David Moscrop is a writer and political commentator. He hosts the podcast Open to Debate and is the author of Too Dumb For Democracy? Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones.
Canada’s Trudeau government touts the country as a climate champion. COP27, where Canada was the only OECD country to have fossil fuel delegates in tow, offered a more telling snapshot of the government’s priorities.
A recently released public opinion poll points to low and dropping trust in Canada across areas of concern. But trust doesn’t just disappear — low trust is the inevitable result of capitalist depredation leaving working people in a constant state of struggle.
Other than suspending student loan interest, Canada’s fall economic statement promises next to nothing for workers. Bloodless technocratic tinkering is never enough, but during times of crisis, leaving structural change off the table is indefensible.
We talked to author and activist Cory Doctorow about his new book, Chokepoint Capitalism, copyright scams, surveillance capitalism, the lies of Big Tech, and the fight for the freedom to create.
In the last few decades, Canada’s New Democratic Party has moved away from socialist politics and grassroots democracy. The party is now languishing. But turning back to its socialist roots could help revive the NDP.
The Canadian right has committed to its own brand of angry identity politics, pitting “regular” folks against the depredations of elites. The Left has to fight back with a class politics opposing economic exploitation — not its own version of tribalism.
Canada is reviewing its privacy legislation, and its facial recognition technologies are under scrutiny. It’s well past time to strictly regulate their usage by both public and private actors.
Economic orthodoxy blames inflation on everyone except corporations and their windfall profits. It’s time to think about responding to inflation and recessions with policies that make corporations pay, not average workers.
Canada’s New Democratic Party, which was founded as a democratic socialist organization, is currently little more than the ruling Liberal Party’s “conscience.” It’s time the NDP changed course and finally recommitted itself to socialist politics.
Pierre Poilievre, the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, presents himself as a friend of the working class. Some New Democrats claim they’ll fight Poilievre’s rhetoric with class war, but is the party up for it?
Mainstream Canadian pundits claim the country is in the midst of a “labor crisis” in which workers just don’t want to work. This is absurd: workers need unions and decent wages, and right now many don’t have either.
Justin Trudeau’s recent housing initiative announcement was better than nothing but woefully inadequate to the scale of Canada’s housing crisis. We need social housing now.
Years of austerity, falling real wages, and the experience of the pandemic have workers rethinking their commitment to their jobs. Anyone surprised by this is rich and profoundly out of touch… or a boss.
The Right broke Ontario’s health care system. Now they can’t wait to replace it with a parallel, two-tiered system that benefits the rich.
The payday loan industry is thriving in Canada, and borrowers are paying the cost through extraordinary interest rates and fees. There is a simple solution: postal banking.
Vancouver is the latest city to sign up for a Safe Supply program, which provides safe drugs to users. Pilot programs — and the failure of the war on drugs — show that this approach is the best way to combat the opioid crisis.
Labor activist Ginger Goodwin spent his life fighting for the rights of working people in British Columbia, and on this day in 1918, he was killed for it. His story is a reminder of the need for uncompromising socialist politics.
In Canada, the results of pandemic income support seem to confirm the claims of universal basic income advocates. But to make UBI work, we need to ensure it’s coupled with a massive expansion of welfare state policies.
Air travel is a Kafkaesque nightmare right now. To solve this crisis and avoid future issues, airlines and the government should listen to workers and finally give them what they deserve: better pay and working conditions.
Union organizing is gaining steam in both Canada and the US, and support for unions is the highest it’s been for decades. The labor movement should take advantage of this moment.