I will tell you: when I was young, I went to religious services at the synagogue, Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto for 11 years of Jewish High Holidays – the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah), and 11 years of the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur—which began last night at sunset). I will tell you: these were family occasions. My sisters and I, dressed in tweedy skirts, pale sweaters, nylon stockings and patent leather shoes, were accompanied by my parents who only attended the synagogue on the High Holidays.  We kids saw all our friends there, since we all went to religious school on Saturday or Sunday mornings. When I asked why religious school shut down for the summer, my father told me God needed a holiday too. My parents, who did not believe in God and were skeptical about faith, believed that going to synagogue on the High Holidays fulfilled their religious and community obligations. 

On Yom Kippur began, Jews are meant to fast for 24 hours, attend services at the synagogue and atone for their wrongdoings. 

I no longer go to synagogue.  Indeed I consider myself a non-practising Jew. While I have little to do with the religious aspect of being Jewish, I have a big commitment to social justice and choose to focus on tikkun olam  — “repairing the world”. 

Today I ask the 330,000 Canadian Jews to think about “repairing the world.”  We have to start with examining our role in supporting what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.  The progressive world’s gaze is now fixated on opposing settler colonialism, and fighting racism and inequality. It is Jews’ responsibility to force Israel to end its illegal and brutal occupation of Palestinians’ lands.  However, the mainstream Canadian Jewish community insists that being Jewish means total and uncritical support for Israel. 

Uncritical support for Israel has made it possible for the Israeli Defence Forces to kill more than 10, 238 Palestinians, including 1228 children in the West Bank and Gaza since 2000.  48,488  Palestinians have been made homeless by Israeli attacks and airstrikes their homes, schools and hospitals since 1967.  Uncritical Jewish support for Israel has made it possible to make Gaza the biggest open-air prison in the world, with 2 million people in an area little bigger than Halifax Regional Municipality.  Gaza has been under siege and a blockade by Israel since 2007.

Let’s look at what Israel does to Palestinians who dare stand up against them. Nine Palestinians were killed and more than 1300 seriously injured — men, women and children in Gaza shot dead by Israeli snipers in the Great March of Return in 2018-19. The US organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, says they were killed for merely protesting their conditions. 

On Sept. 6, six Palestinian prisoners broke out of Gilboa jail in Israel.  One of them, Zakaria Al-Zubeidi, was a co-founder of The Freedom Theatre, which I visited in the Jenin Refugee Camp in the West Bank, just over 10 years ago.  The Freedom Theatre was also co-founded in 2006 by a well-known Israeli actor, Juliano Mer Khamis, son of  a Jewish mother and a Palestinian father.  The theatre founded as a community hub to   “join the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation with poetry, music, theatre, cameras.”  Al-Zubeidi was one of dozens of youth who had participated in the theatre, and wanted to use it to channel their outrage at the Israeli occupation. 

As a teen, he was shot in the legs for throwing stones at Israeli troops in the streets of Jenin.  After four operations and left with a permanent limp, he became more involved in fighting the Occupation. Needless to say he was arrested and imprisoned many times by the Israelis.  Two weeks ago, when the six Palestinian prisoners dug their way out of the prison, the manhunt for them began.  The IDF found Al-Zubeidi hiding in a West Bank village, captured him and according to sources today – beat him severely. Though he did not die, he has serious injuries.

Tonight it’s time for us Jews to think about what we can do to repair a world which our fellow Jews in Israel have broken. It’s time.

Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV) is a grassroots organization grounded in Jewish tradition that opposes all forms of racism and advocates for justice and peace for all in Israel-Palestine. We oppose Israel’s perpetual war including the Jewish settler violence against the Palestinian people. I’m one of the founders of IJV-Canada, an organization which began 12 years ago and now spans Canada. To see more of what we do, check us out here. Please donate to IJV here.

Please note: We have corrected this story. Al-Zubeidi was not killed but serious beatings by Israeli authorities resulted in a broken jaw and broken ribs among other injuries.

Judy Haiven is on the steering committee of Equity Watch, an organization that fights discrimination, bullying and racism in the workplace.  Contact her at equitywatchns@gmail.com

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KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – Katie Campbell is one of those people I often run into at the kinds of rallies the Nova Scotia Advocate likes to cover. At this time Katie is the Halifax candidate for the Communist Party. We interviewed her last week to find out more. 

Tell me a little bit about yourself, and why you teamed up with the Communist Party.

I am a mother and I’m an artist. If I look back at my life, I’m not different from anybody else living in this country. I have lived through the tightening of the fiscal noose all workers are experiencing, the loss of full time work, losing benefits, going from contract to contract. I have always been a lefty. The last number of years things have become critical. For me, it was time to figure out how I could participate in creating really badly needed change.

I really like the platform that we are running on. It looks at what is wrong socially with Canada right now, and it offers solutions that don’t involve the for profit aspect of capitalism. We operate in a capitalist society, which means everything is for profit. If it’s not for profit, it’s not considered of value.

Just to illustrate this, in terms of global warming, we understand the problems, and we know the answers. But we cannot get action because our government is conflicted with capital. And they’re not willing to risk profit margins to make that shift. 

And we see the same thing in terms of housing. People think they own their house, but you don’t own it until you paid the last mortgage payment. The bank owns your house, and they can evict you when you start missing payments. That makes you not that different from the people living in tents, cops can come and kick you out. We’re all living under those same conditions. Meanwhile there’s a construction boom in Halifax, we have never seen so much housing being built, even while the housing crisis has become more acute.

In a way it is also about taxation. We’ve seen a decline in corporate taxes over the past 30 years. If you shave taxes from corporations and wealthy people then you have less money to spend on social programs. Meanwhile we spend tremendous amounts on policing and the military. We could take that and move it to healthcare.

Meanwhile, we are living on stolen land, and we are committed to working nation to nation with Indigenous people, no strings attached, and not tied to continue to hold the purse strings or anything like that.  

In the course of getting signatures, knocking on doors and handing out flyers, I have to tell you, what we’ve noticed is that especially younger people absolutely understand socialism and are open to it. People are looking at other options, since capitalism isn’t working for them. People are filled with rage and fear.

Isn’t voting communist merely a protest vote, that may come at the cost of a more viable progressive candidate?

People can use that kind of language, but the truth is that we have a generation of people coming up which believes in socialism. They understand it, and they want it. What’s happening is not a protest vote, it is people wanting change, and they are going to make that happen. I see this over and over while out campaigning.  

All the parties have been in and out of power, and they tried this and that and nothing has happened. Something’s got to change. The Communist Party offers that change. This is where we are fundamentally different. You cannot work within a system that is hurting people and holding them back, and expect actual change to happen.

Why can’t we have a light rail between here and Sydney? Why can’t we have fast rail between Halifax and Montreal? Why not? Because it is not in the interest of capitalism to expend that money if they can’t make the profit. Whereas within socialism it’s a different metric for success.  

Other parties are very conflicted, because they’re working with businesses and big corporations. The Communist Party is looking at ways to actually improve your living conditions, as well as the way that we live in this world or this society. It’s about changing that focus from purely profit for a certain class of people to making it so that wealth is redistributed into society. Within the Communist Party, there is no conflict with (the interests of) capital, because we’re simply not interested in that.

Lightly edited for length and clarity.

See also: Central Nova Communist candidate Chris Frazer: If we don’t do something bold and meaningful it may end up being too late for us

See also; Activist Rana Zaman runs for Greens in Dartmouth-Cole Harbour

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KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – In July  of 2019 Rana Zaman, a Muslim woman of colour originally from Pakistan, was blocked from running for the federal NDP in the Dartmouth-Cole Harbour riding, although she had won the nomination fair and square. 

Now Zaman is running in the same federal riding again, only this time for the Greens.

Some ill-considered 2018 tweets critical of Israel’s barbaric shooting of Gaza protesters caught the ire of the Canadian pro-Israel lobby, and the Federal NDP quickly caved and disallowed her candidacy, and closed ranks behind a new candidate. The provincial NDP, for which Rana had run earlier, did not speak out publicly in her defense. 

Zaman’s tweets, written after Israeli forces had killed almost 150 Palestinians, and injured 10,000, compared the Israeli killings to what happened in Nazi Germany and likened Gaza to Auschwitz. Over the top and ill-considered stuff, for which Zaman showed genuine remorse and apologized.  

Those same tweets came back to haunt Zaman again when the next year the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commision took away a human rights award she had won mere weeks before.

I never set out to go into politics, Zaman tells the Nova Scotia Advocate. 

“It’s always been in my nature to help out wherever support is needed. It happened initially with the arrival of Syrian refugees, then I saw the struggles of people on income assistance, as well as the Indigenous community and the Black community. That’s when I got involved in rallies and protests, and realized the importance of community involvement,” she says.

It appears the attacks on Zaman have resumed now that she has once again gained some visibility as a federal candidate. 

The Green Party itself has encountered its share of controversy when it comes to Israel. So much so that Green MP Jenica Atwin joined the Liberals after Leader Annamie Paul’s refusal to condemn an adviser who suggested that MPs like Atwell were antisemitic.  

Zaman says she’s very appreciative of the way the Green Party has stood by her.

“I am not saying the party doesn’t have problems, but they did come through for me,” she says. “The Green Party treats its candidates like human beings.”

See also: Rana Zaman addresses accusations of antisemitism at rally in downtown Halifax

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KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – On May 24, 2020, the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) held a high-profile public funeral in Halifax for its public relations officer, Capt. Jennifer Casey, a member of the RCAF’s Snowbirds aerobatic team. She was killed on May 17 when her plane crashed in a residential neighbourhood in Kamloops, BC, during its cross-Canada military public relations and recruitment tour codenamed Operation Inspiration. Fortunately, there was no additional loss of life. Casey was a former radio journalist and previously with NORAD.[1] 

The funeral featured a highly-publicized public memorial procession – attended by Julie Payette, then Governor-General of Canada, and Harjit Sajjan, Minister of Defence – through the streets of Halifax, Nova Scotia, her home province. Payette said she is familiar with the risks inherent to working in the Air Force, and declared “accidents happen. No matter how we train, we know that there are risky parts within this job. And that’s why I’m so proud of them.” That evening CBC-TV featured four different reports on the procession, asserting that “Nova Scotians and the military community joined together in solidarity and sympathy as they saluted Captain Jenn Casey.” [2] In 2021, the RCAF has continued to memorialize Cpt. Casey as part of the government’s resumption of Operation Inspiration.[3]

While the loss of all life is regrettable, no such public tributes, photo montages, biographies nor hymns were organized or published to commemorate the 53 seniors who had died as of that date from COVID-19 at Northwood Manor, the private, for-profit long-term care residence located in the same city. The pain is very great for many of us: Doug Rosborough, a renowned wooden boat builder who died, and several other residents who survived are long time friends. At the time, an estimated 9,585 people in Canada (with 149,420 recoveries) and 1,072,852 people throughout the world had died at that time as a result of the global pandemic and millions have died as a result of genocide, wars and crimes against humanity. Such ceremonies suggest that some human beings are more important and precious than others and a selective hierarchy of victims is being created. This double standard is unconscionable and unacceptable. What is important is that we remember all such victims and all such crimes and understand their causes.

The loss of the life of this young woman was not so much an “accident” as needless and irresponsible – the result of a major public relations exercise organized by the military despite broad concerns about safety of the crew flying aged jet fighters and the skills of the pilots themselves. The Snowbird tour codenamed Operation Inspiration was an adjunct of Operation Strong America, a cross-country military flyover organized by NORAD/U.S. Northern Command and launched by Trump on April 22, 2020 to present the military as “heroes on a par with health care workers.”

Further, the Canadian media still fails to report that on May 17, 2020 – the very same day as the fatal crash of the Snowbird yet in Kamloops – the USAF Thunderbirds abruptly cancelled the rest of Operation Strong America after a near collision over Los Angeles County, California.[3] What is important is that this was a result of the integration of the Canadian Armed Forces into U.S. Homeland Security under NORAD.

Earlier, the Canadian Armed Forces on May 6, 2020 staged a repatriation ceremony to honour the six Armed Forces members who died in the crash of the Sikorsky Cyclone helicopter of the HMCS Fredericton on April 28 in the Ionian Sea in the Mediterranean during a NATO exercise. It was attended by Gov.-Gen. Payette and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the first Canadian prime minister to attend such a ceremony since Paul Martin in January 2004. A highly-publicized motorcade to Toronto along the so-called “Highway of Heroes,” nicknamed during the war in Afghanistan. Another ceremony of the ship’s company had already been held on May 4 at the major NATO naval base in Taranto, southeastern Italy, attended by Sajjan and Deputy Minister Jody Thomas.

On June 25, 2020 a motorcade procession for four of the deceased was held in Halifax and on June 30 another was held in Victoria, BC.

On July 22 HMCS Fredericton returned to its home port of Halifax. Canadian Press reported

“After a six-month deployment, the Royal Canadian Navy frigate sailed into port accompanied by Nova Scotia’s fabled schooner Bluenose II and the navy’s training sailing vessel HMCS Oriole.

“A navy band played military music and a line of Air Force personnel stood dockside holding cardboard letters spelling out: ‘Welcome Home!’

“Earlier, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and Gen. Jonathan Vance, chief of the defence staff, had boarded the frigate before it reached land and sailed into port with the crew. The ship was officially welcomed by Nova Scotia Lt.-Gov. Arthur LeBlanc.”

“Defence officials have said the helicopter was returning to HMCS Fredericton at the end of a NATO training exercise, part of Operation Reassurance.”

However, nobody in Canada talks about what precisely the Fredericton was doing during NATO Op Reassurance in the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea nor the North Atlantic during its 6-month voyage nor what it was “training” for – neither the media (including social media) nor the political world, where an absolute multi-party silence reigns over all this. Yet these deployments, basically dictated by Washington and signed by Trudeau for Canada, not only trace the guidelines of our military policy, but also our foreign policy. Nor does the media any longer mention that the casualties were the largest since Canada’s participation in the US-NATO war of occupation of Afghanistan.

Noteworthy is the fact that these demonstrative ceremonies akin to state funerals are not a military tradition. An analysis of their origin and the reasons given for them is in order. They were started in their modern form during the decade-long Canadian military intervention in the U.S.-led NATO occupation of Afghanistan. Before then, the military returned the bodies of deceased personnel privately, at night.

The aim of successive Liberal and Conservative governments was to use the funerals of Canadian soldiers for political reasons: to convince Canadians to give up their unequivocal opposition to a war of aggression in South Asia by presenting it as being fought in the name of “Canadian values” such as the liberation of women or what was then called the promotion of “defence, diplomacy and development” (the 3D program) and human rights.

Without even the fig leaf of a resolution from the UN Security Council and in defiance of the principles of the UN Charter, the Anglo-American occupation of Afghanistan from 2001 to date set a new low in all the norms of human conduct that now pervades international relations. The war of revenge and global hegemony signalled one of the clearest markers of the terrible danger that confronts humanity.

The war in Afghanistan was officially launched to avenge the attacks in the United States of September 11, 2001, in which many Canadians died. However, it had been prepared beforehand. Canada, like other NATO members, was dragged into the U.S. “war on terror” in Afghanistan based on the lie that the U.S. was acting in self-defence. The war, which was supposed to last two weeks, went on for 20 years. It was planned to last as long as possible.

Canadians did not buy it. Public opinion polls admitted at the time that more than half of all Canadians opposed the participation of the Canada in the occupation of Afghanistan.[4] A survey by Ipsos Reid of France, a corporate affiliate of NATO, commissioned by the Department of National Defence lamented that there was little support or understanding among Canadians for the war or what the military was doing. It suggested that support for the occupation allegedly rose to about 81 per cent when the government’s “explanation” for the Canadian presence in Afghanistan is included as part of the poll.[5] At that time, as today, the Canadian Forces had a recruitment problem amongst the youth.

The consequences of the military savagery of this illegal war were disastrous. Brown University’s Cost of War project estimates that up to April 2021 over 71,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians had died as a direct result of the war. This is in addition to the official count which includes 125,000 combatants on all sides, aid workers and journalists. It does not include all those wounded and left with permanent injuries, the millions displaced from their homes and turned into refugees, those tortured and detained for years without trial in hell-holes like the U.S. prison in Guantánamo, and others condemned to civil death using draconian “anti-terrorism” laws and, in Canada, security certificates. There were 165 Canadians, including seven civilians, who died in the war. Many more of the 40,000 Canadian troops who were deployed to Afghanistan were wounded, both physically and psychologically, leading to many veterans taking their own lives.

Now, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of 9/11 we mourn the loss of all life linked to both occasions, and related events and other such wars aimed at regime change in third countries spuriously claimed to be harbouring terrorists. The Government of Canada and others who spout nonsense about high ideals or stage selective high profile funerals do not mourn or even recognize these losses. None of the losses following 9/11 solicits a single word of regret on the part of the Government of Canada or the cartel parties of the rich seeking to form the next government in the 44th General Election.

What is not understood or appreciated by these warmongers then or today is that Canadians in the main have taken up social responsibility for the social and natural environment, and oppose imperialist war and aggression.

This is a time to draw warranted conclusions about the nature of Canada’s integration into the U.S. war preparations under NORAD and NATO, the taboo around even discussing our country’s membership, and the orchestrated methods being used to promote it in the name of “solidarity” and high ideals. This must raise the question of how the rights and the human-centred security of all can be defended, both within a specific society and internationally. What better time than during a federal election, and in view of the events in Afghanistan, for Canadians to discuss the need for a new direction for Canada’s foreign and military policy and for a government that renounces war and aggression as tools of its foreign policy, and how such a government can be brought into being.

With files from TML Monthly, CBC, The Drive, Canwest and The Coast

Notes

1. Media tributes, in acknowledging Capt Casey attended King’s College School of Journalism in 2008 and 2014, fail to mention that the Journalism School has been one of the university programs across Canada used by the Canadian Forces to recruit student youth. In a lucrative contract with the military, journalism students were embedded in NATO exercises in Europe. “It’s another example of a university selling its soul to the military,” wrote Bruce Wark, then on faculty, who exposed the program back in 2007. (“Militarization of Halifax: King’s military school,” The Coast, December 20, 2007 and tonyseed.wordpress.com. The sad result is now in. The recruitment of youth using various subterfuges such as “see the world,” “jobs,” “career advancement” and “Canadian values” is unconscionable, unacceptable and to be condemned.

2. Elizabeth Chiu, CBC NS reporter, Atlantic Tonight host, May 24, 2020.

The Royal Canadian Air Force announced on May 28, 2021 the resumption of Operation Inspiration:

3. Tyler Rogoway, “The Thunderbirds Had A Little Scare Over SoCal With One F-16 Executing An Emergency Breakaway,” The Drive, May 16, 2020.

The Drive reported “The flyovers were somewhat controversial from the start. The perception that the government was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for each military flyover sortie while first responders struggled to obtain personal protection equipment, laid-off Americans flocked to food banks for sustenance, and small businesses struggled to obtain government loads was hard to overcome in some cases. Videos of harsh criticism of the flights have gone viral . . .”

The Royal Canadian Air Force announced on May 28, 2021 the resumption of Operation Inspiration:

On September 4-5, the Snowbird crews participating in the Canadian International Air Show in Toronto, sponsored by Lockheed Martin, dedicated their performance in memory of Capt Casey. The air show is a venue for weapons manufacturers to showcase their armaments in the name of “entertainment”, including Lockheed Martin to advance its bid to sell its F-35 jet to the Canadian military. They also participated in air shows in London, Ontario, Abbotsford, BC and Camrose, AB and staged fly overs of numerous cities across Canada.

4. CanWest News Service, August 24 2007.

5. National Post, August 24 2007.

This was highlighted in the 2018 report issued by the Independent Panel on Canada’s Future Role in Afghanistan, known as the Manley Report, which aimed to provide the “explanation.” To sustain this pretence, it highlighted “humanitarian” objectives – the 4D program – along with increased military and arms deployment. However, in his press conference launching his report, Manley brazenly referred to the demands of Fortress America, the union of North American monopolies to contend with Europe, conquer Asia, capture China and dominate the world:

“… we have to count. There are times when it matters. We’re not prepared to retreat under the U.S. missile shield and live in Fortress North America. We’re prepared to be out there and we’re prepared to pay the price, because that’s what you expect of a country like Canada.”

The Manley Report demanded that any Canadian government fall in step with the U.S.-led war for markets, resources and spheres of influence in Central Asia, and provide even greater human and material resources for that war.

Republished, with kind permission, from Tony Seed’s excellent blog.

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KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – As people across the country prepare to head to the polls for a federal election in a few weeks, here in the unceded territory of the Mi’kmaw Nation called Nova Scotia we are reeling from the results of a provincial election held last week.

The outcome was a Progressive Conservative (PC) sweep, with 31 seats going to the PC party, 17 to the Liberals, six to the NDP, and one to an independent candidate. Of the five provincial elections that haven taken place since the pandemic began, this is the first to see power change hands. All have resulted in majority governments.

For the past 12 years, Nova Scotia has been led by a Liberal majority government, most of it under Premier Stephen McNeil (he retired last year and was proceeded by Iain Rankin after a leadership race). 

From a progressive standpoint, the Liberal government has had a dismally poor track record: failing to bargain in good faith with many labour unions, carrying on a legacy of environmental racism, allowing a clear cutting of our forests, neglecting the regulation of long-term care facilities, approving open pen fish farms, promoting and subsidizing the offshore oil and gas industry, failing to take action on affordable housing, approving Alton Gas, relying on public-private partnerships for hospital redevelopment, and on and on.

But we had a few shining lights too, with the fracking moratorium that came into place in 2014, as well as the Boat Harbour Act of 2020, which forced Northern Pulp to stop pumping their effluent into Pictou Landing First Nation’s neighbouring harbour (as they had been for 50 years). Despite immense pressure from industry in both cases, the strength of social movements forced the Liberal government’s hand in instituting progressive policies.

A closer look at the party platforms and candidates

The Liberals’ loss of power was surprising to anyone following the campaign trail. Polling throughout the election predicted the election of a Liberal government – so why the big shift in results?

The election platforms offered by the Liberals and the PCs were not ideologically dissimilar. In fact, many analyses of the election results attribute the PC party’s win to its focus on health care and its big spending promises – things we might have normally expected from the Nova Scotia Liberals or NDP. Meanwhile, the Liberals lacked a campaign focus and were more focused on getting our budget back on track. The party also hurt its credibility when it dropped a female candidate from the ticket because of a few boudoir photos – this, even though the party leader has twice been caught driving under the influence and has still managed to keep his position.

The Nova Scotia New Democratic Party (NDP) centred their campaign around the issue of rent control – something that clearly resonated in urban centres, which are also the party’s usual strongholds (in Halifax Regional Municipality and Cape Breton Regional Municipality). Voters outside of Halifax and Sydney didn’t connect as well with the NDP and we saw no NDP seats going to rural ridings.

This election had the greatest number of women and gender-diverse candidates running for office in a provincial election, with the NDP leading at 63 per cent. The three major parties also had six candidates each that identified as Black, Indigenous or a person of colour. Among those elected to office were four Black MLAs and 20 women (36% of the total seat). However, there are still no Indigenous MLAs in the Nova Scotia legislature. Elections Nova Scotia had also brought back four seats for so-called “protected ridings” – one in Preston to encourage the nomination of Black candidates in all parties, and three in traditionally Acadian communities.

It’s time for electoral reform

The Nova Scotia election results were a clear demonstration of the need for electoral reform. A quick comparison of the number of seats secured by each party versus the popular vote they received provides a stark reminder of the shortcomings of the first-past-the-post system.

Here’s how those numbers break down, according to CBC News:

This outcome clearly does not represent who the people of Nova Scotia want to see sitting in the legislature. Based on the popular vote, my math tells me the results should be:

In this scenario, the voting public would feel more accurately represented and motivated to vote in the next election. Voter turnout has already been dropping over the last several decades, falling to as low as just more than 55 per cent of eligible voters in this last election. Proportional representation could galvanize voters and increase turnout, and the parties would be forced to work together towards the goals that most people want. Trudeau may soon regret his failure to act on his promise to introduce proportional representation while in power.

We need to keep up the pressure

Council of Canadians chapters worked hard to raise issues that had been neglected on the campaign trail. The North Shore chapter worked with Sustainable Northern NS (SuNNS) put out a questionnaire for candidates with questions relating to protection of the French River watershed from a proposed gold mine. The South Shore chapter worked with the Campaign to Protect Offshore Nova Scotia (CPONS) to encourage voters to call the party leaders, demanding they oppose offshore drilling.

We can’t afford to give up the fight in the face of a PC majority. Instead, we need to hold Premier-elect Tim Houston and his party’s feet to the fire on issues like health care and climate. Organize in your communities and be ready to fight against any proposal to privatize health care. We need to also be on guard to oppose the return of Pieridae’s proposed Goldboro LNG or attempts to lift the fracking moratorium, as the PC discussed while in opposition.

Find out more about how you can get involved with Council chapters in NS here, and you can support the going work of the Council of Canadians here.

See also: Judy Haiven: Has Nova Scotia joined the club of right-wing, tin-pot premiers?

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Editorial cartoon, published here with the kind permission of Sunil Sarwal.

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KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – Many years ago, when I lived in Edmonton, a mid-level bureaucrat friend told me any decent province must be at loggerheads with feds. That means the party in power in the province better not be the same as the one in Ottawa.

I thought about my friend’s observation when the Tories won a majority government in Nova Scotia the other day. Every province but one now stands to the right of the federal Liberals. We can see the right-wing blather of the biggest and most populous– Ontario and Québec. Just remember Ontario’s Doug Ford closing all the kiddie playgrounds and getting the police to mindlessly enforce Covid restrictions and fines. Ford had to climb down from both.

There was Québec’s CAQ (Coalition Avenir Québec) passing Bill 21, a law against wearing religious symbols if people work as doctors, nurses or even bus drivers. Of course Bill 21 mainly targeted Muslim women in public-facing government jobs who wear the Hijab or Niqab—though Premier François Legault denied women were the focus.

But if we look at the western provinces with conservative leaders, we see where the future is really headed. And it’s bleak.

Take Manitoba, for example. Every year, Premier Brian Pallister spends nearly two months in his Costa Rica luxury home; the rest of the time he’s in his $2 million dollar 9,000 square foot house in Winnipeg – in a city in which most real estate (up to recently) was valued at under $300,000. 

Though he has the lowest approval rating of all premiers, recently he won some accolades from his buddies when he complained that real “Manitobans” (read: whites) were having to go to the “back of the line” because Indigenous people were getting their anti-Covid vaccines first. He offended First Nations and Metis people when he called the dispute about night hunting a “race war”. Relations further deteriorated when Pallister also cancelled a $67.5 million pay out to secure the Manitoba Metis Federation’s support for hydroelectric developments.

Most recently, Pallister was pressured to apologize for saying that people (settlers) who came to Canada before and after it became a country did not come to destroy but to build. After that gaff, he said he won’t be running in the 2023 provincial election.

What of Premier Scott Moe of the Saskatchewan Party? He was merely ticketed for failing to come to a complete stop and driving without due care when he killed a mother of two in 1997. He can’t explain, why for nearly 25 years, he never bothered to apologize to Joanne Balog’s family. Since then, he’s been charged several times for drunk driving. 

Moe’s response to the cold-blooded 2016 murder of a young Indigenous man Colten by white settler farmer Gerald Stanley was to pass the Trespass to Property Act – which demands anyone to ask permission from a farmer before wandering onto the farmer’s land! Last May, Premier Moe did not bother to stop — or discourage– Maxime Bernier and his Canadian Nationalist Party which broke public health rules of 10 person gatherings (Bernier had more than 100). Bernier’s Saskatoon event featured anti-maskers flying the pro-Nazi flag (below).

Moving west, we have Premier Jason Kenney – who has a long experience in right wing federal and provincial politics. A Tory MP and cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s government for years, there is little daylight between the former Alberta Tories and the United Conservative Party (UCP), which Kenney now leads. First the party promises to make Alberta – call it Alabama north – the first right-to-work province. No worker can be forced to be represented by a union, or to pay union dues. 53% of UCP members agree that medical care must be privatized. To that end, Kenney’s government declared it was cutting 11,000 jobs in health care – many to be contracted out to the lowest bidder in the private sector.

Hospital admissions and deaths skyrocketed during the second and third wave of the Pandemic, when Kenney arbitrarily got rid of Covid restrictions as he stressed that trusting “personal responsibility” was better than the “indiscriminate damage” of health constraints for the whole population.

Of course no assessment of Kenney’s pro-fascist power (he had promised an Alberta only police force) and privilege are complete without noting his antipathy toward LGTBQ community: he banned PRIDE celebrations in 2019; he got rid of GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) groups in Alberta’s high schools; he’s avowedly anti-choice when it comes to women’s rights to abortions. Alberta introduced Bill 207, what critics call the Abandoning Patients Act, which would have allowed doctors and other health practitioners not to treat anyone for any personal reason or moral consideration. Fortunately, it didn’t pass second reading.

In electing Tory Tim Houston, has Nova Scotia joined the club of right-wing, tin-pot premiers in this country?

Judy Haiven is on the steering committee of Equity Watch, an organization that fights discrimination, bullying and racism in the workplace.  Contact her at equitywatchns@gmail.com

The post Judy Haiven: Has Nova Scotia joined the club of right-wing, tin-pot premiers? appeared first on Nova Scotia Advocate.

August 10, 2021 – Eddie Nalon died alone in a segregation cell in Millhaven Institution located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada on August 10^th 1974. A year later, Prisoners’ Justice Day (PJD) was first observed by imprisoned people held in the same Canadian federal penitentiary who engaged in a one-day hunger and work strike in support of their demands to end solitary confinement and other injustices behind bars. Since then, PJD has been marked by people inside and outside prison walls across the world. 

Tomorrow, PJD events are taking place across the country to commemorate the lives lost to human caging and to stand in solidarity with prisoners who are demanding an end to draconian conditions of confinement that have only become more austere during the COVID-19 pandemic. In support of these efforts, the Abolition Coalition is hosting PJD TV on August 10th from 5-10pm. The online broadcast will feature footage from these events, as well as segments with criminalized people and community organizers, to expose the brutalities of imprisonment and work towards abolitionist futures where we keep each other safe and respond to harm in our communities in transformative ways. 

PJD Panel on Mental Health and Imprisonment

August 10, 2021

5:30pm – 7:30pm AT

Halifax Commons

5816 Cogswell Street 

Mi’kmaq Territory | Halifax, NS

In-person event link

Books Beyond Bars media contact: booksbeyondbars@gmail.com 

The post Media release: Prisoner Justice Day August 10- organized by Books Beyond Bars appeared first on Nova Scotia Advocate.

KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – Earlier this week we spoke with Jessica Alexander, the Nova Scotia Green Party interim leader and a candidate in the riding of Chester-St Margaret’s. We tackled the environment, poverty, housing, health and education, and how to pay for it all.

Environment

NS ADVOCATE: First let’s talk about the environment. With that I mean the climate crisis, but also things like forestry policies, the de-listing of Owls Head Provincial Park, aquaculture, and so on. If you were premier of Nova Scotia, what would you do differently from the way it is being done today?

JESSICA ALEXANDER: First of all, we have a 53-page platform that outlines those things. So let me start by saying that Green parties are not just local, we are connected globally with other Green political parties, and we share the same priorities, based on the six values of ecological wisdom, social justice, participatory democracy, non-violence, sustainability, and respect for diversity.

Greens have been talking about the necessity for aggressive climate action for 40 years, and the Green Party of Nova Scotia has existed since 2006, so this is not something that we are just waking up to. 

We do find many of the targets insufficient, we find the approaches that support the targets insufficient, the regulations loose, and the enforcement weak. For instance the government was quite willing to support Pieridae’s request for $1 billion in federal support so that it could export fracked gas from Goldboro. That’s taxpayers’ money that could have been used to eliminate poverty in this province, to implement electric car rebates, to adapt to rising sea levels…

In terms of Owls Head the thinking was that we need more golf courses in this province. Meanwhile, golf is a pastime that primarily benefits people who are well to do, and jobs that this potentially brings are seasonal in nature, and they do not provide long-lasting sustainable employment. Because tourism dollars are often related to the currency exchange rate these golf courses can quickly become a white elephant, and meanwhile we have destroyed a very precious ecosystem. 

For forestry policies we believe that the Lahey report is a good start, but beyond that we would ban glyphosate use on Crown land, and we would take exception with clearcutting, or what Lahey calls high intensity forestry. 

The destruction of our natural environment is a continuing act of oppression against the Mi’kmaq people. We need to respect the original inhabitants of this land, which is why we encourage a land back program. Management and stewardship of all of what we call Crown lands, should be returned to Mi’kmaq communities in conjunction with a settler governance structure.  

Poverty

NS ADVOCATE: Central to your poverty platform is a guaranteed livable income. Even when it reaches the proposed $20,000 ceiling it’s still below the poverty line, and it is also below what a person earning a minimum wage would make who was working full time. So I’m confused about the livable part. 

JESSICA ALEXANDER: We can’t completely disincentivize people from paid employment, and we determined that that was the right number to go with. Of course the minimum wage needs to be higher (than the guaranteed livable income), otherwise there’s no incentive to work whatsoever.

But if you’re questioning the livable part, that’s a fair question. Rather than focus on the amount, we want people to rethink the level to which we all need to be matched with the labour market. We need to detach from the labour market to a higher degree than we ever have before, because automation is eating a lot of employment, and that’s going to continue. A lot of people panic when they go into a McDonald’s and now you have to put in your own order, or scan your own groceries. In reality, those are jobs that are low skilled, and most people doing them are capable of more. We’re hoping to shift the dialogue, rather than constantly saying we need jobs,  the Green Party of Nova Scotia is proposing a four day work week, and a guaranteed livable income. People are smart, and they know what they need. They don’t need a handout, they don’t need to be micromanaged, and they don’t need more bureaucracy. We liberate people to be more creative.

NS ADVOCATE: The platform mentions that it favours an increase in the minimum wage, but does not commit to an amount, like say $15 per hour.

JESSICA ALEXANDER:  We would need to fit that into our other priorities, such as implementing a four day work week. If we are talking about a minimum wage to $15 an hour, how many hours are we talking about? So there’s more things that we need to factor in. Our biggest priority is to challenge the public to not think economically simply in terms of jobs. We have to detach ourselves as a society from the labour market 

Housing

NS ADVOCATE: We’re in the middle of an affordable housing crisis, here in Halifax as well as in rural Nova Scotia.

JESSICA ALEXANDER: We would support a limited version of rent control. I’m not somebody who would subscribe to an artificially depressed price on rentals. I think rent control can do a lot of damage over time, American cities did that, and it led to a lot of inner city slums, because the property owners were not able to afford to maintain the rental properties for which costs were tightly managed. But I think you can tightly manage rates of increase and the frequency of increase. So that those are some versions of rent control that we would be comfortable with and would be helpful.

As well, we absolutely need more government ownership of affordable housing units because the market will continue to fail us in that area. As well, we need to consider where we build, for instance, we need to allow seniors to remain in their communities. 

The guaranteed livable income that we propose  would lift people out of poverty on a permanent basis, and in  that sense it is a big part of our approach to setting affordable housing policies.  

Health

NS ADVOCATE: With 71,000 Nova Scotians without a doctor, if the Green Party wins a majority later this month, what would you do differently than the approaches offered by the other parties.

JESSICA ALEXANDER: We would implement a guaranteed livable income, as a public health measure as well, to ease the strain on the physical and mental health systems that we have because we are focused on treating people who are in crisis. Too many times this crisis could be avoided with preventive measures. 

We support a collaborative model of caregiving where people should have access to, for example, dieticians, psychologists, fitness trainers, etc. These are peripheral supports of health that are not currently part of our health care system. In fact, I don’t even like the term health care because we are using a sick care system. 

We also universal pharmacare and dental care programs. The government as a single buyer of pharmaceuticals can put downward pressure on prices.  

Education

NS ADVOCATE: Education represents the final topic in this interview. I’m particularly interested in what the Green Party would do in terms of reinstituting school boards and also what they would do with university tuition fees.

JESSICA ALEXANDER: we would boost access to apprenticeship programs, particularly to train youth. Some people additionally need financial support while they take a training program. We want to eliminate tuition fees for Nova Scotia students at community colleges and work towards eliminating fees for everyone at post secondary institutions in Nova Scotia. We need to be careful with that because people come here (from elsewhere) and they do pay large amounts of money to learn at our universities, which many consider to be fair prices.  

The problem with elected school boards is that it politicizes some elements of education. Communities need to be consulted to determine whether that’s a healthy dynamic or not. We have not taken a firm position on whether we would re-institute elected school boards. 

Budgets and deficits

NS ADVOCATE: Let’s talk about how we are going to pay for all this, I am curious about the Green Party’s stance towards deficits.

JESSICA ALEXANDER: Provincial deficits are acceptable, particularly right now where money is incredibly cheap. When we talk about how we are going to pay for it, a huge part of the Green Party’s position is the fact that we already are paying for it, on the wrong end. We’re paying for dealing with crises. Lifting people out of poverty has a  huge economic benefit, because the cost of poverty is so very high already. 

When we’re coming out of the pandemic, we cannot go back to life as it was because it is not sustainable and we’re on a collision course. It costs whatever it’s going to cost because it’s an emergency. We need to avert emergencies, and we need to make sure we’re doing so in an equitable way.

 NS ADVOCATE: Any final thoughts?

JESSICA ALEXANDER: Well, I want to say that we Greens are here. We are capable, innovative problem solving people. We’re ready to be part of government. I’m running in the district of Chester-St. Margaret’s, and I’m very much hoping to be the first green MLA in Nova Scotia. We have great Greens elected in four provinces already, and there’s no reason that Nova Scotia can’t be the fifth.

This interview was lightly edited for clarity.

See also: Gary Burrill: “The overarching question is what’s going to happen next in Nova Scotia”

The post Jessica Alexander: “Greens have been talking about the necessity for aggressive climate action for 40 years” appeared first on Nova Scotia Advocate.

This year we will be meeting to discuss the connection between mental health and prison, the alarming overrepresentation of Black and Indigenous people in prisons and introducing the various organizations that do prison abolition/reform and ways the greater community can help.

Focus: Gathering with a panel of formerly incarcerated people to discuss their experience in prison. This PJD, an emphasis on how mental health is greatly tied in with the justice system as well as a discussion surrounding how people are criminalized through poverty, racism, anti-indigenous sentiments, respectability politics, etc. highlighting the overrepresentation of women and women identifying Black and Indigenous people in prisons and how folks can support organizations that help formerly incarcerated people or the participants directly.

Location: Halifax Commons, 5816 Cogswell St, Halifax, NS B3H 2Z4

When: August 10th 5:30-7:30If folks have any questions, they can email us at Booksbeyondbars@gmail.com

The post News release: Prisoner Justice Day appeared first on Nova Scotia Advocate.