The Lac-Mégantic tragedy, in which 47 people lost their lives following a train derailment, is 10 years old today. Quebec filmmaker Philippe Falardeau’s recent documentary, Mégantic: ceci n’est pas un accident (“Mégantic: this is not an accident”), revisits the events and sheds new light on this huge scandal.

At a time when all workers are struggling with inflation, and those in the public sector are being offered a meager nine per cent wage increase over five years, the CAQ government figured it was a good time to grease its palms. 

The Quebec health care system is collapsing. In response to this crisis, the CAQ government has just proposed a reform to the healthcare system. Its solution? To pay businessmen to run a new agency that will manage health care like a private company.

On April 14, the meat-packing and food-processing company Olymel announced that it would be shutting down its plant in Vallée-Jonction, in Beauce, Quebec. This is a major blow, not only for the 994 workers at the plant who now find themselves without jobs, but also for the region.

The Quebec Liberal Party (QLP) is in crisis.How did the Liberal Party, once the main political vehicle of Quebec’s ruling class, get here?

On Monday, March 13, the executive committee of the union for Teaching and Research Assistants at Concordia University issued a statement urging their roughly 3,000 members to disassociate from their current parent union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

The 2023 collective bargaining for the Quebec public sector is underway. Unlike the 2020 negotiations, a common front has been formed. It brings together major unions which represent a total of 420,000 public sector workers. This time, the union leadership will have to fight to the bitter end to stop the generalized impoverishment of Quebec workers.

In the last few weeks, we have witnessed a new iteration of the debate on immigration in Quebec, which is taking an increasingly dark turn. With a growing number of asylum seekers in Canada, a significant portion of whom are passing through Quebec via the notorious Roxham Road, a xenophobic, anti-immigrant discourse is also gaining momentum. The labour movement must oppose this anti-immigrant rhetoric.

For more than a week, the nomination by Justin Trudeau of Amira Elghawaby as special advisor in the fight against Islamophobia has created a storm. This is yet another symbolic and empty gesture by the Trudeau Liberals to portray themselves as fighters against oppression. Meanwhile, the nomination brought a big backlash in Quebec, with the CAQ nationalists leading the charge to demand her resignation for past comments on Quebec.

On the evening of Jan. 16-17, 2023, the emergency room nurses at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital staged a sit-in and courageously refused to work under the unacceptable and dangerous conditions imposed on them by management. The increase in mandatory overtime and overwork due to staffing shortages had become intolerable. Nurses recognized that the quality of care was being severely compromised to the point of creating a higher risk of death as a result.