People's Voice Podcast

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In some ways, the spring lockdown associated with the COVID-19 pandemic came as a boon to the Canadian state, which, over the winter of 2019-2020, saw a series of increasingly successful examples of resistance to its colonial projects explode into unprecedented large-scale demonstrations of solidarity in nearly every major city.

The loud calls to respect Indigenous sovereignty and account for the ongoing effects of colonization found common voice with a sweeping international movement to address anti-Black racism, police violence and the consequences of racism, historical and ongoing. These actions, growing from a fertile history of struggle (more recently Idle No More and Black Lives Matter) and driven by egregious new attacks, seriously challenged the ability of federal and provincial governments to continue portraying themselves as caring patriarchs or partners in the development of either group.

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Welcome to the People's Voice Podcast. Visit us online at www.peoplesvoice.ca

The Ontario Tories have more than doubled the exemption from the Employer Health Tax (EHT) announced in the Ontario budget (and included in the budget bill), increasing it from $490,000 in payroll to $1 million. Currently, employers with payrolls over $400,000 have to pay 1.95 percent of that, so the additional savings for a business with $1 million – $5 million in payroll would be $9,945.

This change would make permanent a temporary change that was introduced earlier this year “due to COVID.”

The government is also increasing the level of payroll before employers have to make monthly EHT payments. Previously, employers with an annual Ontario payroll over $600,000 had to make monthly EHT instalment payments. With this legislation, that will change to $1.2 million after the end of this calendar year. Another perk.

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Welcome to the People's Voice Podcast. Visit us online at www.peoplesvoice.ca

On November 16, François Legault’s Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) government presented its “Plan for a Green Economy 2030” to the people of Quebec. It’s considered long overdue by the environmental movement, the trade unions and everyone who fears the climate apocalypse, as well as by Legault’s allies in the ruling class, who advocate the economic model that has led us to the precipice we face today.

The plan’s content will not surprise anyone. The focus is on electrification of transport and heating with a ton of money for the private sector, subsidies for research into “renewable” natural gas and other “innovative” sectors, while targeting greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions to 37.5 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Funding for the first 5 years of the plan is not even the same amount of money set aside to pay down government debt. Furthermore, a significant amount will be paid directly to the private sector, which amounts to paying those who are largely responsible for the crisis, instead of making them pay.

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Welcome to the People's Voice Podcast. Visit us online at www.peoplesvoice.ca

Spread your legs Alberta. Australian mining corporations are already preparing to open-pit mine in the Bighorn area of the Rocky Mountains. Since 1976 the Coal Development Policy has guided land use over many aspects of coal development, including open-pit coal mining and coal exploration in some of Alberta’s most environmentally sensitive areas. This policy was developed with extensive public consultation, to create a fair balance between environmental protection, economic development and the social needs of all Albertans.

But on June 5, Jason Kenney’s United Conservative government rescinded the Coal Development Policy. Recent documents show that at least seven months before announcing the cancellation, the provincial Minister of Environment and the Minister of Economic Development, Tourism and Trade held conversations with coal companies that supported development in these sensitive areas. The lack of public consultation in parks and lands use runs counter to the UCP election commitments to increase consultation in parks and land use decisions and to increase tourism in Alberta.

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Welcome to the People's Voice Podcast. Visit us online at www.peoplesvoice.ca

Newfoundland and Labrador’s new premier, Andrew Furley, entered the provincial legislature in October, after winning a byelection in the riding of Humber-Gros Morne which had been left vacant by previous Liberal leader Dwight Ball. Ball is remembered for leading the province into a period of what could generously be called “tough decisions” in 2016, including an austerity budget which was widely protested. The costs of the ongoing hydro dam on Innu lands in Labrador have become an endless source of criticism and worry over the province’s future, and the COVID 19 pandemic has also taken its toll. The oil sector in particular is in a rocky place; the industry that was supposed to bring Newfoundland and Labrador into prosperity after the collapse of our once enormous fishery now seems on the brink of throwing thousands of workers under the bus, and no serious plans are in place for a just transition to a green economy.

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November 23, 2020 is a significant day in the history of the People’s Republic of China and possibly of the world. China Central Television (CCTV) announced that 9 counties in Guizhou Province, one of the poorest provinces in the country, have been lifted out of absolute poverty. With the results in these last few localities, living standards in all of the 832 previously poor counties across China’s 22 provinces are now above the poverty line. The Chinese government’s ambitious Poverty Alleviation Campaign, the largest of its kind in human history, is ending victoriously.

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Welcome to the People's Voice Podcast. Visit us online at www.peoplesvoice.ca

The recent agreements that both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have signed with Israel, establishing full diplomatic relations, are a boon to US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The two politicians desperately need some wind in their sails – Trump to revive his flagging re-election campaign, and Netanyahu to cover the stain corruption for which he is being legally pursued.

The mainstream corporate media has portrayed these agreements as peace accords that bring security, stability and prosperity to the signatory states and to the region as a whole. Canadian politicians and pundits gave themselves calluses tweeting out their congratulations. It all seems so lovely, especially during this time of global pandemic and economic chaos.

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Welcome to the People's Voice Podcast. Visit us online at www.peoplesvoice.ca

With the rise of the far right it is worth considering the issue of identity politics and the left. This is a type of politics that takes identity, often essentialized, as the central category for organization and analysis. Its left-wing variant is suspicious of power, preferring to engage in academic taxonomies of oppression which prove incapable of addressing underlying causes.

On the right, identity politics is leveraged to deliberately divide and fracture workers, pitting them against each other, most frequently on the basis of race, gender, religion or nationality.

The left variant of identity politics emerged from the post-modern paradigm that has come to dominate much of progressive politics within the academic world. As the past thirty years have shown, a politics that over-emphasizes individual identity and difference over the potential to unite disparate groups under shared class interests leaves much to be desired. Nevertheless, the focus on identity and difference is necessary, even if it served as an over-correction to certain historical tendencies on the left that treated the working class as a homogeneous, abstract, uniform mass.

The problem here is not universality but rather abstract universality. In the overreaction against such descriptions, the post-modern position throws the baby of concrete universality out with the bath water of abstract universality. Forgoing universality as a concept and reveling in difference has led to nothing but the fracturing of progressive forces into small cliques incapable of pursuing a collective emancipatory project with the power to address the needs of the majority in society.

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Welcome to the People's Voice Podcast. Visit us online at www.peoplesvoice.ca

As People’s Voice goes to press, Western governments are escalating their threats to intervene in Belarus against the elected government of Alexander Lukashenko. In response, a growing number of voices around the world are warning of the dangers of intervention to the people of Belarus and of the region. Here, we reprint an analysis from the Party of Labour of Austria. 

In the wake of the presidential election in Belarus, there has been over a week of escalating clashes and protests. The clearly defeated opposition accuses the government of electoral fraud, while the re-elected President Lukashenko considers himself to be in office legally. It is impossible for us to verify how the election process was conducted and how the votes were counted. The view propagated by the opposition candidate Tikhanovskaya, that she actually won with about 80 percent of the vote, is an assertion for which there are no clues or evidence. This version seems implausible, even if one has doubts about the official result. However, it was clear long before the vote that the opposition would not recognize the result in the event of defeat. This makes it obvious that this is a planned staging.  

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Welcome to the People's Voice Podcast. Visit us online at www.peoplesvoice.ca

Not one step further behind!

The coronavirus pandemic coincided with forecasts of the coming economic recession. The combination, as we know, has been cataclysmic and both have had an overwhelmingly negative impact on women. The recovery from both must put jobs, services and supports for women at the forefront of the rebuilding agenda – governments must invest in the public social infrastructures that will assist women in moving toward equality in the workplace. The disaster also reminds us that inequality will continue as long as the capitalist system remains. 

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