Socialist Project

Bullet #1499: Ontario Colleges On Strike

| October 20, 2017

More than 12,000 Ontario public college faculty were on the picket line rather than in their classrooms on Monday morning after talks between the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) and the College Employer Council failed to produce a tentative collective agreement. JP Hornick (chair of the union bargaining team) said Council is committed to a 'Walmart model of education' based on reducing the role of full-time faculty and exploiting underpaid contract workers who have no job security beyond one semester.

What's New: When moving past the Indian Act means something worse

by Russell Diabo | October 19, 2017

In 1980, I was at the Skyline Hotel in Ottawa (now the Delta) and witnessed Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau come to a National Indian Brotherhood meeting of Chiefs. He asked the Chiefs to 'treat Canada better than Canada has treated you,' as he revealed his intention to patriate Canada’s constitution from Britain -- a bombshell that raised the question of whether Aboriginal and treaty rights would be part of the document. From that salvo of Trudeau Senior to the initiatives of current prime minister Justin Trudeau, there has been an unyielding policy war of attrition toward Indigenous people (First Nations, Inuit and Métis).

What's New: ‘Quite an experience’, Blade Runner, Marxism and Postmodernity

| October 19, 2017

With the theatre release of Blade Runner 2049, Red Wedge Magazine have given rs21 permission to republish an interview with Matthew Flisfeder author of Postmodern Theory and Blade Runner (2017). The original interview was carried out in September, and focuses solely on the ‘original’ film and its context.

Bullet #1498: Canada’s Ongoing Complicity with Exploitive Extraction Schemes

by Niko Block | October 18, 2017

On June 15, 1841, the newly established Legislative Council of the Province of Canada - a body of twenty-four appointed lawmakers - was gathered in its chamber in Kingston. Its speaker, a businessman and nationalist named Austin Cuvilliers, began the day’s proceedings by reminding his peers of their mandate: 'Many subjects of deep importance to the future welfare of the Province demand your early attention,' he said, but the most important of them 'is the adoption of measures for developing the resources of the Province. The rapid settlement of the country, the value of every man’s property within it, the advancement of his future fortunes are deeply affected by this question.'

What's New: The Economics of $15: A Reader

| October 17, 2017

The demand for a $15 minimum wage is hugely popular. However, doubts remain about whether raising the minimum wage to $15 would benefit or hurt workers and the economy. These doubts have been sowed by conservative politicians, right-wing think-tanks, employer groups, and a largely uncritical media. Luckily, over the last couple of years progressive economists have been hard at work studying the potential impacts of a $15 minimum wage and critically examining the claims made by those who oppose the minimum wage.

What's New: Why unsustainable fossil fuel use keeps on growing

| October 17, 2017

Simon Pirani, Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, gave a seminar at the Grantham Research Institute. He answers questions about the history of fossil fuel consumption, why consumption keeps rising when we need to reduce energy use, and how we could overhaul the systems which keep consumption high.

Bullet #1497: Mexicans Denounce Canadian Mega-Mining Projects

by Richard Fidler; Mexican Network of Mining Affected People | October 16, 2017

As Prime Minister Trudeau makes his first official visit to Mexico, writes Mining Watch Canada, 'the Mexican Network of Mining Affected People' (REMA by its initials in Spanish) has issued a communiqué to call on Trudeau to live up to his commitments and stop the devastation of Indigenous and campesino communities that has enabled Canadian mining companies to make big profits.

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