Canadian Dimension | The following article by Sol Littman (1920-2017), a sociologist turned journalist and community activist who tracked Nazi war criminals and was the Canadian representative for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, originally appeared in a 1987 edition of Canadian Dimension. It casts a critical eye on the Deschênes Commission, officially known as the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, which was established by the federal government in 1985 to investigate claims that Canada had become a haven for Nazi war criminals. As Littman writes, the commission played a role in whitewashing Nazi crimes while showing a seeming indifference to the thousands of alleged war criminals who slipped through Canada’s post-war immigration screen and found refuge here, almost entirely free from prosecution.
A giant coalition of over 50 pan-Canadian labor, civil society, peace, and justice organizations have signed a joint statement demanding that the federal government led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau call for an immediate ceasefire of all hostilities in Gaza.
Canada is seeing broad grassroots community and labor unity around the demand for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war against the Palestinian people.
INTERNATIONALIST 360° | As the Canadian government claims to support the political rights of Ukrainians, an examination of their hostility towards progressive Ukrainian Canadians shows their support is not genuine.
On September 22, Parliamentarians gave a standing ovation to Yaroslav Hunka, a former member of the the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, the military wing of the Nazi Party, during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Ottawa. Before the end of the war, the unit was renamed the “First Ukrainian Division” in order to remove its association with the Waffen-SS.
Washington and its allies demanded Caracas show “meaningful progress” in talks with Guaidó and upholding “international standards for democracy.”
Brian Pallister’s PC government tabled 19 bills with no text
Watching Meghan Markle and Prince Harry talk to Oprah about the depraved monarchy last night, I couldn't help but wonder why I live in a country where the Queen is the head of state. Canada needs to dump the British monarchy and never look back.
When a California McDonald’s marked International Women’s Day (IWD) in 2018 by inverting its big M to a W, some happy meal consumers tweeted that it should stick to hamburgers not political correctness, but the media also zeroed in on the rank hypocrisy of a corporation that did not pay a living wage or provide healthcare to its precarious, racialized, female workforce. “McFeminist” initiatives by the private and the non-profit sectors to cash in on international women’s day, a time to “celebrate that special woman in your life,” as one hospital fund raiser put it this year, are routine.
Recently, the Biden administration signaled that it will continue Trump’s aggressive approach to Cuba, and Canada seems to be going along for the ride.
The far-right Proud Boys is an odious and reactionary force. But the Canadian government’s decision to designate them a “terrorist group” is an overreach that threatens the ability of progressives to organize themselves and protest injustice.
"Guaido told an Argentine television channel on Tuesday evening that he had spoken with Blinken and Canadian Foreign Minister Marc Garneau “as part of the agenda of international alliances to rescue democracy in Venezuela.”"
Racism appears to be as Canadian as hockey. Does this mean that racism has been with us forever, in all parts of the world, that it is somehow part of our genetic makeup? What can we learn from the responses to racism that have arisen over time?
By refusing to lift patent protections, wealthy countries have guaranteed huge profits for Big Pharma at expense of Global South
Pam Palmater | New report by Canada’s auditor general reveals the current government’s failure to live up to its own political promises
The entire Trudeau cabinet recently opposed an effort which would have kept a landmark promise to deliver pharmacare made by the prime minister in the past election.
Erin O’Toole has unintentionally confirmed the obvious: the Conservative plan for escaping the pandemic begins and ends with the vaccine.
As the COVID crisis pushes more people into poverty and onto the streets, the Charter’s limits can no longer be ignored
More than 100 academics, activists and artists are calling on the Trudeau government to cease its support for Jovenel Moïse
Tumultuous exit of Canada’s governor general prompts questioning of role and monarchy
In response to the pandemic, politicians in Ottawa set up an emergency wage subsidy scheme that was meant to help workers. But some of Canada’s biggest firms have milked the subsidy scheme for billions while paying out dividends and laying off staff.
Due in part to Ottawa’s repeated interventions, Haiti is once again on the road to dictatorship
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.
Every COVID-19 vaccine maker Canada signed a contract with last summer was asked if they could make the doses in Canada and all of them concluded they could not, Procurement Minister Anita Anand said Thursday. ... "The manufacturers reviewed the identified assets here in Canada and concluded that biomanufacturing capacity in this country, at the time of contract, which was last August and September, was too limited to justify the investment of capital and expertise to start manufacturing in Canada."
Any future government that’s concerned about environmental and human rights issues will have to reign in mining companies operating abroad.
For Canada to ratify OPCAT, or introduce any oversight over federal institutions, would need to go hand-in-hand with the introduction of national standards, against which Canada’s compliance can be measured. Yet, the foot-dragging of Canadian legislators on the issue of torture prevention has received little coverage. As a result there is a lack of public awareness of the effects that this international law might have across different sectors of society.
Even before Biden took the oath of office at noon on Jan. 20, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, citing D.C. lobbyists, reported Biden would cancel the Keystone permit on his first day in office. He did so late that afternoon, as one of 17 executive orders.
News reports added Biden is also cancelling the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit for another controversial project, the Dakota Access Pipeline, on grounds that it both endangers Missouri River drinking water and that it traverses sacred Native American lands.
Neoliberal transport policies have failed Canadians, but the pandemic provides us with the perfect opportunity to rethink our priorities.
From schools to hospitals, up and down the province, Manitobans are sitting in confined death traps. As of December 1, 312 people have died from COVID-19. Judging by the leisurely response of Premier Brian Pallister, it appears the sick and dead act as nothing more than sacrificial lambs to the political divinity of neoliberalism in Manitoba.
Although Canada is not as tactless as US politicians when they appeal to right-wing extremism in Florida, the Canadian government and its extensions of capital are deeply implicated in the Monroe Doctrine’s legacy of military and economic interventionism in Latin America, and their record in Colombia reveals this.
The brave and pioneering Independent Jewish Voices was the first to cry “Whoa, boy!” at Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s pusillanimous response to Israel’s projected annexation of much of the occupied West Bank.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen discuss whether Canada really deserves its reputation as a progressive paradise.