The Decline of Democracy in Capitalist Ontario

As the Greenbelt is bulldozed, the province's recycling is privatized without a peep, and the healthcare system is being strangled to death and shaken down by corporations and right-wing doctors, I have been working my way through this book after stumbling upon it at Novel Idea, a great independent bookstore in Kingston.

Tom McDowell documents the rollback of democratic mechanisms within the Ontario legislature and the centralization of decision-making power in the hands of cabinet and premier. The argument McDowell makes is an obvious one: democratic decision-making and diffused power in parliament are rolled back due to a series of economic crises that hit the province in the 1970s and early 1980s, and then again in the first half of the 1990s.

A Timeline of the Site C Dam in British Columbia

This timeline was originally created in February 2021 when costs were revised upwards to $16 billion.

Ontario's "Gestapo Affair" and the Death of Alvin Rowe

On August 18, 1947, Alvin Rowe and his 7-year-old son died in a plane crash in Lake St. Clair. Rowe's fiancée, Betty Pioprowski, and Rowe's brother and pilot, Howard, were rescued. Howard Rowe operated a plane taxi service near Detroit and he had taken the party up for a midnight flight. Howard explained that "without warning, the plane went into a spin." Witnesses said the plane exploded when it hit the water.

Alvin Rowe was a former Ontario Provincial Police officer and, at the time of his death, was a prominent organizer and speaker for the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Ontario. While still serving in the OPP, Rowe came to public prominence for his role in the “Gestapo Affair” during the spring 1945 Ontario election.

Windsor Star, August 18 1947

Notes on the History of Medicare in Ontario

In early 1974, Ontario Premier Bill Davis appointed Frank Miller his new Minister of Health. Miller, a "Blue Tory", was on the conservative right of the Ontario PC Party, and set about enacting austerity measures in the healthcare system to contain growing healthcare costs commonly associated with the establishment of compulsory government health insurance, the Ontario Health Insurance Plan emerging out of legislation in 1969, and with roots in the The Hospital Services Commission Act of 1959.

Here's a brief history of how the achievement of Medicare in Ontario entrenched doctor power, sidelined the socialized medicine movement's quest for community clinics and preventative medicine, and created a healthcare system dependent on hospitals.

Toronto Star, December 8 1969

The Great Green Corporate Swindle continues...

On May 15, Stellantis (formerly Fiat-Chrysler) announced it was halting construction of its heavily-subsidized EV battery plant in Windsor, and demanded more subsidies from Trudeau's federal government and Doug Ford's Ontario government. The announcement came less than a month after Trudeau announced upwards of $13 billion in public subsidies to Volkswagen setting up an EV assembly in St. Thomas.

After Dias: What is Unifor's auto bargaining strategy?

Unifor's bargaining with the Detroit Three slowly gathers momentum. Unifor's target - GM, Ford or Stellantis - will be announced around Labour Day.

A big question is whether or not the massive government-subsidized EV investments in union and non-union auto plants in southern Ontario have come with bargaining strings attached courtesy of the disgraced Dias regime.

The public/private divide in Ontario labour

Union wage settlements in Ontario in 2022 is a good snapshot of how the labour movement in Ontario is divided between public and private sector, and directly reflects where resistance is bubbling and where it is not.