Stop the attack on TTC workers

Jesse McLaren

The corporate press and TTC management are going on an offensive against TTC workers, scapegoating them for an underfunded transit system and pushing towards a privatized system that would be bad for workers and transit users alike. We need to speak out up in support of TTC workers, expose the corporate agenda behind these attacks, defend public services, and expand good green jobs.

Scapegoat

There is growing anger directed at transit workers is fuelled by the corporate press. A tiny number of people who photographed workers against their will were given front-page coverage, while the radio has hosted forums to rant about workers and even question their right to a washroom break. This has created the illusion that the public is up in arms against transit workers, and that the union is responsible for deteriorating conditions and rising fares.

As Bob Kinnear, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113, explained, “There is no group of workers in this city who are more subject to public assault than TTC workers. Every time there is a fare increase, we brace ourselves for the inevitable spike in insults and assaults. But the recent media focus on a handful of TTC workers has made a bad situation much, much worse.”

Rather than address the underfunding that is starving cities of cash, the government, TTC management and corporate press are blaming workers. Their goal is not to improve transit conditions or lower fares, but to privatize the system for more private profit.

Corporate Agenda

This attack on transit workers has not come out of thin air. In the lead up to Toronto’s mayoral election, the Toronto Board of Trade has launched a campaign-votetoronto2010.com–to promote neo-liberal policies (attacks on workers, privatization, contracting out, and user fees) as the solution to underfunding. As the President and CEO of the Toronto Board of Trade argues, “New ways will need to be found to control labour costs. New models of service delivery must be investigated, including introducing competition and doing more outsourcing…The city will need to consider the monetization, or outright sale, of selected assets. User fees must be closely examined.”

Scapegoating workers is the first step towards these policies.

Defend public services

Blaming transit workers for a fare hike is the latest in a series of attacks on public services that scapegoats workers for government and management decisions that have undermined services.

During the 2008 transit strike, the TTC claimed budgetary constraints were the fault of greedy workers, and tried to pit workers against those who use public transit.  But Torontonians received a rude awakening to the real source of transit under-funding: when Mayor Miller applied for $1.2 billion to update transit, Federal Minister of Transportation John Baird told Toronto to “fuck off”—and this from a government that plans on spending $490 billion on war over the next 20 years!

In 2009, rather than address decades of education cut-backs, York University and University of Toronto tried to balance their budget on the backs of Teaching Assistants, and pit striking workers against students. The real blame for tuition hikes was later revealed when the University administration introduced Flat Fees—a money grab that punishes part-time students.

Last summer, Mayor Miller scapegoated city workers for the recession and tried to take away their sick day bank. This unleashed a right-wing backlash that blamed workers for everything from city underfunding to flu deaths.

Now transit workers are again under fire, for conditions they did not create. Transit workers are not responsible for funding, fares, scheduling, or routes. These are the domain of government and TTC management. But instead of blaming deteriorating conditions on those responsible, the government, TTC management and corporate media are channelling public anger against workers. One expression is MPP David Caplan’s proposed bill to outlaw strikes by TTC workers, which Bob Kinear rightly described as “a pathetic political ploy to deflect attention away from his government’s cronic negligence of public transit.” This was quickly proven by McGuinty himself, who endorsed the “essential services” bill while refusing to allocate more funds to the TTC.

Expand good green jobs

Transit workers are not the problem, they are part of the solution. As capitalism lurches towards climate chaos, it is vital that we massively expand good green jobs. Transit workers provide safe and environmentally friendly public transit, and these kinds of jobs and services need to be defended and expanded.

Instead, the TTC management raised fares–despite admitting this could result in the loss of millions of riders–and turned the resulting public anger against workers.
We need good green jobs and accessible public transportation, and that starts with defending transit workers under attack.

Global Recession

For decades we’ve been told that cuts, concessions, privatization, and corporate tax cuts would protect jobs and grow the economy. Now that this profit-driven corporate greed has created a global recession, the same old disastrous policies are presented as “new” solutions, and again working people are being asked to pay.

Any so-called “bailouts” transfer billions of public dollars to banks and CEOs, while more concessions are demanded from workers.

It is these attacks on workers that produced the much-hyped “economic recovery”, which was only reflected in CEO bonuses and bank profits, while unemployment continues to rise.  But even this “recovery” threatens to end as stimulus funding dries up, leaving governments and companies to continue attacking working people in order to extract more profit.

Attacks on public services–from city workers, to teachers, to transit workers–are a conscious strategy to make ordinary people pay for the recession, through privatizing, cutting wages, and gutting pensions and benefits.  But working people didn’t create the economic crisis, and shouldn’t have to pay for it!

Underfunding and Privatizing
All levels of government are using the recession to slash spending and privatize, and demonizing workers is part of this agenda.

Harper is spending billions on a war Canadians reject, and prorogue Parliament rather than answer question on torture, climate change, and the economy. His minister gave the middle finger to Toronto’s demand for transit funding, and when he finally returns returns to work, it will be with an austerity budget and threats of privatizing Via Rail and Canada Post.

Provincially, the Dalton McGuinty government is implementing a 28.5 per cent corporate income tax cut that will deplete Ontario of $10 billion in tax revenue, while refusing to bail out the TTC and pushing to sell the LCBO.

Municipal governments are following suit, transferring the burden onto ordinary people, and blaming unions. Last year city workers were the scapegoat, and now its transit workers. But it it is the labour movement that has won all the public services and benefits Canadians enjoy, from the weekend to minimum wage to Medicare.

Global Resistance

The labour movement is again starting to rise up. From Britain to South Africa, strikes are spreading, Greece is in the middle of a series of general strikes against government austerity measures.
Toronto has seen the creation of the Good Jobs for All Coalition in Toronto—which has been raising demands for good green jobs for all, and building solidarity between labour struggles.

Last summer working people came together to defend city workers on strike, and solidarity continues to grow for ongoing struggles like the locked-out workers at Cadillac Fairview.

When companies and governments push to see how much of this crisis can be dumped on the shoulders of workers, we need to build solidarity with every fightback, and build rank and file networks to strengthen our unions.

Taskforce on Anti-Racism delivers final report

Now it’s time to implement the recommendations

Nora Loreto, Editor-in-Chief

After two years of deliberations, the Taskforce on Anti-Racism at Ryerson released its historic final report on February 11. The report documents the experiences of students, faculty, staff and community members who have encountered racism on our campus, and identifies those structures that perpetuate systemic racism.

The report makes 59 recommendations for combating the “chilly climate” felt by many racialized groups at Ryerson. These include policy changes, expanded and more sensitive course curricula, improved security measures and many other steps meant to help Ryerson become a more comfortable and open space for all who study and work here.

Not surprisingly, the report’s release attracted immediate criticism. Marcus Gee, writing in the Globe and Mail, crows: “Racism at Ryerson? Look carefully or you’ll miss it.” Gee seems incredulous that racism could exist at Ryerson, “one of the most diverse and welcoming universities in the country, if not the world.” Sadly, Gee fails to recognize that his position as a white, middle-class male journalist doesn’t necessarily give him any insight into the experience of racialized groups at Ryerson – never the mind the right to decide what counts as racism.

Gee’s assessment attempts to undermine the careful and considered research that informs the Taskforce’s final report. Unfortunately, he’s not alone. Far too many critics, especially those who have no real connection to Ryerson, seem to think that, because they can’t see it, there’s no racism at Ryerson or anywhere else, for that matter.

But that’s precisely the point.

Racism manifests itself in all kinds of different ways, and is often invisible to those who have never encountered it personally. The purpose of the Taskforce is to draw attention to these experiences, to acknowledge and legitimize them, and to find ways to prevent them from happening again.

To identify racism at Ryerson is not necessarily the same thing as saying that Ryerson is racist. The Taskforce simply concludes that not everyone experiences Ryerson in the same way, and that not everyone is equal while at Ryerson.

Racism is a complex issue that must be addressed honestly and with sensitivity. The Taskforce clearly understands this, and has done well to initiate a sometimes difficult and painful conversation – and one that all members of the Ryerson community must engage. For instance, the report reveals that fewer racialized faculty members get tenure, that some students feel silenced or marginalized in their classes, and that the grade appeals process may be influenced by a students’ racial or ethnic origin – to name just a few of its findings. All these experiences matter, and must be generalized to the wider community.

The Taskforce was led by two co-chairs: Eileen Antone, associate professor of adult education, community development and counselling psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and Grace-Edward Galabuzi, associate professor of politics and public administration at Ryerson. In addition to two co-chairs, ten other members rounded out the Taskforce: three students, three staff members, three faculty members, and one senior administrator.
Its final report delivers a thorough environmental scan of how members of the Ryerson community experience racism, and lays a solid foundation on which future anti-racism initiatives may be developed.

One of the report’s central strengths is the comprehensive and inter-connected nature of its 59 recommendations. For these recommendations to be effective and meaningful, all of them must be implemented.

As Ryerson begins to discuss and evaluate the Taskforce’s final report, we have a real opportunity to set an example for other campuses to follow, one that will hopefully address the province-wide problems faced by racialized students, faculty and staff in higher education. Ryerson students should be proud that they are already at the forefront of this important struggle.

In addition, we have a real opportunity to recognize and educate ourselves about the experience of all those who have been affected by centuries of imperialism, war, colonization, and racist immigration policies – especially Canada’s role in these experiences. The Taskforce deserves credit for drawing attention to these histories.

An important step in this process is to recognize that Canada is a settler-state. Our institutions were built from (and therefore inherit) structures that perpetuate inequality. It is not always an easy task to admit this, but we really have no other choice.

Another settler-state, South Africa, remains a popular example of an extreme manifestation of racist, state-sanctioned segregation. As an apartheid regime, South Africa codified racism as state policy. The indigenous Black population was forced into poverty and restricted from positions of power.

According to CBC’s Digital Archives, South African apartheid was a “a brutal system of racial separation that kept the nation’s black [sic] majority in poverty while a white minority held the wealth and power.” The Archive later quotes Justice Thomas Berger – the youngest person to be appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in the twentieth century – who wrote in 1966 about British Columbia’s treatment of First Nations people: “They began by taking the Indians’ land without any surrender and without their consent…Then they herded the Indian people onto Indian reserves. This was nothing more nor less than apartheid, and that is what it still is today.”

Almost 50 years later, there have been few changes to the Indian Act, or to the racist legislation that came before it. Closer to campus, our very own Egerton Ryerson is credited with founding the Normal School System, the basis for which the Residential School system was developed. These systems became tools for the federal government’s assimilationist policies that sought to destroy the nations of people whose land the settlers stole.

As students who will forever be associated with Ryerson’s name – and/or as people who occupy this land as stewards or settlers – we must resist racism and all forms of oppression: at Ryerson, in Toronto, across Canada, and anywhere we encounter it.

As citizens or residents of Canada, we have a duty to uphold our Treaty obligations – a commitment that should form a critical part of what we mean by citizenship. Universities can play an important role in developing this concept. Regardless of our generational claim to this land, all of us can benefit from a new approach to knowledge and curriculum that includes voices that are systemically silenced.

Bringing Indigenous experience into existing curricula, creating more spots for Indigenous scholars, and introducing traditional approaches into scholarly methods will create better educated students, and help re-establish the kind of knowledge that has been developed in the millennia before our campus ever existed.

The struggles for racialized communities, First Nations, women, queer people, people with disabilities and all oppressed groups are interrelated, and will rise together or fall together. Our collective struggle for real and genuine equality is far from over; on many fronts, it is only just beginning.

The Ryerson Free Press takes pride in giving voice to the perspectives of marginalized and isolated communities and struggles, perspectives that all too often remain absent from Canada’s mainstream and corporate media. We take pride in our commitment to challenging racism and oppression wherever we see it. And we take pride in the stories that appear in our pages, and in our writers who tackle difficult and often controversial issues.

It is in this context that we applaud and endorse the final report of the Taskforce on Anti-Racism at Ryerson, and call for its swift and immediate implementation. The recommendations of the Taskforce are in keeping with our own commitment to global justice, and represent an important step forward to building a more open, accessible and unified community at Ryerson.

Deficit is no excuse to end economic stimulus

Hugh Mackenzie

As Canada’s recession winds down, despite growing talk of housing and debt bubbles, there is an even bigger bubble that’s set to burst.

It’s the Harper government bubble – that carefully crafted, out-of-touch universe our Prime Minister has been living in since recession threw hundreds of thousands of Canadians out of work.
Within the Harper bubble, the recession is over and so it’s time to turn the taps off stimulus funding and get back to the original extreme Conservative program of gutting public services.

Within the Harper bubble, unemployed Canadians are grateful for all the help they are getting. Within the Harper bubble of government-sponsored TV ads, Canada’s recession victims look downright cheerful, despite the fact that 810,000 Employment Insurance (EI) recipients are poised to run out of benefits with no strategic stimulus plan to get them working.

In the real world of recession and a fragile economic recovery, the Harper government’s efforts in last year’s federal budget fell far short of what’s needed. It’s a problem still in search of a solution.
Canada’s commitment to economic stimulus has been lukewarm compared with that of many other countries in the OECD.

The contrast between the Canadian stimulus program and that of the United States could not be more stark: A scattergun program less than the sum of its parts in Canada versus a strategic focus on capacity-building priorities in the United States.

In Canada, the Harper government held up more than 80 per cent of its stimulus spending for more than a year – and then winter set in and the ground froze.
In the U.S., where President Barack Obama refuses to live in a bubble, the federal government had already delivered millions of jobs by the third quarter of 2009.

Thanks to the Harper government’s foot-dragging and scrambling for political advantage, Canada’s economic stimulus is late getting into the market, and with the threat of a slowdown in Canada’s hot housing market, the worst thing the government could do right now is take its foot off the gas and hit the brakes.

Canadians deserve better. And it isn’t too late to make a fresh start.
The number 1 priority has to be employment. Canada lost nearly half a million jobs in the recession and those jobs aren’t coming back quickly.

Canadians still need the support of extended EI.

Canadians also need a robust stimulus program aimed at creating jobs and building Canada’s capacity for the future.

The absolute worst thing the Harper bubble government could do now is to shift its focus to deficit hysteria. Canada’s economic recovery is fragile, and that of the United States – our biggest trading partner – is even weaker. As both the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have pointed out, governments that pull their stimulus funding too quickly could cause another recessionary dip.

That mistake must be avoided at all costs.

As big as our deficit may look in Canadian historical terms, it is not that large in a global context. A recent survey in The Economist shows that Canada’s deficit as a share of GDP is the second smallest on a list of major economies, larger only than China’s.

Our debt as a share of GDP is a fraction of that faced by other major countries. It is far too early in the economic cycle to know if Canada even has a structural deficit large enough to worry about in the longer term.

The Harper government should use the opportunity presented by this week’s federal budget to shift the emphasis in economic stimulus toward investments that will pay off for Canada’s economy in the long term: strengthening our post-secondary education system; addressing the health system challenges of an aging population; continuing to rebuild our physical infrastructure; and funding a Canadian response to climate change.

Finally, although this may be too much for even the most incurable optimist, the government could set aside its ideology, suspend its planned corporate tax cuts and reconsider its non-policy on early childhood education funding.

The corporate tax cuts don’t make sense. They put Canada out front in a race to the bottom in North America that we shouldn’t be in. They make no contribution to the recovery of businesses hurt by the recession – and not making any profit anyway – while delivering savings to industries that don’t need the help.

A budget that took on these challenges would be a refreshing change for Canada. It’s time for the Harper bubble to burst.

Hugh Mackenzie is a CCPA Research Associate.

Olympics should be about the love of sport

All athletes deserve our support, even if they didn’t win a medal

Gursevak Kasbia

It all started with the Opening Ceremonies. I was amazed by the Canadian artists who mesmerized the crowd, and who made us all feel proud as we stood on the world stage. But when one of the torches “failed to launch” near the end of the performance, I started to get a bad feeling about the Games.
Throughout the Olympics, we saw so many of our athletes featured in television commercials, including medal hopefuls Mellissa Hollingsworth and Manuel Osborne-Paradis who performed well, but didn’t win any medals. Others did, including Alex Bilodeau whose heart-warming performance in the freestyle moguls inspired Canadians everywhere.

Canada’s federally funded $112 million “Own the Podium” program was no doubt successful, insofar as Canada came out on top with the most gold medals won by a single country in the history of the Winter Olympics. But what about all the Canadian athletes who were ranked within the top three of their respective sports who didn’t win any medals? Did “Own the Podium” raise expectations too high? Are we sending the message that we only celebrate those athletes who win medals? Shouldn’t win be celebrating their love of sport, and congratulating them – win or lose?

Even though we didn’t win the medals race, we should be proud of all our athletes, and include them in our sense of national pride.

Deadly game of war continues in Afghanistan

‘Olympic Truce’ more symbol than reality for Afghans killed in violence

Derrick O’Keefe

The Olympic Games in Vancouver ended as they began for the people of Afghanistan: timed perfectly with NATO’s use of deadly violence. Just as the Opening Ceremonies coincided with the launching of a massive new military offensive, the Games’ closing celebrations coincided with new attacks in Afghanistan that claimed civilian lives. The Associated Press gives the headline and intro to the fact that four NATO soldiers were killed, putting less emphasis on this latest Afghan civilian carnage:

“KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Four NATO service members died Monday in separate attacks across Afghanistan, including a suicide car bomb that targeted an international military convey as it crossed a bridge in the Taliban-dominated south, the coalition said. Nine Afghan civilians also died in four bombings in the south, officials said…

“The two-week-old Marjah offensive, involving thousands of American troops along with Afghan soldiers, is the largest combined assault since the 2001 US-led invasion to oust the Taliban’s hard-line Islamist regime. It is the first test of NATO’s new counterinsurgency strategy since President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 new US troops to Afghanistan late last year.”

Sadly, all of this stepped up violence in Afghanistan took place under the cynical fraud of an “Olympic Truce,” which VANOC, the Canadian government, and all United Nations member states had endorsed. Based on the images of Canadian and U.S. troops playing ball hockey or watching the gold medal game from their base in Kandahar, many might have had the impression that hostilities were somewhat on hold. The reality was that hostilities were ramped up more than ever, arguably using the spectacle of the Games as cover.
Surely this must rank as one of the most under-reported stories of these Vancouver Games.

The lives of dozens of Afghan men, women, and children were ruthlessly snuffed out over the duration of the Winter Olympics. We will never know their names, their pictures will never be shown on our national news, but their families’ and their country’s suffering will continue, with Ottawa’s complicity, until we take action together to end it.

This opinion piece was originally published on rabble.ca on March 1, 2010. Derrick O’Keefe is the co-chair of the Canadian Peace Alliance.

Toronto Women’s Bookstore may not survive the fiscal year

Haseena Manek

Last month, the Ryerson Free Press published an excerpt of the Toronto Women’s Bookstore’s (TWB) letter to the community asking for financial support.

“In the past,” it reads, “when feminist bookstores were closing down all across North America, the support of the community is what kept TWB alive. You are the reason that we are still here today, and we believe that with your help we can once again work together to save this organization where so many of us as readers, writers, feminists, artists, and activists have found a home.”

Unfortunately, the situation for “the largest non-profit feminist bookstore in Canada” is still looking pretty bleak.

Despite the fact that the response from customers and members of the community was “amazing,” the same publicity that helped raise almost $40, 000 (through donations, volunteering, fundraisers and auctioning services like massage sessions and yoga classes), may have also contributed to the end of the Toronto Women’s Bookstore, as we know it.

The letter, posted on the store’s website, (womensbookstore.com), asked for donations, as well as encouraging readers to hold fundraisers, promote other fundraisers in any way possible and generally spread the word about the TWB’s situation.

According to Janet Romero, co-manager and book buyer, all the fantastic media coverage, (meant for those that love the Toronto Women’s Bookstore and would sorely miss it if it was gone), also reached the store’s Canadian suppliers.

In anticipation of the store having to close down, and in true capitalist and compassionless fashion, the majority of the these suppliers decided to close their accounts, cancel orders, switch to prepaid terms and/or set very tiny credit limits.

Negotiations with suppliers have so far been disheartening, creating additional stress on the store, its board members and its many fantastic staff and volunteers.

The battle with this new enemy may be TWB’s last, but staff are remaining hopeful that negotiations will enable the store to stay open longer. The fear is that that the store will have to close altogether by the end of this fiscal year (which ends on the May 31).
Another option that has been considered is selling the business, as a way of ensuring that it could remain as a resource for the community.

Clearly the board is considering every possible option to keep TWB and everything it provides, and stands for, alive. Unfortunately, capitalism is proving to be an onerous and resilient enemy, constantly resurfacing in new, more demanding ways.

The threat of corporate giants is not a new one to Toronto’s streets, (we mourned the loss of Queen St.’s Pages last summer), nor is it new to the Toronto Women’s Bookstore. The store was hoping that the beginning of textbook sales this past September would help bring TWB out of its two-year deficit.
“However,” says Romero, “course book sales were much lower than expected and we found ourselves in a position where we realized we were not going to be able to pay our bills – that is when we decided to send the call out for help to the community.”

After almost forty years, the Toronto Women’s Bookstore is not just a bookstore, it is a veritable treasure trove of information, inspiration, support and advocacy for “political actions, women’s health care, anti-violence advocacy, and anti-oppression politics for individuals and community groups.” Invaluable to students and non-students alike, it is a true prize on the streets of Toronto.
If only metaphoric riches could count against the Chapters chequebook.

Equal Rights Not So Equal Yet

Kate Spencer

My father was born and brought up in the 1950s – a time when women were kept in the home. He was raised traditionally, with a mother who would have a hot meal on the table every night, a clean home always, and seldom openly disagreed with her husband.

My father grew up, and got married. He considered himself much more open-minded than his father had been, and fully supported the women’s rights movement. He would do a few dishes, perhaps take the garbage out, and then settle down to his paper. My mother famously asked him once, “Do you really think you’re done for the evening?” and my father looked up and said, “But I helped!” My mother was of the opinion that household tasks were to be shared equally – and Dad would soon come to realize that the best way to keep the peace was to help out.

Now, I live with my boyfriend – a truly lovely human being, who believes firmly in equality for all, and supports me in all that I do. When I ask him why it is that I still seem to end up being in charge of keeping our home tidy, he claims to not live up to my cleaning standards. If I have to do the job over again, what is the point in him even attempting it in the first place?

Two generations later, and the reasoning may have changed, but I am still somehow stuck scrubbing our toilet.

The Economist tells me that women are doing better than I think they are – the cover of their first issue this year was Rosie the Riveter doing her familiar flex, with the triumphant “We Did It!” caption. The message is clear – women have made it, have arrived, and are now truly equal. They follow this by saying women now make up 50 per cent of the job market, and by 2011 there will be 2.6 million more female than male university students in America. However, what they leave out is interesting. Are they forgetting that women still only earn 80 cents on the male dollar? And when they say that women are in control of many powerful corporations, they neglect to tell us that only 15 of the Fortune 500 companies are run by women.

In a recent issue of ELLE Magazine, Rachel Combe reports on a study from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, which says that women have experienced a steady erosion of happiness from the 1970s – we are now notably less happy than men (clearly a shady state of affairs). Does the women’s movement have anything to do with our sudden sadness? Consider the 1970s – a time when “girl power” was hitting its stride, when “I am Woman, hear me roar” was an anthem for the hope felt by women who wanted equal rights and equal pay. And it’s been one long bout of not doing as well as we hoped since then. And above and beyond that, we are still doing the double shift of working at work and then coming home to make the dinner, clean the house, and take care of the kids. We are also expected to do it cheerfully, and to rejoice in the fact that, quite literally, we have the opportunity to do twice as much as our mothers did. It’s no wonder we’re feeling depressed.

Our troubles really began with the shift away from matriarchal rule. In many of the original societies of North America, women were in a position of power.  And why was this? Essentially, because women can make babies – and as the child bearers, were responsible for making sure a tribe didn’t die out. In many of those societies, the history of the tribe was passed down through the “wise women” who were responsible for remembering the tribe’s history, which could go back for 45 to 50 generations. “Civilized” societies have tended to be male-dominated, and that may have had a lot to do with the fact that men were no longer in danger of being killed by animals and war.  It is telling that the first place in the U.S. women got the vote was in the Montana territories. Again, this was a situation where men were in daily danger of being killed – it was a rough life out there in Wild West Montana. And as that was the case, it was natural that women be in a position of more importance in the community. Really, where we went wrong is inviting men to come home reliably at the end of each day.

One of our biggest troubles in the here and now is complacency – this feeling that we have gotten to a certain point, and feel that we no longer have any right to complain about a lack of equality. After all, compared to so many less fortunate women, we are so lucky! We do not have to live in fear of honour killings or genital mutilation, and in theory we are able to do anything we want. What is therefore so sad is that we still seem to find it difficult to really assert our own personal power. I have yet to talk to a female friend who says she would be comfortable earning more than her (future) husband – that things are just so much more natural and easy if women are kept in a lower earning bracket. On our own sliding scale of equality, we are still allowing men to dictate how far we can go.

What we need is to remind ourselves of what we were trying to achieve with women’s rights. It is not a problem that has been dealt with, not something that happened to our mothers but against which we are now immune. Equal Rights for Equal Pay may seem elementary and obvious, but it is still a goal that we have to fight to achieve, and we shouldn’t have to feel unfeminine or apologetic about wanting to be considered just as worthwhile as our male counterparts. Women need to remember what Rosie the Riveter has been telling us all along – “We can do it!” but we haven’t done it yet.

Good news for free speech: CanWest is bankrupt

Graeme Z. Johnson

Corporate media giant CanWest LP, which owns dozens of newspapers and magazines across the country, filed for bankruptcy protection January 8 after the company found itself unable to make payments on more than $1.4 billion in debts to more than 300 creditors.

The company’s troubles may come as good news to many who have criticised CanWest’s virtual stranglehold on much of the Canadian newspaper industry. The company has been heavily criticized by free speech advocates, journalists and human rights activists for its selective reporting and attempts to silence dissenting voices within its publications.

According to Stephan Kimber, a former columnist for CanWest’s Halifax Daily News, the company’s owners –

Winnipeg’s prominent Asper family – “…consider their newspapers not only as profit centers and promotional vehicles for their television network but also as private, personal pulpits from which to express their views.”

“The Aspers support the federal Liberal Party. They’re pro-Israel. They think rich people like themselves deserve tax breaks. They support privatizing healthcare delivery. And they believe their newspapers … should agree with them,” Kimber wrote in the column which ended his career with CanWest.

“[T]hey do not want to see any criticism of Israel,” reports Bill Marsden, an investigative journalist at CanWest’s Montreal Gazette. “We do not run in our newspaper op-ed pieces that express criticism of Israel and what it is doing in the Middle East … We do not have that free-wheeling debate that there should be about all these issues.”

“[A] professor at… the University of Waterloo, wrote an op-ed piece for us in which he was criticizing the anti-terrorism law and criticizing elements of civil rights,” Marsden remembers. “We got a call from headquarters demanding to know why we had printed this.”

“In all our newspapers, including the National Post, we have a very pro-Israel position,” CanWest founder Izzy Asper, a vocal opponent of Palestinian sovereignty, told the Jerusalem Post in a 2003 interview, “We are the strongest supporter of Israel in Canada.”

This support has manifested as selective reporting (a 2004 study found the National Post was 83.3 times more likely to report the deaths of Israeli children than Palestinian children), outright hate speech (with one particular National Post editorial referring to the “Palestinian people as one collective suicide bomber”) and censorship.

“[E]veryone has been sent the message they have to watch what they write,” Ryerson journalism professor John Miller told the Washington Post. “If it goes against what is perceived as the Asper line, then some stories aren’t going to get written, or some stories will be written and then they will be killed.”

In an attempt to maintain control over their newspapers’ political stance, CanWest has even tried to reduce editors’ ability to comment on current events by forcing its major newspapers to run “national editorials” produced by CanWest’s central office – a move which met with major resistance from reporters and journalist organizations across the country.

In an open letter published online, journalists at the Montreal Gazette wrote, “We believe this is an attempt to centralize opinion to serve the corporate interests of CanWest. Far from offering additional content to Canadians, this will … reduce the diversity of opinions and the breadth of debate that to date has been offered readers across Canada.

“More important, each editorial will set the policy for that topic in such a way as to constrain the editorial boards of each newspaper to follow this policy. Essentially, CanWest will be imposing editorial policy on its papers on all issues of national significance. Without question, this decision will undermine the independence and diversity of each newspaper’s editorial board and thereby give Canadians a greatly reduced variety of opinion, debate and editorial discussion.”

Activists outside of CanWest have also attempted to highlight the media conglomerate’s failure to accurately report events. In 2007, the Palestinian Media Collective produced a satirical facsimile of the CanWest-owned Vancouver Sun to draw attention to the company’s anti-Palestinian stance. CanWest’s response was a lawsuit the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) called “an ill-advised attempt by CanWest to use the courts to silence satirical criticism and constrain fair comment.” Quebec’s Ligue des droits et libertés (LDL) echoed BCCLA’s criticism, calling the action “an attempt to crush dissenting opinion through legal proceedings … [and] abuse of the judicial system.”

Unfortunately, CanWest’s sale of its newspapers may not address these abuses as well as some may hope. Besides CanWest, the majority of Canada’s media outlets are controlled by only four other large corporations – Bell Canada, Torstar Corporation, Quebecor, and Rogers Communications – most of which are eagerly waiting to snap up CanWest’s leavings.

Following the preferred trend of ailing businesses these days, CanWest has reserved $3.4 million dollars to fund what it calls “retention bonuses” for 24 of its top managers – managers which, according to court documents, are absolutely necessary to the continuing operation of the company.

Meanwhile, the corporation finds itself unable to pay more than $14.4 million dollars in pension benefits owed to former employees.

Harper shuffles cabinet

With the rest of Parliament grounded until March 3, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has decided to get a jump on his competition by making some strategic adjustments to his cabinet.

Here is a  breakdown of some of the major players in the new cabinet and their qualifications:

Minister for Public Safety – Vic Toews: From his record, he’d probably rather still be Justice Minister, since he hasn’t yet been able to realize his dream of bringing ‘offenders’ as young as ten years of age to justice. However, he should feel right at home overseeing CSIS, since Toews already believes prisoners do not deserve the same rights as other Canadians. “[I]t is wrong that these individuals who have broken their obligations to society are now entitled to have the same voice in society,” Toews says of inmates’ right to vote. He would also have people accused of certain crimes presumed guilty until they can prove their innocence, as evidenced by his proposed 2006 legislation on gun crimes.  This legislation would have required “people charged with serious gun crimes…to demonstrate to the courts why they should not stay in custody until their trial.”

Minister of Public Works and Government Services – Rona Ambrose: After falling temporarily out of favour due to her blunders as Environment Minister, the former Minister of Labour’s success at busting the CN worker’s strike last month seems to have restored the Prime Minister’s faith in her.
Veterans’ Affairs and Minister of State (Agriculture) – Jean-Pierre Blackburn: Blackburn takes over the department after the previous Minister, Greg Thompson, resigned January 16. Blackburn leaves behind his oversight of the Canada Revenue Agency, to which he was appointed after being caught “double-dipping” into the federal payroll as Labour Minister, paying two salaries to certain employees close to him.

President of the Treasury Board – Stockwell Day: Now that Day will have a major role in determining the federal budget, it might be a good time for groups who believe in things like civil rights, women’s right to choose, or education to look for alternative sources of funding. After all, Day has gone on record as saying “homosexuality is a mental disorder that can be cured through counselling,” and that “women who become pregnant through rape or incest should not qualify for government-funded abortions unless their pregnancy is life-threatening.” Additionally, the Minister has adamantly asserted that “God’s law is clear: standards of education are not set by government, but by God [and] the Bible.” Luckily, Day has proven that he is able to bend his principles a little bit. After all, why else would someone who believes that democracy is “the ultimate deification of man, which is the very essence of humanism and totally alien to God’s word” have run for Parliament in the first place?

PSE Stakeholders: their demands in word clouds

This year, the funding framework that sets out how colleges and universities will be funded, is expiring. Student, faculty and administrative groups have all submitted their recommendations for how to move forward. To save you time, we’ve condensed their reports into word clouds, so you can see a snapshot of how these groups advocate for change within the post-secondary sector (in alpha order).

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