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Welcome to rabble.ca's extended series on the Canadian left -- Reinventing democracy, reclaiming the commons: A progressive dialogue on the future of Canada -- a look at where it stands after the 2011 federal election, and what the future can hold. The series will run in this, rabble.ca's 10th year, and is curated by journalist Murray Dobbin.
"The future belongs to the most compelling story."
- Drew Dellinger
The defeat of Bill C-311 by the Senate without any debate on Nov. 16, 2010, goes far beyond the loss of Canada's only climate change legislation. It undermines the role of the Senate, counters the very democracy that Canada has been built on, and is one more step towards the dictatorship that Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to be managing to build. Canadians should be out in the streets protesting, but complacency still rules here instead of alarm and indignation.
CANCUN, Mexico -- Critical negotiations are under way here in Cancun, under the auspices of the United Nations, to reverse human-induced global warming. This is the first major meeting since the failed Copenhagen summit last year, and it is happening at the end of the hottest decade on record. While the stakes are high, expectations are low, and, as we have just learned with the release of classified diplomatic cables from Wikileaks, the United States, the largest polluter in the history of the planet, is engaged in what one journalist here called "a very, very dirty business."
In solidarity with the international day of a "1,000 Cancuns", climate justice activists marched into Toronto's downtown core and shut down the intersection of King and Bay Street -- the seat of power for Canada's commerce engine and home to many of the corporations involved in what activists say is killing the planet.
Here, Canadians need look no further than the province of Alberta's infamous tar sands to see the naked face of destruction move upon Mother Earth.
A lively crowd of around 250 piled into the Steelworkers hall in downtown Toronto on May 7, in an event that brought together Latin American solidarity, first nations, and environmental activists.
Naomi Klein: One of the things that's most mysterious about this moment is "Why now?" People have been fighting austerity measures and calling out abuses by the banks for a couple of years, with basically the same analysis: "We won't pay for your crisis." But it just didn't seem to take off, at least in the U.S. There were marches and there were political projects and there were protests like Bloombergville, but they were largely ignored. There really was not anything on a mass scale, nothing that really struck a nerve. And now suddenly, this group of people in a park set off something extraordinary. So how do you account for that, having been involved in Occupy Wall Street since the beginning, but also in earlier anti-austerity actions?
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