Student mobilizations escalate in Quebec

The red square is a symbol of the strike

Adapted from the Globe and Mail - more reports to come!

100,000 university and college students have joined a province-wide general strike and their numbers continue to grow, driven in part by the support of almost half of Quebeckers, according to recent public opinion polls.

Several thousand student protesters marched in blistering cold towards the National Assembly on Thursday, heightening tensions in their showdown with the Charest government. Police riot squads quickly intervened, creating a human chain and using tear gas to disperse students who tried to break down a barricade near the National Assembly building.

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Teachers will withdraw services to protest Bill 22, worsening classroom conditions

BCTF News Release

Monday, March 5, teachers across British Columbia will begin a legal three-day full-scale withdrawal of services, as permitted under the Labour Relations Board interim essential services order. At 6:00 a.m. today, the BCTF issued notice of the escalation to the BC Public School Employers’ Association.
This step follows a province-wide vote conducted February 28 and 29, 2012, in which 87% of teachers voted “yes” to escalating job action from the limited “teach only” campaign that began last September. In all, 32,209 teachers voted, of whom 27,946 said “yes.”

In a morning news conference, BCTF President Susan Lambert noted that the 75% turnout and 87% yes vote demonstrate to the provincial government that “bullying legislation like Bill 22 will not fix a broken relationship.”

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Stay classy, NAFTA

Canada has lost 500,000 manufacturing jobs – most of them in Ontario – over the past decade, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce economists noted in one of three reports by major banks this week on the devastation in the manufacturing sector. As a share of the Canadian economy, manufacturing slumped to 12 per cent from 20 per cent, while in the U.S. it held roughly steady at about 12 per cent of gross domestic product. In 2001, Canada had a $20-billion trade surplus in the Ontario-based automotive industry; that has been transformed to a $12-billion deficit. The energy sector, by contrast, has climbed to a $59-billion surplus in 2011 from $38-billion in 2001.


- Shawn McCarthy, Canada’s growing divide in riches, published in the Globe and Mail, March 3rd 2012

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Robo-calls: Communist Party demands independent inquiry and new election

The Harper Tories have got to go!

There is overwhelming evidence that during the 2011 federal election, thousands of voters across Canada were phoned with fraudulent and misleading information. This sabotage of electoral democracy has removed any legitimacy for the Harper Conservatives. The Communist Party of Canada calls for the immediate resignation of the Harper government, a new general election, and an independent public inquiry into all aspects of this scandal. Everyone responsible for this tactic should face criminal charges, right up to the Prime Minister and his inner clique.

PM Stephen Harper’s arrogant and corrupt government shows complete contempt for democratic rights and civil liberties. It is about to bring in a viciously anti-working class federal budget, and may soon plunge Canada into catastrophic imperialist wars against Iran and Syria. This government is a serious threat to the Canadian people and to world peace.


It is no exaggeration to state that the 2011 election was stolen from Canadian voters, a vote fatally tainted by criminal tactics. It is impossible to count exactly how many voters were discouraged by “robo-calls” from casting a ballot. But reports indicate that this illegal tactic was used in at least 45 ridings. Since many of these constituencies saw very narrow Conservative victories, robo-calls may have lifted the Harper Tories from a minority into a majority in Parliament.

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Barriers, shortages: looking at reproductive rights and access across Canada

Women face many barriers to access to abortion, women's reproductive rights advocacy group Canadians For Choice (CFC) says.

The group has created a leaflet providing an overview of abortion services throughout Canada that can used as a quick reference tool.

(Download the PDF document from there site by clicking here)

The leaflet highlights the numerous barriers to abortion services and provincial/territorial differences in the delivery of services, and provides information that is not readily available from one source, CFC says. They have compiled this province- and territory-specific information `to educate and empower people to exercise their reproductive rights` CFC says on there website.

The leaflet follows-up from a 2010 Toronto Star investigation which revealed a shortage of abortion providers in Canada, where fears of violence, lack of training and other obstacles prevent physicians from providing the procedure. The CFC website also reprints the following facts which come from the Daily Women's Health Policy Report (2010).

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Drummond - Now way, buddy!

Mr. Drummond smirks

Statement by the Executive of the Communist Party of Canada (Ontario)

     The Communist Party of Canada (Ontario) is demanding the provincial government shelve the Drummond Report, warning that the province will be unrecognizable if its recommendations are implemented. Instead the Party says the government should invest in health, education and social programs, create jobs, and introduce progressive tax reform based on ability to pay, which would address the revenue crisis caused by three decades of regressive tax shifts from the corporations and the wealthy onto the working class and the unemployed.

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An Assault on Collective Bargaining, a Degradation of Justice and an Attack on Youth

Statement of the Communist Party, British Columbia

The Communist Party condemns Bill 22 as an assault on Collective bargaining, a degradation of the judicial system and a threat to democracy in British Columbia. In one stroke this failed and doomed Liberal government has violated the right to negotiate, to withdraw labour, and to exercise the franchise of citizenship in a democratic society. They have changed the meaning of the word “mediate” to “enforcement” and degraded the numerous court victories of the BC Teachers with legislation that is in opposition to the Teachers, the Court decisions, their own Labour Board, any sense of human decency and most important of all the quality of life and education of BC children. Twice the Supreme Court has ruled anti-worker legislation of this government illegal.

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Human Resources Minister quietly axes student job centres

Reprinted from the Globe and Mail,
By Gloria Galloway

The employment centres for students that have opened every spring for more than four decades in communities across Canada have been cancelled by the federal Human Resources department, which says it can offer the same services online.

The centres began as a Hire-a-Student pilot project in Moose Jaw, Sask. in 1968 and quickly spread to other regions. But the government says they have seen their attendance dwindle in recent years as increasing numbers of young people turn to their computers to find employment between April and September.

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Being a Trans-woman in Quebec is far from easy

             

Special to Rebel Youth from Clarté newspaper

If there is still a condition that can bring discrimination and abject humiliation in Quebec and Canada today, it's being a transgendered woman. Across Quebec, hundreds if not thousands of transgendered / transsexual (trans) people continue to suffer very bad treatment, violence and attacks, and almost complete rejection from society, in an atmosphere of indifference. Can we consider it normal that, even today, trans rights remains largely unrecognized by law?

The Senate has just nipped in the bud Bill C-389, which would have given the trans community a minimum of dignity and rights. This reveals the open contempt felt by the public authorities towards this community which is greatly in need of defense of its rights. Clearly, the Harper Conservative government has no political will to help trans people and, even worse, actually attempts to actively harm the community.

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Education costs put heavier burden on women

Protesting the Charest increase in fees

People's Voice

Tuition fee increases disproportionately impact the access of women to education, an example of social policy perpetuating gender inequality, says a new policy report from a feminist research group at Concordia University in Montreal.

The report, authored by the Simone de Beauvoir Institute, was released as students mobilize for increased access to education. The Charest Liberals have announced a $1,625 across‑the‑board increase in tuition fees in Quebec. Across Canada, over the past three decades, tuition fees have increased by 400 per cent above inflation, pushing student debt to a record four billion dollars.

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