“The decision announced today that U.S. Caterpillar Corporation will close its Electro-Motive plant in London instead of negotiating with the Canadian Autoworkers Union requires an immediate response from the Canadian and Ontario governments.” That statement from Dave Coles, President of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP).

 “This decision is a slap in the face to Canada which gave Electro-Motive tax breaks to protect jobs,” continues Coles. 

Come January there will be a great schism in the labour movement.

NUPGE has decided to withdraw from the family and leave the House of Labour. This action will wreak havoc with labour councils and federations of labour at a time when we should be focusing our energy on who the real problem is: International capital and the puppet governments.

Thousands of workers have lost their jobs and have had the pensions reduced. There is a public sector wage freeze in Ontario and cutbacks and concessions in every province.

NUPGE members need the labour movement as much as we need them.

CEP also has issues with the Congress and raiding -- but we won't quit the labour movement or harm our central labour bodies.

On Tuesday we went before the Police Ethics Committee to ask that I be involved in my own complaint against the police. I want to be able to ask directly who was giving the agents provocateurs in Montebello their orders.

The hearing was held in a small faceless courtroom, on the sixth floor of an office tower in downtown Montreal. The lawyers all wore nice dark suits. We had one lawyer. The SQ had three.

It's pretty clear that three years after we filed our complaint, the SQ complaints procedure is a bad joke.

When we first filed our complaint against the SQ it was thrown out by the Police Ethics Commissioner-that's right, thrown right out.

Columnist Marcus Gee blames the massive security overkill at the Toronto summit on the rhetorical threat from a handful of fringe groups (read the original article here).

I am an activist. I condemn the use of violence by citizens at the upcoming summit demonstrations.

I also condemn sound cannons, water cannons, plastic bullets, CS gas, and the alarming sight of a police officer armed with a machine gun at the corner of Dundas and Yonge at lunch time on Wednesday.

The demonstrations that have already taken place have been completely peaceful. In every case police have massively outnumbered marchers.