Imperialist disasters unfold in Ukraine and Palestine

Zelensky's fascist-riddled and corrupt wartime dictatorship (he is cancelling elections scheduled for this spring) and his NATO financiers and arms dealers should have sat down with Putin last fall when Russia's northern front collapsed, the encirclement of Kharkiv was defeated, and the Kherson regions was recaptured in the south.

The Jama Expulsion in context

Between Sarah Jama's expulsion from the ONDP caucus, the Paul Miller fiasco in Hamilton East, and the glorious do-nothing reign of Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath, you can see the NDP cratering in Hamilton, one of the historic NDP strongholds in Ontario. We've already seen the big cracks in other traditional NDP strongholds in Windsor, Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins, and across northern Ontario. We've also seen the NDP's big gains in working-class Brampton completely rolled back in the wake of the ONDP's incredible backstabbing of their Brampton North MPP, Kevin Yarde, just before the 2022 election.

Manitoba's NDP: Permanent Austerity and Open for Business

October 3, 2023 is the Manitoba election. The ruling PCs led by Heather Stefanson are on the ropes after first coming to power two terms ago in 2016. They deposed an unpopular, exhausted and divided NDP dynasty that had held office for seventeen long years. The NDP is on the cusp of retaking power under the leadership of Wab Kinew. Kinew was leader in the 2019 election and was soundly defeated. If the NDP wins, he will become the first Indigenous provincial premier in Canada.

The Manitoba election has seen the PCs adopt a nasty scapegoating strategy against trans people first developed by America's right-wing movements and now provincial governments in Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Ontario. The scapegoating of trans people under the guise of “parental rights” serves to rally its right-wing base among various conservative and religious communities. However, scapegoating of this nature is also about deflecting attention and scrutiny from the PC government’s terrible policies of permanent austerity, privatization, and profits over people.

Kinew and the NDP have positioned themselves against the PC’s scapegoating and have also pushed hard on promises of healthcare reinvestment. However, a closer investigation reveals a broad and deep consensus between the NDP and PCs on most economic and fiscal policy. These shared policies put wealthier people and business interests first while containing social programs, public development and democratic planning within the strict confines of permanent austerity. The following is an attempt to unpack aspects of this right-wing consensus between Manitoba's PCs and NDP.

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