Last month, it was reported that the Liberal caucus identified a guaranteed basic income as the top policy priority to debate and vote on at the party’s upcoming November national convention. This comes as little surprise. The COVID-19 pandemic and catastrophic job loss that ensued has intensified calls for the strengthening of Canada’s social safety net and income security programs that have proven to be inadequate during times of economic crisis.
By Jerry Dias, Unifor National President as published in The Star on September 13, 2020
The Trump administration announced in late July that 10 per cent tariffs on primary aluminum imports from Canada would be levied once again, heeding the demands of a small group of industry insiders calling themselves the American Primary Aluminum Association (APAA).
Getting together in big groups, as we would normally at marches and picnics in the usual celebration of workers’ collective power, is just not possible or even a good idea during the COVID-19 pandemic.
What makes this Labour Day so different is that workers in Saskatchewan are quickly headed toward a reckoning with the Sask Party government that is at odds, if not overtly hostile, to working people’s interests.
The COVID-19 crisis has exposed many hard-truths about the state of Canada’s economy in 2020.
The incompetence of our private sector in long-term care homes, for one. The lack of manufacturing capacity to produce critical goods when we need them, another. Generally unhelpful income security programs.
The list goes on.
But there’s a deep fault line in this crisis that runs straight through the world of work.
The world is emerging, slowly and carefully, from almost six months of pandemic-enforced isolation. We’re expanding our bubbles – a phrase few of us would have understood only months ago – and seeing relatives we’d dared not visit until just recently.
How open our communities depends on which province we live in – and beyond that which country or region. Travel between regions, and especially across international borders, remains limited.
Jerry Dias, Unifor National President & Renaud Gagné, Unifor Quebec Director
Against any semblance of good judgement, the United States is on the verge of yet another trade war with Canada by slapping a new round of tariffs on Canadian aluminum.
Sadly, this is the culmination of the current US administration’s stubborn refusal to understand just how important Canadian aluminum is to the US and its willingness to sacrifice jobs in both countries on behalf of special interests.
The American Primary Aluminum Association (APAA) recently called on the U.S. federal government to reimpose national security tariffs on certain aluminum products, arguing that a ‘surge’ in Canadian imports endangers the future of the U.S. industry.
If anyone should have a guilty conscience, it’s Randy Hillier.
Guilty of intolerance.
Guilty of shooting his mouth off.
Guilty of making a complete fool of himself.
And, just this week, guilty of casually, and apparently for the sake of cheap humour, questioned the integrity of an upstanding federal cabinet minister with his flippant comments.
Canada’s conservatives must be popping champagne corks today after the sale of Canada’s largest newspaper to two of its avid supporters.
The Toronto Star has been a consistent voice for working class Canadians for more than 100 years, leading the debate on issues Conservatives can’t stand to talk about – decent wages and working conditions, the rights of marginalized Canadians, reasonable immigration policies, and more.
It’s shocking enough that a bomb threat was made against picketers at the Co-op Refinery, but to learn that no one – not Regina Police, not the mayor, not the province – lifted a finger to warn anyone puts every citizen of Regina in danger.
Think about it. A bomb at a refinery. An explosion there would put thousands of lives at risk far beyond the picket line – so you have to ask why would anyone bury such a threat.
