Premier must keep his promise to consult with the public: TILMA 2.0

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall will be breaking his 2007 promise to the people of Saskatchewan not to sign the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) if he puts his signature to a rebranded version of the agreement. It appears that the New West Partnership will be signed with British Columbia (B.C.) and Alberta in the near future, without any public or legislative oversight.

In an open letter sent today to the Premier, over 30 groups and individuals called on the Premier to release the full text of the New West Partnership. These signatories made presentations in 2007 at the legislative hearings on TILMA, arguing that the government should reject the controversial interprovincial trade agreement. Today they called on the Premier to conduct a legislative review and full and transparent public hearings on any proposed New West Partnership.

“In June 2007, when he was leader of the opposition, Brad Wall listened to the overwhelming voices of the people of Saskatchewan and made the right decision in pledging that he wouldn’t sign on to TILMA,” says Larry Hubich, president of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour. “Now less than three years later he appears ready to sign a secret deal that nobody has seen, that appears to be based on TILMA, and he’s hoping the people of Saskatchewan will be fooled by a fresh coat of paint and a new name. I don’t think so.”

In 2007 over 70 organizations and individuals raised concerns about several provisions of TILMA , including those that would lower regulatory standards and that would implement a private tribunal for corporations to challenge provincial rules and standards.

“Saskatchewan was right to reject TILMA then, and it should reject a rebranded TILMA now,” adds Scott Harris, the Prairie Regional Organizer with the Council of Canadians. “Nothing has suddenly changed to make lowest-common-denominator regulations and standards good for Saskatchewan. Nothing has suddenly changed to make giving corporations the right to sue elected governments for millions of dollars for ‘impeding trade’ – decided on by unaccountable dispute panels – suddenly a good idea for Saskatchewan.”

“Handcuffing the ability of the province, municipalities, school boards and public enterprises to make decisions in the best interest of Saskatchewan flies in the face of democratic principles,” concludes Gary Schoenfeldt, chair of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour Trade Committee. “The Premier has an obligation to show the people of Saskatchewan what’s in this new TILMA agreement before he signs anything. Both Brad Wall and Ken Krawetz are on record as saying they would never sign a TILMA agreement without first consulting with Saskatchewan people and we are asking them to keep their promise.”

The groups are asking when the three provinces plan to sign off on the New West Partnership. In his February 9, 2010 Throne Speech, BC Premier Gordon Campbell stated that the “new west partnership with Alberta and Saskatchewan … will build on the success of the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement” and on March 30, 2010 BC Liberal MLA Douglas Horne tabled a Notice of Motion saying, “Be it resolved that this House support the creation of the New West Partnership with Alberta and Saskatchewan.”

For more information:
Larry Hubich, President, Saskatchewan Federation of Labour: (306) 537-7330
Gary Schoenfeldt, Chair, Saskatchewan Federation of Labour Trade Committee: (306) 537-7091
Scott Harris, Prairies Regional Organizer, Council of Canadians: (780) 233-2528

Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day and the International Year of Biodiversity

See the Change, Be the Change: 4th Annual Environmental Film Festival and Environmental Activist Awards
Royal Saskatchewan Museum Theatre, Regina
Friday, April 23rd at 7:30 pm - Film Screenings

The Story of Stuff (20 min.)

The Story of Stuff takes viewers on a provocative and eye-opening tour of the real costs of our consumer driven culture—from resource extraction to iPod incineration. Annie Leonard, an activist who has spent the past 10 years traveling the globe fighting environmental threats, narrates the Story of Stuff, delivering a rapid-fire, often humourous and always engaging story about “all our stuff—where it comes from and where it goes when we throw it away.”

The Story of Cap and Trade (10 min.)

The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at Copenhagen and on Capitol Hill. Host Annie Leonard introduces the energy traders and Wall Street financiers at the heart of this scheme and reveals the "devils in the details" in current cap and trade proposals: free permits to big polluters, fake offsets and distraction from what’s really required to tackle the climate crisis.

The Story of Bottled Water (8 min.)
The film explores the bottled water industry’s attacks on tap water and its use of seductive, environmental-themed advertising to cover up the mountains of plastic waste it produces. The film concludes with a call to ‘take back the tap,’ not only by making a personal commitment to avoid bottled water, but by supporting investments in clean, available tap water for all.

8:15 pm - Environmental Activist Awards Ceremony

Regina's SEN Environmental Activist Awards will be presented by Lynn Hainsworth, Executive Director of Saskatchewan Eco-Network to the Campbell Collegiate Environmental Club, Catherine Verrall, Paule Hjertaas and Jim Harding.
Discussion to follow. Free Admission. Fair Trade coffee will be served.

Saturday, April 24th, 7:30 pm - Film Screenings

Refugees of the Blue Planet (54 min.)
Each year, millions of people the world over are driven to forced displacement. From the Maldives to Brazil, and even closer to home, here in Canada, the disturbing accounts of people who have been uprooted are amazingly similar. The enormous pressure placed on rural populations as a result of the degradation of their life-supporting environment is driving them increasingly further from their way of life. The Refugees of the Blue Planet sheds light on the little-known plight of a category of individuals who are suffering the repercussions of this reality: environmental refugees. They are constantly growing in number and often have no legal status, even though their right to a clean and sustainable environment has been violated. In French with English subtitles.

Taking Back Control of Our Food (46 min.)
This is a film featuring Dr. Wayne Roberts, Coordinator, Toronto Food Policy Council; introduced by Elaine Sukava of Food Secure Saskatchewan.

Free Admission. Toonie concession available featuring Fair Trade coffee, popcorn and pop.

Sponsored by: RSM Associates, Saskatchewan EcoNetwork, Saskatchewan Council for International Cooperation, Food Secure Saskatchewan and the Education for Sustainable Development Network.

For more information contact the Royal Saskatchewan Museum at 306-787-2815 or visit http://www.royalsaskmuseum.ca/

Naming the violence that has taken our sisters

By Joyce Green

Briarpatch Magazine

March/April 2010

This essay is adapted from remarks delivered at the Sisters in Spirit vigil in Regina, SK, October 6, 2009.

Some things defy articulation. How can a community conceptualize the vicious, racist misogyny that leaves scores of Aboriginal women missing and murdered? We try, because silence really is complicity – because we are all affected, we are all related and we do not accept the loss of these women. I say to the families of missing and murdered women: we are humbled by your courage in the face of such pain.

The women’s movement has a saying: the personal is political. We share our personal experiences, and in that way, we make them political. This is what Sisters in Spirit is doing. This is what the Native Women’s Association of Canada is doing. This is what the families of the missing and murdered women are doing.

Our personal conditions are not just private – they are the result of structures, processes, policies, laws, misogyny and racism. Once we understand that, we find solidarity, begin to analyze our situation and then take political action. In our solidarity and action we have power; we are not only victims.

There are so many names, too many for me to recite. But I remember in particular the girl whose name was the first branded into the national consciousness – Helen Betty Osborne, a 16-year-old high school student who was kidnapped, raped and murdered by four white boys, protected by their community for decades. She would be my age had she lived. Closer to home, I remember Pamela George, a young mother, kidnapped, raped and murdered by two young white men in Regina. I remember Amber, and Daleen, and Tara-Lyn, and all the sisters who are no longer with us. I am enraged that the loss of these women is a regular occurrence.

Generations apart, they have all been taken from us by an evil that has not gone away. And while racism and sexism come together in the lives of Aboriginal women, we know that not only white men have preyed on these women.

Aboriginal women and men have suffered from the violence of colonialism, but they have not suffered in the same way. Many women are victimized by assault, rape and murder. But indigenous women are especially vulnerable to male violence because of the convergence of sexism and racism. According to Amnesty International and the Native Women’s Association of Canada, Aboriginal women are five times more likely to be murdered than other women in Canada.

“It’s a good place to raise a family,” people said when I moved to Regina in 1998. But not for my girl, who is visibly Aboriginal. I raised my daughter in fear – always fearing she would become a victim, would go missing, would be killed. She came close to it. I am lucky. She is alive. It could so easily have been otherwise.

Racism is an ideology that justifies the oppression and thefts of colonialism. Racism allows the settler population to see themselves as deserving, while the Other, the indigenous, is seen as deviant and deficient. Racism gives rise to white privilege, enjoyed by those who can choose not to know about colonialism or indigenous peoples, but who nonetheless benefit from being white in a racist settler society. Those with privilege receive quality education and good jobs, and are genuinely distressed at the suffering of indigenous peoples, while being blind to the ways in which their privilege arises from the historical and ongoing oppression of indigenous peoples.

The racism that I’m describing leads predominantly white politicians, police and media to pay less attention to missing Aboriginal women, and to ignore the factors that make them so vulnerable. They prefer to talk about “cultural differences” instead of oppression, about “risk factors” instead of colonialism. By focusing only on individuals and ignoring history, they can be blind to the fact that this awful problem of missing and murdered Aboriginal women is a consequence of our social, economic and political relationships.

Together, we remember these women and commit to working to build a society where women are not under such threats; where we will not always have to be afraid; where we need not meet to name the missing and share our pain; where such atrocities do not happen; where colonialism will be a thing of the past and we can finally work together for justice for all.

Blessed be, all my relations.

Restoring the Bargain: Challenging Bill 6

CCPA Saskatchewan Office Update

The Saskatchewan office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is releasing University of Regina business administration professor S. Muthu’s study, Restoring the Bargain: Contesting the Constitutionality of the Amendments to the Saskatchewan Trade Union Act, a thorough analysis of the constitutionality of the province’s current labour legislation.

This study represents an important contribution to the current debate over the extent to which legislatures can limit workers’ rights and freedoms. The study also thoroughly evaluates recent Supreme Court decisions, with emphasis on the Dunmore decisions and Health Services et al v. B.C. to determine if recent guidance by the Supreme Court will uphold Bill 6.

Muthu concludes that Bill 6 amendments to the Trade Union Act S.11(1)(a) are in violation of sections 2(b), 2(c), 2(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Furthermore, Muthu contends that these changes are not saved by the constitutional test under Section One.

Muthu argues that rather than representing a “rebalancing of powers,” as the government insists, instead “unions’ and employees’ freedoms have been infringed while employers’ freedom have been enhanced.” The effect of Bills 5 and 6 “provide the employer with a double barrel gun – freedom of speech enhancement at critical organizing moments and mandatory requirement of certification elections – with a lot of ammunition, resulting in practically an open hunting season on unions.”

With the current court challenge to the Wall government’s labour legislation by both the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour (SFL) and the Saskatchewan General Employees Union (SGEU), professor Muthu’s analysis offers a detailed background of the arguments and logic that will ultimately shape this important judicial decision.

View the full report here

Climate Scientist Sues National Post

Suit Could Hold Paper Responsible for Comments and Internet Repetitions

Desmog Blog

Dr. Andrew Weaver, one of the most respected climate scientists in Canada and one of the best climate modellers in the world, has launched a libel suit against the National Post newspaper and its publisher, editors and three writer: Terence Corcoran, Peter Foster and Kevin Libin.

In the words of a news release broadcast today, the suit is for "a series of unjustified libels based on grossly irresponsible falsehoods that have gone viral on the Internet."

The 48-page Statement of Claim (download the PDF version here) sets out a National Post pattern of reporting critical and erroneous material about Weaver and, in recent times, refusing to retract or correct when inaccuracies are brought to the paper's attention. An obvious example was an allegation that Weaver had (or was about to) quit his Nobel-winning role in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - an allegation Weaver dismissed out of hand.

Two elements of the suit could be of interest to every online publication that offers or encourages the retransmission of its material. In addition to citing reader comments among the libels posted on the National Post site, Weaver is asking for an unprecedented Court order requiring the newspaper to help track down and remove defamatory National Post articles from the many other Internet sites where they have been re-posted.

That, if granted, would cause the paper no end of trouble and could create a precedent that would make every paper in the world think twice before posting so much as a single DIGG link at the bottom of a story.

Are Canadians Paying Too Much in Taxes?

Posted by Iglika Ivanova
The Progressive Economics Forum

It’s tax season and people are looking more closely at their incomes and the amount of taxes they pay.

The Fraser Institute released their annual Consumer Tax Index report yesterday, claiming that the total tax bill of the average Canadian family now takes up 41.7% of their income. This seems like a big number, which they use to suggest that Canadians are overtaxed, but what does it actually measure?

The Fraser Institute calculates the average Canadian tax bill by taking the entire amount of tax revenue that the Canadian governments collect, including all personal and business taxes, import duties and resource royalties, and divided them by the number of Canadian households. This definition of a family’s tax bill does not correspond to what individual families actually pay and is way too broad to be meaningful.

The argument that the average Canadian family pays for all business taxes is simply not convincing. Even if individuals ultimately pay all business taxes, it’s not necessarily Canadians that pay them (think of all the stuff we export).

And it’s certainly not the average family that pays all business taxes. In fact, given how unequally distributed shareholder profits and investment earnings are these days, the average has become meaningless — it’s artificially pulled up by those with higher incomes and does not represent the experience of most families. The median family’s tax bill would be a lot better metric in this case.

When corporate income tax, natural resource royalties and other business taxes are excluded from the calculation, the average family’s tax bill comes out to 36% of family income. This includes personal income taxes, sales taxes, taxes on liquor, tobacco and fuel and payroll taxes.

Including CPP and EI premiums in the family’s tax bill is also misleading. These payments directly benefit the individual who makes them by making him/her eligible for certain payouts in the future — pension benefits when they retire or EI benefits when they lose their job. This makes them very different from taxes like income or sales tax, which go into general revenue and do not necessarily flow back to the particular taxpayer.

Even if we overlook these issues and accept the Fraser Institute’s numbers, knowing that a family pays 36% or 41.7% of its income on taxes still doesn’t answer the question of whether this is too much or too little. We need to take account of what Canadians get for their taxes to make that kind of judgment. The Fraser Institute report, however, completely misses this part of the equation in their report.

In fact, a large chunk of government’s tax revenues flow back to Canadians in the form of direct transfers, such as old-age pensions for our elders, EI payments for the unemployed, and child benefits for parents.

Interestingly, the Fraser Institute includes government transfers in their calculation of family income. You won’t find this out in this report, though – you need to look up a 2008 Fraser Institute book that is cited in the report to get at their definition of family income (or family cash income, as they call it). Well, I did, and I found that family cash income includes wages and salaries, but also unincorporated non-farm income, interest, dividends, private and government pension payments, old age pension payments, and other transfers from government.

Without getting into a discussion of what percentage of Canadian families receives income from dividends and other investments, and how meaningful averages are when the distribution is so unequal, let’s just note that old age pension payments and other government transfers account for a large share of the average family’s cash income. In 2007, the latest year for with Fraser Institute numbers are available, they estimated that the average family received $2,125 in old age pension and $8,344 in other government transfers, for a total of $10,469 or 16% of their “cash income” of $66,496.

On average, then, almost half of the family’s total tax bill came back to them in the form of direct transfers from government. The other half was used to pay for services like education, healthcare, policing, justice, road construction and repair that Canadian families used and benefited from. This doesn’t seem like such a bad deal, after all.

Greg Albo speaking at Regina May Day event

Regina May Day Event Speaker

Greg Albo teaches political economy at the Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto. He is currently co-editor of the Socialist Register. He is also on the editorial boards of Studies in Political Economy, Relay, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, Canadian Dimension, The Bullet and Historical Materialism (England). Co-editor of A Different Kind of State: Popular Power and Democratic Administration and author of numerous articles in journals such as Studies in Political Economy, Socialist Register, Canadian Dimension, and Monthly Review.

Professor Albo is also on the executive of the Centre for Social Justice in Toronto. He has lectured in universities across Canada, and also in the US, Japan, Turkey, Columbia, Cuba, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Italy, Britain, Austria, Germany and elsewhere. Professor Albo’s research interests are the political economy of contemporary capitalism, labour market policies in Canada, and democratization. He teaches courses on the foundations of political economy, Canadian political economy, alternatives to capitalism, and democratic administration.

Below are two videos in which Greg Albo discusses the challenges facing socialism.






More on the May Day Event here.

Eriel Deranger at May Day Event

Eriel Deranger is a Dene woman from Alberta who has been active in challenging the tars sand development. She is involved with the Rainforest Action Network. She will be one of the guest presenters at the May Day event in Regina.

Rainforest Action Network video



Eriel's video



Below is a video interview with her about a protest she was involved in last September.



Activists send message to Canada via a 70-foot banner about tar sands over Niagara Falls



About Eriel

Eriel Deranger was raised in a family of activists and spent much of her youth attending rallies, protests and social justice conferences. Much of her activity was rooted in the struggles facing Indigenous peoples. Specifically, she has worked on Indigenous land claims in Canada. This eventually led to an interest and involvement in broader global issues. “While working on these issues I found myself becoming more interested in the fact that the systems that we are currently living in are fraught with inequities and that change was needed….I found that change would only come from international pressure that asserted our Indigenous sovereignty.”

With the support of TakingItGlobal and Canadian Heritage, Aboriginal Affairs, Eriel attended the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York in 2006. After meeting other Indigenous youth at this forum she returned to Canada to help develop the United Nations Indigenous Youth Caucus. In 2007 she attended the International Training Centre for Indigenous People in Illuslisat, Greenland. This led her to research the impact of the Alberta Tar Sands on the rights of Indigenous peoples in Canada and to become more involved with environmental organizations.

In partnership with the Rainforest Action Network and the Indigenous Environmental Network, Eriel has worked for the past year and a half to ensure that the public is aware of the impact that Alberta Tar Sands are having on the community, climate change and our dependency on oil. She recently attended the International Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen as a representative of the Rainforest Action Network and the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.

Through her involvement in these organizations, Eriel is working towards a world that encompasses environmental justice rooted in the recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

Eriel believes that being a global citizen means being active and engaged with the issues of her community and representing them globally. “It means being accountable to my people and community and engaging with the broader spectrum of the world and those facing similar issues,” she says.

Her vision for an equitable, sustainable future includes the adoption and implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and creating a world that is free of destructive non-renewable resources extraction.

She says that young people in North America have a unique role in changing the future. “Being from North America we must recognize that we have an ecological debt to the Global South. The comforts of our world come at the expense of many Indigenous peoples worldwide.” Youth have a responsibility to help break this cycle.

Eriel has this advice for other young people looking to get involved in international development work: “Research the area that you are interested in and look for organizations that fit your need. Internships are a great way to get your foot in the door. Many social justice organizations need volunteers. Consider volunteering and getting active in your community. It often leads to more.”

She would also like to remind youth to “…come from a place of love. Try to avoid ‘helping’ others, but rather work with people.”

Download Eriel's written profile

Rebuilding the Left: Toronto Worker's Assembly

"The Assembly calls on activists to join together in a democratic process to create a new politics. It is both a space for dialogue and learning within the popular left movement and an organ of common action. Seeking to move beyond coalition and network politics the Assembly is an organization that individuals belong to without giving up their membership and allegiances to community organizations, unions and left groups. We are committed to developing our understanding of what we’re up against, who our potential allies are, and to organize and act in new ways that will take us from a politics of resistance to emancipatory alternatives."

One  of the most developments within the Canadian left that Greg Albo will be discussing at the upcoming May Day Event in Regina is the Greater Toronto Worker's Assembly. This broad-based organization brings together many movements, parties, unions and individuals into a unique project of the left.

The following is their statement of purpose.

About the Greater Toronto Workers' Assembly (GTWA)

With economic and political crises deepening before our eyes, the working class in Canada – employed, unemployed and marginalized; in the workplace and the community; union and non-union – seems to be permanently on the defensive both ideologically and strategically. This is, on one hand, easily explained: amidst attacks on workers, poor people, unemployed/underemployed, racialized workers and immigrants, many of us are consumed in the struggle just to survive, let alone participate in some form of organized or unorganized resistance. Others among us are trying to deal with the enormity and ferocity of the attacks by employers and governments threatening our jobs, working conditions and basic standards of living. But there is also a sense that we have not yet built the kind of movement that we need.

Despite often resourceful local forms of resistance and organizing, we have yet to build an independent politics that puts real alternatives to capitalism on the agenda. Many unions are pursuing short-term strategies that fend off or minimize the impact of the crisis on their own members, but fail to address its underlying causes, challenge the inequalities it is reinforcing, and build the necessary alliances with the unemployed and the thousands of people living on various forms of social assistance. Those of us with a more radical vision of social and economic justice remain fragmented and isolated. How can we address our immediate needs and also build our collective capacities for social change?

The goals of the Assembly are:

To bring together activists within the broad working class movement, to explore the experiences and approaches to struggle that both unite and divide us as a starting point for overcoming divisions and building greater collaboration, exchange, strategic discussion and action amongst us

To share our understanding of the problems created by capitalism and the current economic crisis and the need to develop alternative visions that challenge the logic and power of private corporations, and the states that back them, over our lives

To identify and develop concrete strategies and organizational forms of struggle which defend working-class people’s immediate needs and lay the groundwork for an equitable and democratic alternative to our present economic and political system.

Fnd out more at the GTWA website here.

Explaining the Saskatchewan NDP's shift to "Third Way" Social Democracy

By David McGrane, Carleton University

Since the election of Tommy Douglas’ first Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) government in 1944, Saskatchewan has been considered the home of social democracy in English Canada. This paper begins by briefly describing the ‘traditional social democracy’ of CCF-NDP governments in Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1982 which was characterized by the expansion of universal social programs, the use of public investment and state intervention as a tools of economic development, the imposition of labour code reforms on business and the creation of public enterprise for essential services and the extraction of natural resources.

The paper then describes the shift of the NDP government in the 1990s to ‘Third Way’ social democracy which focused on the maintenance of public enterprise for essential services, the attraction of external  private investment as the principle means of economic development, the search for a consensus between employers and unions on labour code modifications, the rationalization of universal social programs and the expansion of targeted social programs.


“Explaining the Saskatchewan NDP’s Shift to Third Way Social Democracy” -

Roy Romanow tried legislating Saskatewan nurses back to work in the 1990's. Third Way social democracy lost that battle. See the video below from 100 Years of Nursing.
Click on Saskatchewan nurses strike in 1999 here

Who are the heroes in Afghanistan?

Rick Salutin
Rabble.ca

Tipping points are a matter of opinion. In mine, the Canadian mission in Afghanistan has now tipped over and landed in Somalia in 1993. This was not supposed to happen.

I mean we can sort of quasi-invade it but we can't walk into one of their prisons. I mean, give me a break." (Former Canadian embassy in Kabul official Eileen Olexiuk, on being told by superiors that she couldn't investigate prisoner transfers despite serious concerns over torture.)

Tipping points are a matter of opinion. In mine, the Canadian mission in Afghanistan has now tipped over and landed in Somalia in 1993. This was not supposed to happen. The mission of the Rick Hillier generation in the Canadian Forces was to redress the failure and shame of the Somalia mission. Canada went there to back up a U.S. invasion, designed to show American ability to impose its control anywhere, as the world's "sole superpower," after the Soviet Union imploded. But it led to the abuse and murder of a Somali teenager, Shidane Arone, by Canadians, a suddenly disbanded royal commission, the dissolution of an elite unit, and a will to rebuild.

Now look at Afghanistan. We went in to back a U.S. invasion. Yesterday in Ottawa, a senior military cop said the plan was to avoid another Somalia by handing prisoners to Afghans, where our "responsibility ended" unless "there was a clear allegation" of torture -- and it turns out there were many! This is worse than Somalia. It is gutless, widespread and systemic. Wednesday, a former Afghan translator for our troops testified to the most grisly details yet. He's now in Ottawa with his family, after threats of Taliban retaliation.

No ground was won back by the military with this mission. What are families of the dead soldiers to make of it? The elaborate built-up structure of myth is under stress: the highway of heroes, Luke's Troops, standing O's at public events, Hockey Night in Canada tributes. Even the fact that our troops were in Kandahar gets ignored as the U.S. prepares to move in there.

I certainly don't think our soldiers have been villains, but they have been victims and to some degree dupes. Their military and political leaders let them down by sending them in. Once there, you have to deal with death, torture, the whole calamitous package. A better idea is to stay out of pointless mires. Use your military to defend your country, not invade and occupy others.

There are villains: The generals who swanned before the parliamentary hearings last fall, scoffing at all charges, and now at least sounding chastened. Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper. Barking MPs like Conservative Laurie Hawn and his caucus mates. The media who gullibly swallowed the Rick Hillier shtick as if he was the second (one was enough) coming of Don Cherry.

And there's at least a footpath of heroic whistleblowers and truth-tellers, like the commonsensical Eileen Olexiuk ("Give me a break"). Richard Colvin, who's still in the diplomatic service, but broke ranks and took his lumps in and out of Question Period. Ahmadshah Malgarai, the Afghan-Canadian translator who testified this week. The Globe's Graeme Smith, who unleashed the detainee story in 2006. None needed the courage of a soldier in the field, but they spoke more in the interests of those soldiers than the generals and politicians, who pretty much betrayed them.

What can we expect from this government? "From what I know and have seen, I have no interest in seeing this exhibition personally," said cabinet minister James Moore this week. He was talking about a show at the National Gallery, but it could have been the Afghan torture disclosures. These guys just don't want to know. Their prorogation gimmick in December kept the story quiet till now. The only reason we get to hear it at all is due to the powers of the opposition in what the Brits charmingly call a hung parliament.

Pray for another, I say, at least until we have solid guarantees of public information about what matters.

Regina May Day Event!

As a follow up to the successful January 30th meeting, the committee for rebuilding the left is sponsoring an educational event in celebration of May Day.

Click on above image to enlarge.

Also about this May Day Event: The Toronto Worker's Assembly - NYC

About guest speaker Eriel Deranger here.

About guest speaker Greg Albo here.

About Peter Garden.

Peter Garden is the owner of Turning the Tide Bookstore in Saskatoon. He has been working a community activist in Saskatoon for the past 5 years on a number of social justice and environmental issues. He has been a producer and webmaster for Making the Links, a radio show on CFCR 90.5 FM in Saskatoon and web audio site www.makingthelinksradio.ca. He is an administrator of the newly-formed Actupinsask Independent Media website and a founding member of the Seeds of Change community centre which offers a library, meeting space and computers with multimedia production software to the public.

Peter Garden on Ryan Meili

Socialists, Jews, and the 1947 Saskatchewan Bill of Rights

As the Saskatchewan Party contemplates axing the Saskatchewan Human Rights Tribunal, we should take a moment to reflect on the role of the CCF in establishing Canada's first human rights legislation.

I offer this essay by Carmela Patrias. - NYC.



PDF document below.


Socialists, Jews and the 1947 Bill of Rights -

Revolutionary Traveller

Freeze-Frames from a Life
 by John S. Saul

John S. Saul draws on a series of his own occasional articles written over a span of forty years which, together with a linking narrative, serve to trace not only his own career as an anti-apartheid and liberation support movement activist in both Canada and southern Africa but also help recount the history of the various struggles in both venues in which he has been directly involved. He thus shapes a unique memoir, capped by some longer summary pieces on the global processes of empire and decolonization that he has witnessed and on the reading, listening, playing and family pleasures that have enlivened his life’s passage.

At its core, Revolutionary Traveller tries to make sense of the path taken by liberation movements in Southern Africa from the perspective of one swept up in their momentum. It is both sobering and liberating to read a personal account of such large political transformations that considers the role an individual can play while acknowledging the greater role of class and national forces.”

— Chris Webb, Canadian Dimension magazine

Buy this book here.

New hard-hitting report details Prime Minister’s ‘assault on Democracy’

Accompanying poll shows majority of Canadians want proportional representation
Council of Canadians

A major poll, conducted by Environics Research for the Council of Canadians, has found that 62 percent of Canadians support “moving towards a system of proportional representation (PR) in Canadian elections.”

The poll accompanies a report prepared for the Council of Canadians by Murray Dobbin on the “concerted attack on democracy” by the Harper government. The report, Harper’s Hitlist: Power, Process and the Assault on Democracy, is available at www.canadians.org/democracy. The report details the two recent prorogations, Harper’s influence on the Senate, and his attacks on women’s rights, democracy and political advocacy.

A key finding of the Environics Research poll is that 36 percent of Canadians are more supportive of PR based on the view that such a system could make it more difficult for prime ministers to arbitrarily prorogue Parliament to avoid accountability. Harper’s Hitlist makes the case that this latter figure suggests that the anger over Harper’s actions has resulted in a determination by voters to deal with the situation permanently: by changing the system itself. To help build on this momentum for PR, the Council of Canadians is encouraging voters to sign the Declaration of Voters' Rights at http://www.fairvote.ca/.

In addition, the strong support for PR is consistent across the country – from a low of 59 percent in Alberta to a high of 65 per cent in Quebec. Young voters – prominent at the anti-prorogation demonstrations in January – were the strongest supporters, with 71 percent favouring a change to PR.

As Dobbin explains in the opening paragraphs of the report, “This study is intended to examine the most serious violations of democracy committed by the prime minister and his government. Some are clearly more serious than others. But taken as a whole they add up to a dangerous undermining of our democratic traditions, institutions and precedents – and politics.”

“These violations are not accidental, they are not incidental, and they are not oversights or simply the sign of an impatient government or ‘decisive’ leadership,” says Dobbin. “They are a fundamental part of Harper’s iron-fisted determination to remake Canada, whether Canadians like it or not.”

Murray Dobbin is an author, columnist, and former board member of the Council of Canadians. He is also the author of Word Warriors, an on-line activist tool hosted on the Council’s website at www.canadians.org/wordwarriors.

The poll on proportional representation was conducted by Environics Research between February 22 and 24, 2010. The results represent the findings of a telephone survey conducted among a national random sample of 1,001 adults comprising 501 males and 500 females 18 years of age and older, living in Canada. The margin of error for a sample of this size is +/- 3.10 percent, 19 times out of 20.