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Jeremy Appel is an Edmonton-based independent journalist and author of the Orchard newsletter on Substack. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Kenneyism: Jason Kenney’s Pursuit of Power (Dundurn, 2023).
The union drive at a Starbucks in Calgary, Alberta, was defeated by both the anti-union tactics of the company and the province’s ruling party. Successful votes elsewhere, however, indicate the Starbucks unionization wave is only just beginning in Canada.
A Starbucks location in Calgary awaiting its ballot results may prove to be the spear tip of a Canadian answer to the labor surge of its US counterparts. The longtime union-busting company may find itself on the receiving end of an emboldened workforce.
Alberta’s United Conservative Party is using the health care crisis caused by the pandemic to its ideological advantage. Citing backlogs in surgeries — resulting from overrun hospitals — the party is seeking to privatize the province’s health care system.
While Canadian workers took to picket lines to agitate in the face of the hardships brought on by the pandemic, Canadian businesses collected COVID benefits intended for the very employees they laid off.
The meatpacking company Cargill didn’t lift a finger when a massive COVID outbreak left half its workers in High River, Alberta, ill. The business’s unwillingness to take employees’ health seriously motivated workers to fight for — and win — a new contract.
The Canadian military has been caught using PSYOP tactics it honed in Afghanistan on domestic soil. The dirty tricks, which included a scheme to spread panic about imaginary wolf attacks in Nova Scotia, should worry anyone concerned about civil liberties.
Canada is deeply implicated in the blood-soaked global arms trade. It won’t stop until we make it stop.
Cargill runs Canada’s biggest meatpacking facility and obliged its workers to come in despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Now the company is facing a criminal investigation — the first of its kind — after the sadly predictable deaths of workers and their family members.
Alberta’s UCP government, led by premier Jason Kenney, is kowtowing to the province’s bosses in every conceivable way. The passage of Bill 32 demonstrates their devotion to Alberta’s business class and their contempt for working people.