A new United Nations report, released before the COP28 climate summit, says Canada is not on track to meet its commitments on climate change. Canada is among a group of top fossil-fuel-producing countries on pace to extract more oil and gas than would be consistent with its emissions targets. Far from decreasing oil and gas extraction, Canada is on track to actually increase production of oil and gas! In the same week, Canada’s commissioner of the environment and sustainable development revealed that Canada is the only G7 country that has not achieved any emissions reductions since 1990. These reports show once again the total inability of capitalism to meaningfully address the climate crisis.

On Nov. 23, close to 600,000 public sector workers in Quebec were on strike. Considering that Quebec has around 4,439,000 people active in the labour market, this represents 13.5 per cent of all workers in the province! It is safe to say that everyone personally knows at least one person who went on strike that day: teachers, nurses, support staff and specialists in the fields of health, education and social services. This is the largest strike in the history of Quebec.

Over 2,100 airline attendants at Air Transat voted almost unanimously in favour of strike action last week, after years of poverty pay and job cuts.

For nearly two months, the Palestine solidarity movement has been met with contempt and slander by the press, the state, and its institutions. In spite of this, protests against Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of Gaza are continuing, and public opinion is only coming more firmly to the side of the Palestinians.  

So, the ruling class is stepping up its repression of pro-Palestine activists.

For months, Indigenous activists, trade unions, and youth organizations in Panama have been on the streets, demonstrating against the extension of a massive Canadian-owned mine in the middle of a rainforest.

Last week, our comrades at Dawson College in Montreal organized a public discussion in the school cafeteria on the history of the Palestinian resistance for fellow students interested in organizing against the oppression of the Palestinian people. Before they could begin, however, they were confronted by campus security and told that they did not have the right to hold an event in support of Palestine at their college.

Despite Trudeau’s crocodile tears, the IDF and the Israeli state as we know it would not exist without more than 100 years of Canadian imperialism behind it. 

While the slander of pro-Palestine protests is not new, the divide between the media and public opinion has perhaps never been more striking. 

On Nov. 20, the results of the SSMU referendum on the Policy Against Genocide in Palestine came in. In the largest and most representative referendum in McGill history, a crushing majority of students voted in support of the Palestinian struggle.

Bill C-58, a law introduced by the federal government that purports to ban the use of “replacement workers” (i.e. scabs) in labour disputes, passed its first reading in the House of Commons on Nov. 9. In truth, the legislation is a cynical political manoeuvre by Liberals who are sinking in the polls.