Notes on Canadian labour's civil wars, 1948-1993

This map in the November 13 1948 edition of the Financial Post provides a great visual representation of why anti-Communism was so aggressive and pervasive within organized labour during the opening years of the Cold War. While the CCF was being red-baited in election campaigns, the CCF inside the CIO-affiliated Canadian Congress of Labour, in concert with the non-aligned Trades and Labour Congress, waged a ruthless war on Communist-led unions that dominated resource industries and a lot of critical manufacturing and logistics.

Comment on the Mass Casualty Commission

I don't know what's on the news in Nova Scotia these days, but here in Upper Canada a few clicks from John A MacDonald's bones, I'm hearing almost nothing about the Mass Casualty Commission.

Michael Ignatieff's bloody new fever dreams

Michael Ignatieff, the Iraq War cheerleader and champion of America’s torture programs, is once again at the service of empire. This time he is busy rewriting history as a pure fantasy in attempting to reduce the Russian war on Ukraine as both the design and actions of a single madman. And what better place for these ravings than the Globe & Mail?

Ontario labour's pathetic pandemic defeat

Fenner Dunlop workers in Bracebridge, locked out for 165 days in 2021.

Doug Ford's Bill 124 became law in November 2019. Even back then the law had imposed below-inflation wage restraints. There were already examples of long-term care workers getting screwed by Bill 124 before the pandemic hit.

With inflation now topping 5 percent, Bill 124 is even more brutal. Healthcare workers are taking big pay cuts as burnout is almost universal and labour shortages begin to mount.

The pandemic should have provided Ontario healthcare unions all the leverage they needed to crush Doug Ford's balls between walkouts and Bill 124.

The Emergencies Act and Canada's political crisis

Justin's public justifications for using the Emergencies Act is as flimsy as his dad's "apprehended insurrection" excuse for the War Measures Act in October 1970. In both cases, there is a deeper motive although neither is very hard to discern.

The Ottawa Debacle and the Defeat of the Left

Is anyone in Ottawa marching through Centretown today? If you try, will you end up fighting PSAC marshalls? What would JB McLachlan do?

Notes on the Convoy crisis

Cobbled-together notes and thoughts on the Freedumb Convoy, the New Right, and the Left. Written Wedneaday, February 9.