by John Clarke Both the Justin Trudeau Liberals in Ottawa and the Kathleen Wynne Government at Queen's Park in Toronto have been making noises of late on the subject of Basic Income. The last Ontario Budget, in fact, declared an…
Don't be distracted by the decision of the Justin Trudeau government to remove 6 CF18 fighter jets from Iraq, or to allow 25,000 Syrian refugees to come to Canada. In addition to sending hundreds more troops to the Middle East,…
In his first year as President and CEO of Royal Bank, David McKay saw his total direct compensation jump 44 per cent to $10.9 million. Victor Dodig, who took the top job at CIBC in September 2014, had his total…
Food scarcity and malnutrition, exacerbated by climate change, could result in a half a million extra deaths by 2050. Research published in the medical journal The Lancet, in early March, indicates that fewer fruits and vegetables would be available due…
by Barry Weisleder Let's talk about jobs and the carbon-based energy industry. Who left Alberta oil workers in the lurch? It was not the opponents of pipelines. Environmentalists didn't cause the commodity price to plummet. But the present situation does…
[Northern Lights for March 2016] by Barry Weisleder His February 10 open letter has an air of desperation about it. And a touch of remorse. But it is severely lacking in political transparency and the identification of damaged principles. For…
by John Wilson There seems to be no end to the corporate media’s barrage of propaganda in favour of the “war against ISIS”. It is accompanied by relentless attempts to rationalize western imperialist interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere.…
On the 105th Anniversary of IWD For Feminism and Socialism! A women's conference of the Socialist International in Copenhagen in 1910 launched International Women's Day globally in 1911. Trotskyist parties, including the predecessor organization of Socialist Action / Ligue pour…
A review of two political classics, by Barry Weisleder Is it time to build an international revolutionary workers' party? James P. Cannon consistently said yes. Isaac Deutscher, for most of his adult life, said no. Both were highly esteemed Marxists,…
by John Wilson There seems to be no end to the corporate media’s barrage of propaganda in favour of the “war against ISIS”. It is accompanied by relentless attempts to rationalize western imperialist interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere.…
by Barry Weisleder His February 10 open letter has an air of desperation about it. And a touch of remorse. But it is severely lacking in political transparency and the identification of damaged principles. For New Democrats who consider electoral…
Party time? - a review of two political classics by Barry Weisleder Is it time to build an international revolutionary workers' party? James P. Cannon consistently said yes. Isaac Deutscher, for most of his adult life, said no. Both were…
Lessons of the Massacre in Indonesia 50 Years Ago From Jakarta to Caracas The fiftieth anniversary of one of the biggest political massacres of the twentieth century passed in the west almost without notice. In 1965 a military coup in…
It will take 118 years to close the wage gap between women and men if present trends in pay inequity persist, the World Economic Forum predicts. The global pay gap between the sexes narrowed by a mere 3 per cent…
by Robbie Mahood On October 30, 2015, revelations of Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) spying on my father, Ed Mahood, almost sixty years ago, recently came to light courtesy of a phone call from an Ottawa journalist to my sister. …
Despite a weak jobs economy and record personal debt, Canada’s biggest banks achieved a profit of $35 billion in 2015, a 5 per cent rise from a year earlier. Income for the country’s largest lenders, the Royal Bank, TD Bank,…
a review by John Wilson The Danish Girl (2015, 1 hr. 59 min., directed by Tom Hooper) is a mesmerizing, moving account of how transgender pioneer Lili Elbe (originally Einar Wegener) came to be one of the first persons known…
What will come of the massive report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated the cultural genocide inflicted by the Canadian federal government on indigenous peoples? Will its 94 specific recommendations bear any fruit? The TRC deserves praise for…
by Robbie Mahood (Montreal, December 2015) Leaders of Quebec’s Common Front of public sector unions and the provincial Liberal government of Premier Philippe Couillard announced a tentative agreement on December 17. The deal covers wages and pensions. Working conditions are…
by Barry Weisleder As if in a dance of the seven veils, the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau is sequentially exposing its false election promises, revealing an agenda that increasingly resembles that of the widely despised Conservative predecessor regime.For starters,…
