Had a loose-cannon, right-wing evangelical minister not been given to boasting, it might have been many more months before the public became aware of a federal government scheme to silence critical film and television production in Canada. Instead, a Globe and Mail interview with Charles McVety, president of the Canada Family Action Coalition, became the catalyst for a controversy that has quickly exposed the modus operandi of all the parties in the Canadian political establishment.
Twenty-two years after the Air India disaster, the worst terrorist crime in Canadian history, a public inquiry is unearthing further evidence that the Canadian state had advance knowledge of the impending attacks and was either unable or unwilling to stop them.
Canada’s nominally social-democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) has in recent months made a concerted effort to paint itself as an opponent of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) mission in Afghanistan, hoping that widespread anti-war sentiment among the Canadian population—and opposition to the Afghanistan intervention in particular—will redound to its electoral benefit.
An October ruling by Ontario Superior Court Justice Lynn Ratushny in the case of Ottawa Citizen journalist Juliet O’Neill highlights the extent to which the Canadian ruling elite is prepared to break with democratic norms in order to prosecute its right-wing program of militarism, cuts to public and social services and closer cooperation with the Bush administration.
The media reported this week that the Canadian government had received a letter from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in response to its “protest” regarding the treatment of Maher Arar. A Canadian citizen, Arar was “rendered” by US authorities to Syria, where he was tortured and held under brutal conditions for almost a year.
According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Fifth Estate and the Globe & Mail, the “Toronto terror cell” arrested in June for allegedly plotting massive acts of terrorism against Canadian targets included not just one, but two Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) moles. This second Muslim man in the pay of Canada’s security forces is said to have been involved in the accused terrorists’ alleged efforts to construct powerful explosives.
The minority Conservative government of Stephen Harper is widely expected to revive legislation, originally introduced by the preceding Liberal government, that would expand the ability of the Canadian state to spy on domestic Internet communications.
Despite rapidly mounting casualties, Canada’s ruling Conservatives have made it quite clear that they have every intention of pressing ahead with the Canadian Armed Forces’ (CAF’s) intervention in Afghanistan.
The revelation that the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) had an informant or mole planted within the group arrested in Toronto in early June for allegedly plotting terrorist attacks is being used by Canadian authorities and the corporate media to continue their campaign to create a climate of fear conducive to the promotion of a right-wing agenda.
Canada’s federal election was held Monday, January 23. The World Socialist Web Site will post an initial assessment of the results on Wednesday, January 25.
Like social democratic parties the world over, Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP) has lurched far to the right during the past 15 years. In the campaign for the January 23 federal election, the NDP is doing everything in its power to prove it is a “responsible” party that can be trusted to uphold the interests of big business and defend the Canadian state. The New Democrats’ fondest hope is that in the coming parliament, as in the last, they will have the opportunity to help sustain a government formed by one of the big-business parties.
Like social democratic parties the world over, Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP) has lurched far to the right during the past 15 years. In the campaign for the January 23 federal election, the NDP is doing everything in its power to prove it is a “responsible” party that can be trusted to uphold the interests of big business and defend the Canadian state. The New Democrats’ fondest hope is that in the coming parliament, as in the last, they will have the opportunity to help sustain a government formed by one of the big-business parties.
Workers at Telus, the largest telecommunications concern in western Canada, have voted by a narrow margin to reject the tentative settlement reached between the leadership of the Telecommunications Workers Union and management in early October. That the workers have voted down the proposed settlement, against the recommendation of their union leadership and despite walking the picket line for more than three months, speaks both to the character of the proposed settlement and to the workers’ determination.
On October 10, Canadian Thanksgiving, the Telecommunications Workers Union (TWU) announced that it had negotiated a contract settlement with Telus, the largest telecommunications company in western Canada. The settlement is supposed to bring an end to the lockout of some 12,500 workers (across British Columbia and Alberta) that began almost three months ago.
Twelve-thousand five-hundred Telus workers in British Columbia and Alberta have been walking the picket lines since July 21. The conflict has been provoked by Telus, the largest telecommunications company in western Canada, with the intention of busting the union and shredding what few obstacles remain to the contracting out of any part of the company’s operations.
Canada’s top military commander, Chief of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier, has been the focus of a blitz of media attention in the wake of a series of bellicose public appearances. Openly adopting the militarist rhetoric of the Bush administration, the general frothed to a media briefing that the targets of an expanded Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) deployment to Afghanistan were “detestable murderers and scumbags” who “detest our freedoms... detest our society... [and] detest our liberties.”
The Canadian government is in the process of establishing a long-term military base in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region. According to a recent article in the Globe and Mail, the Canadian government is negotiating with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to gain control of a section of the Minhad Air Base, located near Dubai, for years, if not decades, to come.
At Venice’s Teatro Fondamenta Nuove on January 13, composer and pianist Fredric Rzewski gave a remarkable performance of his composition, The People United Will Never Be Defeated. Rzewski’s work is a set of 36 variations, spanning 50 minutes, on Chilean composer Sergio Ortega’s El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido—the song most closely associated with the resistance of the Chilean working class to the 1973 coup that installed the 17-year military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.
