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.

Russian retreats, NATO escalation

When NATO members ranging from paralyzed Germany to pro-war Canada balk at shipping tanks to Ukraine for yet another round of escalation, NATO's General Secretary says otherwise. And now Germany follows suit. Canada will be next. The dam has burst.

Does anyone still deny this is a proxy war? It boggles the mind how the stream of arms shipments into Ukraine from NATO countries can be conceived as anything else. What do people imagine a proxy war is?

The All-Party Healthcare Privatization Consensus

As I write, the news is breaking of major new incursions into the hospital sector by for-profit hospitals. Millions in public healthcare dollars are being funneled into for-profit hospitals to "solve" the crisis that has been allowed to deepen by the Ontario PC government. Once the private hospitals are firmly established as necessary components of a "public" system, the new centralized cabinet-controlled Ontario Health Agency will likely begin allowing the private hospitals to apply to run the Ontario Health Teams that have replaced the LHINs (aka regional health authorities).