For The People? Early state ownership in Ontario

October 11 1910: Ontario Hydro power is switched on for Berlin (Kitchener) 

The "Laurier Boom" spanning the late 1890s to the immediate pre-war years was the onset of municipal ownership of utilities (telephone, water, gas, streetcars, electricity). In this period, Ontario also took enormous first steps towards state ownership of industry, most famously with the 1906 creation of Ontario Hydro, but also with the formation of what we now know as Ontario Northland in 1902.

Both the political left and right often portray state ownership as a form of socialism. What is striking about this early period of municipal and state ownership of utilities and infrastructure is the degree of clarity with which Ontario's political elites rejected the claim that state ownership was socialism.

Democracy vs Confederation: Médéric Lanctôt and Les Rouges

The first Canadian red scare came in the 1860s as elites from four British North American colonies pushed ahead with the project of Confederation against widespread popular opposition in the Maritimes and Quebec.

The Quebec Tories, led by George-Étienne Cartier and allied to John A. Macdonald's Upper Canadian Tories, were strong political allies with the Catholic Church, such as Montreal Bishop Ignace Bourget. Together, parliament, the pulpit, the courts and newspapers worked in concert to defeat Les Rouges, a democratic and republican political movement originating out of Montreal's Institut Canadien.

"Unions slide from unity to enmity over Tim Hudak"

Here's a huge reason why Ontario labour remains stuck and ineffective as a movement: an evolving 20-year battle at the top of the province's major unions over election strategies because there is no commitment to a political strategy that would involve serious extra-parliamentary or even workplace mobilization.

Whether campaigning openly for the NDP, or openly for Anybody-But-Hudak, or funding issue-based TV ads that lend to strategic voting, Ontario's unions have all allowed their political strategies to be narrowed and whittled down to electoralism.

Only labour's agitation for the minimum wage bucks this trend.

There are of course other issues driving these splits, but it is the political strategy of labour that has to be addressed first and foremost.

Problems of personality and territorialism will always persist but it couldn't hurt to have some new people with new ideas.

Postering etiquette 101

1. Don't poster over events that haven't happened

2. Don't poster over non-event art and political posters/statements

3. Poster over corporate bullshit

4. Keep postering to assert control over public and bogus "private" space

Debate on "Pop-up" Unions

A few articles documenting an important debate on the left over new forms of worker organization in England in the fight against privatization and contracting out at Sussex University. Also, check out Mark Bergfeld's website and writings.

New struggles, new unions? On the Pop-Up Union at Sussex University
Mark Bergfeld
Ceasefire Magazine, April 18 2013

Are "Pop-Up" unions the way forward?
Sandy Nicoll
Socialist Review, June 2013

Start with solidarity
Mark Bergfeld
Socialist Review, July 2013

The Sussex University Pop-Up Union: A Mythbuster
Mark Bergfeld
July 2013

Pop-up unions through history
Brian Parkin
August 2013

A Very Canadian Coup: Some thoughts on prorogation and democracy in Canada

So what exactly was the 2008 prorogation? We know the Governor General acceded to the Prime Minister's request to prorogue parliament to prevent what was a constitutionally-legitimate effort by the Liberals and NDP to form a new government. This all began when the recently-elected minority Tory government had proven unable to gain opposition support for a budget that contained no response to the unfolding economic crisis, sought to gut public party subsidies, suspend pay equity court challenges and federal workers' right-to-strike (when there were absolutely no prospects of a strike).

There seem to be two mainstream approaches to this question, both of which are unsatisfactory and worrying. If we adhere to parliamentary protocol, the Liberals and NDP had every right to form a government without an election. This renders the prorogation illegitimate. Alternatively, if we go by democratic principles, then Harper was right to criticize the Liberals and NDP for not seeking a new election. However, the same democratic principles mean the Governor General has no right whatsoever to prorogue parliament at the PM's request. Whether we go by democratic principles or parliamentary protocol, the affair is both unprecedented and illegitimate. It reveals a profound contradiction between what is and isn't democratic within the framework of Canada's parliamentary system.

Toward a Student Syndicalist Movement, or University Reform Revisited

This document was written in 1966 by Carl Davidson, a University of Nebraska student, and was submitted as a position paper to the August 1966 convention of the Students for a Democratic Society. The paper helped reorient SDS back towards student politics after concentrating its efforts in the early 1960s on civil rights and anti-poverty organizing. The strategy of either reforming existing student government/union/association structures or building a new independent student union remains extremely relevant in English Canada today. - editor 

Davidson leads "Prairie Power" in SDS

In the past few years, we have seen a variety of campus movements developing around the issue of' 'university reform.' A few of these movements sustained a mass base for brief periods. Some brought about minor changes in campus rules and regulations. But almost all have failed to alter the university community radically or even to maintain their own existence. What is the meaning of this phenomenon? How can we avoid it in the future? Why bother with university reform at all?