Hello readers! I’m excited to share with you a look back on the top news stories of the past year. I began my role as editor of rabble.ca in April this year. This December, I was excited to review all of the great work that our team has done throughout 2022.
2022 saw major news stories that changed the political, health and labour landscape in Canada and around the world. These stories will no doubt follow us into and affect our decision-making in the year ahead.
Over the last 12 months, rabble.ca kept you up-to-date on the news and views you needed to know. As we enter the last few days of 2022, let’s review some of the top stories of the year.
Freedom Convoy occupation of Ottawa
The year began with the chaotic Freedom Convoy protest. Ostensibly about a federal vaccine mandate for international truckers, this protest saw hundreds descend upon downtown Ottawa and Parliament Hill.
The protesters harassed Ottawa residents —subjecting them to incessant honking for weeks on end —as a part of their demand to end all COVID-19 related mandates.
As similar protests began at some of Canada’s border crossings to the U.S., Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to evict the protesters from the capital.
Before the occupation began making national headlines, rabble contributor David Climenhaga shared how many of the financial backers of the Convoy were connected to far-right wing and Alberta separatist groups.
Karl Nerenberg, rabble’s parliamentary reporter, and resident of Ottawa, shared his first hand account of the protest.
“[I] witnessed a rather large proportion of the protesters carrying aggressive and obscene signs which featured an upwardly outstretched middle finger accompanied by the words F*CK TRUDEAU,” Nerenberg wrote in late January.
“In their actions, the protesters have, so far, avoided out-and-out violence. But when it comes to their words and their imagery, it is another story,” he added.
Monia Mazigh called out how differently police agencies were handling this mostly-white protest as compared to protests by racialized communities. She wrote, since 9/11, the only “publicly perceived threat to Canadians is ‘Islamic terrorism’.”
“[Canada has] passed highly intrusive anti-terrorism legislation that expanded police powers to arrest actors, disrupt groups, and prevent attacks,” Mazigh wrote. “Many activists, especially those in Indigenous and racialized communities, knew this legislation targeted Muslims and those contesting governmental policies like Indigenous land defenders. If anti-terrorism laws were really useful, and I am not advocating to enact them, they would be the ideal tools to use against these occupiers.”
Provincial elections
There were two major provincial elections this past year, one in Ontario and another in Quebec. Both elections resulted in victories for right-wing parties and both elections saw comparatively low voter turnout.
In Ontario this June, Premier Doug Ford and his Progressive Conservatives returned to a larger majority government. Despite winning less than 20 per cent of the vote.
National politics reporter Stephen Wentzell reported on Democracy Watch’s analysis of the election. This analysis found that Ford was funded by an equally small group of donors.
Later in the fall, François Legault’s governing the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) party returned to power with a massive majority of 90 seats out of 125. And again, a right-wing party was able to achieve this astounding victory without majority support. Roughly 40 per cent of the electorate actually cast their ballot for Legault.
Legault had previously been a champion of reforming Quebec’s electoral system, a cause he has let fall to the wayside now that he no longer stands to benefit from it.
“Now, Legault says he doesn’t perceive any demand from the population for a different electoral system. So it is no longer a priority for him,” wrote Karl Nerenberg just prior to the vote. “It just so happens that the current system hugely favours the CAQ. That’s because the governing party faces a highly fractionalized opposition.”
This year also saw John Horgan step down as premier of B.C. and provincial leader of the NDP. Horgan was replaced by David Eby in November this year.
Poilievre takes the CPC further down the road of toxic politics
In September, Pierre Poilievre was officially crowned as the new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC).
During the campaign, Poilievre did what he was best at, campaigning on the offensive, both literally and figuratively.
In a piece written just before the leadership vote, I chronicled how Poilievre was quick to use social media as a tool to assault journalists who he disagreed with, regardless of the danger it represented for those journalists.
“We try not to get into critiques on politics per se, but on issues and policy of hate,” said Bernie Farber, chair of the Canadian AntiHate Network. “I’m taking a bit of a different track with Mr. Poilievre. Only because of his clear associations with the hard right, that I find a really clear and present danger to the country right now. That’s why we’re having a discussion.”
Furthermore, Poilievre was not quick to distance himself from far-right leaders like Jeremy MacKenzie, leader of Diagolon, with whom he was photographed with during the leadership campaign over the summer.
Joyce Arther of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada also highlighted Poilievre’s anti-abortion record.
“Fourteen years ago, Poilievre opposed giving Dr. Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada. Since then, he has consistently voted in favour of anti-choice private member bills and motions, with just one exception. He voted against Bill C-233 in 2021 (to ban sex selection abortion),” she wrote.
End of a royal era leaves difficult legacy for First Nations
On September 8, 2022, after 70 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth II passed away.
As head of state, the passing of a monarch leaves a complicated legacy for Indigenous peoples living in Canada.
rabble columnist Rachel Snow explained that in the view of some First Nations groups, treaties made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries between Canada’s Indigenous people and the British Crown were done so with the monarch, rather than simply the government of the day.
“The Queen has not really done anything to assist the First Nations People[s] here in Canada who signed or believed that the promises and negotiations and everything that was discussed, that that treaty was going to be honored and fulfilled,” Snow said. “I think some people will be upset that they didn’t get a chance to directly go to the Queen to ask for this kind of a nation-to-nation agreement.”
Roe v. Wade struck down and the state of reproductive rights in Canada
Canada, like much of the world, watched in horror as the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the landmark case of Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the right to an abortion and related healthcare in America.
rabble columnist Judy Rebick explained how the decision represented a broad attack on human rights.
“A ban on abortion affects millions of people,” Rebick wrote. “The Supreme Court argument basically says that there are no legal rights unless they are guaranteed in the Constitution other than those originally there unless a constitutional amendment is passed by elected representatives. With that argument, same sex marriage, perhaps inter-racial marriage, birth control, gay rights and trans rights could be eliminated.”
Also this year, Stephen Wentzell reviewed Martha Paynter’s book Abortion to Abolition: Reproductive Health and Justice in Canada. The two discussed how the status of abortion rights in Canada is far more complex than is widely understood.
“New Brunswick has always had, since 1810, the most restrictive and conservative approach to abortion access,” said Paynter, noting that the province’s Medical Services Payment Act prevents physicians from being paid for abortion care services if they are provided in “free-standing” clinics.
Lisa LaFlamme and the attack on female journalists
Canada’s most prominent female journalist Lisa LaFlamme was herself unwillingly thrown into the spotlight this summer after her employer unceremoniously fired her.
While no official explanation was given to the public, speculation was rampant that this was a decision motivated by sexism and ageism.
Judy Rebick wrote that the firing of LaFlamme highlighted greater issues faced by women and people of colour working in journalism.
“As an older woman with grey hair who still works in the media from time to time, I am glad to see the massive support for Lisa LaFlamme but I am much more concerned with the online hatred experienced by young women journalists and particularly Black, Indigenous and racialized women,” Rebick wrote.
rabble labour reporter Gabriela Calugay-Casuga spoke to Kiran Nazish, the founding director of the Coalition for Women in Journalism (CFWIJ). The two discussed how newsrooms can protect journalists from harassment.
“One thing that newsrooms do, which is very harmful and very archaic, is work independently in silos,” Nazish said. “If CBC is going through something, they would not do any kind of support work, assistance or talk about it. I think there needs to be an ecosystem of support between newsrooms. When there’s a journalist in any community, whether they’re freelancers or working with opposition media or competitor media, there should be an ecosystem and a unified support system for all journalists.”
The fight to protect female journalists in Canada rages on.
As Stephen Wentzell reported last week, Canada is on track to be the most likely country for female reporters to be subjected to major online trolling campaigns.
Solidarity wins out in Ontario labour dispute
CUPE Ontario scored a historic victory for labour as they fought a better contract for their education support workers.
Education support workers, who are mostly women, were only receiving an average annual salary of $39,000 a year.
After talks with the province stalled, Premier Doug Ford reached for the so-called “nuclear option” by passing Bill 28, which imposed a contract of his choosing on the union. He invoked the notwithstanding clause to ensure that the bill could not be challenged in the courts.
I spoke with CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahn about this unprecedented attack on labour rights. I asked if he was prepared to call for a general strike, something not seen in a generation. He said:
“I think it is absolutely a possibility in a way I hadn’t imagined before. Many of us talk about the idea of a general strike as though it were a fantasy land. A lovely dream. But I do think that people see what is at stake and if a government isn’t going to allow for any democratic process or any democratic debate, if they’re just gonna create legislation that is such a ridiculous hammer to hang over the heads of people, and continue to cut services . . . This is the beginning of much resistance to many of the components that this government has here.”
Just days later, Ford blinked and repealed Bill 28 and returned to the negotiating table.
CUPE’s members voted to ratify their new agreement on December 5 by a margin of 73 per cent in favour. The new contract secured an average annual salary of 3.59 per cent, but did not address the unions concerns about continued underfunding of public education in Ontario.
Inflation in Canada
Like much of the rest of the world, Canada is facing historically high rates of inflation. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the grocery store.
Grocery industry insiders said that the record profits Canada’s major food chains have seen during the pandemic are not the result of profiteering off of inflation. Economist Jim Stanford told Karl Nerenberg that this simply was not true.
Grocery profits have more than doubled since before the pandemic, but the volume of sales has not similarly grown.
Those facts and figures, argued Stanford, are “definitely proof that the industry is profiting unusually from the current conjuncture of supply chain disruptions, inflation, and consumer desperation.”
This autumn on rabble radio, I sat down with Stanford to talk about the state of Canada’s economy. We also discussed how progressives must band together as we move into 2023.
Environment remains a top priority
Once again global temperatures spiked, and the rabble newsroom was inspired to create the Boiling Point series. At part of this series, our newsroom spoke to a diverse group of healthcare workers, labour leaders and climate activists. We wanted to know: how prepared is our country to handle increasingly hot summers and extreme weather events? And how are these weather events affecting everyday Canadians?
On the global effort to mitigate the damage being done by climate change, rabble covered COP15 biodiversity conference this fall.
Stephen Wentzell reported that the landmark conference ended with a historic agreement to protect biodiversity by 2030. This agreement was called the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The framework includes a commitment from governments to respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples
Sovereignty Act debacle in Alberta
Newly minted Alberta Premier Danielle Smith passed the so-called Sovereignty Act as her first piece of signature legislation.
rabble Alberta politics correspondent David Climenhaga explained how the act represented a potential constitutional crisis.
“The fact remains the law is still virtually certain to be found unconstitutional as it allows the Alberta Legislature, now apparently dominated by recently converted Alberta separatists, to usurp the power of Canada’s courts to adjudicate jurisdictional disputes between the federal and provincial governments,” he wrote.
Climenhaga will keep a close eye on all-things Alberta politics in the year to come.
The news is an ever flowing and ever changing thing. It does not respect neat chunks of time like months and years. Some of these news stories will likely continue to dominate the headlines in 2023. See what our columnists chose as their favourite pieces from this past year.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
