BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson today announced a plan to completely eliminate the provincial sales tax (currently 7%) for 1 year, and then cut it by 4 points (or 57%) after that. Conservatives are prone to make expensive tax cut promises during elections, a tendency which contradicts their other touch-stone of perpetually promising to get tough on deficits and debt. Like other governments, BC is already facing enormous deficits for years to come as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated recession. While it might be hypocritical for deficit-phobic conservatives to argue for tax cuts even in the face of deficits, it has never stopped them before. So Wilkinson’s gambit should not be surprising. But by pledging to completely eliminate the province’s 2nd largest source of tax revenue, he surely gets high points for sheer audacity.

Cihan ErdalCUPE National President Mark Hancock and National Secretary-Treasurer Charles Fleury are today calling for the release of Cihan Erdal, a queer youth activist, PhD student and member of CUPE Local 4600 at Carleton University. Erdal was detained in Istanbul, Turkey, on September 25, as part of an apparent arbitrary mass arrest of 82 politicians, activists and academics. Erdal is a Canadian permanent resident, who was in Turkey conducting fieldwork for his doctorate.

"The use of the OPCW to justify warfare on Syria – whether in the form of military strikes in 2018 or economic strangulation today in 2020 – is additionally tragic in light of the OPCW’s own history. It was just seven years ago that the OPCW was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work eliminating chemical weapons, including in Syria."