They're trying to force the workers to strike so they can make their case to the government that the strike is disrupting an essential service and demand that they force the union to accept the terms. Literally the same thing happened a year ago: Postal workers make demands and are willing to negotiate, Canada Post completely refuses to negotiate and locks out the workers, workers strike, postal traffic in Canada grinds to a halt, millions of people and businesses are impacted, Canadian government cites the post office as an "essential service" and uses that to force the union and employer into arbitration even though the employer was the belligerent one and didn't even attempt to negotiate in the first place.

Also, news outlets scapegoated the union for all the delayed mail the last time they went on strike. "How could they do this to Canada? Can't they just accept working like slaves? It's an essential service after all, that means we get to exploit the people doing the job as much as we want and if they strike they're the problem!" No mention of what the union's actual demands were or how the post office itself acted.

Also also, Canada Post is NOT tax funded. It's a government institution that is set up like a normal corporation, but with the government as the shareholder. If that's not an ass backwards way of providing an essential service I don't know what is. Literally the worst of both worlds between private and public ownership.

I know it's in French but I could not share to you the rag that state funded media can regurgitate.

Basically this article is about Trump who may awakens forgotten traumas for people having suffered some degree of it. At first I was like, okay, let's see that stuff.

Then it hit me, second paragraph. Quoting a Venezuelan woman who says : "I feel like 1999 when Chavez came to power" - "The discourse was the same".

Then, second person quoted, an Ukrainian woman who says : "Impossible for that woman to not think about the USSR revolution a hundred years ago." Writes down the "journalist"

Another quote from that woman, vice-president of the Ukrainian National Federation of Quebec, "it was a movement to destroy the world order. What Trump is doing, politically and economically, it's also to change the existing order."

Couldn't have you picked, let's say Franco or Mussolini even ? Nah, socialism is actually Trumpism.

God I hate this blatant shit.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/62991105

Hey everyone!

For those that have crossed the US / Canadian border recently: what was your experience when going through US customs? Were you harassed / detained? Any tips to prepare for crossing?

My SO and I were talking earlier about having some family come up from the US to Canada to visit us. I suggested maybe they should wait a bit due to the apparent unhinged behaviour of US Customs; However, while my SO doesn't deny the stories, she believes they might be rare cases & blown out of proportion by the media. She found out that the Vancouver woman that was detained for ~2 weeks also had improper paperwork - which is often left out by the media. While the detainment duration is still totally unjustified, the initial detainment was caused by the improper paperwork.

So I'm reaching out to those that actually cross the border to see what's actually going on; as the media can be fanatical sometimes.

Thanks in advance!

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7736771

With the latest NDP defeat we're besieged by well meaning arguments on how we can save the NDP or return it to a working class party. As if that were ever the case.

The NDP was founded as a union with the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) in 1961. Even then, both parent organizations routinely silenced revolutionary aspirations of their members with swarming clouds of labor aristocrats determined to censor liberatory momentum with the very same careerist management/consultant parasites that dominate the Labour to NDP pipeline today. Leading to the NDP's formation, the CCF had recently caved to the red scare and replaced their revolutionary Regina Manifesto (a creed that won medicare and more) to the reformist Winnipeg Declaration which fell flat other than the "achievement" of creating the of the NDP. More disappointing, the bodies which made up the CLC had a proud history of purging socialists opposed to the Marshall Plan or NATO (also supported by the CCF), while banning entire unions they deemed as too friendly to socialism or socialist states, and eagerly imitated the American Federation of Labor’s partnership with the CIA to quietly collude with the Canadian state to suppress liberatory organizing at home and abroad.

Born from such rot, it's little wonder the NDP has brought Canadians no closer to securing the most minimal human demands of peace, land, or bread. Even while they routinely win provincial governments, the legacy of each NDP regime continues the pattern of bourgeoisie lackeyism to enforce the status quo at any cost; their most radical members serving only to redirect liberatory energy for material change into immaterial rhetorical campaigns at best. A small tasting of the exhaustive proof that the party is no instrument of the masses features the following recent lowlights:

• Evidence internal party rules and bylaws are continuously rewritten to ensure no democratic movement from within the party can achieve momentum to challenge the leading aristocrats includes:

  1. Today, the party's top officials are literally lobbyists for everything from Airbnb to fossil fuels and banks.
  2. In 2022, the BC NDP held a secret meeting of anonymous executives to disqualify the trending grassroots leadership candidate.
  3. In 2021, ridings requesting to run grassroots candidates were ignored, with party designated candidates being dropped in without any connection or introduction to the individual riding.
  4. In 2021, it was noted by the grassroots Courage Coalition that only 13 of the 29 resolutions passed by the convention were added to the NDP policy book. The party already scraps up to 40% of member-submitted resolutions with no oversight, so to drop passed resolutions further raises accusations of gatekeeping.
  5. In 2021, unions were given a much higher allocation of delegate spots - even where union members were not NDP members and no debate was had on the motion. This is notable as union delegates are typically the most reactionary vote at conventions, often obstructing revolutionary programs from riding associations and general members.

• Evidence that even when ignoring subservience to capital at the provincial level, the federal party directly aids military aggression, imperialism, and often serves as a collaborative mouthpiece for the bourgeoisie at it's highest positions include:

  1. Today, the NDP continues a neoliberal imperialist foreign policy with positive positions on Palestine barely present after decades of militant organizing.
  2. In 2022, the party made an executive decision to enter into a Supply and Confidence agreement with the Liberal party despite the Liberal's track record of strike-breaking and betrayal of working class interests (which they did again by breaking the 2024 Canada Post Strike during the agreement without a material response from the NDP)
  3. In 2011, the NDP clamored to vote in favor of the bombing of Libya which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.

• Evidence that the NDP participates in bourgeoisie cash for access schemes while also securing financing (and coinciding conflicts of interest) from banks and large donors rather than building a wide base of grassroots support:

  1. Today, the NDP hosts events with the required entry fee ranging from $400 to $1,725. A working class party should not be chasing big donors as this inevitably creates systemic pressures to ignore grass roots organizing and populist support.
  2. Today, the NDP (like all parties) takes out massive loans to finance election campaigns ($7 million in 2019, down from $22 million in 2015). This creates a conflict of interest between the banks and newly indebted MPs and party while the profit the banks make inevitably is invested in the most profitable industries: fossil fuels and war.
  3. In 2022, 20% of the total amount donated to the NDP came from donors giving $1000 or more.

If this is the cutting edge of Canadian class struggle, of course the Canadian worker remains insulated from class consciousness, still happy to bathe in the spoils of western imperialism and ongoing genocides of Indigenous populations backed by Canadian corporations from coast to coast to coast. Few question where their tax dollars go, fewer how their state pension grows.

From 2025 forward, that period of comfort comes to a slow and obvious end alongside the American hegemony that secured it. As the decline of American empire will continue to bring about shocks to the western economic system, it's our duty not to prop up the equally decaying liberal/social democratic structures that brought us here, but to escalate the jailbreak of masses restrained by such unscientific idylic thought. Socialism is a scientific method to assess and advance the means of production beyond the anarchy of markets and nature alike. Now is the time of monsters, and only we can save us.

If we truly seek to secure universal peace, land, and bread, our task is to elevate class-consciousness and bring that awareness to life through the establishment of rank-and-file formations rooted in the real conditions and needs of working people. We must reawaken to our responsibilities of directing unions into struggle, assemblies into decisive projects, and movements into action without asking for permission or participation from institutions with a vested interest in prolonging the status quo.

The people, and only the people, are the motive force of history. We must go to the masses, not to instruct them, but to learn and understand their needs to forge a revolutionary program from their conditions. We must form new organs of people's power: workers' councils, tenant unions, Indigenous-led land defense formations, and more configurations of class struggle independent from the ruling class.

Our task is clear: unite the scattered, awaken the sleeping, organize the willing, and struggle without compromise.

There are some already taking up this task, with the Communist Party of Canada being at the forefront, but we need more hands at the wheel and eyes on deck as we continue to chart what socialism with Canadian characteristics will look like.

What is the efficient implementation of mass-line process across Canada's complex communities? What is the efficient recipe for cadre education and self criticism? What is the efficient congress to bridge organizations with evolutionary momentum into a singular revolutionary movement?

Let New Democrats cling to their sinking vanity project. Let us build something new.

Majority vs minority still TBD at the moment.

Text of the article at the time of posting:

Man dead after being shot by police at Toronto's Pearson airport

Police were attempting to resolve dispute before man produced gun: Peel police chief

CBC News · Posted: Apr 24, 2025 7:59 AM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago

Investigators survey the scene after Peel police shot and killed a man outside Terminal 1 at Toronto’s Pearson airport on Thursday morning. (Evan Mitsui/CBC) Social Sharing

A man is dead after being shot by Peel police at Toronto Pearson's Terminal 1 Thursday morning.

The shooting happened shortly before 7 a.m. after police received a call from a member of the public about a dispute involving two or three people, Peel police Chief Nishan Duraiappah said. The group knew each other and was there "for the purposes of travel," he said.

Three officers responded to the call. Police had been attempting to mediate the dispute for around 10 minutes when the man abruptly took out a firearm and pointed it at an officer, he said.

Kristy Denette, the spokesperson for the province's Special Investigations Unit (SIU), told reporters the man did not fire his weapon at police, adding it's unclear whether he pointed the weapon at the officers.

Two of the officers fired at the man, the SIU said, correcting its earlier release that said three officers opened fire. The man, 30, was pronounced dead at the scene, it added.

The man was "in distress" and had been in an SUV at Terminal 1 departures, but the shooting happened outside the vehicle, the SIU said.

Denette said some family members were present at the time of the shooting, and the SUV had a child's booster seat inside.

No police officers were injured and a post-mortem exam for the man is scheduled for Friday morning, the SIU said.

The shooting "is an isolated incident and there are no known threats to public safety," Peel police said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

Asked about the shooting at an unrelated event Thursday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford called it unacceptable.

"What's the world coming to? You go to the airport and there's shootings happening," he said.

In an update to media on Thursday, Ontario's Special Investigations Unit said the man was "in distress" and produced a weapon but didn't fire it before being shot dead by police at Pearson airport.

Peel paramedics responded to the scene around 6:56 a.m., a spokesperson confirmed.

Duraiappah called the shooting a "tragic incident" and said it was not an attack on the airport.

"There was nothing that was compromising the airport operations," he said.

Police have body camera footage of the incident and are cooperating fully with the SIU's investigation, he said.

Duraiappah said there was a large police presence on scene, along with SIU investigators.

The SIU is an independent agency that investigates the conduct of police officers in incidents across Ontario that may have resulted in death, serious injury, the discharge of a firearm or allegations of sexual assault.

Witness saw man bleeding, officer performing CPR

Danilo Simic told CBC News he had just dropped off a friend at the airport and was planning his route home to Hamilton when he heard 10 or more loud bangs.

"Right away I thought, this can't be a car's loud exhaust. This is something different, something that I haven't heard before," he said.

A man who was at Toronto's Pearson airport at the time of a police-involved shooting Thursday recounts hearing multiple gunshots before seeing police performing CPR on an injured man.

Simic said he ducked in his car, assuming the noises were gunshots. Everyone around him "came to a standstill," he said.

Two police cruisers soon sped past him, he said.

As Simic drove away, he saw a man lying on the ground bleeding from his torso and his head. An officer was giving the man CPR, he said.

Police were also holding back a woman from the scene, Simic said.

Another witness, Jake Seymour, said he was outside on the airport's lower level when the shooting happened.

He said he heard multiple shots, then went to the top floor to see if he could offer first aid. First responders were already there, he said in a direct message to CBC Toronto.

Seymour said exits in the area were blocked off. The scene that was taped off wasn't on the roadway where passengers immediately exited the airport, but rather the secondary roadway closer to the airport's parking garage, he said.

Grey SUV on scene with several evidence markers

Images from the scene showed a heavy police presence with several Peel Regional Police vehicles parked outside the massive three-level terminal building that's the hub of Air Canada's operations and most major international flights.

CBC News crews spotted at least a dozen police cars en route to the departures area of Terminal 1.

Police cordoned off a section of the road outside Terminal 1, where a grey car with its trunk open sat near several evidence markers. (Darek Zdzienicki/CBC)

One image from the scene showed a grey Jeep Cherokee in a section of the road that's been cornered off with police tape. There were several white evidence markers on the ground behind the vehicle, which had its trunk open.

The SIU confirmed this was the vehicle involved in the shooting.

A number of passengers were seen wheeling their suitcases between police cruisers with their lights flashing while making their way into Terminal 1.

Travellers at Pearson have been left scrambling after a police-involved shooting snarled operations at the Toronto airport. CBC's Dale Manucdoc has the latest on the investigation.

Roads closed, routes affected near airport

Pearson airport said flights were operating normally on Thursday despite the police investigation.

The road to Terminal 1 departures was closed, but has since reopened, the airport says.

Highway 409 to Terminal 1 departures was closed due to a police investigation, Ontario Provincial Police said in a post on X.

A 30-year-old man died Thursday morning after being shot by Peel police officers outside Toronto's Pearson International Airport, the province's Special Investigations Unit said. (CBC)

The 900 Airport Express bus was detouring via Terminal 3 due to police activity, but service has since resumed, the Toronto Transit Commission said.

Service on the UP Express appeared to be unaffected.

With files from Linda Ward and Kirthana Sasitharan

In response to the threat of Trump tariffs, an old narrative about interprovincial trade barriers has risen from the dead. The idea that eliminating supposedly massive internal trade barriers would lead to thousands of dollars per year in gains for ordinary Canadians makes for great soundbites for politicians, but should we really believe that there is a free lunch to be had?

While politicians and media figures have claimed that Canada’s GDP could grow by up to $240 billion, such incredibly large numbers simply don’t make sense based on what we know about interprovincial trade. Prior economic research on purported barriers to trade comes up with numbers that are an order of magnitude smaller.

Clean electricity is perhaps Canada’s greatest strategic asset in the 21st century. Already, more than 80 per cent of electricity generated in the country is non-emitting. As more and more of the economy electrifies—everything from electric vehicles to heat pumps to steel furnaces—we will need to double or even triple total electricity production, which Canada is well-positioned to do given our existing infrastructure, expertise and geography.

In this pivotal moment, the nation-building project Canada needs is not another oil pipeline that traps us in a costly, declining industry, but an east-west electricity grid that enables a productive, resilient economy for the century to come.

between this and the intra-day tariff chart, i'm not sure which is more ridiculous.

Prominent Ukrainian-Canadian advocates have opposed the release of the Deschênes list, with some raising fears about personal safety. Last year, after declining to release it, the government expressed concern that publishing it could boost discredited Russian propaganda about Ukraine having Nazi ties.

I'm seeing some people taking the threats posed by the Trump admin to make Canada the "51st state" both literally and seriously, to the extent they're starting to game out the likelihood of some kind of military action.

Personally I don't take the threat of outright American subversion/invasion/etc seriously yet because I don't see the sort of coordinated propaganda effort I would expect from a country preparing for a military operation this controversial. Nor is there any real constituency of Americans I'm aware of with personal or material animus against Canada - right now I'm only aware of Trump mouthing off and Musk salivating over fake nerd maps.

Let's say I'm wrong though and he really is dumb enough to go full boots on the ground North of the 49th parallleeeeelllllll - what happens? What will the hot zones be? Which premiers will be first on the kill list? and of course.....What Will Quebec Do?