socialism
• Mondragon Diaries: Five Days Studying Cutting-Edge People and Tools for Change
• 'One Worker, One Vote:' US Steelworkers to Experiment With Factory Ownership, Mondragon Style
• Green Party Mayor of Richmond, California Signs 'Letter in Intent' with Spain's Mondragon Coops
• There Is An Alternative: Market Socialism with Radical Democracy
• Green Jobs Meets the Solidarity Economy: A Dynamic Duo for Changing the World
• Green Jobs and Class Struggle: A Memo for the Working Class Studies Association
• Alinsky vs. Arizmendi: Redistribution or Control of Wealth In Changing the World
• Eleven Talking Points On 21st Century Socialism
• Jossa: Gramsci, Economic Theory of Worker Cooperatives and the  Transition to a Socialist Economy
• Jossa: Excerpts from ‘Marx, Marxism and the Cooperative Movement’
• Schweickart: Is Sustainable Capitalism Possible? The Case of China
• $15 from Changemaker Publications. http://stores.lulu.com/changemaker

Co-op offers pennies

Written by RWDSU 
Act Up In Sk
Saturday, 07 May 2011

Yorkton Co-operative employees employed in all of that retail’s locations in the city of Yorkton have overwhelmingly rejected what the Co-op has called its best offer. The 100 plus employees at this retail have been bargaining for a new agreement since the last one expired over one year ago. The major issues are all monetary in nature, the big one being wages.

The Co-op has proposed new start rates at just 75 cents per hour above minimum wage in the first year. Top-rated employees who for the most part are in the clerk-cashier position have been offered an increase of $1.36.

However, the Co-op proposed to cancel a $1 per hour incentive program which has been in place for many years. Consequently, the real increase in year one is 36 cents for this group. That would put a cashier on a pay scale of between $10 to $14.66 per hour after four years on the job. The Co-op’s offer for a second and third year employee is 25 cents for all rates except the top, where they are offering 37 and 38 cents respectively.

This wage offer is well below the rates for cashiers at other unionized supermarkets in the city, such as Sobey’s and Superstore. Long term staff are disappointed and feel the Co-op can well afford to do much better.

Yorkton Co-op rates have fallen behind because of many years when staff took wage freezes and very small increases.

It is common knowledge that Federated Co-operatives Ltd., of which Yorkton Co-op is a member owner, has been making hundreds of millions of dollars. Meanwhile petroleum division workers are in the lower end of pay in this industry and gas bar employees after three years will only be getting $11.83 per hour.

Employees are members of the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union and have given the union a strike mandate to conduct job action unless the Co-op begins to close the gap with other major retailers.

The Founding of the Co-operatives

NFB

A record of the founding meeting of the Fogo Island Ship Building and Producer Co-operative(1967).

The Fogo Island Process evolved from a series of events that took place on Fogo Island in 1967. Two years before, Donald Snowden, the then Director of the Extension Department at Memorial University, proposed the idea of producing a series of films to show the people of Newfoundland and Labrador that poverty did not mean economic deprivation, it could also be the result of isolation and the inability to access information and communication through media as well as a lack of communication.

Snowden teamed up with Colin Low, a filmmaker with The National Film Board of Canada, and considered five areas in Newfoundland for potential filming before deciding Fogo Island was the ideal candidate to initiate what is now known as the Fogo Island Process.

In 1967, less than five thousand people lived on Fogo Island, living in ten separate communities. Fogo Island represented the type of isolation and lack of information or organization that Snowden wanted to show as alternate indicators of poverty in the province.

Fogo Island at that time was going through an economic slump. The Island depended on the fishing industry for three hundred years, but the inshore fishery was failing, and sixty percent of families were forced depend on welfare. These circumstances brought about the possibility of resettlement.

Snowden believed that the people of Fogo Island could form a co-operative in an effort to preserve their way of life. Colin Low was introduced to Fred Earl, a Memorial University Extension Worker, and attended a meeting of the newly formed Improvement Committee, a group of members formed from the ten communities across the Island. They introduced the concept of filming on the Island, and identified a number of Island wide issues: the inability to organize, the need for communication, the resentment felt towards the idea of resettlement, and the anger toward the fact that the government seemed to be making decisions about Fogo Island’s future with no community consultation process.

By using the technique of filming, communities as well as government officials were able to see how the people of Fogo Island felt about the issues they faced concerning the fishery. It was clearly identified that the government was making decisions for Fogo Island without community consultation. This became an important part of the Fogo Island Process, as individual communities were united in their concern for their livelihood and for the future of Fogo Island.

As a result of the films, fishermen were given the opportunity to voice their concerns to cabinet ministers and other government officials. Soon, alternatives were made to the original proposal of resettlement, which was initially pushed by Premier Joseph Smallwood.

Today, the Fogo Island Co-operative is prospering. The Fogo Island Process is only one factor in a success story for which most credit must be given to the people. As film producer Colin Low said, the films "intensified" a process already begun. The Fogo Island Process became an internationally acclaimed prototype of using media to promote dialogue and social change and was the model used by various communities in similar economic situations around the world.

Matador Farming Pool and the Co-operative Farm Movement

The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan

Veterans planting trees at the Matador Co-op Farm, May 1948.
Everett Baker (Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society)

Matador is the most successful of the co-operative farms established under the auspices of Saskatchewan’s CCF government following World War II. Set southwestern Saskatchewan, it is one of the original settlements of the province’s postwar co-operative community movement and its last survivor.

The co-operative tradition arose in western Canada at the end of the 19th century and became an integral part of the agrarian settlement of the west. This tradition of rural co-operation was overwhelmingly Rochdalian or liberal democratic, that is, a form of co-operative organization that accepted the existence of the capitalist market-place, respected the family ownership of farms as private property, and advocated the pooling of purchasing and marketing functions through farmer-owned co-operatives. A liberal democratic co-op tended to deal with a single aspect of a person’s life: that concerned with credit, farm production marketing, retail supplies, and so on. In contrast, the co-op farms were intentional co-operative communities, which created a co-operative lifestyle for their members and linked a variety of co-operative institutions under one organizational roof. Co-operative community lifestyles tended towards the communal, and land and assets were owned and worked co-operatively.