Critical Perspectives and Reflections

By Bill Lee   There has been a great deal of commentary on the death of Jim Flaherty the recently retired Minister of Labour in the Harper government, much of it around his "legacy". Below is an exchange of views that I had on April 12, 2014 with a woman on FB. I don't know the person but she took issue with my criticism of the "Flaherty legacy". I  think it demonstrates a problem of the political literacy level in Canada and ended in my frustration. I wish I had been somewhat more gracious. By the way, Lawlor is my real first name, while William is my second. Lawlor Lee Could not agree more. It may be that JF loved dogs, cared about his family and was good to his kids. But he participated in policies, indeed seemed the life and soul of so many of them, that devastated working class families - 21% cut in welfare rates in Ontario under Harris for example and the mania for cutting and taxes the deficit in a period of unemployment under Harper. So all the ...

By: Ernie Lightman I recently returned from a research trip to Israel where I met with colleagues on the left, both academics and community activists. It seems their universities are facing a gender-religion dilemma comparable to a recent occurrence at York University in Toronto. Remember the case of the male student at York – identity undefined but presumably Muslim or ultra-Orthodox Jewish – who was unwilling to attend a seminar at which women would be present? Well, In Israel, they have the same problem, only in reverse, and affecting large numbers of students. Many young ultra-Orthodox Jewish women, and observant Muslim women, want to attend university, specifically social work programs, but are unwilling (or are prevented by their families and communities) from enrolling in classes where male students will be present. That is to say, they demand special classes for women-only. Both these groups in Israel experience limited labour force involvement for a variety of cultur...

By: Bill Lee The recent publicity about Toronto's sort of Mayor Rob Ford and his enabler brother calling out the Chief of Police here as being biased in his duties by mentioning Ford by name in a couple of public interviews and indeed for investigating the Mayor at all has gotten me thinking. Not about his lust for publicity, of course he has that and is in constant campaign mode to boot. Not about him being a bully, of course he is a bully. Not that he is a privileged, dysfunctional individual with serious addiction problems. Of course he is all of those. It is the image of a deeply self-involved human being who has apparently not sense of the needs, feelings or rights of anyone else. But perhaps the most iconic image of Ford did not involve drugs, alcohol or berating other public figures. It was the image, caught on camera last November of this very fat man, our Mayor travelling at a surprising speed around the council chambers, looking not at all where he was heading or who m...

 By: Mike Balkwill Climate change are words that form a constant hum in the background of my thoughts. It is an anxious hum and is the result of a lot of gathering a lot of information about climate change, its causes, its current and anticipated impacts on the ecosystem and therefore on human society. The hum goes like this – “Everything is going to change, everything has to change. Will the people I love survive?” In order for humanity, (and many other species) to survive the effects of the changing climate people who live in societies with capitalist economies are going to have to change everything about how we live.  One source I have read says that in the industrialized economies that means reducing everything we do that uses fossil fuels by 90%. This means anything that we do ten times in a day, or ten times in a week, or ten times in a month that requires fossil fuels we would now be able to do only once a day, one time in a week, or just once in a month. If I...

By: Jim Ward   In his less insightful moments, when he attempted to predict the future (a mugs game at any stage of history), Karl Marx predicted that eventually the awareness of class would trump that of nationalism.  He was, of course, terribly wrong in that prediction.  World War 1, known in its time as The Great War, blinded lots of good British, French, Canadian, German, American, Australian and Turkish working-class lads to the fact that their lives were much the same, selling their labour on the cheap to the benefit of the few that geared them up for war.  Women too, although not major participants in the shooting war, did their bit to ensure their male counterparts were willing to pay the ‘ultimate sacrifice’ for their god and their country.  Young women in London where ever-ready to present young men not in the shooting war with white feathers, branding them cowards , unwilling to fight for “their freedoms ”  Those Bri...

By: Cecelia Lee Climate change marches on though some politicians and corporate leaders refuse to accept it. This photo was taken in December, 2013 in the midst of the ice storm, in Toronto, just before Christmas. The ice felled trees, downed hydro wires, created an ice-skating surface on some streets. It also affected the transportation system in the city. Subways and streetcars couldn’t run due to the conditions –lots of ice and severely cold temperatures. In the past twelve months, to name two other unusual circumstances – a huge flood in Alberta and a drenching of Toronto last summer. In Toronto a passenger train was caught in the flood in the Don Valley. It could not go forward or back due to the amount of water surrounding it. How truly frightening that must have been. Added to our climate change’s woes is an article in the March 20, 2014 Toronto Star. Consider, for example that Environment Canada’s climate change and clean air program is having its budget reduced by an asto...