tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64630699504748299672024-03-07T22:09:04.403-08:00Michael Laxer's BlogUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger85125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-32274712963536646792014-04-21T06:59:00.003-07:002014-04-21T06:59:48.636-07:00Free transit: Three reasons it is an idea whose time has come On January 1, 2013, Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, became the largest city in the world to make mass transit free for its residents. While the effects of having done this are, of course, specific to the context of the city itself, it has shown that a major city can do it and that it is has been <a href="http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2014/01/largest-free-transit-experiment-world/8231/" rel="nofollow">widely popular with its residents</a>. It has also focused attention on a growing international movement of groups, activists and parties who feel that free mass transit in major urban areas is an important social and environmental goal to be worked towards in the near future.<br />
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In a culture such as ours, where cars are very deeply entwined with notions of personal identity and freedom, and where the right has convinced people (falsely) that government can afford to do nothing of any significance, free transit seems at first, no doubt, like utopian nonsense to many. But given the enormous amount government invests in subsidizing the infrastructure and gas that cars rely on, and given the environmental and social equality issues involved, this is not the case at all.<br />
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Free transit is an idea whose time has come and there are three truly significant reasons it needs to be front and centre as an ultimate objective in any left municipal agenda in Canada.<br />
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<strong>1) The environment and fighting car culture</strong><br />
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It is impossible to overstate the devastating and ongoing effects that cars and fossil fuels have on the environment. A <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/31/climate-change-threat-food-security-humankind" rel="nofollow">United Nations report</a> released on March 31, 2014, painted a dire picture of the predicament we have gotten ourselves into globally and without immediate and drastic action it is only going to get worse.<br />
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Even setting future climate change aside for a moment, air pollution caused by cars is killing people in very large numbers right now. A <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/health/pollution+nine+times+deadlier+than+crashes+study+finds/9061897/story.html" rel="nofollow">University of British Columbia study</a> in October, 2013 showed that car pollution causes the premature deaths of 21,000 Canadians annually; nine times as many as are killed in car accidents.<br />
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Writing yesterday in <em>T</em><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/10/divest-fossil-fuels-climate-change-keystone-xl" rel="nofollow"><em>he Guardian</em>, Desmond Tutu</a> went so far as to call for an Apartheid-style boycott of the companies responsible for climate change and of the fossil fuel industry. He directly called for the ending of the massive government subsidies of fossil fuels that occur globally.<br />
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In Canada these subsidies to gas and energy consumption amount <a href="http://www.desmog.ca/2013/05/10/just-how-much-exactly-are-you-paying-subsidize-fossil-fuels" rel="nofollow">to $26 billion annually</a>, which means that 4 per cent of all government revenues were spent on them. This is a staggering fact. It also clearly shows that claims that government lacks the money to finance expanded, adequate and free transit in major urban centres are simply not true.<br />
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When one factors in possible dedicated revenue streams like tolls, gas taxes or taxes on luxury vehicles, or the possibility of a dedicated income tax increase on people with incomes over a certain level, there is absolutely no reason that free transit is not a quickly achievable goal.<br />
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Our governments and parties lack the political will and have prioritized energy consumption, including fossil fuel consumption, as well as catering to the perceived needs of car driving voters, ahead of transit.<br />
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Car culture, admittedly, <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2013/10/it-time-war-on-car">is deeply engrained</a> in Canada. It is also clear that steps have to be taken now to change that. Free transit would play a direct and obvious role in getting people out of cars and onto transit and in changing our collective perceptions of how to get to work, schools, the grocery store and recreation.<br />
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<strong>2) Social inclusion</strong><br />
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Since Tallinn introduced its experiment in free transit one of the most pronounced benefits of the first year has been a large increase in ridership in an outlying neighbourhood with high population density and poverty rates.<br />
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This makes sense. Free transit would be an obvious way to incorporate neighbourhoods with high poverty rates or population densities that are detached from the overall economic and cultural life of the city into the fabric of city life as a whole.<br />
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Museums, art galleries, cultural or political events, parks and waterfronts and so many other essential parts of the urban experience would be there to visit at no cost in fares. Fares can add up. A family of two parents with three kids in Toronto, for example, wanting to go to its iconic High Park on a weeknight or to the Art Gallery of Ontario (which unlike the park is not free) would pay $16.80 for the round trip by TTC. That is a substantial addition to any outing.<br />
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For workers whose incomes are already stretched to the breaking point by substandard and poverty level minimum wages, these kinds of fare levels are directly and demonstrably a contributing factor in social exclusion.<br />
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Beyond opening up the city to neighbourhoods excluded from full participation in it, the reverse is also true. It would open up neighbourhoods that few visit to new possibilities to host cultural or artistic events and to become destinations. This has profound potential economic benefits.<br />
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This is especially true when free transit is made a central component of transit expansion overall so that not only are fares free, but the routes are there to make the free fares effective and worthwhile.<br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong>3) Income inequality and economic justice</strong><br />
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Free transit has a real role to play in issues of economic justice and income inequality.<br />
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As we have already seen, our government spends vast sums of money to subsidize fossil fuels and car usage. This does not even include the money that must be spent by municipalities and governments on the infrastructure cars require.<br />
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These subsidies are made at the expense of those on lower incomes and those living in poverty. Directly. They use government funds that could be utilized by transit and any number of other programs to fund and facilitate a lifestyle choice that is of far greater benefit to the middle class, the upper middle class and the wealthy. In this sense they represent a redistribution of government revenue from those of lower incomes to those of higher ones.<br />
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Even the<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/business/imf-calls-for-curbing-fuel-subsidies.html?_r=1&" rel="nofollow"> International Monetary Fund noted</a> that "subsidies were expensive for governments, and that, instead of helping consumers, they detracted from increased investment in infrastructure, education and health care, which would help the poor more directly."<br />
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One way that those on lower incomes and living in poverty can be more directly helped is free transit!<br />
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As <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/estonias-capital-introduces-free-public-transportation_n_3014589.html" rel="nofollow">one Tallinn resident put it</a>, "I live on a tight budget since I don't have too much work right now. I need to save money wherever I can, so I'm very happy with the free public transit scheme. This is a good thing for the common person."<br />
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Transit fares, for those who have work, cut into these often substandard, poverty wages themselves in the daily commute to work. Free transit would facilitate the search for better jobs (or a job at all) outside of local neighbourhoods and would allow all of those using public transit to keep more of their income by choosing free public transit as opposed to driving or having to pay daily or monthly fares. It would be especially beneficial for those on fixed incomes or relying on social assistance.<br />
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We should not underestimate the impact that this can have on the daily lives of millions of people.<br />
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It is also an issue of basic fairness. For many decades urban residents who could not afford to or who chose not to commute by car have been subsidizing those who did. They have been made to pay higher and higher fares on in many cases inadequate and overcrowded transit infrastructure while the priority has been given to cars, even in spite of the environmental repercussions of this. Most Canadian governments and municipalities have shied away from the use of tolls or the imposition of car pooling lanes, essentially facilitating the singularly destructive act of driving wherever one wants, whenever one wants, on one's own.<br />
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This has to change.<br />
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There are other reasons free transit makes sense. It would end the need to police fares and the daily confrontations between transit workers doing their jobs and some transit riders. It would signal a shift in our society's priorities. It would also, like free health care, be inspiring and transformative of how many look at the role of government and it would be very hard for even reactionaries to fully reverse once put in place in major cities.<br />
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Very recently the Coalition of Progressive Electors in Vancouver, one the country's largest municipal political formations, <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/news/COPE+puts+free+transit+tenant+protection+platform/9679373/story.html" rel="nofollow">voted at a policy conference</a> to make free transit a plank of their upcoming municipal campaigns. By doing so they have taken an important idea out of the "fringes" and put it into the civic discourse of the country's third largest city.<br />
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Hopefully this indicates a shift in thinking that will ripple through left-wing and progressive parties and municipal candidates from Calgary to Toronto to Montreal and to Halifax. A shift that will help to begin to make free transit the priority for our movements that it needs to be.<br />
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<em></em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-7228264917845309452014-04-21T06:54:00.000-07:002014-04-21T06:54:14.562-07:00Gratuité du transport en commun : trois raisons qui en font une idée dont l’heure est venue<strong>Gratuité du transport en commun : trois raisons qui en font une idée dont l’heure est venue</strong><br />
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<strong>This translation is courtesy of <span class="entity _586o" data-fulltext="Réseau pour un transport en commun gratuit - RTCGratuit" data-group="all" data-icon="null" data-select="group" data-si="true" data-text="Réseau pour un transport en commun gratuit - RTCGratuit" data-type="ent:page" data-uid="477869278980401">Réseau pour un transport en commun gratuit - RTCGratuit a Qubec City Free Transit Group. The website can be found at: <a href="http://www.rtcgratuit.ca/">http://www.rtcgratuit.ca/</a></span></strong><br />
<strong><span class="entity _586o" data-fulltext="Réseau pour un transport en commun gratuit - RTCGratuit" data-group="all" data-icon="null" data-select="group" data-si="true" data-text="Réseau pour un transport en commun gratuit - RTCGratuit" data-type="ent:page" data-uid="477869278980401"></span></strong><br />
Par Michael Laxer<br />
(Rabble.ca)<br />
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Le 1er Janvier 2013, Tallinn, la capitale de l'Estonie, est devenue la plus grande ville du monde à rendre le transport en commun gratuit. Bien que les effets de cette mesure soient, bien sûr, spécifique au contexte local, cela démontre qu'une grande ville peut le faire et que c’est très populaire (1) . Ça a également attiré l'attention sur un mouvement international grandissant de groupes, de militant-e-s et de partis qui estiment que la gratuité du transport en commun dans les grandes zones urbaines est un objectif social et environnemental important sur lequel travailler à court terme.<br />
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Dans une culture comme la nôtre, où la voiture est étroitement liée aux notions d'identité personnelle et de liberté, et où la droite a convaincu les gens (à tort) que le gouvernement n’a pas les moyens de faire quoi que ce soit de significatif, la gratuité du transport en commun semble être à première vue, sans doute, une aberration utopique pour plusieurs. Mais, étant donné les sommes énormes que le gouvernement investit pour subventionner les infrastructures et le pétrole dont ont besoin les voitures et, compte tenu des enjeux d'égalité sociale et environnementale en cause, ce n'est pas du tout le cas.<br />
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La gratuité du transport en commun est une idée dont l’heure est venue et il y a trois raisons vraiment importantes qui font qu’elle devrait être mise de l’avant comme objectif ultime de tout programme municipal de gauche au Canada.<br />
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<strong>1) L'environnement et la lutte contre la culture de l'automobile</strong><br />
Il est impossible de surestimer les effets dévastateurs que les voitures et les combustibles fossiles ont sur l'environnement. Un rapport des Nations Unies(2), publié le 31 Mars 2014, a peint un tableau inquiétant de la situation dans laquelle nous nous sommes globalement mis et, sans action immédiate et drastique, ça ne va qu'empirer.<br />
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Même en mettant de côté les changements climatiques pour un moment, la pollution de l'air causée par les voitures tue déjà des gens en très grand nombre. Une étude de l'Université de la Colombie-Britannique (3) publiée en octobre 2013 démontre que la pollution automobile provoque le décès prématuré de 21 000 Canadien-ne-s chaque année; neuf fois plus que le nombre tué dans des accidents de voiture.<br />
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Dans une tribune(4) publiée dans The Guardian le 10 avril dernier, Desmond Tutu est allé jusqu'à appeler à un boycott des entreprises responsables des changements climatiques et de l'industrie des combustibles fossiles comme celui qu’il y avait eu contre l'apartheid. Il a directement appelé à la fin des subventions gouvernementales massives aux combustibles fossiles qui se existent un peu partout.<br />
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Au Canada, ces subventions au pétrole et à la consommation d'énergie totalisent 26 milliards de dollars par année(5) , ce qui signifie que 4 pour cent de toutes les recettes du gouvernement y ont été consacrées. C'est un fait stupéfiant. Ça démontre aussi clairement que les prétentions à l’effet que le gouvernement n'a pas l'argent pour financer un transport en commun gratuit et de qualité dans les grands centres urbains ne sont tout simplement pas vraies.<br />
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Lorsque l'on tient compte d'éventuelles sources de revenus dédiées comme l’instauration de péages, de taxes sur l'essence, de taxes sur les véhicules de luxe ou la possibilité d'une augmentation de l'impôt des personnes dont le revenu dépasse un certain niveau, il n'y a absolument aucune raison pour que la gratuité du transport en commun ne soient pas un objectif rapidement atteignable.<br />
Nos gouvernements et partis n'ont pas la volonté politique et ont privilégié la consommation d'énergie, y compris la consommation de combustibles fossiles, ainsi que la satisfaction des besoins présumés des électeurs automobilistes, plutôt que le transport en commun.<br />
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La culture de l’automobile(6) est, certes, profondément ancrée au Canada. Il est également évident que des mesures doivent être prises dès maintenant pour changer cela. La gratuité du transport en commun pourrait jouer un rôle direct et évident pour sortir les gens de leur voiture et les amener dans le transport en commun et changer nos perceptions collectives de la façon de se rendre au travail, à l’école, à l'épicerie et à nos loisirs.<br />
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<strong>2) L'inclusion sociale</strong><br />
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Depuis que Tallinn a commencé son expérience de gratuité du transport en commun, l'un des avantages les plus marqués de la première année a été une forte augmentation de l'achalandage dans un quartier périphérique pauvre à forte densité de population.<br />
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C’est logique. La gratuité du transport en commun est un moyen évident d'intégrer les quartiers avec des taux de pauvreté ou des densités de population élevés, qui sont détachés de la vie économique et culturelle globale de la ville, dans le tissu de la vie urbaine dans son ensemble.<br />
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Les musées, les galeries d'art, les événements culturels ou politiques, les parcs et les secteurs riverains et tant d'autres éléments essentiels de l'expérience urbaine deviennent accessible, à visiter sans billet d’autobus à payer. Mine de rien, les tarifs font monter une facture. Une famille de deux parents ayant trois enfants à Toronto, par exemple, qui veut aller à High Park un soir de semaine ou à la Art Gallery of Ontario (qui, contrairement au parc n'est pas gratuite) paierait 16,80 $ pour le voyage aller-retour en transport en commun. C'est un ajout important au coût de toute sortie.<br />
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Pour les travailleurs et les travailleuses dont les revenus sont déjà étiré jusqu'au point de rupture par un salaire minimum sous le seuil de pauvreté, ce genre de tarif de transport en commun est directement et manifestement un facteur contribuant à l'exclusion sociale.<br />
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Outre l'ouverture à une pleine participation à la vie de la ville pour les quartiers exclus, l'inverse est également vrai. La gratuité du transport en commun ouvrirait de nouvelles possibilités d'accueillir des manifestations culturelles ou artistiques à des quartiers que peu de gens visitent et qui pourraient ainsi devenir des destinations. Cela a des avantages économiques potentiels profonds.<br />
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C‘est particulièrement vrai quand on fait de la gratuité du transport en commun un élément central de l’amélioration globale du transport, de sorte que non seulement l’absence de tarif, mais aussi les trajets sont là pour rendre la gratuité efficace et utile.<br />
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<strong>3) Inégalité de revenus et justice économique</strong><br />
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La gratuité du transport en commun a un véritable rôle à jouer dans les enjeux de justice économique et d'inégalité de revenus.<br />
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Comme nous l'avons déjà vu, notre gouvernement dépense d'énormes sommes d'argent pour subventionner les combustibles fossiles et l'utilisation de la voiture. Cela ne comprend même pas l'argent qui doit être dépensé par les municipalités et les gouvernements sur l'infrastructure qu’exige l’automobile.<br />
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Ces subventions sont accordées au détriment des personnes à faible revenu et des personnes vivant dans la pauvreté. Directement. Elles utilisent des fonds publics qui pourraient être utilisés pour le transport en commun et un certain nombre d'autres programmes pour financer et faciliter un style de vie qui profite beaucoup plus à la classe moyenne et aux nantis. En ce sens, elles représentent une redistribution des revenus gouvernementaux de bas en haut.<br />
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Même le Fonds monétaire international(7) a noté que «les subventions sont coûteuses pour les gouvernements, et que, au lieu d'aider les consommateurs, elles nuisent à l'augmentation des investissements dans les infrastructures, l'éducation et les soins de santé, ce qui aiderait les pauvres plus directement».<br />
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Une façon d’aider plus directement les personnes à faible revenu et vivant dans la pauvreté est la gratuité du transport en commun!<br />
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Comme un résident de Tallinn(8) l’a dit : «je vis avec un budget serré puisque je n'ai pas trop de travail en ce moment. J'ai besoin d'économiser de l'argent partout où je peux, donc je suis très heureux avec le système de transport en commun gratuit. C'est une bonne chose pour le commun des mortels».<br />
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Les tarifs de transport en commun viennent souvent réduire, par des déplacements quotidiens pour aller au travail, des salaires sous le seuil de la pauvreté. La gratuité du transport en commun faciliterait la recherche de meilleurs emplois (ou la recherche d’emploi tout court) à l'extérieur de son quartier et permettrait à ceux et celles qui utilisent le transport en commun de conserver une plus grande part de leur revenu en choisissant le transport en commun gratuit au lieu de conduire ou d'avoir à payer des tarifs tous les jours ou une passe mensuelle. Ce serait particulièrement bénéfique pour les personnes à revenus fixes ou en s'appuyant sur l'aide sociale.<br />
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Nous ne devrions pas sous-estimer l'impact que cela peut avoir sur la vie quotidienne de millions de personnes.<br />
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C'est aussi une question d'équité fondamentale. Pendant plusieurs décennies, les citadin-e-s qui n'avaient pas les moyens ou qui choisissaient de ne pas se déplacer en voiture ont subventionné ceux et celles qui le faisaient. On leur a fait payer des tarifs de plus en plus élevés pour, dans de nombreux cas, une infrastructure de transport inadéquate et surpeuplée alors que la voiture avait la priorité, en dépit des répercussions environnementales. La plupart des gouvernements et des municipalités canadiennes ont hésité à utiliser le péages ou l'imposition de voies de covoiturage, ce qui facilite essentiellement l'acte singulièrement destructeur de conduire où l'on veut, quand on veut, seul.<br />
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Cela doit changer.<br />
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Il y a d'autres raisons qui rendent la gratuité du transport en commun logique. Elle mettrait fin à la nécessité de contrôler les tarifs et aux affrontements quotidiens entre les travailleurs et les travailleurs des transports qui font leur travail et certains usagers qui ne veulent ou ne peuvent pas payer. Elle serait le signe d'un changement dans les priorités de notre société. Elle serait également, comme les soins de santé gratuits, une source d'inspiration et transformerait la vision de plusieurs du rôle du gouvernement et il serait très difficile pour les réactionnaires d’inverser totalement la tendance une fois la gratuité du transport en commun mise en place dans les grandes villes.<br />
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Très récemment, la Coalition of Progressive Electors à Vancouver, une des plus grandes formations politiques municipale du pays, a voté en congrès(9) de faire de la gratuité du transport en commun un des thèmes de leurs campagnes municipales à venir. Ce faisant, ils ont sorti une idée importante de la marginalité pour la mettre dans le discours civique de la troisième plus grande ville du pays.<br />
Espérons que cela indique un changement de mentalité qui se répandra à travers les partis progressistes ou de gauche et les candidats municipaux de Calgary à Toronto et de Montréal à Halifax. Un changement qui permettra de commencer à faire de la gratuité du transport en commun la priorité qu’elle doit être pour nos mouvements.<br />
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Michael Laxer vit à Toronto où il dirige une librairie avec sa partenaire Natalie. Michael a un diplôme en histoire du Collège Glendon de l'Université York. C’est un militant politique, il a été candidat à deux reprise et organisateur électoral pour le NPD, c’était un candidat socialiste aux élections municipales de Toronto en 2010 (il se présente de nouveau) et il est membre de l'exécutif du Parti socialiste nouvellement formé de l'Ontario.<br />
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Publié à l’origine le 11 avril 2014 sur le portail d’information de gauche canadien rabble.ca. Traduction : Nicolas Phébus pour RTCGratuit.ca<br />
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Texte original : <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Frabble.ca%2Fblogs%2Fbloggers%2Fmichael-laxer%2F2014%2F04%2Ffree-transit-three-reasons-it-idea-whose-time-has-come&h=kAQHYdXJ3&s=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2014/04/free-transit-three-reasons-it-idea-whose-time-has-come</a><br />
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Notes :<br />
(1) <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlanticcities.com%2Fcommute%2F2014%2F01%2Flargest-free-transit-experiment-world%2F8231%2F&h=2AQHczKoD&s=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2014/01/largest-free-transit-experiment-world/8231/</a><br />
(2) <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fenvironment%2F2014%2Fmar%2F31%2Fclimate-change-threat-food-security-humankind&h=GAQGzrGK4&s=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/31/climate-change-threat-food-security-humankind</a><br />
(3) <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vancouversun.com%2Fhealth%2Fpollution%2Bnine%2Btimes%2Bdeadlier%2Bthan%2Bcrashes%2Bstudy%2Bfinds%2F9061897%2Fstory.html&h=kAQHYdXJ3&s=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.vancouversun.com/health/pollution+nine+times+deadlier+than+crashes+study+finds/9061897/story.html</a><br />
(4) <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fcommentisfree%2F2014%2Fapr%2F10%2Fdivest-fossil-fuels-climate-change-keystone-xl&h=sAQE7IbPM&s=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/10/divest-fossil-fuels-climate-change-keystone-xl</a><br />
(5) <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.desmog.ca%2F2013%2F05%2F10%2Fjust-how-much-exactly-are-you-paying-subsidize-fossil-fuels&h=NAQGJt1bF&s=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.desmog.ca/2013/05/10/just-how-much-exactly-are-you-paying-subsidize-fossil-fuels</a><br />
(6) <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Frabble.ca%2Fblogs%2Fbloggers%2Fmichael-laxer%2F2013%2F10%2Fit-time-war-on-car&h=6AQFQDsb2&s=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2013/10/it-time-war-on-car</a><br />
(7) <a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2013%2F03%2F28%2Fbusiness%2Fimf-calls-for-curbing-fuel-subsidies.html%3F_r%3D1&h=jAQHzIqb-&s=1" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/business/imf-calls-for-curbing-fuel-subsidies.html?_r=1</a>&<br />
(8) <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/estonias-capital-introduces-free-public-transportation_n_3014589.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/04/estonias-capital-introduces-free-public-transportation_n_3014589.html</a><br />
(9) <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/news/COPE+puts+free+transit+tenant+protection+platform/9679373/story.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.vancouversun.com/news/COPE+puts+free+transit+tenant+protection+platform/9679373/story.html</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-46787726178542430392014-04-05T15:29:00.000-07:002014-04-05T15:29:49.498-07:00Left behind: Ontario's politicians are abandoning minimum-wage workers and people living in povertyOntario is on the verge of <a href="http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/02/04/ontarios_minimum_wage_plan_locks_many_into_poverty_goar.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">indexing minimum-wage workers</a> into perpetual poverty.<br />
<br />
This is a political choice being made by politicians in the province. The Liberal party is calling for an $11-an-hour minimum wage indexed to inflation. The ONDP is calling for a $12-an-hour minimum wage two years from now also indexed to inflation. The Tories would simply leave workers exactly where they are.<br />
<br />
Poor.<br />
<br />
Both of the Liberal and ONDP proposals start well below the poverty line and this directly means that minimum wage workers will be,<a href="http://raisetheminimumwage.ca/updates/new-bill-to-index-minimum-wage-to-cost-of-living/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> by any reasonable standard</a>, indexed to stay below the poverty line forever. If it is pegged to a below poverty rate to begin with and then tied to "inflation" it makes it so that the minimum-wage workers can never, by definition, climb out of poverty.<br />
<br />
This is why <a href="http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/politics/archives/2013/09/20130911-114424.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">many business groups support this idea</a>. Why wouldn't they? It allows them to pay poverty wages in perpetuity by law!<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, social assistance rates remain at levels that are incomprehensibly sadistic and wrong.<br />
<br />
Given this willingness to index poverty into law and to ignore the vicious reality of where social assistance is at, it seems worth noting that the inequality that exists between those in office making these decisions and those they are condemning it to is truly profound and obvious.<br />
<br />
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Even assuming that one can get full-time work, a worker working a full-time job at the new minimum-wage proposal of the Liberals would make a pre-tax income of $22,880 a year. A worker under the ONDP proposal would make $24,960 a year in 2016, even, again, assuming they got full-time work.<br />
<br />
These are astonishingly low wages that are impossible to live on in Ontario, especially in a major city like Toronto.<br />
<br />
A $15-an-hour minimum wage allows for a full-time income of $31,200 a year. A dramatic improvement that would have a clear and obvious impact on the lives of workers. Especially given that now the pre-tax income of a full-time minimum-wage worker is at most $22,360.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/09/02/ontario_welfare_reforms_roll_out_this_month.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">a single person on welfare in Ontario receives</a>, $7,512 a year.<br />
<br />
Seriously. $7,512 a year.<br />
<br />
Who is making these decisions about the minimum wage and welfare? Given that it is a minority parliament that has allowed this to continue for three years, all the parties have made this decision.<br />
<br />
And not one of them is claiming to want to do anything differently in this regard.<br />
<br />
So <a href="http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/publications/salarydisclosure/pssd/orgs.php?organization=legislative&year=2013" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">the people making the decisions</a> are Kathleen Wynne who made $198,521.29. Tim Hudak who made $180,885.60. Andrea Horwath who made $158,157.96.<br />
<br />
Rosario Marchese who made $129,720.00. Ted McMeekin who made $165,851.04. Peter Shurman who made $116,550.00.<br />
<br />
Every single person making the choice, and it is a choice, to continue to legislate poverty for those on social assistance and working for the minimum wage made in excess of $100,000 a year. Every single MPP.<br />
<br />
The contrast is very stark and very clear.<br />
<br />
The question, in the end, is how many people in Ontario have to be working for the poverty wages that are less than $15 an hour or "living" off of cruel social assistance rates before any political party or MPP making over $100,000 a year cares?<br />
<br />
What is the perceived electoral risk versus big salary for themselves ratio that is required before any MPP in Ontario will actually do something to prevent the indexing of poverty wages into law or before they will stand up for meaningful increases in what human beings on social assistance are forced to subside on?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-77856597374198013032014-04-03T20:18:00.006-07:002014-04-03T20:18:40.154-07:00Less than zero: Living in the 'real world' of the Left's retreat. In Ontario another election season is at hand. A provincial election seems likely and municipal elections are occurring province wide. We have a bizarre situation where the Liberals are forcing the NDP to shift "left" on a number of issues like <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2014/01/27/kathleen_wynne_objects_to_14_minimum_wage.html" rel="nofollow">the minimum wage</a> and now<a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2014/03/18/tax_hikes_loom_for_upperincome_earners_in_ontario.html" rel="nofollow"> possible taxes</a>, where "left wing" candidates for mayor in Toronto feel the need to couch policies in fundamentally <a href="http://www.oliviachow.ca/transit" rel="nofollow">reactionary anti-tax rhetoric</a>, and where even what would a generation ago have been perceived as mildly social democratic notions like living wages, the idea of direct government intervention in the economy, new universal social programs or a comprehensive tax program to fund critically socially significant initiatives like transit, are now seen as incredibly "radical" and as hurting the "left's" chances of "winning."<br />
<br />
But winning what, exactly?<br />
<br />
After 25 years of constant retreat one might imagine that the left might think a new strategy is in order. Despite all the concessions to "reality" or doing what it supposedly takes to get elected, where are we? Does anyone seriously believe that we are better off than when we had an actual socialist political force in the country that advocated for demonstrably interventionist and meaningful social and economic policies?<br />
<br />
We are in a society where poverty and inequality are at levels unparalleled in decades and where any possible or obvious solutions to deal with this are deemed to be fanciful or unrealistic. Often they are presented as if they are simply intellectual exercises that are encumbrances to supposedly "realistic" agendas aimed at making "practical change." Agendas floated by very well compensated elected politicians who, it would seem, equate what is beneficial to their careers with what is socially progressive or with what constitutes a "progressive" agenda.<br />
<br />
The very idea of socialism has been framed as some kind of intellectual exercise that "academics" indulge in while the elected "realists" are out there getting results that never really seem to happen. "Radical" ideas are portrayed as little more than hopeless ideals that we know would be positive, but that we don't really think there is anything we can do about.<br />
<br />
Often leftists are told in condescending ways that we have to live in the "real world."<br />
<br />
But here is the thing. Making this political choice to get elected, and it is a choice, does have real world consequences.<br />
<br />
When we toss aside our commitment to the idea of a society based on equality and social justice, when we abandon calling for an end to capitalism, it is not just abandoning an intellectual construct.<br />
<br />
There are direct results that are not in anyway an abstraction.<br />
<br />
Real people in the real world are suffering, living in or living on the edge of poverty, and facing grotesque exploitation directly due to corporations and the <a href="http://rabble.ca/news/2011/01/seeking-democratic-socialist-canadian-political-life">capitulation of the liberal left</a> to the basic ideas of the right.<br />
<br />
The new universal mantras of "tax relief" and "fiscal conservatism" or "responsibility" embraced by "progressives" have <a href="http://mlaxer.blogspot.ca/2013/11/the-theory-and-pratice-of-tax-relief.html" rel="nofollow">real world consequences</a> that are not slogans, not ideological, but fact.<br />
<br />
The fact is that <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/strombo/news/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-poverty-in-canada" rel="nofollow">poverty kills people and renders the idea of equality of opportunity a joke</a>.<br />
<br />
The fact is that millions of people are forced to work for wages that they cannot live on without assistance.<br />
<br />
The fact is that social assistance rates are not just inadequate <a href="http://update.ocap.ca/rtr" rel="nofollow">they are cruel</a>.<br />
<br />
The fact is that the minimum wage now is a<a href="http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/02/04/ontarios_minimum_wage_plan_locks_many_into_poverty_goar.html" rel="nofollow"> poverty wage</a> and we are about to <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2014/03/on-international-womens-day-we-must-remember-poverty-and-minimu">index people</a> into poverty under provincial plans.<br />
<br />
The fact is that climate change may yet kill us all and we are doing next to nothing to combat the suicidal consumptive consumerism and <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2013/10/it-time-war-on-car">car culture</a> causing it.<br />
<br />
The fact is that ideas like free education and transit will allow for far greater social inclusion and for a clearly better society.<br />
<br />
The fact is that possible programs like Pharmacare or free dental care would make life demonstrably better for millions of people in very direct ways.<br />
<br />
The list could go on and on.<br />
<br />
But what it comes down to is that if we are not fighting for these things, if we are not standing up front and centre for them, they will not happen.<br />
<br />
All the time we hear that talking about socialism and being "radical" is somehow quaint and silly while these appalling oppressions, as well as oppressions like patriarchy, colonialism, racism and homophobia endure, and while the insanity that is austerity and environmental catastrophe continue unabated.<br />
<br />
These vicious real world cruelties and injustices happen every single day. The lack of new and serious social programs impacts the lives of real people every single day.<br />
<br />
This is exactly why socialist ideas and leftist campaigns matter. Why they are not an intellectual exercise.<br />
<br />
They matter because if they do not happen, these actual, real, demonstrable cruelties, injustices and oppressions that impact real people in the real world will simply continue.<br />
<br />
It is the guaranteed outcome of not fighting for "radical" change.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-56514603739962316102014-02-19T17:59:00.003-08:002014-02-19T19:36:40.033-08:00A letter to Andrea Horwath<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_53056171980a81d15414582">
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">Dear Ms. Horwath;<br /><br />Thank you for your<a href="http://ontariondp.com/en/letter-to-the-premier" target="_blank"> letter to the Premier of Ontario</a> asking her to make life in the province "more affordable, not more expensive". </span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">It has, indeed, come to the attention of many that life for millions of people in Ontario is not affordable. <br /><br /> They do not make enough to make ends meet because they are not paid a living wage, the kind of living wage that would come from being paid a $14 or $15 an hour minimum wage. It is sad that no one in parliament advocates for this.<br /><br /> They are suffering due to inadequate social assi<span class="text_exposed_hide">...</span><span class="text_exposed_show">stance rates across the board; rates barely raised for twenty years now while extremely well compensated politicians ignore the people made to endure nearly impossible hardship on them.<br /><br /> They cannot afford daycare or medications because we have cut personal taxes so much (and not just, as you imply, on the upper classes) that we have no hope of building universal Pharmacare or daycare programs. This leaves many citizens and residents of Ontario with nothing but lint in their pockets. Sadly, again, no one is advocating for universal Pharmacare or daycare. <br /><br /> While some advocate boutique tax cuts for "small" business and middle class homeowners, many find life unaffordable due to woefully inadequate public transit that keeps people in expensive and destructive automobiles and keeps fares too high for those without cars.<br /><br /> Free public transit would certainly make life more affordable. At the very least greatly expanded transit would make the lives of millions far better. It might help save the planet as well. <br /><br /> Strict rent controls and a public housing strategy would make life more affordable.<br /><br /> Lower and ultimately free tuition fees would make life more affordable. They would also greatly enhance equality of opportunity, which these days is mostly a myth. <br /><br /> Socializing the ownership of multinationals trying to move their factories out of the province and thereby preserving good jobs would obviously make life more affordable for the workers and communities devastated by corporate immorality and greed. <br /><br /> I can think of many other things that might make life more "affordable". And more just and fair. Like free summer and after school programs for kids, free educational and recreational programs for adults, stricter labour laws to prevent employer abuse of workers, laws to actually facilitate unionization or worker co-operatives and so many more. <br /><br /> Programs, increases and steps that, even a couple of which, would actually, truly, honestly, clearly make life more "affordable" for citizens and residents in Ontario. As well as making our society a better and far more just place to live in. <br /><br /> Maybe it is time to talk about a few of these ideas. To force the leaders of what we have always assumed were the parties of business, the Liberals and Conservatives, to listen and take notice. To force them to hear what a real People's Agenda would be about. <br /><br /> I would hope you would consider using your power to seek some of these concessions in the minority parliament and in office should you win the next election.<br /><br /> They would make life far more "affordable". They might even surprise you in how they could inspire the people of the province. They would also have the virtue of being the right thing to do.<br /><br /> All the best and In Solidarity. </span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-12309802090168900832014-02-19T06:06:00.005-08:002022-09-19T08:04:13.212-07:00Woody Allen and the persistent myths of rape culture<br />
<i><b> </b></i><br />
By now the outline detailing the facts of the terrible story that
Dylan Farrow tells of her sexual assault as a child by her father Woody
Allen are well known.<br />
<br />
After he was honoured at the Golden Globes for his work in film, Mia
Farrow and Allen’s son Ronan Farrow tweeted comments that essentially
called the Golden Globes and other celebrities out for having done this
in spite of Woody Allen’s history of sexual assault, and his entirely
and obviously inappropriate behaviour towards Mia Farrow’s adopted
daughter whom he had known since the age of eight and began to have a
sexual relationship with as soon as he was legally able to do so.<br />
<br />
This led to a defence of Allen by Robert Weide in <em><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/27/the-woody-allen-allegations-not-so-fast.html" target="_blank">The Daily Beast</a></em>
on January 27th. Weide’s article was followed by a firestorm of
criticism as well as by Dylan Farrow herself, after many years of
silence, <a href="http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/an-open-letter-from-dylan-farrow/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0" target="_blank">forcefully and powerfully speaking out</a> about the abuse she had suffered.<br />
<br />
In the days since, basically every point that Weide made in Allen’s
defence has been completely demolished in one forum or another. <em>Feminist Current’s</em> Meghan Murphy<a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/feminist-current/2014/02/why-defend-woody-allen" target="_blank"> called out Weide</a>
for his victim blaming and trying to make it all about Mia Farrow (a
tactic Allen defenders consistently use) as opposed to about Dylan
Farrow. <em>Vanity Fair’s</em> Maureen Orth responded to all the
“articles containing incorrect and irresponsible claims” in defence of
Allen by outlining the <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/02/woody-allen-sex-abuse-10-facts" target="_blank">“10 Undeniable Facts About the Woody Allen Sexual-Abuse Allegation”</a>. Legal analyst Lisa Bloom wrote of the <a href="http://nakedlaw.avvo.com/crime/six-reasons-dylan-farrow-highly-credible.html" target="_blank">“Six Reasons Why Dylan Farrow is Highly Credible”.</a> <em>Slate’s </em>Jessica Winter wrote about <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/02/woody_allen_and_dylan_farrow_digging_deeper_into_misleading_coverage.html" target="_blank">“just the facts”</a> and how Weide had none on his side. There are many other examples, including the rather <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/danny-shea/heres-the-1993-woody-alle_b_4746866.html" target="_blank">damning release</a> of the actual custody judgement.<br />
<br />
When Allen issued a statement in the <em>New York Times, </em>reiterating his long held contention that it was all “implanted” in Dylan Farrow’s mind by Mia Farrow, Dylan <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dylan-farrow-responds-woody-allen-678552?mobile_redirect=false" target="_blank">responded powerfully again</a> by noting that “I have never wavered in describing what he did to me.”<br />
<br />
Yet in spite of this overwhelming evidence legions of Woody Allen’s
online defenders, (the majority of whom seem to be men, based on what
I’ve seen in many online discussion threads), continue to insist that
Dylan Farrow is the unwitting dupe of a plot by her vengeful mother.
This despite the fact that many of them are also supposedly the
educated, enlightened, liberal types who I think are broadly believed to
be Woody Allen’s fan base.<br />
<br />
Predictably, of course, some conservative journalists like the <em>National Post’s</em> Jonathon Kay got in on the act <a href="http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2014/02/07/jonathan-kay-woody-allen-versus-mia-farrow-whos-the-real-monster/" target="_blank">penning articles</a>
repeating many of Weide’s already discredited claims, while seeking to
use ”personal experience” to imply that false sexual assault accusations
are widespread or that one needs to be wary of similar accusations of
child abuse. This is an old tactic, as, of course, undocumented and
entirely one-sided “personal experiences” can be used to try to
undermine the actually well-established facts about rape and child
sexual abuse, facts to which we will shortly return.<br />
<br />
This is due, no doubt, to the sad reality of the reflexive need of
many to blindly defend their heroes, whether cultural, political,
sporting or what have you. While they would obviously not see it this
way, there is in practice little difference between the supposedly
boorish defenders of any number of sports figures accused of sexual
assault and rape or the allegedly bookish defenders of Allen other than,
perhaps, the type of language they use. Sexism and rape apologism
presented in more rarified form is not, however, any better, more
excusable or less misogynist.<br />
<br />
But is also due directly to rape culture and its persistent mythology
as well as to the continuing and ongoing lies — and they are lies —
about how common, widespread and prevalent false accusations are. It
should come as absolutely no surprise that so many fall back on what are
proven rape myths when convenient and are unwilling to acknowledge how
deeply embedded rape culture is, as doing so forces one to ask many
uncomfortable questions about sexual violence and the extremely gendered
nature of it. It ultimately forces one to confront the widespread and
extremely violent nature of Patriarchy and male behaviour found across
cultures and countries; behaviour that men engage in across lines of
class, race, education and other factors.<br />
<br />
So fall back on the rape myths men (and some women) do. And again
they must be confronted. The absolute and proven fact is that false
allegations of rape or sexual assault are extremely rare, especially
versus cases of sexual assault itself, and especially when compared to
the legions of men who actually get away with sexual assault, which is
sadly the vast majority of those committing it. Even those who write <a href="http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/07/10/robyn-urback-sometimes-assault-accusations-are-false-a-little-awareness-is-ok/" target="_blank">pathetic articles</a>
arguing that the tiny number of such cases should still somehow be
regarded as a major social issue acknowledge that only 2-4% (at most) of
all <strong><em>reported </em></strong>rape or assault allegations are false. Given that it is well established that the vast majority of sexual assaults,<a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/how-canadas-sex-assault-laws-violate-rape-victims/article14705289/?page=all" target="_blank"> as many as 90 per cent</a>,
are never reported to the authorities, the actual, real occurrence (not
all of those everyone knows from “personal experience”) of false
allegations versus actual incidences are completely statistically and
socially insignificant.<br />
<br />
Does this mean they do not happen and are not devastating when they
do? No. It does, however, mean that attempting to conflate them is
simply a tactic and attempting to imply that their occurrence makes it
more likely to be true than usual in any specific given case is inane.
Allen’s defenders also completely ignore the reality that many of the
terrible false convictions of people for actual rapes or for the insane
wave of Christian conspiracy theories about <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/19/magazine/19KIDSL.html?_r=3&pagewanted=print&position=&oref=slogin&" target="_blank">“Satanic” sex rituals</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria" target="_blank">in the 80′s and early 90′s</a>
that they reference were due almost entirely to prosecutorial
misconduct and are in no way analogous to the Allen situation. To say
that claims made by women (or men) that are consistent over twenty years
from childhood to adulthood, where they unequivocally can identify
the person they are accusing, and that still turn out to be false and
are proven to be so are rare, would be an enormous understatement. It
strains belief to discredit someone on this basis.<br />
<br />
But the realties of rape culture run much deeper than this. As men of
any background can be the perpetrators of sexual violence, so can their
victims. As Kirk Makin wrote in the <em><a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/how-canadas-sex-assault-laws-violate-rape-victims/article14705289/?page=all" target="_blank">Globe and Mail:</a></em><br />
<em></em><br />
<blockquote>
It’s a crime like no other. A violation of the self as
well as the body — an assault on trust, on privacy, on control. It’s
also an offence with an afterlife: a sense of bruising shame and guilt.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
And it happens to women in Canada every 17 minutes.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Some of those women place calls to services such as the
Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter – about 1,400 of them last
year alone.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
“These are not just women who live in poverty or need,”
says Summer-Rain Bentham, one of the counsellors who answers their
calls. “These are women who are teachers, doctor or lawyers; women whose
husbands may be police officers or judges.”</blockquote>
<blockquote>
But if these women are hoping for more than support – if they are hoping for justice – the phones might as well keep ringing.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
Less than half of complaints made to police result in
criminal charges and, of those charges, only about one in four leads to a
guilty verdict.</blockquote>
Sexual abuse and assault is a daily threat and actuality for all
women. Men too are sexually assaulted both as children (and defenders
of the Catholic Church initially attempted to use similar arguments to
Allen’s defenders against emerging stories of the widespread assault
of boys and girls when accusations were brought by the victims often
decades later) and as adults. But what is in no doubt is who, regardless
of the gender of the victim, the perpetrators of sexual violence and
assault are.<br />
<br />
They are men. Overwhelmingly men. As the latest statistics from <a href="http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2012001/article/11692-eng.htm#a8" target="_blank">Statistics Canada</a> point out:<br />
<blockquote>
Regardless of the type of offence, males were
consistently more likely than females to be the accused. Sexual offences
showed the highest representation of males: 98% of all persons charged
with sexual assault level 1, child pornography and sexual violations
against children in 2011 were male.</blockquote>
In the end, one has to think that this gendered reality of rape and
sexual assault and abuse, this indisputable fact that sexual violence is
a male crime that flows from a society and a civilization founded on
male supremacy and patriarchy, underlies much of the persistence of the
defenses of the (too numerous to recount) cases of famous and powerful
men accused of such crimes that many simply cannot believe are guilty.
As well as of the literally countless similar defenses of the millions
of not so famous perpetrators of these assaults who have never faced,
and never will face, justice.<br />
If we, as a society and as individuals, confront the reality of how
prevalent, widespread and so often totally unpunished male sexual
violence really is, then we also have to confront the reality of what
patriarchy is — how it is an inextricable part of what allows men to
continue to get away with so many terrible crimes against women and
children. We have to confront the established fact that supposedly
“good” men — priests, artists, intellectuals, activists, business
people, “pillars of the community” — are just as likely to be sexual
predators, pedophiles and violent towards women, boys and girls, as any
other men.<br />
<br />
It is easier to disregard and reject what women say or to imply that
they are being emotional, irrational, petty or malicious. It easier
to chose to think that it was all a vindictive lie by a scorned woman.<br />
<br />
This is why so many do.<div><br /></div><div>(This article originally appeared on Feminist Current)</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-20542072194792284452014-02-19T06:03:00.001-08:002014-02-19T06:03:15.537-08:00Where is the ONDP on a $14 an hour minimum wage in Ontario? <div class="body">
In an election year pledge that is both a
woefully insufficient step in the "right" direction and an act of
supreme political cynicism, Ontario's Premier Kathleen Wynne has
promised an immediate hike of the minimum wage in Ontario to $11 an
hour, after having frozen it since 2010. <br />
<br />
It is a smart move. With the likelihood of the minority parliament
falling in the coming months, it is a small, token gesture toward the
large numbers of citizens worried about growing inequality. It also has
the virtue, from a Liberal point of view, of being small. Other than
putting up the usual resistance, very few, even in the business
community, have gotten, or are likely to get, too worked up about it.<br />
<br />
In part this is due to the<a href="http://raisetheminimumwage.ca/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> ongoing effort by a coalition of labour groups and community activists</a>
to get the minimum wage raised to $14 an hour, a prospect that no doubt
terrifies the business class, even though it really is the bare minimum
needed to live above the poverty line in centres like Toronto. No doubt
they realize that $11 an hour represents a victory of sorts. <br />
<br />
While Sid Ryan of the Ontario Federation of Labour called the Liberal proposal of tying the minimum wage in future to inflation <a href="http://www.yorkregion.com/news-story/4337374-tying-minimum-wage-to-inflation-revolutionary-sid-ryan/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"revolutionary in a way,"</a> this is a proposal also supported by many business groups (<a href="http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/politics/archives/2013/09/20130911-114424.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">and had been in advance of it</a>),
and is especially appealing in the present context of relatively low
inflation and the very real possibility of future deflation. This
"revolutionary" proposal may likely not lead to a $14 or $15 an hour
minimum wage for a generation.<br />
<br />
More difficult to understand, for some, is the ONDP's apparent
reluctance to take a strong stand on this issue consistent with its
alleged social activist and labour allies. <br />
<br />
To date, while some of its caucus members have been slightly more
outspoken, the leader driven party has not strayed from its message of
boutique appeals to minor consumerist middle class issues and its
pandering to the fiction of the small business "job creator." While it
is true that small businesses create many jobs, it is also true,
especially in the absence of an industrial or neo-industrial state job
creation strategy, that the jobs they create are often not even worthy
of the term "McJob." They are, overall, without any question the lowest
paying jobs and rarely have any benefits of any meaning.<br />
<br />
The ONDP also distorts what a "small business" is. When it calls for a reduction in the small <a href="http://ontariondp.com/en/fact-check-mcguinty%e2%80%99s-plan-for-small-business-not-worth-waiting-for" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">business tax rate</a>, as it does, it fails to mention that this applies only to incorporated "small" businesses, which are often not even the <a href="http://lbo-news.com/2011/11/26/from-the-archives-the-small-business-myth/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">romanticised vision</a>
that some have of "Mom and Pop" businesspeople toiling away long hours
for their "community." Many incorporated "small businesses" are
professionals attempting to minimize taxes, small landlords, etc. It is a
designation that is about liability and tax law; nothing else. Many,
many, small retail business people, like corner store owners, small
coffee shops, independent online retailers, etc., are not incorporated
at all and function instead as self-employed sole proprietorships or
partnerships under tax law. <br />
<br />
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<img alt="" height="0" src="http://ads.rabble.ca/www/delivery/lg.php?bannerid=1690&campaignid=958&zoneid=52&loc=http%3A%2F%2Frabble.ca%2Fblogs%2Fbloggers%2Fmichael-laxer%2F2014%2F02%2Fwhere-ondp-on-14-hour-minimum-wage-ontario&referer=http%3A%2F%2Frabble.ca%2Fstats%2Fblogs%2F15861&cb=f41a8c7fed" style="height: 0px; width: 0px;" width="0" /></div>
</div>
</div>
Not only does the ONDP's proposed "small business" tax cut not cover
them (not that they actually need a tax cut, given that round after
round of personal tax cuts have them covered), the party disingenuously
claims to represent them with this policy when it does not. <br />
<br />
Never mind that despite holding the balance of power, the ONDP has
done nothing to force the minimum wage issue. Horwath and the ONDP have
also been working for many years, however, to distance themselves from
being seen as a programmatically leftist party backing systemic changes
of any meaning, and have instead focused on traditionally right wing
ideas of placing emphasis on the "cost of living" in a consumerist sense
as opposed to on the traditionally leftist notion of alleviating
poverty and social inequality through comprehensive social programs.<br />
<br />
An Ontario voter forwarded me a reply that he received, after
emailing the office of NDP MPP Jagmeet Singh and asking him and the ONDP
to support a $14 an hour minimum wage. His office wrote back:<br />
<blockquote>
In regards to your concerns about the minimum wage increase,
we understand the frustrations of Ontarians. Families are getting
squeezed, their bills are going up, fees are rising, hydro costs are
skyrocketing, and families just can’t keep up. Responsible working
families who work hard for forty hours a week, should not be living in
poverty. Hard work and responsibility should be compensated with a fair
and reasonable wage. The ONDP has a long history of working with the OFL
and applaud their grass roots work to have the minimal wage increased.
We look forward to seeing what they bring to the debate, as many of
their previous campaigns have helped shape the growth and betterment of
Ontario.</blockquote>
This is very telling. Among other things, it perpetuates that awful
fiction of the "worthy" versus "unworthy" poor, directly implying in its
language that those who are not working, for whatever reason, have been
laid off, or cannot find full time work (and many workers are forced to
work what are legally regarded as part-time jobs) are not
"responsible." One might ask, should "irresponsible families," or,
heaven forbid, people without "families," unable to find work "forty
hours a week," be living in poverty?<br />
<br />
Beyond that, in seeking to avoid answering the inquiry, which it
tried very hard to do, the response focuses on "bills," "fees," "hydro
costs," etc., completely disingenuously implying that these are the
reasons that people are feeling the "pinch" as opposed to the fact that
many in the working class, and even the middle class, are not making a
living wage. <br />
<br />
By focusing on the consumerist issues the ONDP avoid tackling the
actual underpinnings of inequality and injustice; the downward pressures
on wages and the lack of a forceful commitment by any political party
to living wages. By implying there is a "debate" as to what the minimum
wage should be, they are directly saying that business people who feel
the minimum wage should be kept low have a position worthy of
consideration. <br />
<br />
All one has to do, frankly, is look at the shockingly reactionary <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeLwFjIAxAg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">by-election ad</a>
for ONDP candidate Wayne Gates. The video ad talks about how Tim Hudak
did not do enough in the great struggle of "rewarding job creators" and
making sure slot machines stayed in race tracks! This is an interesting
vision of social democracy.<br />
<br />
Nowhere does it talk about higher wages or economic equality issues. <br />
<br />
Horwath and the ONDP, however, has been actively courting the "905"
area code suburban vote by seeking to jump on the perceived coattails of
Rob Ford style right wing "pocket book" populism. Hence their fixation
on consumerist issues like HST hydro cuts, auto insurance rates,
opposing obviously environmentally beneficial "car taxes" and the like,
while having no alternative funding visions for important social
objectives like Toronto transit expansion other than
vague promises about "corporations" somehow paying for it all. They
will, of course, pay for nothing. <br />
<br />
The calculation is obviously that Horwath thinks Ford still has an
appeal among 905ers and that the NDP can somehow harness this. This
calculation is very open for debate. What is not open for debate is that
it leaves workers in low wage jobs, the Precariat, entirely out of the
equation.<br />
<br />
Minimum wage and non-"middle class" workers do not primarily need
small cuts to hydro bills, auto insurance rates (if they even own a
car), or to have the worst employers in the economy "rewarded" for
creating bad jobs, they need higher wages, expanded and free transit,
universal daycare, pharmacare, and the types of universal social
programs "progressives" and social democrats once actually fought for.
They need a wage and job strategy that is not centered around the
economy's worst and least reliable employers, "small business."<br />
<br />
They need active parliamentary political representation that will fight for living wages and economic justice.<br />
<br />
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-73400369941106979402014-01-19T22:20:00.001-08:002014-01-19T22:20:25.105-08:00Letter to landlord.
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Mr. #$$%%&^&***(</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Natalie Lochwin and I have an order
against #&^%(&^ Ontario Ltd. from the Landlord and Tenant
Board for #$%^$$ </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This judgement is non-negotiable and
payment in full was to have been made by October 4<sup>th</sup>, 2013
, according to the order itself. This has not occurred and this is a
violation of Board's order.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As your legal counsel will advise you,
and as the Landlord and Tenant Board's own website makes clear:</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“An order issued by the Board is
similar to a court order. Most of the terms and conditions of
Board orders can be enforced through the courts. For example,
an eviction order can be filed with the Court Enforcement Office
(also known as the Sheriff’s office) to be enforced; or an order
for payment of money may be filed with the Small Claims Court for
enforcement.</div>
<br /><br />
<br />
Once the Board issues an order, it is final. The Board will
not change the order because a party does not like the decision or
because a party believes that a different decision should have been
made.”<br />
<br /><br />
<br />
If we do not receive the full amount owed to us according to the
judgement within 14 days we will commence further collection and
legal action against you at that time without any further
communication.<br />
<br /><br />
<br />
Please send payment in full to %(&^ Lake Shore Blvd. W.,
Toronto, Ontario, $%^$%^.<br />
<br /><br />
<br />
We anticipate your prompt attention to this matter,<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-26691477936884694492014-01-19T22:11:00.000-08:002014-01-19T22:11:36.486-08:00Pursuing a judgement against a landlord in Ontario and the case for landlord licensing <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KOCB0_691Zc/Uty38QQj9II/AAAAAAAAA80/JJIL30f9LKU/s1600/1-monster+jam+036.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KOCB0_691Zc/Uty38QQj9II/AAAAAAAAA80/JJIL30f9LKU/s1600/1-monster+jam+036.JPG" height="250" width="400" /></a></div>
In the early part of 2013 my partner Natalie and I and our three children were evicted from the apartment we had lived in in west end Toronto and that was our home. It was well suited for us, with three bedrooms, a deck and being very close to both our work and the school all our kids were enrolled in.<br />
<br />
We had done nothing wrong. The building had changed hands, and the new owners claimed that they intended to live in the apartment, which was above a store where they supposedly planned to open a business. This is their right under the law, regardless of how long a tenant has lived there, or the tenant's circumstances. The owner at the time, our landlord, issued us an eviction notice so that the apartment would be vacant on the closing of the real estate deal.<br />
<br />
We did not contest the eviction. There really would have been no point. Instead we went through the process, an always stressful and costly one, of finding a new home, packing up all our things and moving. <br />
<br />
This could have been the end of the story, but, instead, only a couple of months after moving we noticed a "For Rent" sign in the window of our former apartment. The new owners, obviously, had not moved in! With a little sleuthing we found out that they were renting it out, and had upped the rent by $300 a month, something that is legal on vacant apartments under our Mike Harris era Ontario "Rent Control" laws. This allowance obviously provides an incentive for new owners to evict existing tenants claiming that they or a family member intend to move in so as to jack up the rent on an apartment they think they can get more for. Otherwise, with tenants who are already in place they can only increase rent according to a regulated guideline, this year at only 0.8%.<br />
<br />
This is a provision that clearly should be changed and full rent controls should be put back in place on vacant apartments as well. <br />
<br />
It was the previous owner who had evicted us, so we took the numbered company (with lots of helpful advice from a friend involved with the <a href="http://torontotenants.org/" target="_blank">Federation of Metro Tenants' Associations</a>) that had been our landlord to the Landlord Tenant Board for having evicted us in bad faith. If proven, a tenant is allowed to claim for all moving expenses and can claim for any difference in rent for every month of one year if the new apartment they have moved into is more expensive. In our case, for example, the difference in rent was $100 a month more for our new apartment, so we were able to try to claim for $1200 in damages. ($100 X 12 months). <br />
<br />
This is done by filling out a T5 "Landlord Gave a Notice of Termination in Bad Faith" form. This can be found on the <a href="http://www.ltb.gov.on.ca/en/Forms/STEL02_111308.html" target="_blank">Landlord and Tenant Board website </a>along with the relatively easy steps for how to go about filing it. You will have to have documentation for all claims, like rent receipts/lease agreements, receipts for movers/moving trucks, evidence that they are renting it (we had a photo of the "For Rent" sign in the window) etc. If you are ever evicted for this reason, hold on to these and any screengrabs or newspaper ads, etc. <br />
<br />
We and our former landlord received a hearing date notification from the Board and then argued our cases at the hearing itself. You can have a lawyer represent you, but this is expensive and in most cases like this, simply not worth it. Obviously if you can have a lawyer or experienced paralegal do it. This is always advisable. We represented ourselves. Be aware that your former landlord is not only allowed (as they should be) to be present at the hearing, but that they can ask you questions. If you are not prepared or willing to have this happen, and it can, of course, be stressful, then you cannot pursue them. On the positive side, the adjudicator at the hearing will not tolerate interruptions, angry attacks or insults, so you need not worry about these. <br />
<br />
A month or so after the hearing we received the verdict. We had won! We had been awarded the $1200, plus moving expenses, plus some damages we had not even requested. It was an across-the-board victory and vindication. The Board Order was mailed to both us as tenants and the landlord. They were given a specific date to pay by, and told that the decision was final and binding (it is only in very rare cases that a Board judgement can be appealed). <br />
<br />
The payment date came and went. Eventually they sent a small fraction of what we were owed and made it clear that this was all they intended to pay. <br />
<br />
And nothing, at all, happened. <br />
<br />
This is when you discover that in Ontario, there is absolutely no enforcement arm for Board decisions. The landlord or tenant is ultimately responsible for enforcement. While landlords have obvious ways to enforce a judgement, as the tenant still lives in the apartment and as eviction notices, for example, can be enforced by the Sherriff, a tenant, especially a former one, cannot do this. You have to find a way to collect the judgement yourself, and this is not easy to do.<br />
<br />
The Landlord Tenant Board has a "help" line and when we called it after the landlord refused to pay, we were politely told that there was nothing they could do. On three separate occasions I was told personally that I was "wasting my time", that pursuing the landlord would cost more money than it was worth, that I should likely hire a collection agency to pursue them and, as one helpline worker told me, "hope for the best". <br />
<br />
Hiring a collection agency is an option. For a percentage of your judgement they will attempt to collect it and, if it is high enough (they can be up to $25,000), they might even pursue it in court for you. If you have no time to pursue it yourself, this may be the best option. Our judgement was for under $2000 total however, as many will be, and a collection agency is unlikely to pursue this in court. They may succeed in harassing your former landlord into submission, and they do not get paid unless they do, but a landlord can simply ignore them and wait them out.<br />
<br />
Alternately, of course, if you have access to a lawyer or paralegal and if it is either pro bono for you or worth it to pay the fees, then you should take advantage of this and have them take action on your behalf. This is, when possible, always the best course of action.<br />
<br />
But it is not always possible, and Natalie and I certainly could not afford this, and even if we had been able to, it would not have been worth it for a judgement that size. <br />
<br />
After a considerable amount of digging around, and again with the helps of friends, I found that there is another option. What you have to do is have the Board Order converted to a judgement in Small Claims Court. First, send your landlord a letter telling them that they have failed to make restitution as required, and tell them that if they do not pay within 14 days you will take further action. I have posted a copy of the one I sent (with some information redacted) here. <br />
<br />
Assuming they do not pay, you need to take the Order to the Small Claims Court office in your community in Ontario and do this in person. In Toronto this is located at 47 Sheppard Ave. E. A full list of office addresses can be found on the <a href="http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/courts/Court_Addresses/default.asp" target="_blank">website of the Ministry of the Attorney General.</a><br />
<br />
This will cost you $100, but you can claim this as a cost later and recoup it from your landlord when and if you succeed in getting what you are owed. You need to go with identification and proof of address. The key thing that you also need, if you wish to be able to proceed to immediate garnishment and enforcement of the decision, is your landlord's banking information. Usually you will need to get a cancelled rent cheque that has been cashed by your landlord from your bank. This will have your landlord's bank's stamp on it, which contains the banking information (bank, account number, branch number, etc.). <br />
<br />
If you do not have or are not able to get your landlord's banking information it becomes far more complicated as you will have to serve forms to have a hearing held to compel your landlord to provide the information for garnishment or you will be required to, if they have one, compel their employer to enforce the judgement by garnishing their wages (if you had or have a numbered company landlord, this can obviously not be done). Otherwise, you have to seek other types of property seizure/liens that are very difficult to pursue. <br />
<br />
Assuming you do have or can get this banking information, and it is generally not that hard to obtain, you will need to fill out and file at the Small Claims Court office a Form 20E "Notice of Garnishment" along with a Form 20P "Affidavit for Enforcement Request" with a clerk at the court office. These forms can be found at the <a href="http://www.ontariocourtforms.on.ca/english/scc/" target="_blank">government website along with instructions for their completion</a>. The clerk will stamp the notices.<br />
<br />
You want to claim for your full Board order amount, plus the $100 cost of the judgement conversion, plus any interest available to you for late payment. The interest you can claim and from what date you can apply it will be included in the original Board order. <br />
<br />
You will then have to serve the stamped Notice of Garnishment on the financial institution where they have their account and on your landlord. You also have to send your landlord a copy of the 20P form. It is critical to note that you do not have to serve your landlord until 5 days after you have served their bank. This prevents them from removing the money from the account. While other methods are allowed, and are detailed in the form instructions, I advise serving the documents via registered mail to have a paper trail. <br />
<br />
When you serve the stamped 20E Notice of Garnishment with you landlord's bank you also have to include a blank "Garnishee's Statement Form", form 20F, that they will send to you filled out when they have either enforced your garnishment or are attempting to claim that they cannot do so. <br />
<br />
Once you have served the bank and your landlord, you will have to complete and return to the court, very promptly, a form 8A "Affidavit of Service". This must be, as the form says, "signed in front of a lawyer, justice of the peace, notary public or commissioner for taking affidavits", meaning that you will have take it to a lawyer's office and have this dome, generally for a fee of around $20, (and then mail it to the Small Claims Court) or to take it back to the court office and do it there. It is critical that you take this step, or you will not get your garnishment. <br />
<br />
Small Claims Court offices have free legal clinics available to people of lower or medium income (and I suspect anyone doing this on their own is almost certain to qualify) who will give you advice and even fill out the forms for you. Take advantage of this. I would have had a much harder time without them. The forms are confusing if you are not familiar with them, and they have to be filled out properly or they are not valid. <br />
<br />
Expect, especially in major centres, to spend a long time at the court office. If at all possible, go as early as you can in the day.<br />
<br />
If you follow these steps, and if your landlord has the money in their account, the bank will garnish it, will send it to the Ministry of the Attorney General, and, barring a very unlikely appeal of this, you will be issued a cheque within 30 days of the ministry getting the money (which generally happens within 20 days of you serving the bank.)<br />
<br />
We finally got our cheque, and restitution, in early January 2014. While this was a very satisfying moment, it took months and many hours of effort. If I were not self-employed and, to be honest, driven by a sense that my family and I had been wronged, I probably would have just given up. If reading the steps involved seemed a frustrating and tedious effort, this is what the actuality of it is like! I can honestly say that had I known the effort involved, I am not sure I would have done it. <br />
<br />
This is wrong. The fact that it is so difficult for tenants to get the restitution and justice that they are due after a Board order is simply wrong. The power relations and resources of landlords and tenants, in the overwhelming majority of cases, are not the same. Landlords in the vast majority of cases have far greater resources and far more that they can do evade compliance with an order. <br />
<br />
Ontario needs to implement an enforcement arm for the Board in conjunction with both landlord registration and landlord licensing. Landlords should be required to adhere to the various codes and acts, including the many appalling cases of lack of maintenance, or face losing the privilege to be landlords. There should be direct consequences for slumlords, including provincial and municipal legislation allowing the expropriation of their property and its conversion to public or cooperative housing. All landlords should be made to place their banking information on file with the government so that in the event a tenant gets a judgement, they can act on it without all of these hurdles. <br />
<br />
This is a basic issue of fairness. It is simply unfair to expect tenants to do what is now required to get the money they are owed from what are often wealthy individuals or corporations. These are judgements made by government boards in the interest of social justice and the enforcement of government enacted regulations and laws. The reality that the government then leaves it to the tenant to enforce the order entirely on their own is a real injustice. <br />
<br />
It is very clear that the vast majority will not be able to do so. This makes one wonder if that is, in fact, the government's intent.<br />
<br />
<b>This article outlines the specific case and steps that Natalie and I had to take. Every case, of course, is somewhat unique. If you can, you should always try to get the help of a lawyer or paralegal if this is possible for you. For further help and advice, please also check out these organizations:</b><a href="http://torontotenants.org/" target="_blank">The Federation of Metro Tenants' Associations</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.cleo.on.ca/en/resources-and-publications/pubs?field_legal_topic_tid_i18n=89&language=en&&" target="_blank">Community Legal Education Ontario</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-73443846985819234382014-01-03T11:11:00.000-08:002014-01-03T12:13:09.369-08:00Michael Laxer for City Councillor Ward 6: Opening Statement <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z_fH8sYNnYc/UscHftvZUGI/AAAAAAAAA5s/AF7xzMsXXYQ/s1600/1-sept27+006+(1).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z_fH8sYNnYc/UscHftvZUGI/AAAAAAAAA5s/AF7xzMsXXYQ/s400/1-sept27+006+(1).JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Sisters and Brothers;</span></div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">As a long-time resident of and small business person in Ward 6, and as a lifelong resident of Toronto, I am announcing today that I am running for election to seek to serve the people of Etobicoke Lakeshore Ward 6 as your City Councillor. I have lived in the Ward and worked on the Lakeshore every single day for over twelve years. </span></div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">I feel that, as a city and a society, our governments and many of our politicians have lost track of the principles of equality, justice and community that so many of us see as a fundamental part of what kind of a place we want to live in. </span></div>
<div class="ecxMsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br />The programs and freedoms that our foremothers and forefathers fought for are being sold off and whittled away on the altar of corporate greed in order to generate greater wealth for the already wealthy.<br /><br />We need to turn things around in Toronto. We need, together, to work towards a new direction for our city and its government.<br /><br />We need a real alternative.<br /><br />For too long we have been led by one version or another of austerity and cutbacks. Fewer services, lower wages, higher user fees, while the rich get richer and the city becomes impossible for many to afford to live in. For too long the agenda has been set by and for the rich, powerful and privileged, like Rob Ford, instead of by an agenda centred on the interests of the working people and residents of the city and Ward 6.<br /><br />As a candidate for City Councillor I want to help to change this. I want to work with you around issues like:<br /><br /><b>1) Economic Justice and Equality:</b> We need a new Toronto. A more just and inclusive Toronto. A Toronto that leaves no resident behind. To do this we need the fight for economic justice to be front-and-centre and as a City Councillor I will fight to make higher wages a part of the business standards expected of retailers and businesses who wish to operate in the city, will actively fight for higher wages and benefits for all people and for stopping wage cuts for city workers or workers under contract to the city. Our city does not benefit by pushing the wages of any workers down.<br /><br />Instead we will fight together to raise the wages of all.<br /><br />I will actively advocate as a Councillor for a $15 an hour minimum wage in the city and province.<br /><br /><b>2) Transit: </b>As Ward 6 City Councillor I will fight to see the Waterfront West LRT plan brought back to connect our Ward with Toronto's downtown in a faster and easier direct route. I will work to see transit expanded city wide and to have revenue tools put in place to finance and maintain this expansion. I will work to integrate GO Transit and TTC routes within the city so that people can use the Lakeshore line as if it was a subway. I will also fight against any agenda to raise fares and will work towards FREE transit, which should be the environmental and social goal of any government.<br /><br /><b>3) Housing: </b>Toronto needs a serious housing strategy with the building of more co-op and community housing and fighting to get the province to implement stricter rent controls, especially in high rise and condo buildings. We need to bring in landlord licensing so that landlords who consistently fail to keep units in good repair and meet basic standards of conduct lose their right to be landlords. Public housing, which has been neglected and allowed to fall into disrepair over the past 20 years must be raised to a higher standard. We need to end homelessness in Toronto. Housing is a basic human right that needs to be made more affordable. Far too many Torontonians are homeless or one paycheque away from homelessness. This is unacceptable.<br /><br />We also need to continue the fight to abolish the pro-developer Ontario Municipal Board.<br /><br /><b>4) Police Accountability: </b>The police in Toronto are meant to serve and protect ALL the citizens and residents of Toronto. There are simply too many cases where some police officers think and seem to be treated as if they are above the law. This has to stop. As a City Councillor I will work to fight for greater civilian oversight of the police and greater police accountability. No one should be above justice.<br /><br /><b>5) A More Democratic City Hall: </b>For too long our City Hall has seen many of the same faces backed by the same interests. It is time for a more democratic City Hall, more open to change and new ideas and voices. For too long highly paid City Councillors have made cuts to the programs, wages and services that those making far less than they do depend on.<br /><br />As City Councillor I will fight to see term limits implemented, so that no Mayor or Councillor can serve more than two terms, to see stricter rules around campaign donations implemented, including limiting the ability of wealthy candidates to donate to themselves, and I will pledge to make no more in income than the average resident of the city does, donating the rest to charity and social causes. If City Councillors are going to make decisions affecting the lives of the people of the city, they should have to make ends meet on the wage of an average resident to truly understand the impact of their policies!<br /><br /><b>6) Fighting the Ford Austerity Agenda: </b>When I ran in 2010 I was the only candidate in this Ward, and one of the few in the city, to stand up against Rob Ford publicly. His pathetic and dangerous personal behaviour aside, it was his agenda I most opposed. Together we need to fight this agenda, an agenda that goes beyond Rob Ford and that is the Capitalist agenda of service and wage cuts. We need a real and forceful Socialist alternative to this agenda. A Socialist alternative built around people and not profit, built around community and not the rich.<br /><br />This is just the start of our shared platform. There is so much to work towards in so many areas. As a candidate, and as a Councillor if elected, I will hold meetings every month open to all members of the community and anyone from anywhere in our city to get your input and your ideas for how we can, together, build a better, more equal and more just Toronto.<br /><br />A Toronto whose government is centred around our collective goal of ending injustice, inequality and oppression.<br /><br />A Toronto that will be known internationally not for a dangerously out-of-control reactionary mayor, but for its dedication to building a new society and a better world, starting right here in our own neighbourhoods and communities.<br /><br />A new Toronto.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-20715489624167376802013-12-24T07:24:00.004-08:002013-12-24T07:24:48.653-08:00The racist idea of a War on Christmas As fall fades into the "holiday season," for years now we in North America have been forced to endure right-wing commentators, TV personalities and talk radio shows droning on-and-on about the supposed "war on Christmas." It is such a farcically and transparently false idea and yet it persists.<br />
<br />
The "war" that is alleged is usually, according to the narrative, being fought on a few crucial fronts. The schools, where allegedly Christmas is "not allowed" anymore; workplaces, where allegedly people are being "forced" to say "happy holidays" and hide their "beliefs"; the retail stores where Christmas has been banished; and the government, which apparently is behind it all and is going to one day ban Christmas altogether.<br />
<br />
All of this is total nonsense. It is so ludicrous that it flies in the face of even the blatant evidence of walking down an American or Canadian street of any kind. The side streets abound with houses adorned with Christmas lights and decorations and the main streets with stores and retailers, large and small, engaging in very fierce and very explicit competition to part you from your Christmas dollar. Christians can rest assured that the private sector's lust to profit from the birth of Jesus remains totally unabated.<br />
<br />
In Toronto, as I am sure is true in other cities, an entire radio station turns itself over to playing Christmas music 24 hours a day for weeks. They even describe themselves as the <a href="http://www.chfi.com/2011/11/20/christmas-time/" rel="nofollow">"official" Christmas music station</a>! (To the best of my knowledge there is no, for example, six-week, 24-hour-a-day Hanukkah music station, so at least on this front Jesus is still clearly winning). Others increase the nauseating inclusion of Christmas songs on playlists more and more as the grand Holy Day approaches. In the week before Christmas it reaches a saturation point that is totally unavoidable.<br />
"Christmas specials" are on every channel and are done on many TV series, Christmas trees are everywhere, including public spaces, and, of course, Christmas is a national holiday with schools taking a long break to correspond to it. This, needless to say, is not done for the major religious holidays of any other religion.<br />
<br />
The idea that schools and workplaces "ban" Christmas is completely false, and while holiday concerts may not be explicitly religious, so as to include the millions of Canadians who are not religious Christians, they do, of course, occur in the lead up to the Christmas holidays and they do include primarily Christmas carols and jingles. The office Christmas party remains a time-honoured tradition of drunkenness and inappropriate behaviour, the only real threat to which is legal liability as opposed to Satan worshiping "politically correct" atheists or non-Christians.<br />
<br />
The entire war on Christmas idea has been demolished and mocked in many forums. Rob Boston recently wrote a piece in <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/6_conspiracy_theories_about_the_imaginary_war_on_christmas_partner/" rel="nofollow">Salon</a> that both took apart its proponents' arguments very effectively and labeled it a conspiracy theory. Which to a degree it is.<br />
<br />
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Yet, the reality is that exposing the notion as false is simply not enough. It is not just the misguided musings of people with an overly nostalgic fixation on a glorious past that never really existed. It is not just false. It is also racist and bigoted and is an attempt to help to create a backlash against immigration, diversity, inclusion and multiculturalism. This so-called war is held up as an example of "reverse racism" and to support the claim that it is now the Christians who are oppressed and being discriminated against.<br />
<br />
It is hard to put an end to the imbecilic yearly incantations of this ideological fiction for precisely this reason. Racist conspiratorial ideas withstand intellectual scrutiny among their devotees because they are articles of faith, not logic. They are part of the foundation of a world view, not a description of reality.<br />
<br />
All one has to do to see this is to listen to any call-in radio show on the matter. As an example, CBC Radio's <em>Ontario Today</em> had a <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/ontariotoday/2013/12/04/wednesday-christmas-at-work/" rel="nofollow">Christmas at Work </a>episode recently where a caller, "Chris from Woodbridge," at around 16 minutes into the program began to espouse the points you always hear. Talking about how "people can't respect Canadian traditions and Canadian life as we have had it for centuries," referring to "these people," talking of Christmas as a "recognition of religious belief in the Christian country of Canada" and bluntly stating that "we are overly tolerant to the detriment of Canadians and our traditions."<br />
<br />
Yet "these people" he is referring to are also Canadians and Canadian citizens just as he is, Canada is not a "Christian" country historically in the sense that Chris and others like him mean it, and non-Christians have been in Canada since before its inception as a nation. People of Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist and many other religious beliefs have been a part of what is "Canadian" and of Canada for, in many cases, generations, and are just as "Canadian" as any other Canadian. Canadians who are Christians do not even, of course, broadly agree on what Christianity is or even when Christmas should be celebrated, with Orthodox Christians, for example, celebrating it January 7, 2014 and therefore not even in the same year technically. Never mind that we have built our "nation" on land stolen from the non-Christian First Nations and aboriginal peoples whose home this was and whose traditions have been entirely disregarded.<br />
<br />
The point is that the people who promote this myth do not really mean "Canadians" at all. They mean Christians. They are fundamentally opposed to the growing complexity, tolerance and secularism of Canada and see this, correctly, as a threat to their vision of an evangelical nation organized around Christian fundamentalism. They hold up a racist mythology about a past that never was to help to build a future that will include only citizens of their beliefs and of their racialized view of what a "Canadian" is.<br />
<br />
Critical to this narrative, as with all religious fundamentalist or racially supremacist narratives, is the notion that the "community" is under threat from outsiders who would seek to subvert it from within. The "threat" from these "others" is used to rally the community to fight harder to exclude other ideas and beliefs as being "dangerous." Additionally, in the case of the evangelical and religious right, the "threat" is used to seek to justify a theocratic notion of the role of Christianity within North American "tradition" so as to help to undermine its actual tradition of a large degree of separation of church and state.<br />
<br />
The fact that fighting the fake "war on Christmas" is part of a broader political movement's objectives was made clear by, among others, Sarah Palin, <a href="http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2013/December/Sarah-Palin-War-on-Christmas-Tip-of-Greater-Battle/" rel="nofollow">who on December 10, told a Christian "news" site that</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
"This war on Christmas is really the tip of the spear when it comes to a greater battle that's brewing... And that battle that's brewing is those who would want to take God out of our society, out of our culture, which will lead to ruin as history has proven."</blockquote>
For extremist movements and ideas, if these threats do not really exist, it is necessary for them to be invented.<br />
<br />
For secularists of all stripes it is critical to understand that the idea of a "war on Christmas" is not simply false. It is part of a radically right-wing, evangelical and racist agenda to build a "Christian" North America.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-11169191568404478702013-12-02T18:27:00.003-08:002013-12-03T04:12:30.214-08:00An Open Letter to Councillor Mark Grimes: We do not want a self-admitted celebrity "criminal" in our children's holiday parade<span class="userContent">Councillor Mark Grimes;<br /> <br /> For many
years we have had to endure right wing and/or populist rhetoric about
drugs and crime. About how we need to have zero tolerance for it
supposedly; how "criminals" do not deserve our sympathy, how drugs are <span class="text_exposed_show">a scourge and how criminal behaviour is never acceptable.<br /> <br /> Was it not our now self-acknowledged criminal behaviour mayor who said he did not want to "hug a thug".<br /> <br />
Was it not Conservative talking heads like Tim Hudak who have defended
extremely harsh anti-drug laws...except, apparently, when they are meant
to apply to political allies?<br /> <br /> It has been made clear that
apparently our self-acknowledged drug using, violently misogynistic
abusive, guilty of self-acknowledged criminal conduct (and crack cocaine use is a criminal
offense, normally, if you are not rich and white) intends to attend the
local Lakeshore Santa Claus Parade. He seems to want to show the kids that you
can do whatever you want, as long as you are rich and powerful enough to
get away with it.<br /> <br /> In a neighbourhood where so many have been
intimidated and abused by the police for so much less, and where
politicians like yourself have jumped on anti-drug and anti-crime lines
to get elected, one has to ask, why is he being allowed to march in a
children's parade?<br /> <br /> Why?<br /> <br /> Is it now OK for a rich white elected official from a wealthy family to behave this way?<br /> <br />
Councillor Grimes, what is your position? Do you or do you not feel
that it is appropriate for a self-acknowledged drug user, as Rob Ford is,
to march in a "family oriented" parade. Do you or do you not think that
all citizens should be held equally accountable for clearly criminal
conduct?<br /> <br /> Do you, or do you not, think that Rob Ford and every other person in your ward deserve the same justice?<br /> <br /> Would you allow other self-acknowledged criminals guilty of what Rob Ford is, to march in the December 7th Santa Claus parade?<br /> <br /> Does this city have no shame?</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-50714158264125227472013-11-25T16:56:00.000-08:002013-11-25T17:18:16.655-08:00The theory and practice of "tax relief": Austerity, inequality and neo-liberalism (in three parts)<div class="body">
<b>This is a republication of three pieces (one written with Matt Fodor) on the devastating impact of tax cuts on society and on the creation of the austerity agenda as well as the ineffectual "response" of the left; a response that in many cases facilitated it. </b><br />
<br />
"Austerity is not simply the consequence of constant tax cuts, it's their purpose"- Alex Himelfarb<br />
<br />
<b>Part One: Tax relief and the austerity agenda</b><br />
<b> </b> <br />
One has to hand it to the neo-liberal
ideologues and the neoconservative political movement in Canada; they
have managed to get all political parties, the mainstream media and most
of the population on board the "tax relief" train. To one degree or
another, they kneel at the alter of this ultimate false god.<br />
<br />
And in the wake of round-after-round of federal and provincial
income, sales and corporate tax cuts, the threat of severe austerity
measures grows as each year passes.<br />
<br />
While this story has played itself out across the country, right now
it is doing so most dramatically in the province of Ontario, where
citizens are faced with an austerity agenda that will be
one-degree-or-another of the disgraceful Drummond Report.<br />
<br />
The massive income tax cuts of the '90s and the past decade in
Ontario are the chickens that have come home to roost and they are
directly why our governments claim they cannot "afford" to fully fund
the programmes that citizens depend on, and why they are increasingly
rattling the sabres by giving us the entirely false and unnecessary
choice between supposed impending economic collapse and massive service
cuts and user fees.<br />
<br />
To put this in perspective, we have to begin by looking at what
potential revenue was lost by Ontario's two decades of tax cuts. By
2003, as was noted at the time by the Canadian Centre for Policy
Alternatives, the Harris era personal income tax cuts alone were
removing $11.6 billion per year from the Ontario treasury. These tax
cuts, which were never reversed, (and which no one is proposing to
reverse) have meant that Ontario has lost a minimum of $90-100 billion
in revenue since 2003, not including the further tax cuts of the
McGuinty era and not including the revenue lost during the Harris era
itself. They also were of far greater benefit to the upper income
brackets than the lower.<br />
<br />
The reversal of these specific tax cuts would have reduced Ontario's
overall debt from in excess of $236 billion to under $140 billion. This
is very significant, given that Ontario paid out more in interest on
this debt in 2010-2011 than it spent on post secondary education. The
interest the province is handing to global financial concerns would have
been around half the nearly $10 billion it was. That pays for a lot of
programmes. It would also have meant that instead of facing an
approximately $16 billion deficit this year we would be facing at most a
deficit of $4.5 billion.<br />
<br />
And this does NOT include all the other tax cuts; the cuts to
corporate taxes, to small business taxes, to personal taxes since 2003
under McGuinty, etc. It only includes the impact of cuts to personal
taxes that occurred under Mike Harris.<br />
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In fact, McGuinty's government has bragged that it is cutting income taxes even further. In <i>Ontario's Tax Plan for Jobs and Growth </i>of
March, 2010 the Ontario government is openly proud about how their
personal income tax "relief" will benefit 93% of Ontarians (which means
many very well-off people) and take another $11.8 billion in revenue out
of the coffers over three years. That's almost $4 billion a year. And
that means that, without these additional tax cuts, had there not been
the "tax relief" since 1995, there would have basically been no deficit
and their would be no need for the austerity agenda at all.<br />
<br />
If the corporate and small business tax cuts of the 1995-2011 period
had not happened, combined with the restored revenues from personal
income taxes mentioned above, we would be running a surplus now and we
would have an overall debt well under the $100 billion mark.<br />
<br />
And yet no one, in any of the mainstream political parties, is
advocating for reversing the vast bulk of these taxation policies. Not
even close.<br />
<br />
It is very important to understand that for the majority of citizens
the money that they have received through this "relief" does not even
remotely compare to the services, social cohesion and opportunity that
they have lost as a result of it.<br />
<br />
Unless you are in one of the small tax brackets at the pinnacle of
our very steep income pyramid, tax relief is no relief at all. 100 per
cent the opposite in fact. Tax relief is the key reason we can't
"afford" and do not have programmes like universal day care. It is the
reason that "economists" like Don Drummond can claim a fiscal crisis
where none need exist and advocate to cut your programmes to the bone in
the name of "fiscal responsibility". It is the reason our social
programmes are not as good as they were in the '80s and early '90s. The
reason our social and even physical infrastructure is falling apart. The
reason why user fees on things like children's programmes are ever
increasing. The reason why public transit exists at levels well below
what is required. The reason why if you lose your job you can't count on
any real long-term government help, why health care is in "crisis", why
tuition fees are way up, and so much more. It is a large part of why it
seems, despite unprecedented economic "growth" over the last 25 years,
that we are asked over-and-over again to make sacrifices to keep the
wealthy wealthy and big business afloat. It is the primary reason we
have been utterly unable to really confront the stain of child poverty
and it is a root cause of the massive growth in social inequality.<br />
<br />
The results of the theory and practice of "tax relief".<br />
<br />
Tax relief is the greatest snake oil salesperson political trick of
all time...it promised to deliver financial aid and social stability
but, for the bulk of the population, it delivered the exact opposite.<br />
<br />
After the 2008 crisis of capitalism and the massive funds that were
found to bailout major corporations in both Canada and the USA, it is
also very clear that the idea that all this "tax relief" would result in
eternal prosperity, corporate investment and trickle-down wealth has
now obviously been shown to be the total nonsense that it always was.
Most of the population has less job security, less access to programmes
and less of a share of overall social wealth than they did when it all
began. So, one has to ask, what was the point if not simply to benefit
companies and those with higher incomes?<br />
<br />
But there is no real political counter-offensive against the basic idea of personal tax cuts.<br />
<br />
As shown the McGuinty Liberals have carried the Harris tax cuts
further, and have pledged repeatedly that any tax hikes are off the
table. The Tories advocate for even deeper tax cuts, and have implied
that they would, if they could, implement Drummond's report in its
entirety: a recipe for Greek-style social collapse.<br />
<br />
The Ontario NDP has called for a raise in the corporate tax rate back
to 14%, but the money that this would put back into government coffers
would be offset in large part by what the government would lose by the
NDP's promises to cut the HST on home heating and gasoline, and by tax
breaks to small business. They outline this themselves in their 2011
election platform, the <i>Plan for Affordable Change. </i>Nowhere does
this platform call for any personal tax increases, not even on the
highest income earners. And yet increasing income taxes even marginally
on, say, the top 25% of incomes in Ontario, would have a profound impact
on, at the very least, maintaining government programmes as they are
now.<br />
<br />
The plan's constant refrain of "Rewarding Job Creators", "Living
Within our Means", and "Making Life Affordable" expose the central
contradictions of the tax relief idea. These targeted tax cuts proposed
by the NDP are bad environmental policy, as many have pointed out, most
notably the David Suzuki Foundation. But, more basically, would life not
be made considerably more affordable for the pocketbooks of "working
families" if we reversed personal income tax cuts and used the money to
create a provincial system of, for example, free daycare or free
pharmacare?<br />
<br />
These are programmes that cannot really happen in any other way.
Sometimes one can't help but feel that Social Democrats in Canada think
that one day they will deliver Scandinavian Social Democracy and social
programmes with US level tax rates. They won't.<br />
<br />
These are just two examples of the programmes that could have, and
could yet exist, if we turned back the near twenty years of personal and
corporate tax cuts. Instead we will likely see more service cuts, and
we will see a yet greater burden on the province's poor, its workers and
its middle-class.<br />
In fact, of course, without personal tax increases on, at the very
least, the top income brackets, all the rhetoric of the "shared pain"
that is flowing from Queen's Park is unbelievably and contemptibly
hollow.<br />
<br />
Now, more than ever, we need to fight for real, fair, steeply graded
progressive income taxes and to understand that only with these taxes
can we build the kind of society that we want and can we fight the
inequality that is the hallmark of our times.<br />
<br />
<b>Part 2: It's still time for an adult conversation about taxes</b> <br />
Written with Matt Fodor<br />
<br />
In a 2009 article in the <a href="http://www.thestar.com/opinion/2009/10/26/can_we_have_an_adult_conversation_about_taxes.html" rel="nofollow">Toronto Star</a>,
progressive economist Hugh Mackenzie commented on the "strange debate
that separates taxes from the services they pay for." This is a problem
across the political spectrum. Mackenzie criticized the tendency of
the Canadian Left to "[campaign] for better public services as if they
can be provided free. Better services won't cost us anything because the
higher taxes needed to pay for those services can be paid by people we
don't know. People who make a lot more money than we do. Big
corporations but not small businesses."<br />
<br />
Mackenzie was referring to the British Columbia NDP's campaign
against the carbon tax as well as the campaigns against the HST "tax
grab" by the NDP in both B.C. and Ontario. This continues today with
the Ontario NDP's <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2013/03/perils-populism-andrea-horwath-taxes-road-tolls-and-war-car">opposition to road tolls</a>
in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area to pay for much needed transit
improvements, which eerily echoes Rob Ford’s “war on the car”
narrative.<br />
<br />
Just this past week, <a href="http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Local/2013-08-08/article-3342167/Mulcair-says-people-want-him-to-kick-Harper-out/1" rel="nofollow">in a truly amazing statement when asked about taxes</a>, this from Tom Mulcair:<br />
<blockquote>
Mulcair seemed surprised when he was asked if taxes would go up under an NDP government.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
"You’re the first person who’s ever asked me that," he said, adding quickly that they most definitely won't.</blockquote>
<blockquote>
"I am categorical on that," he said. “Several provinces are now at
the 50 per cent rate. Beyond that, you’re not talking taxation; you’re
talking confiscation. And that is never going to be part of my policies,
going after more individual taxes. Period. Full stop.”</blockquote>
The Canadian Left, in seeking to justify this and similar stances,
will often point to historic left-wing "anti-tax" moments, like the
fight against the Poll Tax in the UK in the '80s. But in doing so they
take the issue out of the present neo-Liberal context of an ideological
campaign against the very idea of taxes. This campaign has been
exceptionally successful and has been a critical component underpinning
both the appeal of right wing populist ideas (and a major factor in
why people support the right and its ideas even against their own
seeming class interests) and the growth of rampant, "Gilded Age" levels
of social inequality.<br />
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On the surface, the "people we don’t know" argument seems appealing.
After all, the Left has long fought for progressive taxation – based on
the ability to pay – as a key means of redistribution and raising the
revenue to pay for welfare state measures and public investments.
Progressives have rightfully condemned the changes of the tax system
over the past two decades that have benefited affluent Canadians. By
increasing taxes on “people we don’t know”, so the argument goes, we can
provide "tax relief" to hard-working, middle income Canadians and
"everyday families."<br />
<br />
This argument is problematic for several reasons. It underemphasizes
the issue of revenue and the devastating impact of tax cuts in Canada,
as well as the redistributive power of public spending. The argument
is also contradicted by the experience of the Nordic countries, which
have the most advanced welfare states and lowest levels of inequality
among OECD countries.<br />
<br />
Further, it helps to reinforce the complete illusion that taxes are,
in fact, a "burden" upon the "middle class" at all, an illusion that
furthers right wing ideological ideas and objectives. It feeds into
false 99 per cent fantasies that mislead with the facile notion that
social inequality and economic injustices can be rectified exclusively
by making "them" (big business, the rich, etc.) pay, while not
increasing taxes on, say, a household with $100,000 in annual income (a
household that would, one might note, fall well within the parameters
of the 99 per cent).<br />
<br />
As we will show, this reluctance to confront the socially negative
ramifications of tax cuts for the middle class and this capitulation to
the notion of taxes as a "burden" upon the middle class, has severely
limited the ability of government, of any ideological stripe, to
actually implement or re-implement social programs and polices that
played a direct role in lessening inequality and its consequences. The
"War on Poverty" that governments declared at the height of the post
war period of "social compromise" was actually succeeding and it was
founded and predicated upon far higher personal income taxes for
citizens of all classes.<br />
<br />
Also, these ideas underestimate the highly disparate nature of
"need" within the so-called 99 per cent. They equate the desire of a
household with an income of $100,000 a year to finance the mortgage on a
large house, or buy a second car that they feel they "need", with the
ability of a family with an income of $35,000 a year to send their kids
to "public" summer programs (which are no longer free in most
centres), to access increasingly expensive higher education, to have
properly government funded daycare, or any number of other programs
that would fundamentally alter their lives and social mobility. These
"needs" are highly different morally and ethically.<br />
<br />
Over the past two decades, neoliberalism has been consolidated as the
economic orthodoxy in Canada, at all levels of government and is now
supported by political parties of all stripes. In order to cultivate
popular support for neoliberalism, the positive role of government came
under a media and corporate assault. Public services were demonized as
overly generous and bureaucratic; the more efficient private sector
could do it better.<br />
<br />
Tax cuts were sold as a means of freeing Canadians of taxes and
giving them more money to spend. Taxes were thus not a positive
investment in society but a burden to be avoided. There developed a
culture of tax revolt that crossed class and ideological lines.<br />
As Marxist economist <a href="http://newpol.org/content/left-europe-social-democracy-crisis-euro-zone-interview-leo-panitch" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Leo Panitch put it</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
It also had to do with a tax revolt on the part of the
working-class, which starts to see less and less for itself in the
welfare state. Respectability leads this segment to increasingly deride
that working class we now call the precariat. And many of them opt --
and the unions aren’t able to stop many of them opting (to some extent
they’re even complicit in it) -- for the $200 a year they can save by
voting for a government that offers them less taxes. A portion of the
working-class opts for that. And the left was complicit in it when it
opposed, for example, the sales tax. One needed to say and should be
saying that Sweden’s value-added tax is 23 per cent. You can't have a
welfare state without it.</blockquote>
Jean Chretien and Paul Martin slayed the deficit by massively cutting
public spending, and dismantling much of the progressive state that had
been built up during the 1960s and 1970s. They then implemented
personal and corporate tax cuts and also slashed the capital gains tax,
the single most regressive tax cut in Canadian history. Tax-cutting has
continued under Stephen Harper, who cut the GST by two points,
implemented many boutique tax cuts for "middle class families" and
continued to cut corporate taxes. The effect of these tax cuts has been
to turn Canada into a more unequal and market-dominated society.<br />
<br />
It is true that the right-wing line that “there aren’t enough rich
people, so why bother taxing them?” is a self-serving one that can
easily be refuted. At the same time, we need to recognize that working
and middle class Canadians benefit far more from quality public
services, paid for by taxation, than from tax cuts.<br />
<br />
Tax cuts have also had a devastating impact at the provincial level.
While this is true across Canada, taking the example of the past
nearly twenty years of fiscal policy in Ontario, [as noted as well in part one] a key component of the
Common Sense Revolution of Mike Harris was a 30 per cent personal
income tax cut. This cut and its preservation and expansion over the
years by both the Tories and Liberals, fundamentally changed Ontario
politics. Once in place, the province could not return to previous
levels of spending for health, education, welfare and municipalities,
and no major political party has dared to suggest reversing it.<br />
<br />
The profound effects that this has had are not widely understood as
they have been not only compounded by further tax cuts, personal and
otherwise, under the provincial Liberals, but also by the fact that a
generation of complete cross-ideological subservience to the underlying
concept of tax cuts have led them to become so ingrained in our
political and economic culture that they fundamentally narrow the scope
of the possible in terms of redistributive or social program options.<br />
<br />
The tax cuts remove at a<a href="http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Ontario_Office_Pubs/bti_taxcuts.pdf" rel="nofollow"> bare minimum</a> between <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2012/03/tax-relief-and-austerity-agenda">$12 and 14 billion</a>
a year from the coffers of the government of Ontario. This
dramatically limits not only attempts to preserve social programs and
infrastructure, but basically makes it impossible to expand them in any
meaningful sense. It has also led, in Ontario and across the country,
to large increases in the structural debt of many provinces, a fact
that is significant as it means that more money is spent servicing the
debt every year, essentially meaning that it is spent paying interest
to largely foreign financial concerns as opposed to on services for
citizens.<br />
<br />
In the case of Ontario, for example, the amount spent servicing the debt is <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/ontarios-debt-burden-just-keeps-on-growing/article11689508/" rel="nofollow">$10.6 billion a year</a>,
which is greater than what the province spends on any other single
program or service, like welfare or transit, other than health and
education.<br />
<br />
After two decades of tax cutting, both the federal and provincial
governments have lost billions of dollars of revenue. By 2009, tax
cuts under both Liberal and Conservative governments since 1995 had
deprived the federal treasury of about $50 billion annually. We need
to restore the fiscal capacity of the state to pay for welfare state
measures and much needed public investments. In the current context,
calls for "tax relief" -- even if ostensibly from the Left -- are
dangerous and wrong.<br />
<br />
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, in its <a href="http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2013/03/AFB2013_MainDocument.pdf" rel="nofollow">Alternative Budget</a>
noted that raising the top federal income tax rate from 29 per cent
to 35 per cent for those earning $250,000 or more would yield about $3
billion annually. A Financial Transactions Tax would raise $4 billion,
while an inheritance tax on very large estates would yield $1.5
billion. Closing tax loopholes -- including by taxing capital gains at
the same rate as wage and salary income and by cracking down on tax
havens -- would bring in about $10 billion. <a href="http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2013/08/13/whats-a-point-of-corporate-tax-worth/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Erin Weir notes</a>
that raising the corporate tax rate to 19.5 per cent would raise $7-8
billion; restoring the 22 per cent corporate tax rate would raise
$11-12 billion. All of these are worthy proposals that should be
adopted.<br />
<br />
Yet we should not be under the illusion that these tax proposals --
or even stiffer ones -- on "people we don’t know" -- would restore the
fiscal capacity of the state that has been undermined over two decades
of neoliberalism, let alone allow the state to provide "tax relief" to
the "middle class or entirely do away with consumption taxes such as
the GST. It has been long understood that consumption taxes are an
excellent way of raising revenue, and provide a more steady revenue
stream to the treasury than taxation on income, which fluctuates during
economic downturns. According to the <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canada-lost-when-ottawa-cut-the-gst/article10271589/" rel="nofollow">Parliamentary Budget Officer</a>,
each percentage point cut to the GST costs the federal government $7
billion annually; Harper’s GST cut alone thus costs the federal
government $14 billion annually.<br />
Looking in comparative perspective, there is a strong correlation
between direct spending and equality; countries with higher taxation are
more equal. It is for this reason, that it is important to recognize
not only the redistributive function of taxation, but also its role in
financing welfare states and providing benefits that fall to low-income
and dependent workers. <a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/191500021e1t004.pdf?expires=1371591358&id=id&accname=freeContent&checksum=C5DF952D0451E2741C6E3F92F4DDB822" rel="nofollow">Taxation as a percentage</a>
of GDP in Canada in 2011 was 31 per cent, below the OCED average of
33.8 per cent. This was far below that of Sweden (44.5 per cent) and
Denmark (48.1 per cent), though ahead of the U.S. (25.1 per cent).<br />
<br />
As Hugh Mackenzie<a href="http://www.thestar.com/opinion/2009/10/26/can_we_have_an_adult_conversation_about_taxes.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> notes</a>:
"Nations that have the most highly developed systems of public
services pay for them with all kinds of taxes, including sales taxes
and payroll taxes that everyone contributes to because everyone knows
there is no such thing as a free lunch."<br />
<br />
The Nordic countries of Sweden, Denmark and Norway all have a Value
Added Tax (VAT) of around 25%, far higher than the GST/HST, which
finances the welfare state. The Nordic model is notable for its
reliance on transfers, which do the heavy lifting in terms of countering
inequality. While personal income taxes are higher than in Canada,
they also pay much higher levels of consumption and payroll taxes. Yet
the net impact of the tax-and-transfer system is progressive. Rather
massively so. In part, this is for the obvious reason that because the
affluent spend more, the net impact of consumption taxes are progressive
if they are spent on human need.<br />
<br />
Indeed, the redistributive power of public spending -- on healthcare,
education, pensions and an array of other public services -- should not
be ignored. A CCPA report, <a href="http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/canadas-quiet-bargain" rel="nofollow">Canada’s Quiet Bargain</a>,
found that more than two thirds of Canadian households receive more
than 50 per cent of their income in public services, a far better deal
than the market and far more than they pay in taxes. This was even more
true before the tax-cutting mania of the past two decades.<br />
<br />
The taxation of private consumption can fund the provision of public
goods (such as parks, public transit, public housing, etc.) that are
more ecological than private goods. Furthermore, public goods provision
has the effect of decommodification which is as important as progressive
taxation in terms of moving toward socialist relations in capitalist
societies.<br />
<br />
Beyond this there is the basic morality of attempting to put a
break on consumption. Whenever one speaks of obviously environmentally
or socially beneficial taxes or revenue tools like taxing gas or fuel
consumption or whenever one opposes populist campaigns to cut them, some
on the left will talk of examples of how "ordinary people" cannot
afford to pay them. Even when this is true, there are many other means,
such as rebates, to rectify the impact on those who are genuinely
harmed by such taxes.<br />
<br />
But what they never talk about are the wealthy homeowners who will
get gas tax cuts, the reckless or irresponsible users of cars or air
conditioning or home heating who will get tax cuts, or the reality that
if we wish to alter social behaviour and to change patterns of
consumption, taxing behaviour that is environmentally destructive or
anti-social in its implications is not regressive at all. It is one of
the primary goals of socialist politics to shift society away from the
wanton or reckless behaviour of not only corporations, but also the
consumerist society that they have manufactured. This is simply
impossible in any meaningful way without altering the behaviour of
consumers, especially those whose consumption patterns reflect their
higher incomes.<br />
<br />
The state has a fundamentally important role to play in shifting
patterns of behaviour through taxation, and when shifting people out of
cars, or encouraging them to consume less gas, electricity, water and
other resources, the progressive nature of implementing disincentives
is clear. This is even more clear if these taxes and revenue streams
are tied directly to social goals like mass transit expansion.<br />
<br />
Our consumerist society is highly destructive and the patterns of
consumption it has created are both unsustainable and morally wrong
given the consequences to the planet and the disparities that exist in
consumption globally. It will not be changed by goodwill. Next time
anyone proposes blanket tax cuts to home heating or opposes taxing car
use, ask yourself about how progressive it really is to give a tax
break to heating millionaire's mansions, or to oppose encouraging car
pooling or making sure that the person driving that empty SUV might be
made to think again if fuel taxes are high.<br />
<br />
Cutting consumption taxes on these fronts especially amounts to
little more than revenue depleting, environmentally negative proposals
that are boutique policy gifts and handouts to the upper middle and
upper classes.<br />
<br />
In terms of generating the revenue that will allow for the
possibility of real social democratic governance and that will give the
state the resources needed to implement a social agenda that will
directly benefit the overwhelming majority of citizens, the
"progressive" necessity is very clear.<br />
Higher taxes in all forms.<br />
<br />
The restoration of the GST to 7 per cent alone would significantly
offset the cuts to the public sector. Further increases to the tax are
essential components to the improvement and expansion of public
services. Transfers to lower-income households must be significantly
increased as well. We should fight for a return to more progressive
taxation, and begin with calls for higher taxes on capital and on
wealthy individuals. Given the more inegalitarian income distribution
in Canada as compared to the Nordic countries, the progressive income
tax needs to play a greater role in the tax mix. We welcome, for
instance, the call by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks for combined
federal-provincial income tax rates of 60% and 70% on incomes over
$500,000 and $2.5 million, as proposed in their book The Trouble With
Billionaires.<br />
<br />
<img src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/images/cleardot.gif" /><br />
We would propose the reversal of all income, corporate and sales
tax cuts that have been implemented in the last 20 years. We would
further propose the expansion of taxes on fossil fuel, natural gas and
electricity consumption, as well as on cars and their usage, with an
extensive rebate program to offset the impact on actually lower income
citizens. For instance, a <a href="http://www.straight.com/news/343006/marc-lee-progressive-carbon-tax-reform-win-win-opportunity-bc" rel="nofollow">progressive carbon tax</a>
could be designed so the bottom 50 percent of households would be net
beneficiaries, where 80 percent of households would receive at least
some credit and the most affluent 20 per cent that have the biggest
impact would pay the most.We would also favour revenue generating tools
like heavily taxing luxury goods.<br />
<br />
Altogether these proposals would generate tens of billions of dollars in extra revenue annually for the government.<br />
<br />
We would suggest that this be used to build, to start, a national
daycare program, a national housing strategy, free pharmacare, eye care
& dental programs through transfers and incentives to the
provinces, an anti-poverty strategy, a public transit infrastructure
campaign and a transition to a 'green' economy as well as to reassert
the state's role in the economy and in social justice in the many other
ways that having these resources would allow.<br />
<br />
As leftists we can fantasize about a coming revolution that will
make taxation unnecessary and wipe away the state altogether. At the
other end we can pretend that relatively minor tax increases on small
groups of people or on corporations will solve everything like manna
from heaven.<br />
<br />
Or we can grow up.<br />
<br />
<b>Part Three: The fallacy of corporate taxes in a neo-liberal context</b> <br />
<br />
<div class="body">
"Make the corporations pay!"<br />
<br />
It is a slogan that sounds good, and with which I would fully agree,
under conditions where "corporations," or, more accurately, those who
control them, were actually paying. But this is not the case in the
debate in Canada today where many on the left are falsely proclaiming
corporate taxes as an alternative to <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2013/08/its-still-time-adult-conversation-about-taxes">increasing personal taxes</a>,
even on the wealthy, and seem to display little understanding that
corporate tax rates have nothing at all to do with inequality socially
and are not at all a tax on wealth or the wealthy.<br />
<br />
When Thomas Mulcair <a href="http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/10/09/ndp-would-raise-corporate-tax-rate-to-pre-tory-level-tom-mulcair-says/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">juxtaposes his "plan"</a>
to increase corporate taxes as a "progressive" alternative to
Toronto-Centre candidate Linda McQuaig's previously stated notion that
taxes should be increased as well on Canada's wealthiest individuals, he
is fundamentally juxtaposing McQuaig's plan that might accomplish
something to a plan that will accomplish absolutely nothing.<br />
<br />
The essential fallacy of mythologizing corporate taxes in the present
context lies in the fact that, unless you agree with the U.S. Supreme
Court, corporations are not people. By definition, if government taxes a
corporation, ultimately some individuals, somewhere, pay the bill.
Corporations cannot pay anything, any more than a house you own pays its
own property tax. Given that corporations can, will and must extract
the money to pay their tax bills any number of ways, from increasing
prices, to attempting to force down worker wages and benefits, to
finding creative ways to reduce nominal profit (which includes actually
increasing CEO salaries or privileges, which are a "cost"), in the
absence of a campaign to dramatically increase personal taxes on the
managerial and CEO class of corporations or to re-adjust social power
relations through the threat of socialization of assets and/or price
controls, the net effect of corporate taxes, in terms of income
levelling, will often be either zero or regressive.<br />
<br />
It sounds radical, and is therefore appealing to centrists who wish
to nominally appear radical, but its impact on inequality is essentially
non-existent for the very simple reason that inequality is driven by
disparities in the incomes that exist between individuals. Inequality
is facilitated by corporations and corporate actions, but it is
manifested in the difference between people and people alone.<br />
<br />
This exact inequality exists within corporations themselves.
Corporations are comprised, as a general rule, of workers, managers and
upper management. Given the nature of the capitalist economy, the way
corporations will seek to lessen the impact of higher taxation will not
be at the expense of their CEOs.<br />
<br />
It is not corporations who own multiple mansions, live lavish
lifestyles or indulge in tremendous decadence, it is wealthy people who
do so. The disparity between rich and poor is not between rich and poor
companies, but rather between rich people and those living working-class
lifestyles or those actually living in poverty.<br />
<br />
<div class="block block-openx" id="block-openx-6">
<div class="content">
<div id="beacon_4bec3a0403" style="left: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; visibility: hidden;">
<img alt="" height="0" src="http://ads.rabble.ca/www/delivery/lg.php?bannerid=1666&campaignid=948&zoneid=52&loc=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Frabble.ca%2Fblogs%2Fbloggers%2Fmichael-laxer%2F2013%2F11%2Ffallacy-corporate-taxes-neo-liberal-context&cb=4bec3a0403" style="height: 0px; width: 0px;" width="0" /></div>
</div>
</div>
Taxes on corporations, in isolation, separated from higher tax rates
on the wealthy individuals who own, profit from and run the
corporations, act as little more than waypoints to collecting taxes
on corporate workers or customers.<br />
<br />
"Progressive" politicians, New Democrats, Liberals and Democrats
alike, like the corporate tax narrative when it suits them precisely
because it does not threaten any actual people at all, whether it is
Galen Weston or one of his Loblaws cashiers. They can claim to be
holding the banner of redistributive justice high. To be defending the
mythical "99 percent."<br />
<br />
Yet these taxes can only have an impact on inequality if you assume,
barring personal tax increases, that corporations will pass the "costs"
of higher taxes along, out of a sense of social justice, to their
corporate boardrooms. This is, frankly, a counterintuitive and bizarre
assumption for leftists to make.<br />
They will not. They will, as they always do, make their workers pay.<br />
<br />
We need to move beyond the false narrative of so-called "corporate
taxes" as a solution under capitalism and, instead, to advocate for both
a dramatic increase in personal taxes on the wealthy and the upper
middle class with a corresponding fight to socialize corporate
assets. We need to tie this to an entrenchment of union and workers'
rights and democratization of the economy.<br />
<br />
It is time to actually make those who benefit from the corporations
pay. By higher taxes on capital gains, by higher income taxes on the
wealthy and managerial class, by inheritance taxes, by expanding the
legal rights and powers of workers.<br />
<br />
By advancing expropriation and radically new ownership models.<br />
<br />
Until then, when it comes to understanding how to tackle income
inequality and its consequences, it is the pre-by-election Linda McQuaig
who was right and it is the desperate-for-power NDP leader Thomas
Mulcair who is wrong.</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-80763870645035923132013-11-14T18:11:00.000-08:002013-11-14T18:11:56.996-08:00The myth of the leftist, feminist, anti-racist, elitist<strong>This article was published on </strong><a href="http://feministcurrent.com/" target="_blank"><strong>Feminist Current</strong></a><br />
<br />
In an act of what has to be acknowledged as tremendous, though in some respects entirely typical, rich famous male hubris, Joss Whedon, of comic book and <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</em> note, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDmzlKHuuoI" target="_blank">recently gave a talk</a> in which he proclaimed that feminism is a term that he objects to and that he feels should be replaced because, in essence, he does not like it. He does not like it because it is supposedly at variance with his idea that equality already exists as a “natural condition” or for some pseudo-philosophical reasons that are never really clear other than that, frankly, they are rather silly, it must be noted, coming from a man.<br />
<br />
The sheer idiocy of a wealthy straight male (or any male of any kind) telling women how they should frame the language of their own liberation movement, however, did not prevent large numbers of liberal men (and, of course, some women) like CBC Toronto’s Metro Morning host Matt Galloway on air, from gushing over it, thrilled, apparently, to see yet another in a long line of alleged male “feminists” talking down to women about just what it is that they are doing “wrong” that men could tell them how to do better.<br />
<br />
Like abandoning the very term feminism for starters.<br />
<br />
This would all be Buffy-style darkly humorous were it not for the fact that it is indicative of a far broader problem within both the left and society as a whole.<br />
<br />
The problem being that, somehow, the notion has arisen that not only are the people living oppression, like women under Patriarchy, not allowed to frame their own discourse without condescension from those who are actually members of the oppressive group socially, historically and right now, but also that people in struggle for liberation against injustice and fighting systemic oppression are regularly labeled as “elitist” or as part of an “Ivory Tower” for doing so.<br />
<br />
Often such resistance is called out as “purity” and as an example of “identity politics” that, apparently, indicates that one is an “intellectual” or “academic” who is out of touch with all of those supposed “salt-of-the-earth” leftists.<br />
<br />
There are few better examples than the sad and extreme exuberance and exultation that greeted the <a href="http://gawker.com/russell-brand-may-have-started-a-revolution-last-night-1451318185" target="_blank">BBC interview with Russell Brand</a> that some heralded, rather farcically, as the start of a new social discourse or revolution; a notion so facile that it can only be a comment on the left’s desperation that it would actually be believed by anyone.<br />
<br />
Russell Brand is at least as misogynist in his personal conduct as rape anthem “star” Robin Thicke, if not worse in every meaningful real world way, but apparently, for some, making a quasi revolutionary rant on the BBC (that the BBC then promptly shared everywhere, of course) absolves one of having to be held accountable for it.<br />
<br />
This is an odd version of leftism.<br />
<br />
When, entirely rightly, feminist activists and others pointed out that the notion that one should take inspiration from the ranting of a well established misogynist with a long history of ugly, exploitative and violent behaviour towards women, (by his own <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-494606/Sleazy-sad-self-obsessed-Russell-Brand-hero-times.html" target="_blank">acknowledgment</a>), is highly problematic, they were often met with the standard line that they were being “elitist”, “putting identity first” or that they were exhibiting what was an example of <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/11/08/russell-brand-the-posh-left-and-the-politics-of-class/" target="_blank">“posh” leftism</a>, as if any such thing actually exists.<br />
<br />
This came from many of the usual suspects of sexist “leftism”, the allegedly revolutionary exponents of the tired old “class first” line, for example, but it was inherently ridiculous given that they were defending the rather minor, in political terms, outburst of a rich, abusive and atrociously self-indulgent white male that was then widely and wildly promoted by the very media that he had supposedly “bested” and called out on his way to a gig as guest editor of the New Statesman! If it is “elitist” to identify, question and condemn behaviour and opinion like Brand’s towards women, behaviour that reflects centuries of oppressive and violent entitlement and social power, and if it is allegedly counter to the interests of the “left” to do so, then there really is no left.<br />
<br />
This is hardly an isolated example. Regularly one hears from pundits and politicians, and certainly not only those on the right, that any number of people are now part of the “elite”. Variously unions, anti-poverty activists, anti-racist activists, people of colour, First Nations and aboriginal peoples, LGBT groups, women and feminists are all commonly described as “special interest” groups, despite the obviously reactionary background to this.<br />
<br />
It turns actual elitism on its head.<br />
<br />
This is going on, right now, with the entire Rob Ford fiasco (the misreading of which by the Left deserves to be the focus of an entirely separate article from this one). Even here we find not only the right but also many leftists framing the Ford phenomenon as a revolt against “elites”; a notion that is demonstrably false. Never mind that his abusive behaviour to women is constantly overshadowed and even ignored in the discourse.<br />
<br />
There are very real elites. Industrial, financial and commercial capitalists are an elite. Hollywood stars, comedians, sports players, etc., are certainly an elite and an almost neo-feudal one in the way that they are fawned over by sycophantic “handlers” and servants. The capitalist managerial class and professional upper middle class, including large numbers of the so-called 99%, are an elite. There are others. Never mind whites and men, the beneficiaries of centuries, and sometimes millennia, of systemic privilege, acknowledged and unacknowledged, spoken or otherwise.<br />
<br />
A generation ago, as a part of their assault on the gains of working people, women, people of colour, the LGBT community and others, the reactionary right created all of the terms like “Champagne Socialist” or “latte drinker” that are tossed about in an attempt to turn social relations around and make out leftists, feminists and community activists and liberation theories and movements as the new elites. They made it seem as if talking about the injustices and consequences of systemic oppression was an academic exercise or a function of “privilege”.<br />
<br />
It is not. Misogyny, racism, homophobia and poverty are a violent and oppressive reality every single day. These institutions of oppression abuse, violate and kill women, people living in poverty, aboriginal and First Nations peoples and members of the LGBT community daily. They cause tremendous and demonstrable inequality and suffering in the lives of real people. They are not an abstraction, and, unlike Mayor Ford in Toronto, for example, people living under the weight of these oppressions are often not given first chances, let alone second ones.<br />
<br />
It is bad enough that these views and terms are to be found within society and the forces of reaction. It is even worse that we use these arguments and terms ourselves in our debates and disagreements within the left. Instead of exposing and combatting institutionalized oppression within our own leftist movements, when using this language or logic of reaction activists who do allow them to continue without being confronted and minimize their fundamental importance to the struggle for human liberation. Far from “distracting” from the struggle, you cannot have a radical socialist agenda of any meaning without taking a radical stance against all of these oppressions.<br />
<br />
No matter what disagreements leftists may have, it is not elitist to fight racism, misogyny or homophobia. It is not elitist to stand for union or worker’s rights. It is not elitist to acknowledge systemic oppression or injustice.<br />
<br />
In reality there is no such thing as a leftist or anti-oppression “elitism”. It is a right wing myth.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-88797011035208183652013-11-06T16:39:00.001-08:002013-11-06T16:39:23.918-08:00It is time for a war on the car Every weekday when I get up and take my kids out the door to start their trek into school, we turn off of the street we live on and onto 26th St. in South Etobicoke, a suburb of Toronto. This leads us to Lake Shore Blvd. W., where we can either choose to walk in or to catch a bus in bad weather.<br />
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At the northeast corner of 26th and Lake Shore there is always a long line of generally impatient drivers, queued up in their cars, pickup trucks or SUVs, (almost always, one might note, alone in their cars) idling while waiting to get to the drive-through Tim Horton's window to order and collect whatever pseudo-Canadian (the chain is owned by Americans) fast food, horrible coffee, "daybreak" starter that they apparently require for the rest of their journey.<br />
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When we arrive at the end of our walk or bus ride, this time at Dwight Ave. and Lake Shore, just down the street from their school, there again we are greeted with a line of cars, this time waiting for their turn at a McDonald's window, doing exactly the same thing.<br />
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These two drive-throughs are bookends of our relatively short commute. They are replicated many thousands of times across Canada, let alone North America. They also speak volumes as to what our consumerist, car centered society is about, and how its culture of immediate self-gratification and absurd fixation on convenience is both profoundly harmful and a function of a right wing mythology and adoration of the terribly destructive concept of suburbia.<br />
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One has to realize that the very large majority of people driving to these windows, to work or driving their kids to school, do not "have" to do this, they chose to. As a person who has never driven a car and who has commuted to university and then work (and these were not short commutes) by public transit his entire life, I can tell you first hand that no one living in the City of Toronto needs to drive at all. Even now the transit infrastructure exists that makes this, for the vast majority of citizens, unnecessary. Never mind that so many trips in cars are short ones, driving children to school or driving up the street to get groceries, and are entirely based around convenience as opposed to "need".<br />
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Driving in a dense urban setting is a lifestyle choice that has been re-framed as a necessity and this re-framing flows from distinctly North American ideas of convenience, independence and "freedom" that have also laid the foundation for the creation of the suburban lifestyle; a lifestyle tied directly into the middle class or pseudo-middle class fixation on home ownership that has driven the appalling growth of the environmental and social blight of urban sprawl, backed as it is by willing governments who have <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/nightmare-main-st-cmhc-and-canadian-housing-bubble">facilitated it through dangerously loose credit rules</a>.<br />
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It is no coincidence that this is so easily tied to a fast food lifestyle. What is better than driving, by yourself, in your car, immune to any contact with other people outside of your sphere, and being able to pull right up to a tiny window and have a minimum wage worker hand you a bag of prefabricated, bland and homogenous "food", often that has a terrible environmental price tag attached to it, without the need to ever even emerge from this pollution spewing cocoon?<br />
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The car is, in the end, something of a metaphor for our general unwillingness to actually take action to curb our reckless and disastrous levels of personal and social consumption. While it has become somewhat fashionable to place the blame for society and the environment's ills solely at the doors of impersonal corporations, it is rather meaningless to do so. Personal consumption, after all, is what feeds corporate profit and rapaciousness as much as anything else, and it is impossible to seriously critique or seek to mitigate the tremendously destructive effects of the North American and Western consumerist model without attempting to modify or change the patterns of consumption of consumers.</div>
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In addition, consumption, by definition, increases as you go up the income scale; in fact, rather drastically so. Those at the very bottom of the income pyramid can hardly be called "consumers" in the modern sense at all. Their "consumption" is limited to the very bare necessities. When we speak of "consumers" as opposed to citizens, we are already leaving the poor out of the discussion in any meaningful way, and discussions of making life more "affordable" for "poor" suburban drivers are, in actuality, aimed squarely and entirely at the middle and even upper middle class.<br />
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In the case of the Right this is reflected in the explicit embrace of the icon of the car, as most obviously evidenced by Rob Ford and his "fight" to end the non-existent "war on the car". His allegation was that this war on the car dominated civic policy in Toronto, Canada's largest urban centre, despite the fact that it is one of the most car friendly cities in the developed world, with basically no tolls, forced or encouraged car pool lanes or driving restrictions of any kind.<br />
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This, in fact, is true across Canada, <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-lags-in-use-of-road-tolls-1.1012628" rel="nofollow">which lags far behind the rest of the world </a>in attempting to curb driving through disincentives to it like tolls and car pooling lanes.<br />
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Far from being an anti-driver nightmare, (other than the congestion caused by cars themselves), Toronto exceeds even Los Angeles in its devotion to catering to the whims of the car driver. Ontario's Liberal government has greatly exacerbated this by, despite some positive moves to enact disincentives on drivers, catering to Ford's inane subway plan in Scarborough and by having facilitated the destruction of the "Transit City" plan implemented by the previous Miller administration. It caved to the pro-subway lobby that won over many Torontonians by arguing that LRTs and streetcars were bad for cars.<br />
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Far more insidious, however, is the embrace of this by the "left", specifically, in the case of Toronto, the Ontario NDP, who see suburban car drivers as an obvious target for their new "pocketbook populism", as evidenced by their <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2013/03/perils-populism-andrea-horwath-taxes-road-tolls-and-war-car">outright rejection of imposing some revenue generating fees on drivers to fund public transit</a>, as well as with their fixation on <a href="http://jagmeetsingh.ca/" rel="nofollow">"standing for Ontario drivers",</a> a phrase they actually use.<br />
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This is tied to the ONDP's desire to replace truly redistributive politics with tokenism that sounds as if it is aimed at the disadvantaged, and that takes the rhetoric of radicalism and uses it to fight for meaningless and often reactionary tax cuts or an opposition to fees that, in fact, benefits the upper middle class more than anyone and that undermines directly and basically the ability of any government to create a public transit infrastructure of sufficient density in Toronto to shift car users onto transit. This infrastructure would obviously be in the interests of the urban working class and the poor.<br />
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As we will see, even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has acknowledged that the fixation of Western and some developing nations with subsidizing the energy and fossil fuel consumption of their citizens and corporations not only has a negative effect on the environment, but also directly benefits the better off at the expense of the poor.<br />
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To begin to see how, one has to realize just how extensive these subsidies are. As a business blogger on sustainability, <a href="http://www.desmog.ca/2013/05/10/just-how-much-exactly-are-you-paying-subsidize-fossil-fuels" rel="nofollow">Dennis Wong noted</a>,<br />
<blockquote>
What the general public is mostly unaware of is the fact that our energy prices are subsidized prices. When we pay $50 at the gas pump, the gas we got is actually worth more than $50. When we pay $100 for our hydro bill, the energy we used is actually worth more than $100. Why is that? It’s because the government financially subsidizes the energy we use. Although this practice has been taking place for years, most people in the general public don’t realize the energy prices we consumers pay are below market levels.</blockquote>
Further...<br />
<blockquote>
According to the IMF study (and the additional data they provided to me) Canada incurred $26 billion on energy subsidies in 2011. The Canadian government’s revenues were $665 billion in that year. In other words, 4% of the government revenues were spent on energy subsidies. (Note that the IMF calculation uses U.S. dollar, but the Canadian dollar was at <a href="http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/exchange/exchange-rates-in-pdf/" rel="nofollow">virtual parity</a> with the U.S. dollar over the year of 2011, with $1 USD equaled $0.989 CAD).</blockquote>
These subsidies, which amounted to a total of $787 per year for every man, woman and child in the country, clearly and self-evidently are of greater benefit to those who consume more energy, from corporations to the wealthy. This makes them inherently regressive.<br />
Further, however, this money is not being spent on other things, like mass transit infrastructure, education, health care, etc, which would directly benefit lower income earners. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/business/imf-calls-for-curbing-fuel-subsidies.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">As the IMF noted</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
Developing and industrialized countries should rein in energy subsidies that totaled $1.9 trillion in 2011 to ease budgetary pressures and free resources for public spending in areas like education and health care, <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/international_monetary_fund/index.html?inline=nyt-org" rel="nofollow" title="More articles about the International Monetary Fund.">International Monetary Fund</a> economists said in a research paper published Wednesday.</blockquote>
and<br />
<blockquote>
The paper said that subsidies were expensive for governments, and that, instead of helping consumers, they detracted from increased investment in infrastructure, education and health care, which would help the poor more directly.</blockquote>
Put bluntly, "Subsidies have been a counterproductive way to help the poor because they are more beneficial to the rich, who consume more energy, the fund said".<br />
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This also plays out in practice with all attempts to make life "easier" by enabling consumption. Consumption increases with income, it does not decrease. Unless it is tied into a broader anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist and radical reorganization of taxation, efforts to ease the costs, taxes and fees associated with things like gas or fossil fuel consumption will benefit the better off far more than those of lower incomes, and this explains why the Tories in Ontario also oppose such taxes.<br />
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Worse, though, there is a desperate and very real need to curb consumption, especially fossil fuel and energy consumption, in the wealthiest countries in the world, like Canada and the United States. Our consumption patterns, both by individuals and corporations, are not only unsustainable but are also literally destroying the planet and directly killing people.<br />
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In fact, a study released just three days ago at the University of British Columbia found that traffic related pollution is nine times deadlier than car crashes and that it has a terribly negative effect on quality of life. <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/health/pollution+nine+times+deadlier+than+crashes+study+finds/9061897/story.html" rel="nofollow">The report noted</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
Air pollution is mainly associated with asthma, other lung conditions and cardiovascular diseases. Exhaust fumes from diesel, a known carcinogen, are tied to lung cancer. A 2008 federal report estimated that on an annual basis, there are 306 premature deaths, 1,158 hospital admissions, and 8,763 emergency department visits related to air pollution in B.C.<br />
Nearly a third of the country’s population lives within 500 metres of a highway or 100 metres from a major urban road, exposing them to toxic fumes from more than 15,000 cars per day, according to the CMAJ report. Such air pollution triggers “inflammation, oxidative stress and imbalance in the autonomic nervous system” which includes heart rhythm disturbances.</blockquote>
As noted, "The article is timely, coming as it does on the heels of last week’s declaration by the World Health Organization that air pollution is a carcinogen". The report also suggests the use of disincentives to get people out of cars, such as imitating highly successful tolls like the one in place in London, England.<br />
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What this suggests, more broadly, is that not only are attempts to make driving more affordable highly regressive as social and tax policy, but that they actually help to contribute to the deaths of many of those they are allegedly meant to help.<br />
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A consumerist social model, even while providing the thin veneer of trickle down luxury to citizens in lower income brackets, is, in reality, centred around the consumption of those in middle and higher income brackets. They have to fuel it or it would collapse, for rather obvious reasons. This is done in part through the <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2012/09/politics-middle-class-hegemony-and-growth-inequality">extension of "easy credit" to the middle class</a>, but also through the use of government to facilitate consumption via subsidies and the lifting of disincentives even when this consumption is highly destructive.<br />
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It is, in fact, time for a "war on the car" socially and in major urban centres like Toronto especially. The illusion that the patterns of car use that exist in Canada and North America are sustainable economically, environmentally or morally is reckless and dangerous.<br />
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<a href="http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canada-loves-cars-driving-solo-most-popular-way-to-get-to-work-1.1342244" rel="nofollow">Four-fifths of commuters in Canada do so by car, and the majority of these drive by themselves</a>. The notion that this is an acceptable situation is truly wrongheaded. So is the demonstrably false notion that people "have no choice" but to do this. In urban centres where mass transit has been expanded and/or where disincentives to driving have been put in place, people have gotten out of their cars and, horror-of-horrors, used transit!<br />
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The idea that we should not be taking serious steps to force this to change through road tolls, enforced car pooling lanes, higher gas taxes, and ending the subsidization of energy consumption, and using these funds to build mass transit networks as well as in more directly redistributive ways is profoundly reactionary.<br />
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More significantly, however, time is also running out. The consumerist, suburban, car driven, fast food, disposable goods society cannot exist indefinitely. The resources that drive it and the ability of our climate to endure it are finite.<br />
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If we do not change now, and if we do not take action, however hard and initially unpopular with some, the planet will ultimately force us to anyway. Then it will be too late, and making it more affordable for someone to drive, by themselves, wherever and whenever they want will seem a supremely misguided fantasy of a terribly decadent past.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-87551206411069284702013-10-17T17:43:00.004-07:002013-10-17T17:43:38.668-07:00It's enough to make you sick: Sue-Ann Levy, the Toronto Sun and the attack on workers Sue-Ann Levy, the perpetually grotesque enemy of working people that the <em>Toronto Sun</em> pays good money to run down those who actually work for a living, <a href="http://www.torontosun.com/2013/10/15/making-taxpayers-sick" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">penned an opinion piece recently</a> spouting the Canadian Taxpayers Federation line that Ontario government employees are somehow abusing the system by calling in sick more than do their private sector counterparts.<br />
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She spouts a bunch of statistics that, hopefully correctly, show that workers who are able to, do in fact call in sick, though she frames this, of course, as workers somehow "shirking" work because the government or unions "let them".<br />
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It is part of a wide ranging, right-wing attack on the very idea that workers have a right to anything at all and is part of an ongoing attempt to facilitate a culture that regards labour standards and laws requiring employers to act with basic decency as somehow undermining capitalism and freedom.<br />
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This is regularly done by attempting to pit workers subject to direct abuse by their bosses against those who have at least some protection as a result of unions or regulations passed by governments.<br />
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It is time, quickly and unapologetically, to put this right-wing and terribly destructive, damaging and dangerous threat to public health to rest once and for all.<br />
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The problem is not that public sector workers are taking off too many sick days. The problem is that private sector workers are being forced to work when they are sick.<br />
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As with so many things in this era of reaction, a propaganda campaign is being waged to make it out that somehow "calling in sick" more is a sign of privilege and entitlement as opposed to pointing out the fact that some people are forced to work despite actually being sick.<br />
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If you are not protected by a union contract or if you do not work for the government the odds are you will be forced to work when sick, to work with people who are sick and to face firing or no pay when you are so sick that you stand up and are unwilling to cave into the pressure that your private sector employer will place on you to work when you are sick.<br />
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You are, all too often, not only working while sick, you are making your fellow workers sick and, if you are in a service job, making the public sick, even entitled columnists like Sue Ann Levy.<br />
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Anyone who has actually worked in a non-union, lower paying, private sector environment knows that sick pay almost always is not a reality, that employers regularly pressure workers to work when they are too ill to, that workers will work when they should not as they have no financial choice, that parents of sick children will be forced to take their children to work, exposing their co-workers to whatever the child is ill with, because they cannot afford to and do not have the right to take a sick day at home with an ill child.<br />
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I worked for a private transportation company through most of the '90s. I had a boss whose understanding of labour relations was that because he allegedly came in when he was sick, so should all his workers, despite the fact that they made a fraction of what he did and despite the fact they had no ownership in the company at all.<br />
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Sick pay simply did not exist. If you called in sick, you lost a day's pay.<br />
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Given that few were making anything approaching a solid wage, a day's pay was a lot.<br />
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That is the reality of why private sector workers call in sick less. It is not because they get sick less. It is not because union or public sector workers are more "entitled". It is because private sector workers with no protection are terrified of losing their jobs or not getting paid and know full well that they will lose them if they call in sick too often.<br />
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The Sue-Ann Levys and<em> Toronto Suns</em> enable the worst sadism of capitalism. They seem to think the problem is not that most workers have no serious right to refuse to work when ill, but rather that some do.<br />
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It's enough to make you sick.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-90476227640800747242013-10-17T17:41:00.000-07:002013-10-17T17:41:05.927-07:00Dexter, democracy and disappointment: Why leftist principles matterDespite the hand-wringing of <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/gerry-caplan/2013/10/after-dexter-loss-can-ndp-ever-win-canada">some commentators </a>and the bewilderment of NDP types that one would expect to be bewildered, there is really no mystery to the fact that the Dexter government not only failed to get reelected, but in fact got crushed.<br />
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It disappointed the people.<br />
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Aside from all of its attempts, from almost the first day it took power, to dampen expectations and to tell citizens that they should only anticipate "good government," they still disappointed the people because, after in some cases decades of dreaming and of fighting against all the odds for a party that said it would do politics differently and that said it was fundamentally of a different type than the Liberals and Conservatives, in reality the Dexter government proved to be essentially more of the same. It often placed corporate interest ahead of public good, and after a four-year term did not deliver a single reform or change of any substantive or lasting meaning that would inspire anyone at all.<br />
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Nothing. And it proudly intended to do this. It joins a long line of "social democratic" governments both in Canada and elsewhere that have sought to set the bar low, and have gone even lower. Governments whose minuscule "accomplishments," in so far as they even exist, are purely ephemeral, in that they will be simply swept away by whoever replaces them in government if they are so inclined.<br />
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Since these governments do not even attempt serious change, they do not accomplish it.<br />
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There is more that is at work than simply trying to "govern for everyone," be good "managers" or the nausea-inducing mantra of "practical" change, a type of slogan that means citizens can expect no real changes at all. One is forced, over time, to suspect that the reality is that social democratic politicians become the same prisoners of the desire to be in power, to lead and to hold and maintain positions that pay exceptionally well as do all other politicians.<br />
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There is an unfortunate transformation that people often undergo when they rise to positions of influence, power or, frankly, higher salaries, within what are supposed to be leftist or "progressive" unions, parties or organizations. This is especially true if they are elected to positions as MPs or MPPs, with the staff and financial reward that accompany that. Old ideals are easy to sacrifice on the alter of a salary of $160,000 a year and with the added claim that one is, after all, "getting things done."<br />
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Without being entirely cognizant of the process, "progressives" and leftists, once ensconced in positions of power, begin to adopt an attitude and a style of doing things that they would have laughed at and fought against had they seen it in others. Indeed, in the case of the NDP sycophants, you often see behaviour excused that they would have condemned in those who acted similarly or identically within the Liberal or Conservative Parties.<br />
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Among many appalling recent examples, the case of the nomination of <a href="http://audrawilliams.me/2013/07/08/its-my-party-and-ill-cry-if-i-want-to/" rel="nofollow">Adam Giambrone </a>for a by-election by the Ontario NDP stands as a particularly egregious one, embodying the worst excesses of a<a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2013/08/08/ndp_matriarch_quits_party_to_protest_giambrones_nomination_win.html" rel="nofollow"> seemingly rigged process,</a> as well as blatant disregard for the left's supposed goals of trying to redress systemic racism and sexism.<br />
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Those going along with such practices cannot then claim any difference from others in terms of these principles. If principles like fighting systemic injustice are non-negotiable socially, then they have to be internally within our own organizations as well. Otherwise, there is no commitment to them that will not be sacrificed for political or personal gain.<br />
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Leader-focused, now more than ever, and hierarchically based, the left has parties and organizations with power structures and managerial "result" driven goals that are not only entirely analogous to those of the capitalists and bourgeois society as a whole, but that also subvert democracy internally by by their very nature facilitating the creation of a "social democratic" political class.<br />
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Due to the growth of bureaucratic elites and the subsequent institutionalization of these elites, organizations of the left often have their ideals subverted from within. This results in the all-too-familiar reality of leftist parties, unions or organizations developing de facto leadership cults, discarding meaningful internal democracy (and any organization in which the rank-and-file members are not a constant threat to those in power, and are not able to easily replace them, is neither democratic nor truly committed to ideals of equality or leftism), and failing to live up to the ideals that they foresee socially in theory but seem to be afraid of or eschew when applied within.<br />
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We begin, as the left, to fail by becoming what we purport to oppose, regardless of our continued radical rhetoric, or lack thereof. Instead of trying to build new collective governance structures that are democratically inclusive and that seek to actively combat parliamentary ossification, centralization and bureaucratization, we simply mimic the power pyramids of the past and call it by new names.<br />
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It is the left's perpetual dilemma and its persistent albatross. We talk a good game in theory and yet play the same one in practice that is played by all the other hierarchically driven embodiments of bourgeois power.<br />
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In fact, by demanding a form of loyalty that is based on an alleged need to stand united against the right, corporations and the forces of reaction, a need that is true for social classes and groups under assault by the corporate agenda but that is falsely used to demand "solidarity" with a leadership and internal power grouping, left parties and organizations are often far less tolerant of dissent and apply far fewer brakes on the power of the leader and their immediate handlers than one would anticipate from people who claim to be fighting for equality.<br />
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When the goal is to achieve and maintain power at any cost, the cost will be principle. This is not an abstraction, though it is often presented as such. It is often framed as if "intellectuals" or "malcontents" are somehow simply sitting around whining. But that is nonsense, because in this case "principle" means the fight to end tremendous social injustices like sexism, racism, colonialism, inequality and poverty. These injustices destroy and impact the lives of millions of citizens every single day.<br />
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There is nothing abstract about it. When "left" governments fail to act on these issues in any meaningful sense, they facilitate this suffering. It is that simple. One can make excuses all one wants. But excuses are no different when painted in orange.<br />
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Even worse, when left governments (or parties, unions or organizations) fail to act according to their ideals they do something more insidious; they feed into the present right wing culture and climate of disillusion and indifference towards activism, politics and government. They play into the reactionary rhetoric of all those who say, "It makes no difference, they are all the same anyway," and into the notion that government is irrelevant to the lives of the people. They play into the notion that everyone is equally morally corrupted at the end of the day.<br />
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There are few greater enemies to the struggle to achieve a new society than disillusionment among those who need it. Unlike the other obstacles we on the left face, however, this disillusionment is almost entirely of our own making.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-46811714281914695462013-09-26T21:24:00.001-07:002013-09-29T07:59:29.821-07:00Reverse "Podcast": Paul Elam, "Agent Green" and Disorientation 2013 at U of T.One of the most predictably salient features of hate movements is how completely out-of-touch with reality their narratives are. They depend on the big lies, and their followers believing them, to survive.<br />
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Sometimes, however, their attempts to stretch their false persecution complexes (and all hate movements depend on these...as they have to assert the absurd idea that those who are victimized, be it people of colour, Jews, women or whoever is the scapegoat, are actually those who are doing the victimizing) are even more than usually farcical and ridiculous. <br />
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A good example is this the recent <a href="http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/notes-on-secret-toronto-feminist-meeting-923/" target="_blank">A Voice for Men (AVfM)</a> "outrage" at a panel that I was a part of this past Monday.<br />
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Organized by OPIRG TO<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/653487854662277/" target="_blank"> this panel </a>sought to combat the attempts by misogynists, in alliance with the American <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/spring/misogyny-the-sites" target="_blank">based hate site AVfM</a>, to establish so-called men's rights clubs on campuses in Canada and <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2012/12/mens-rights-movement-cafe-university-toronto" target="_blank">specifically at U of T</a>. They have done this under the guise of a supposedly "moderate" group, <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2012/10/lies-our-fathers-told-us-mens-rights-movement-and-campus-based-" target="_blank">CAFE</a>, that now has plans to have a speaker on campus who thinks declining male enrollment in university can be partly attributed to attempts <a href="http://metronews.ca/news/toronto/806630/mens-rights-speaker-claims-anti-rape-talks-discourage-men-from-higher-education/" target="_blank">to fight rape on campus by women</a>. Seriously. <br />
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These same groups are planning <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/538284516227056/?context=create" target="_blank">an event at Queen's Park</a> on Saturday that seeks in part to expose the "fact" that "<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show">men are subject to rampant false sexual, Domestic Violence and rape allegations".</span></span></span><br />
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<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show">But, it seems the <a href="http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/notes-on-secret-toronto-feminist-meeting-923/" target="_blank">"scoop" of the week</a> for them, was their "infiltration" of a "secret feminist meeting" by some coward that they have called "Agent Green". Honestly. It would be hard to make this up! </span></span></span><br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></span></span>
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show">Of course, as I have linked to above, this "secret" meeting was actually a highly publicized event that was advertised all over U of T campus as well as online through social media and that was open to the public with no restrictions at all. They have a very odd definition of "secret". Due to the fact that women at U of T have been intimidated and harassed by these groups, the organizers requested that it not be recorded; a request that we all suspected would not be and that was not, respected. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show">"Agent Green", like James Bond, managed to make his way into the dangerous public "secret" assembly and, well no doubt soiling himself with fear the whole time, recorded a public event that had a virtually full capacity attendance. What a brave guy! Well done!</span></span></span><br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></span></span>
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show">So, as it is now all over Facebook and Twitter and there is no difference anymore, here without further ado is the recording of the "secret" feminist meeting. It will make it very clear, from the excellent panel and audience discussion why we need to fight the Men's Rights Movement and its radically reactionary agenda. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show">Please note that you have to skip to the seven minute mark. It would seem that Agent Green is something of an amateur and was too scared to turn the recording device on in the public hall itself. So the first part are sounds of him breathing heavily and his pants swishing while he set up his sting. That took real courage.</span></span></span><br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></span></span>
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show">The rest is a fantastic discussion and panel dealing with the MRA. Glad it is "out there"!</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show">Please note: The sound quality sucks, which likely has something to do with the idiocy of how it was recorded. The points come through well though. Thanks "Agent Green". Your role playing at being a CSIS guy paid off well. You are going to get our ideas out to thousands of people that would have never heard them. </span></span></span><br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span></span></span>
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show">Original Description:</span></span></span><br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"><b><span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show">7:00-9:00-PANEL<br /> What’s Wrong with the MRA? The Problem of Men’s Rights Organizing<br />
Speakers: Steph Guthrie (Academy of the Impossible), Jeff Perera (White
Ribbon Project), Ashleigh Ingle (Graduate Student Union, University of
Toronto), Michael Laxer (Rabble)<br /> Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, room 2211<br /> 252 Bloor Street West<br /> <br />
Men’s Rights Activists are cropping up at North American universities,
building their “social movement” under the guise of promoting free
speech and equality. In actuality, what the MRAs promote and peddle is
anti-feminist and misogynist ideology and politics. Their proponents
have gone as far as to incite harassment against those who speak out
against them and websites like A Voice for Men have publicly slandered
and targeted women. Last year, students and community members in
Toronto challenged the MRAs by protesting their events on the University
of Toronto campus. Since the MRAs consider the University of Toronto to
be a key recruiting ground for their cause, and we’ve seen how the
University of Toronto administration is all too happy to host them here,
this panel will present a case for why Men's Rights organizations and
activists are dangerous and why we should build towards an organized
feminist movement that can respond to them. <br /> <br /> *There will be no
video or audio recording of this event. Any oppressive language and/or
actions will not be tolerated, and those engaging in such behavior will
be asked to leave the event*<br /> <br /> Speaker Bios: <br /> <br /> Jeff
Perera is a Community Engagement Manager for the White Ribbon Campaign,
the world’s largest effort to engage men in re-imaging masculinity and
help end gender-based violence. Jeff also founded Higher Unlearning, an
online space to explore how ideas of gender & masculinity play out
in everyday life.<br /> <br /> Steph Guthrie is a feminist advocate and
community organizer who uses social media and interactive events to
spark and sustain conversations about gender justice, labour, politics
and education. She is a faculty member and lifelong learner at Academy
of the Impossible. <br /> <br /> Ashleigh Ingle is a feminist and an
anarchist who organizes with working people and students at the
University of Toronto and in the community. She is the current chair of
the Women and Trans people caucus of the U of T Graduate Students'
Union. She participates in grassroots feminist organizing at the
University and hopes to see the response to the presence of MRAs to be
the creation of a militant feminist movement capable of responding to
the manifestations of white supremacy and patriarchy faced by students
and workers at the University of Toronto and beyond. <br /> <br /> Michael
Laxer is blogger for rabble.ca, a two-time former candidate and former
election organizer for the NDP, was a socialist candidate for Toronto
City Council in 2010 and is on the executive of the newly formed
Socialist Party of Ontario.</span></span></span></b></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"><b><span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show">Update: After the MRA rally in Toronto on September 28 ( a rally that was a total fiasco, as you can read about in this <a href="http://manboobz.com/2013/09/28/speaker-at-mens-rights-rally-of-the-century-in-toronto-calls-on-mras-to-take-up-arms-against-communists/" target="_blank">manboobz post</a>) some <a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.171423116381958.1073741859.153783111479292&type=1" target="_blank">photos were posted of the rally on Facebook</a>. As an FYI to anti-MRA activists and other feminists for future events you hold, the man wearing the Men's Rights Edmonton placard on himself was at the public Disorientation 2013 anti-MRA panel. Could he be Agent Green? He clearly is not a feminist ally! (Should the above link to the photos no longer work, I will upload a photo of the door crasher). </span></span></span></b></span></span></span><br />
<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-16407828971931683882013-09-26T13:21:00.000-07:002013-09-26T13:21:57.725-07:00Start your own revolution: Towards a new independent socialist electoral activism.Politics in Canada and more broadly is a very regimented,
leader-driven game. From multiple, seemingly different perspectives, we
often end with the same result. The hegemonic discourse of
neo-liberalism and the overwhelming desire of those in power to stay in
power, as well as the subversion by apparatchiks of party "democracy"
exists to such an extent that political parties, their members and
their caucuses are really mass powerless mouthpieces for their leaders
and the backroom strategists that advise those leaders. This has meant
that the room to maneuver and to fight for a leftist discourse in
electoral terms has narrowed considerably.<br />
<br />
While some insist that getting this-or-that candidate nominated, or
this-or-that resolution passed at some farcically irrelevant party
convention can turn the tide, the evidence of the last 30 years is
unequivocal. When the left, in Canada embodied in the NDP, has been in
or out of power they have, in economic terms, lost. The right has set
the policies and the framework for these policies and the "left" has
capitulated to them. This is why, for example, having had the NDP in
"power" in Manitoba for many years now has made little difference at
all to that province's rates of inequality, people living in poverty or
child poverty versus the rest of the country. The NDP has capitulated
in advance to the essentially consumerist middle class ideas that drive
our politics, so their election or reelection is basically meaningless
in any fundamental sense.<br />
<br />
Would they have been better and would they be better than the
Tories? Yes. Of course. But the same can be, was, and could still be
said of the Liberal Party many times. It is not only not an inspiring
argument, it is a tiredly old and facile one from any actually
socialist point-of-view. If being "better" than the hard right
movements that have successfully dismantled the post-war social
compromise welfare state is the objective, then that is not hard to
achieve. If largely doing the bidding of business lobbyists while
talking in "progressive" terms about "getting results", and if being
unwilling to stand up for principle, the poor and the marginalized while
collecting salaries that place one within the top 2% of income earners
is the objective, then the job has been well done.<br />
<br />
Leftist discourse has been reduced in meaning in Canada to the point
that we have begun to actually believe that fighting to lift ATM fees,
take the HST off home heating or to make it more affordable to help
contribute to global warming by facilitating the singularly selfish
lifestyle choice of driving cars to work in a metropolitan area with
mass transit, are "leftist" causes as opposed to the neo-Nader,
liberal, consumerist irrelevances that they actually are.<br />
<br />
Less than much ado about nothing, they are a sad shadow of when the
capitalists used to be actually scared of the left and the possibility
of its victory. Now they, at worst, would see it is as a short term
inconvenience, like a stock market crash or bad press from a class
action lawsuit.<br />
<br />
So, apologies to Lenin, what is to be done?<br />
<br />
The task of building a new left party faces the tremendous obstacles
of not only the institutionalized power bases of the already elected
MPs, MPPs, MLAs, MNAs and their staffs and organizers, it also faces
the sectarianism of the left generally, the reality that many union
leaderships, as in the United States, have bought into a "reformist"
strategy where "reform" really means a defensive posture against
reaction, and it faces the anti-electoralism of the many in the "social
movement" or "neo-anarchist" wing of the left who, understandably,
think it is all a big farce.<br />
<br />
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It also faces the reality that Canada is a huge country and that
starting a new electoral project is inhibited by obvious problems like a
lack of money, the vast distances between activists, inertia, the odd
left wing version of apathy and the natural and inevitable distrust of
the "new". It is also inhibited by the desire of people to be a part of
a "winning team" even if that team is really not winning much of
anything at all other than some elections.<br />
<br />
Given these very real obstacles, we are faced by the even greater
ones of our society's and movement's "leadership cults." For all the
talk of wanting to do something new and to construct a new set of
social power relations, it is depressing how leftists within their own
organizations have entirely adopted the structures of the elites and
political movements that they are seeking to supplant. It is depressing
how obedience to the leader is seen as a virtue despite the obvious
inequality, lack of democracy and historically noxious reality that
such obedience implies and reflects.<br />
<br />
Overly respecting or playing the sheep to your "leaders" is a fool's
game, and the leadership concept itself inevitably leads to inequity,
undermines true democracy, creates false and shallow partisanship, and
leads drips to get their backs up about even minor criticisms. A new
world is never born by adopting the institutions of the old.<br />
<br />
While Quebec Solidaire has begun to chart a new path in collective
governance ideas, we in the rest of the country cannot wait for the
consciousness of the English Canadian socialist left to catch up.<br />
So, to paraphrase the great leftist singer <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHbfZiE1D50" rel="nofollow">Billy Bragg</a>,
it is time to start your own revolution, and cut out the middle
people, the power brokers, the parties, the sycophants, the hacks, the
careerists and the opportunists. If the structures do not exist yet, it
is time to start to create them yourself with your local friends and
comrades. It is time to take back power from the self-appointed, party
backed, mouthpieces of institutionalized "leftism".<br />
<br />
Where to start? Start with<a href="http://rabble.ca/whatsup/putting-your-ideas-principles-action-workshop-on-how-to-start-your-own-activist-municipal-ca"> municipal elections</a>.
If you are in Ontario, for example, these are coming in 2014, they
cost very little ($100) to register in, and you get as many as nearly
ten months to get out and make your ideas heard. Ten months to talk to
neighbours, friends, co-workers, fellow students, and whoever will
listen to the message that, as a comrade Andrew Klochek put it at the
founding convention of the Socialist Party of Ontario, "It is never too
late to write the future."<br />
<br />
There are more choices than the paltry four "versions" of the same
thing that we are being offered, and there are more outcomes that are
possible than the depressing ones we have been taught to expect.<br />
<br />
Start by telling the naysayers that it is not about winning, it is
not about you, it is not about immediate "power," it is about something
much bigger than that. It is about turning the tide in a real way. It
is about making those in real positions of power uncomfortable and
accountable again. It is about empowering citizens to be angry in an
anti-capitalist sense and to no longer want to reform the system in
minor ways, but rather to reject it entirely. It is about saying this
can be done without leader worship, "democratic centralism" or the
sheer idiocy of "solidarity with the leadership" in pathetic social
democratic "campaigns" that seek to change little at all.<br />
<br />
You can do it yourself. You do have that power. You may not, and in
most cases will almost certainly not, "win" in the short term, but if
worrying about losing, or desperately trying to talk to people "where
they are" had been the tactics of our socialist ancestors we would all
be living in the dark ages of the early industrial era still. It is
usually an excuse for wanting to "win" anyway.<br />
<br />
The only real change occurs when you shift the discourse. That never
happens by "talking to people where they are." Doing that is the
window dressing of do nothing parliaments and parliamentarians.<br />
Take the fight to the people. Directly. Change the discussion.
Directly. Do not wait for some politically appointed and partisan
driven committee paid for by a party or government to decide that one
minor part of what is important to you and your community is something
they might do something about one day. Say it yourself and forget the
talking heads.<br />
<br />
You can stop interpreting and talking about how bad the world is,
and you can instead change it. Marx was right.That is the point.<br />
<br />
There has never been a better time for a grassroots, insurrectionist
politics in defiance of political leaders and parties. There has never
been a better time for citizens to cut the parties and politicians
out. They are already irrelevant.<br />
<br />
Make politics relevant again.<br />
<br />
Run for office, any office, on an independent socialist or syndicalist campaign and start a new discussion in your community.<br />
<br />
Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau and their machines are not going
to do it for you. They are never going to talk about what matters to
you. They are only going to talk about what can get them a seat
here-or-there. Most municipal, provincial and federal politicians are
nothing but a sad reflection of whatever their "leader" says they are
or whatever opportunist stance can get them closer to reelection. That
is why no one cares who they are unless they do something "off script",
which they basically never do. Almost no one who does not live there
can name or cares about an MP or MPP who is outside their own riding
who is not in cabinet.<br />
<br />
Why should they? These MPs are paid over $100,000 a year (in many
cases well over) to say Yes Minister or Prime Minister and leap up like
sheep during a vote as expected.<br />
<br />
Cut them out. Be unexpected. Fight back.<br />
<br />
You have nothing to lose. And you just might, one day like the early socialists did, change society. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-63945811880136479642013-09-21T18:46:00.003-07:002013-09-21T18:46:42.388-07:00Love in the time of homophobia: The right of LGBT couples to be couples in public <div class="body">
If you are a heterosexual, chances are you have
never really given much thought to the daily public displays of
affection that we make with our girlfriends or boyfriends, husbands or
wives, all the time.<br />
You very likely kiss your partner hello or goodbye in basically any
context without any hesitation, hold hands while strolling down the
street, stare into each others eyes and touch romantically while lying
on that blanket in the park, and put arms around each other at the
movies or in a restaurant while waiting for your food to come.<br />
<br />
You never worry about what neighbourhood, venue or restaurant you
are doing this in, thinking that some might not be accepting of it,
because all are. You don't worry if children or "families" are around.<br />
<br />
This is the day-to-day behaviour of love and it is accepted and
expected. No one notices when you do this, and if they do notice they
likely smile and think that it is sweet, cute or heartwarming.<br />
<br />
Which it is.<br />
<br />
Except, that is, if you are doing the exact same things and are an LGBT couple.<br />
<br />
Over a year ago a young couple in my community started a new
initiative for the South Etobicoke (West Toronto) neighbourhood I live
in. Bram Zeidenberg and Jamie Berardi had had enough of the homophobia
and lack of an LGBT public presence where they lived and they did
something about it. They started the<a href="https://www.facebook.com/LakeshoreLGBT?ref=br_tf" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Lakeshore Villages LGBT Community Group</a>,
went door-to-door to neighbourhood businesses getting them to put up
stickers supporting inclusion, made presentations to and got the
endorsement of local Business Improvement Areas and during the last
Pride Week, for the first time in this part of the city, the commercial
strip had many businesses flying pride flags.<br />
<br />
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Yet just this past weekend they had to organize a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/459564240808002/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">local protest and awareness picnic</a> to stand up against treatment <a href="http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/09/16/canada-waitress-humiliated-gay-couple-in-restaurant-by-telling-them-they-cannot-sit-together/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">that they say they received at the hands of a local diner's waitress </a>when they sat on the same side of a booth together as a couple.<br />
<br />
While the owner of the diner denies many of their claims, there can
be little doubt that public displays of affection and small levels of
intimacy by LGBT couples are held to an entirely different standard
than those of heterosexual couples and that what are seen as perfectly
ordinary expressions of love in the one case are labeled as lewd,
inappropriate or "disturbing to children" or families in the other.<br />
<br />
In fact, of course, many of these seemingly ordinary actions for
heterosexual couples result in glares, abuse, harassment and violence
for LGBT couples. A common sentiment is that any intimacy between LGBT
couples, no matter how minor, belongs behind closed doors or "in the
bedroom" as if a kiss is akin to sex. Thus the restaurant owner in the
above incident allegedly saying that Mr. Zeidenberg should <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/09/16/residents_rally_in_restaurant_dispute.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">“leave his relationship at home”</a>.<br />
<br />
This is something that heterosexual couples are simply never asked to do.<br />
<br />
In addition, the threat or specter that LGBT couples supposedly
present to "families" or "children" is constantly raised. It is raised
even by many of those who claim to be fine with LGBT rights, unless, of
course, they actually see members of the LGBT community in the real
world acting like everyone else does. It is usually framed something
like "I have no problems with gays/lesbians/trans people, but they
really should keep it to themselves and not force my kids to watch it."<br />
<br />
After I had gone with my kids to the rally that was held in Mimico
by the Lakeshore Villages LGBT Community Group last Sunday, Mr.
Zeidenberg put up a message on my Facebook wall that read:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
So terrific to see so many families and kids at our event. We are a
family too and no matter what some people might think, children do NOT
need to be protected from seeing two individuals in love. There is
nothing harmful or offensive about a same-sex couple sitting next to
one another in a family restaurant.<br />
</blockquote>
<br />
This comment made me very sad. Not because of what he said, with
which I agree entirely, but because he felt he needed to say it all.
Because of the fact that so many people do still think that children
and "families" need to be "protected" from LGBT citizens or couples.<br />
<br />
In fact, a report released in 2010 by the <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/winter/10-myths?utm_content=buffer28092&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=Buffer" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Southern Poverty Law Center </a>listed
the myth that "Gay men molest children at far higher rates than
heterosexuals" as the number one myth propagated by the anti-gay
movement. It is a profoundly widespread and destructive myth. And it is
completely false.<br />
What is actually harmful to children, however, especially children
who may be starting to feel that they do not fit into the
heteronormative construct that surrounds them, is to be told and taught
by their parents or role models that being an LGBT couple is abnormal,
dangerous, or "acceptable" but still something not to be talked about
or seen. This is truly harmful.<br />
<br />
More to the point, it is also simply wrong. Morally, ethically and
in every sense. The notion that LGBT couples should have to behave in a
way that would seem prudish by Victorian standards so that citizens
who cannot adapt to the 21st Century are not made to feel
"uncomfortable" is disgraceful.<br />
<br />
Heterosexual citizens and couples are the people who need to get
past this. It is incumbent upon us to change. It is not to the LGBT
community and couples to accommodate the bigotry and biases that we
hold.<br />
<br />
The sight of a couple in love is one of the most life affirming
things that we are fortunate enough to be able to witness almost daily.
I want my children to grow up in a society where LGBT couples kissing,
holding hands and sitting beside each other at a diner booth is seen
as an equal part of this affirmation of human love.<br />
<br />
In the end, you are not truly free to love and to exercise your
human rights as equals if you are not able to do so publicly. You are
not really free to love if the love must be expressed in the bedroom or
in the closet alone for it to be without the danger of humiliation,
discrimination or violence.<br />
Heterosexual couples do not have to worry about this or think about it at all. It is time that this was true for every couple.<br />
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-6642086904963155092013-09-11T15:45:00.002-07:002013-09-11T16:10:02.597-07:00Sexual Harassment on the street, the MRA & hate speech: A discussion with host Sarah Luca of Womyn's Word<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the discussion that host Sarah Luca of the CHRY radio station show, Womyn's Word and I had on a show in August.<br />
<br />
We touch on topics related to street sexual harassment, the Men's Rights Movement, how men can act as feminist allies, and the fight against public and online misogyny.<br />
<br />
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The interview was prompted by an article I wrote for rabble.ca, <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2013/06/sexual-harassment-on-street-taking-misogynist-hate-speech-serio" target="_blank"><i>Sexual harassment on the street: Taking misogynist hate speech seriously </i></a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-35184567220443061612013-09-10T06:53:00.000-07:002013-09-10T08:40:14.770-07:00Putting Your Ideas & Principles into Action. How to Start Your Own Activist Municipal Campaign: A Workshop for Activists who Want to Run for Municipal Office in Toronto & Ontario in 2014<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl">Tired of the Toronto
transit farce? Upset that the choices municipally seem to often be
between different shades of right wing? Want to see social issues,
poverty, housing, tenant's rights, the environment, worker's rights,
women's rights, LGBT rights and the issues that matter to you put front
and centre in a campaign?<br /> <br /> Then start your own municipal revolution and cut out the power brokers, pundits and parties.<br /> <br /> Run for municipal office in Ontario in 2014. Be it for Councillor, Mayor or whatever office <span class="text_exposed_show">in your community you wish, bring a leftist agenda to the people and to the discussion in your neighbourhood.<br /> <br /> You can do it. You can effect the discussion. Take your message directly to your neighbours and the people. <br /> <br /> We want to help get you started.<br /> <br />
Join us October 6 at the <a href="http://www.the519.org/" target="_blank">519 </a>in downtown Toronto for a workshop for Leftist citizens of any stripe that are
interested in running. Even if you have just considered doing it, come
out to find out what is involved.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"><span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"><a href="http://www.the519.org/" target="_blank">519 Community Centre </a><br /> 519 Church St.<br /> Toronto.<br /> Sunday, October 6th<br /> 1 p.m.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"><span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"> </span></span></span> <br /> We will be covering issues
like how and when you can register, when you can start campaigning, when
you can open an office or put up signs, who you can legally get
donations from, how to find an auditor, how to maximize your impact if
you are running a low budget campaign, who to reach out to for help, how
to manage keeping track of your expenses and much more.<br /> <br />
Michael Laxer, a socialist candidate for Toronto City Council in 2010
will discuss the lessons he learned from his first campaign, what he
would and will do differently, the impact that running can have and what
goals you need to set for a first, insurgent campaign.<br /> <br /> Joey
Schwartz, an expert on election rules and finances who has been an
organizer on multiple campaigns, will then do an in-depth look at the
rules, important dates and what you need to know to get going and to do
it right.<br /> <br /> This will be followed by an extensive Q&A session
and a chance for you to meet and network with other like minded
activists. <br /> <br /> This event is 100% non-partisan, is not affiliated
with any party or left wing group or formation and is open to anyone on
the left. It is open to anyone in Ontario.<br /> <br /> The event will also be free. We do ask that you preregister so that we will have space and materials available for you.<br /> <br /> You can preregister or ask any questions by emailing us at michaellaxer@hotmail.com or posting a comment. </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show">You can find the event and track developments on Facebook at: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/156400347891773/">https://www.facebook.com/events/156400347891773/</a></span></span></span><br />
<span itemprop="description"><span class="fsl"><span class="text_exposed_show"><br /> Make sure that the principles, ideas and policies that would and will change your community get heard!<br /> <br /> 519 Community Centre <br /> 519 Church St.<br /> Toronto.<br /> Sunday, October 6th<br /> 1 p.m.<br /> </span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-37989973448777938562013-09-09T09:33:00.000-07:002013-09-09T09:33:32.646-07:00M is for misogyny: From frat boy chants to society<div class="body">
From the <a href="http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/smu-frosh-chant-perpetuates-rape-culture-sexual-assault-centre-1.1441577" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Atlantic</a>:
"SMU boys, we like them young. Y is for your sister. O is for oh so
tight. U is for underage. N is for no consent. G is for grab that ass."<br />
<br />
To the<a href="http://ubyssey.ca/news/sauder-chant-325/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Pacific</a>:
"Y-O-U-N-G at UBC we like em young Y is for yourrr sister O is for ohh
so tight U is for under age N is for noo consent G is for goo to jail."<br />
<br />
We have all heard about the Canadian university rape chants by now.
Many of us may remember hearing or are hearing similar chants or <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/campus-notes/2013/09/bitches-and-drinks-overheard-frosh-week" target="_blank">sentiments </a>at our university "Frosh Weeks" and beyond.<br />
Student unions attempted to excuse or hide it (before apologizing),
administrators have been quick, rightfully, to condemn it, but it is
what it is. A profoundly disturbing realization that young men, and
sadly some women, will participate in collective chants glorifying
raping underage girls as a mechanism to belong and to fit in. That this
culture of abusive, violent male behaviour is seen by many men as a
way to draw men together. That it is seen as a way of telling the other
young men they are wishing to bond with that they too have no problem
with being a "man", that they too are a man who wants young women,
whether or not the young women want them, and that they are not some
"sissy". That feeling this way about women is expected and anticipated
if you wish to be a part of or bond with the male group.<br />
<br />
As with all collective chants, from the bleating of the sheep in
Animal Farm to the chants of drunken sports fans, it reflects a desire
to be a part of a collective. It turns out that this collective regards
making a joke of rape a rite of passage.<br />
<br />
And this collective is very large; far larger than the university frat boy idiotic reflections of it.<br />
<br />
In fact, like other ideologically hegemonic ideas and oppressions,
manifestations of this kind of mass misogyny should come as no surprise.
But it does. It does because, despite all the overwhelming evidence to
the contrary, we chose to see misogyny as a secondary issue and to
label its manifestations as anomalies or "jokes". We say that it is
"natural", it is "boys being boys" and that there is "nothing you can do
about it". We celebrate pathetic male singers and entertainers whose
whole motif is to degrade, belittle, objectify and dismiss women. Men in
positions of power regularly protect other men and young men, such as <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/05/steubenville-rape-protests_n_2416820.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">high school football stars</a>,
when they are accused of rape. Why would we expect reflections of this
in broader society or in university to be any different?<br />
<br />
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Given the inherent violence and degrading nature of the depictions
of women in the porn/video game/ music video culture, and given the
extraordinary violence against women manifested in the vast bulk of
Hollywood horror or thriller films, it is not hard to understand why
young men reflect it as they try to fit in and conform in what for most
of them is their first time "outside the nest".<br />
<br />
In reality why would we expect any different from the boys of a society that has made a pop song about <a href="http://www.mamamia.com.au/social/robin-thicke-blurred-lines-post/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">anal rape a runaway hit,</a>
that has a music video "culture" in which it is actually surprising to
see a video by a male pop artist in which women are not objectified,
that has ingrained pornography so much into the very fabric of the
day-to-day that it is becoming increasingly inseparable from
"mainstream" entertainment and advertising, that exploits and sexually
objectifies primarily its youngest citizens, both male and female, for
male gratification and that holds up the desires of men, no matter how
destructive or exploitative, as some kind of litmus test of "freedom"?<br />
<br />
Worse it occurs in a context where the backlash against the equality
gains of women and the women's movement grows daily. From the rapid,
alarming and profoundly reactionary growth on <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2012/12/mens-rights-movement-cafe-university-toronto" target="_blank">Canadian university campuses</a> of the <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2012/10/lies-our-fathers-told-us-mens-rights-movement-and-campus-based-" target="_blank">Men's Rights Movement </a>and
of its absurd notions of "reverse sexism" and the need for "men's
equality", to the political expressions of forms of these same ideas in
mainstream politics, to the increasing and farcical idea that men and
boys are "falling behind" or that education and civil society have been
"feminized", these chants and examples of collective male misogynist
outbursts were and are a basic and integral facet of a society dominated
by men in which part of "being a man" and relating to men consists of
telling other men that you are the same kind of disgraceful example of a
man that they are.<br />
<br />
The point is that they are not the exception. They are simply an uncomfortable expression of the norm.<br />
Acknowledging how deeply ingrained and how common such male "chat"
and thinking is, as well as how obviously wrong it is, would mean
putting our safely constructed, male worldviews at risk. To acknowledge
one's own complicity in oppression is simply a<em> ne plus ultra</em>, a Rubicon we as men are seemingly mentally incapable of crossing almost entirely out of our own self-interest.<br />
<br />
This is reflected in the overwhelming male consensus around issues
like pornography and prostitution and our basic sense of entitlement to
them. It is reflected by our so often expressed desire to claim that
"men" are being just as "victimized" as women or that women`s issues
are secondary or no longer relevant. But we do so by talking about
issues related to class, race and even the expectations that Patriarchy
sets for men, none of which are centred around the oppression of men as
men, an oppression which simply does not exist outside of an LGBT
context.<br />
<br />
It is reflected in examples like Hugo Schwyzer, a man who basically
demanded to be acknowledged as a feminist, who taught "Women's Studies"
courses that included supposed "analysis" of porn, and who has now
admitted, among other things, that<a href="http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/local/los_angeles&id=9239979" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> he slept with his students</a> and even a <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/porn-professor-hugo-schwyzer-comes-clean-about-his-twitter-meltdown-and-life-as-a-fraud.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">much younger porn star</a>
at the time. He essentially used "feminism" as a way to get entirely
inappropriate sexual gratification. There is little more predictably
male than that.<br />
<br />
It easier to think that it is the fault of women that we as men fail
or suffer injustice than to accept that we do so in a society whose
power institutions and relations were created by other men. Better even
to deny that men have power or are primarily responsible for
Capitalism or Patriarchy at all.<br />
This is how rape culture, Patriarchy and misogyny are an ideological
hegemony. They are not only accepted and excused, they are a
fundamental and day-to-day part of a society's power relations. They
define and are therefore expressed as a part of our basic cultural
conformism and discourse.<br />
<br />
Be it at water coolers, in gym change rooms, football team
meetings, strip clubs or wherever men congregate or relate as men to
each other, the type of discourse and misogyny seen at these campuses
always rears its ugly head eventually.<br />
<br />
The terrible and horrific reflection of these "antics" in real terms
is the persistence of daily male violence and harassment against women
in our society on a mass scale, from rape to spousal or partner abuse.<br />
<br />
While they were done in a public forum and in a way that has brought
deserved punishment and critical attention, the Frosh chants are
really no different from countless other expressions of these kinds of
misogynist backslapping "jokes" and thinking that men engage in
together all the time.<br />
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-87904753643036425802013-08-20T05:58:00.001-07:002013-08-20T05:58:35.464-07:00It's still time for an adult conversation about taxes <b>Written with Matt Fodor</b><br />
<b> </b> <br />
In a 2009 article in the <a href="http://www.thestar.com/opinion/2009/10/26/can_we_have_an_adult_conversation_about_taxes.html" rel="nofollow">Toronto Star</a>,
progressive economist Hugh Mackenzie commented on the "strange debate
that separates taxes from the services they pay for." This is a problem
across the political spectrum. Mackenzie criticized the tendency of
the Canadian Left to "[campaign] for better public services as if they
can be provided free. Better services won't cost us anything because the
higher taxes needed to pay for those services can be paid by people we
don't know. People who make a lot more money than we do. Big
corporations but not small businesses."<br />
<br />
Mackenzie was referring to the British Columbia NDP's campaign
against the carbon tax as well as the campaigns against the HST "tax
grab" by the NDP in both B.C. and Ontario. This continues today with
the Ontario NDP's <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2013/03/perils-populism-andrea-horwath-taxes-road-tolls-and-war-car">opposition to road tolls</a>
in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area to pay for much needed transit
improvements, which eerily echoes Rob Ford’s “war on the car”
narrative.<br />
<br />
Just this past week, <a href="http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Local/2013-08-08/article-3342167/Mulcair-says-people-want-him-to-kick-Harper-out/1" rel="nofollow">in a truly amazing statement when asked about taxes</a>, this from Tom Mulcair:<br />
<blockquote>
Mulcair seemed surprised when he was asked if taxes would go up under an NDP government.<br />
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
"You’re the first person who’s ever asked me that," he said, adding quickly that they most definitely won't.<br />
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
"I am categorical on that," he said. “Several provinces are now at
the 50 per cent rate. Beyond that, you’re not talking taxation; you’re
talking confiscation. And that is never going to be part of my policies,
going after more individual taxes. Period. Full stop.”<br />
</blockquote>
The Canadian Left, in seeking to justify this and similar stances,
will often point to historic left-wing "anti-tax" moments, like the
fight against the Poll Tax in the UK in the '80s. But in doing so they
take the issue out of the present neo-Liberal context of an ideological
campaign against the very idea of taxes. This campaign has been
exceptionally successful and has been a critical component underpinning
both the appeal of right wing populist ideas (and a major factor in
why people support the right and its ideas even against their own
seeming class interests) and the growth of rampant, "Gilded Age" levels
of social inequality.<br />
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On the surface, the "people we don’t know" argument seems appealing.
After all, the Left has long fought for progressive taxation – based on
the ability to pay – as a key means of redistribution and raising the
revenue to pay for welfare state measures and public investments.
Progressives have rightfully condemned the changes of the tax system
over the past two decades that have benefited affluent Canadians. By
increasing taxes on “people we don’t know”, so the argument goes, we can
provide "tax relief" to hard-working, middle income Canadians and
"everyday families."<br />
This argument is problematic for several reasons. It underemphasizes
the issue of revenue and the devastating impact of tax cuts in Canada,
as well as the redistributive power of public spending. The argument
is also contradicted by the experience of the Nordic countries, which
have the most advanced welfare states and lowest levels of inequality
among OECD countries.<br />
<br />
Further, it helps to reinforce the complete illusion that taxes are,
in fact, a "burden" upon the "middle class" at all, an illusion that
furthers right wing ideological ideas and objectives. It feeds into
false 99 per cent fantasies that mislead with the facile notion that
social inequality and economic injustices can be rectified exclusively
by making "them" (big business, the rich, etc.) pay, while not
increasing taxes on, say, a household with $100,000 in annual income (a
household that would, one might note, fall well within the parameters
of the 99 per cent).<br />
<br />
As we will show, this reluctance to confront the socially negative
ramifications of tax cuts for the middle class and this capitulation to
the notion of taxes as a "burden" upon the middle class, has severely
limited the ability of government, of any ideological stripe, to
actually implement or re-implement social programs and polices that
played a direct role in lessening inequality and its consequences. The
"War on Poverty" that governments declared at the height of the post
war period of "social compromise" was actually succeeding and it was
founded and predicated upon far higher personal income taxes for
citizens of all classes.<br />
<br />
Also, these ideas underestimate the highly disparate nature of
"need" within the so-called 99 per cent. They equate the desire of a
household with an income of $100,000 a year to finance the mortgage on a
large house, or buy a second car that they feel they "need", with the
ability of a family with an income of $35,000 a year to send their kids
to "public" summer programs (which are no longer free in most
centres), to access increasingly expensive higher education, to have
properly government funded daycare, or any number of other programs
that would fundamentally alter their lives and social mobility. These
"needs" are highly different morally and ethically.<br />
<br />
Over the past two decades, neoliberalism has been consolidated as the
economic orthodoxy in Canada, at all levels of government and is now
supported by political parties of all stripes. In order to cultivate
popular support for neoliberalism, the positive role of government came
under a media and corporate assault. Public services were demonized as
overly generous and bureaucratic; the more efficient private sector
could do it better. <br />
<br />
Tax cuts were sold as a means of freeing Canadians of taxes and
giving them more money to spend. Taxes were thus not a positive
investment in society but a burden to be avoided. There developed a
culture of tax revolt that crossed class and ideological lines.<br />
<br />
As Marxist economist <a href="http://newpol.org/content/left-europe-social-democracy-crisis-euro-zone-interview-leo-panitch" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Leo Panitch put it</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
It also had to do with a tax revolt on the part of the
working-class, which starts to see less and less for itself in the
welfare state. Respectability leads this segment to increasingly deride
that working class we now call the precariat. And many of them opt --
and the unions aren’t able to stop many of them opting (to some extent
they’re even complicit in it) -- for the $200 a year they can save by
voting for a government that offers them less taxes. A portion of the
working-class opts for that. And the left was complicit in it when it
opposed, for example, the sales tax. One needed to say and should be
saying that Sweden’s value-added tax is 23 per cent. You can't have a
welfare state without it.</blockquote>
Jean Chretien and Paul Martin slayed the deficit by massively cutting
public spending, and dismantling much of the progressive state that had
been built up during the 1960s and 1970s. They then implemented
personal and corporate tax cuts and also slashed the capital gains tax,
the single most regressive tax cut in Canadian history. Tax-cutting has
continued under Stephen Harper, who cut the GST by two points,
implemented many boutique tax cuts for "middle class families" and
continued to cut corporate taxes. The effect of these tax cuts has been
to turn Canada into a more unequal and market-dominated society. <br />
<br />
It is true that the right-wing line that “there aren’t enough rich
people, so why bother taxing them?” is a self-serving one that can
easily be refuted. At the same time, we need to recognize that working
and middle class Canadians benefit far more from quality public
services, paid for by taxation, than from tax cuts.<br />
<br />
Tax cuts have also had a devastating impact at the provincial level.
While this is true across Canada, taking the example of the past
nearly twenty years of fiscal policy in Ontario, a key component of the
Common Sense Revolution of Mike Harris was a 30 per cent personal
income tax cut. This cut and its preservation and expansion over the
years by both the Tories and Liberals, fundamentally changed Ontario
politics. Once in place, the province could not return to previous
levels of spending for health, education, welfare and municipalities,
and no major political party has dared to suggest reversing it.<br />
<br />
The profound effects that this has had are not widely understood as
they have been not only compounded by further tax cuts, personal and
otherwise, under the provincial Liberals, but also by the fact that a
generation of complete cross-ideological subservience to the underlying
concept of tax cuts have led them to become so ingrained in our
political and economic culture that they fundamentally narrow the scope
of the possible in terms of redistributive or social program options.<br />
The tax cuts remove at a<a href="http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/Ontario_Office_Pubs/bti_taxcuts.pdf" rel="nofollow"> bare minimum</a> between <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2012/03/tax-relief-and-austerity-agenda">$12 and 14 billion</a>
a year from the coffers of the government of Ontario. This
dramatically limits not only attempts to preserve social programs and
infrastructure, but basically makes it impossible to expand them in any
meaningful sense. It has also led, in Ontario and across the country,
to large increases in the structural debt of many provinces, a fact
that is significant as it means that more money is spent servicing the
debt every year, essentially meaning that it is spent paying interest
to largely foreign financial concerns as opposed to on services for
citizens.<br />
<br />
In the case of Ontario, for example, the amount spent servicing the debt is <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/ontarios-debt-burden-just-keeps-on-growing/article11689508/" rel="nofollow">$10.6 billion a year</a>,
which is greater than what the province spends on any other single
program or service, like welfare or transit, other than health and
education.<br />
<br />
After two decades of tax cutting, both the federal and provincial
governments have lost billions of dollars of revenue. By 2009, tax
cuts under both Liberal and Conservative governments since 1995 had
deprived the federal treasury of about $50 billion annually. We need
to restore the fiscal capacity of the state to pay for welfare state
measures and much needed public investments. In the current context,
calls for "tax relief" -- even if ostensibly from the Left -- are
dangerous and wrong. <br />
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, in its <a href="http://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2013/03/AFB2013_MainDocument.pdf" rel="nofollow">Alternative Budget</a>
noted that raising the top federal income tax rate from 29 per cent
to 35 per cent for those earning $250,000 or more would yield about $3
billion annually. A Financial Transactions Tax would raise $4 billion,
while an inheritance tax on very large estates would yield $1.5
billion. Closing tax loopholes -- including by taxing capital gains at
the same rate as wage and salary income and by cracking down on tax
havens -- would bring in about $10 billion. <a href="http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2013/08/13/whats-a-point-of-corporate-tax-worth/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Erin Weir notes</a>
that raising the corporate tax rate to 19.5 per cent would raise $7-8
billion; restoring the 22 per cent corporate tax rate would raise
$11-12 billion. All of these are worthy proposals that should be
adopted.<br />
<br />
Yet we should not be under the illusion that these tax proposals --
or even stiffer ones -- on "people we don’t know" -- would restore the
fiscal capacity of the state that has been undermined over two decades
of neoliberalism, let alone allow the state to provide "tax relief" to
the "middle class or entirely do away with consumption taxes such as
the GST. It has been long understood that consumption taxes are an
excellent way of raising revenue, and provide a more steady revenue
stream to the treasury than taxation on income, which fluctuates during
economic downturns. According to the <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canada-lost-when-ottawa-cut-the-gst/article10271589/" rel="nofollow">Parliamentary Budget Officer</a>,
each percentage point cut to the GST costs the federal government $7
billion annually; Harper’s GST cut alone thus costs the federal
government $14 billion annually.<br />
Looking in comparative perspective, there is a strong correlation
between direct spending and equality; countries with higher taxation are
more equal. It is for this reason, that it is important to recognize
not only the redistributive function of taxation, but also its role in
financing welfare states and providing benefits that fall to low-income
and dependent workers. <a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/191500021e1t004.pdf?expires=1371591358&id=id&accname=freeContent&checksum=C5DF952D0451E2741C6E3F92F4DDB822" rel="nofollow">Taxation as a percentage</a>
of GDP in Canada in 2011 was 31 per cent, below the OCED average of
33.8 per cent. This was far below that of Sweden (44.5 per cent) and
Denmark (48.1 per cent), though ahead of the U.S. (25.1 per cent).<br />
<br />
As Hugh Mackenzie<a href="http://www.thestar.com/opinion/2009/10/26/can_we_have_an_adult_conversation_about_taxes.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> notes</a>:
"Nations that have the most highly developed systems of public
services pay for them with all kinds of taxes, including sales taxes
and payroll taxes that everyone contributes to because everyone knows
there is no such thing as a free lunch."<br />
<br />
The Nordic countries of Sweden, Denmark and Norway all have a Value
Added Tax (VAT) of around 25%, far higher than the GST/HST, which
finances the welfare state. The Nordic model is notable for its
reliance on transfers, which do the heavy lifting in terms of countering
inequality. While personal income taxes are higher than in Canada,
they also pay much higher levels of consumption and payroll taxes. Yet
the net impact of the tax-and-transfer system is progressive. Rather
massively so. In part, this is for the obvious reason that because the
affluent spend more, the net impact of consumption taxes are progressive
if they are spent on human need.<br />
<br />
Indeed, the redistributive power of public spending -- on healthcare,
education, pensions and an array of other public services -- should not
be ignored. A CCPA report, <a href="http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/canadas-quiet-bargain" rel="nofollow">Canada’s Quiet Bargain</a>,
found that more than two thirds of Canadian households receive more
than 50 per cent of their income in public services, a far better deal
than the market and far more than they pay in taxes. This was even more
true before the tax-cutting mania of the past two decades.<br />
<br />
The taxation of private consumption can fund the provision of public
goods (such as parks, public transit, public housing, etc.) that are
more ecological than private goods. Furthermore, public goods provision
has the effect of decommodification which is as important as progressive
taxation in terms of moving toward socialist relations in capitalist
societies.<br />
<br />
Beyond this there is the basic morality of attempting to put a
break on consumption. Whenever one speaks of obviously environmentally
or socially beneficial taxes or revenue tools like taxing gas or fuel
consumption or whenever one opposes populist campaigns to cut them, some
on the left will talk of examples of how "ordinary people" cannot
afford to pay them. Even when this is true, there are many other means,
such as rebates, to rectify the impact on those who are genuinely
harmed by such taxes.<br />
<br />
But what they never talk about are the wealthy homeowners who will
get gas tax cuts, the reckless or irresponsible users of cars or air
conditioning or home heating who will get tax cuts, or the reality that
if we wish to alter social behaviour and to change patterns of
consumption, taxing behaviour that is environmentally destructive or
anti-social in its implications is not regressive at all. It is one of
the primary goals of socialist politics to shift society away from the
wanton or reckless behaviour of not only corporations, but also the
consumerist society that they have manufactured. This is simply
impossible in any meaningful way without altering the behaviour of
consumers, especially those whose consumption patterns reflect their
higher incomes.<br />
<br />
The state has a fundamentally important role to play in shifting
patterns of behaviour through taxation, and when shifting people out of
cars, or encouraging them to consume less gas, electricity, water and
other resources, the progressive nature of implementing disincentives
is clear. This is even more clear if these taxes and revenue streams
are tied directly to social goals like mass transit expansion.<br />
<br />
Our consumerist society is highly destructive and the patterns of
consumption it has created are both unsustainable and morally wrong
given the consequences to the planet and the disparities that exist in
consumption globally. It will not be changed by goodwill. Next time
anyone proposes blanket tax cuts to home heating or opposes taxing car
use, ask yourself about how progressive it really is to give a tax
break to heating millionaire's mansions, or to oppose encouraging car
pooling or making sure that the person driving that empty SUV might be
made to think again if fuel taxes are high.<br />
Cutting consumption taxes on these fronts especially amounts to
little more than revenue depleting, environmentally negative proposals
that are boutique policy gifts and handouts to the upper middle and
upper classes.<br />
<br />
In terms of generating the revenue that will allow for the
possibility of real social democratic governance and that will give the
state the resources needed to implement a social agenda that will
directly benefit the overwhelming majority of citizens, the
"progressive" necessity is very clear.<br />
Higher taxes in all forms.<br />
<br />
The restoration of the GST to 7 per cent alone would significantly
offset the cuts to the public sector. Further increases to the tax are
essential components to the improvement and expansion of public
services. Transfers to lower-income households must be significantly
increased as well. We should fight for a return to more progressive
taxation, and begin with calls for higher taxes on capital and on
wealthy individuals. Given the more inegalitarian income distribution
in Canada as compared to the Nordic countries, the progressive income
tax needs to play a greater role in the tax mix. We welcome, for
instance, the call by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks for combined
federal-provincial income tax rates of 60% and 70% on incomes over
$500,000 and $2.5 million, as proposed in their book The Trouble With
Billionaires.<br />
<br />
<img src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/images/cleardot.gif" /><br />
We would propose the reversal of all income, corporate and sales
tax cuts that have been implemented in the last 20 years. We would
further propose the expansion of taxes on fossil fuel, natural gas and
electricity consumption, as well as on cars and their usage, with an
extensive rebate program to offset the impact on actually lower income
citizens. For instance, a <a href="http://www.straight.com/news/343006/marc-lee-progressive-carbon-tax-reform-win-win-opportunity-bc" rel="nofollow">progressive carbon tax</a>
could be designed so the bottom 50 percent of households would be net
beneficiaries, where 80 percent of households would receive at least
some credit and the most affluent 20 per cent that have the biggest
impact would pay the most.We would also favour revenue generating tools
like heavily taxing luxury goods.<br />
<br />
Altogether these proposals would generate tens of billions of dollars in extra revenue annually for the government.<br />
<br />
We would suggest that this be used to build, to start, a national
daycare program, a national housing strategy, free pharmacare, eye care
& dental programs through transfers and incentives to the
provinces, an anti-poverty strategy, a public transit infrastructure
campaign and a transition to a 'green' economy as well as to reassert
the state's role in the economy and in social justice in the many other
ways that having these resources would allow.<br />
<br />
As leftists we can fantasize about a coming revolution that will
make taxation unnecessary and wipe away the state altogether. At the
other end we can pretend that relatively minor tax increases on small
groups of people or on corporations will solve everything like manna
from heaven.<br />
<br />
Or we can grow up.<br />
<br />
<em>Matt Fodor is a Toronto based writer and academic. He is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at York University.</em><br />
<br /><em>Michael Laxer is a political activist, a two-time former
candidate and former election organizer for the NDP, was a socialist
candidate for Toronto City Council in 2010 and is on the executive of
the Socialist Party of Ontario.</em><br />
<em>Photo: flickr/dibytes</em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6463069950474829967.post-31111321936052000042013-08-13T08:54:00.005-07:002013-08-13T08:54:53.643-07:00Want, waste and wealth: The immorality and inefficiency of capitalist food distribution in CanadaIt has been both a disturbing and telling couple of weeks in terms of news developments related to food distribution in Canada.<br />
<br />
First, at the end of July, a <a href="http://www.news-medical.net/news/20130726/Report-shows-almost-4-million-Canadians-struggle-to-afford-food.aspx" rel="nofollow">report</a>
by researchers at the University of Toronto showed that nearly four
million Canadians face what they, as is now commonplace, somewhat
euphemistically describe as "food insecurity"; an academic way of
saying that these citizens either are not able to buy enough food for
themselves or their families or that they are constantly struggling to
do so. In the case of Nunavut, where the situation is at its worst,
over 50% of households experienced food insecurity, while in both PEI
and New Brunswick it was a quarter or more of households.<br />
<br />
Jennifer Taylor, head of the PEI Food Security Network, <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/story/2013/08/01/pei-child-food-insecurity-584.html" rel="nofollow">reacted to the island province's embarrassingly high numbers</a> by stating:<br />
<blockquote>
It's a social problem. It's not a nutritional problem [but] it has nutritional outcomes...<br />
This is an embarrassment. We have the home of Green Gables, we have
beautiful beaches, we have friendly, generous people and we have the
most kids — save Nunavut, that's the only place higher — that are
possibly going to bed hungry or going the whole day without food. This
is a crisis and we need to deal with it.<br />
</blockquote>
The consequences of "food insecurity", or put more bluntly, hunger,
malnourishment and the stress of trying to get food on the table, is
devastating for those families and individuals facing it. The report's
project leader, Dr. Valerie Tarasuk, <a href="http://www.news-medical.net/news/20130726/Report-shows-almost-4-million-Canadians-struggle-to-afford-food.aspx" rel="nofollow">put it in stark terms</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
The impact of this situation on children, families, communities, the
health care system and our economy cannot be overstated...The problem
is not under control and more effective responses are urgently needed.
The cost of inaction is simply too high.<br />
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</blockquote>
Shortly after the release of this report, <a href="http://www.torontosun.com/2013/08/05/canadian-consumers-cope-with-dramatic-increase-in-food-prices" rel="nofollow">came news from Statistics Canada</a> about the rising price of food in Canada between 2007-2012. In the words of Mark Brown of their economic analysis division:<br />
<blockquote>
The report showed that prices have increased at a cumulative rate of
19% over the last five years. The report also showed that for Canada,
the price of food rose at almost twice the rate of the Consumer Price
Index, excluding food.<br />
</blockquote>
This is a staggering increase that directly effects the financial
well-being of citizens, especially, obviously, lower income households
and those on fixed (and always declining versus inflation) social
assistance rates. It also clearly adds to the acute problem of "food
insecurity" described above.<br />
<br />
Finally,<a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/canadas-food-system-needs-environmental-overhaul-218851171.html" rel="nofollow"> a third report </a>released
by the Conference Board of Canada on August 8, found, among other
troubling environmental conclusions, that as much as 40% of all food in
Canada is wasted. This waste is equivalent to as much as $27.7 billion
annually.<br />
<br />
Put in the context of widespread food insecurity and the rise of
prices, this level of waste is truly appalling both socially and
morally. It means that not only is food that could feed citizens who
are going hungry being wasted on hard-to-believe and disgraceful
levels, but such wastage inevitably will be a factor in keeping food
prices high, in this case artificially.<br />
<br />
The Conference Board, typically and disingenuously given its
business bent, puts the onus for the waste on consumers, and calls for
greater "education and awareness campaigns". While it is, no doubt,
true, that most food waste cumulatively will occur in households, the
40% figure is not an average, it is a total. Any given household, taken
individually, will waste far less food than the vast majority of
restaurants and supermarkets/food retailers taken individually.<br />
<br />
What the numbers really indicate is that food waste is a systemic
part of our food distribution system, that it is tied to the quantities
in which food is packaged, marketed and sold as well as to standard
commercial food practices, like restaurants and diners filling plates
with more food, often by far, than a person is likely to finish. The
food industry, as a whole, profits greatly from this waste, as it
directly impacts supply and demand in ways obviously in its favour and
drives up prices.<br />
<br />
Further, though, the Conference Board's calls for "education and
awareness" are absurd in a society and economic system predicated on
the principle of perpetual over-consumption (in economic terms)
socially, with the over-consumption the more pronounced the higher up
the economic ladder one climbs, it being basically non-existent at the
lower end. Placing the "blame" on households conveniently diverts
attention from the profound immorality of what this waste represents.
It is an intrinsic part of our capitalist system of "food distribution"
and not an incidental one.<br />
<br />
The waste embodies the very ethos and underlying driving forces of
consumerist capitalism and highlights its moral and economic
contradictions as well as how it is basically unsustainable.<br />
Most Canadians are aware that we are living in a <a href="http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/canadian-housing-boom-in-9th-inning" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">dangerous housing bubble which is at best now "cooling", though it shows very real signs of collapsing</a>. This is especially problematic as the housing bubble was essentially <a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/nightmare-main-st-cmhc-and-canadian-housing-bubble" target="_blank">engineered by the Federal Government</a> as a form of economic stimulus, and the government, and citizens, are on the hook for it should it collapse.<br />
<br />
These actions have also had the, to say the least, morally dubious
effect of dramatically driving up housing prices making them less
affordable to those with lower incomes, even despite the loosening of
mortgage qualification rules until recently. In the long term they have
also created conditions in which it is quite likely that many
Canadians will be paying mortgages on properties worth significantly
less than what they purchased them for. Finally, they have placed many
Canadians in a position, though admittedly of their own nominal "free
will" in which they have a remarkable net worth on paper, tied up in
the value of a house they do not actually yet own, but who in reality
are a paycheque or two away from losing everything.<br />
<br />
Many are also aware that we have sustained much of Canada's economic "recovery" since 2008 through the<a href="http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/michael-laxer/2012/08/final-fantasies-illusions-personal-debt-and-canadian-consumeris" target="_blank"> extension of credit</a>
and the facilitation of a culture of indebtedness that has led to
Canadians being in far greater debt than at any other time in their
history. This is a credit bubble which is also clearly driven by
consumerist forces in the economy backed by the government's and
corporate sectors policies around credit. As with all bubbles, it would
take a surprisingly small number of initial defaults on mortgages and
credit card/line-of-credit debts to set a whole chain reaction of
default and rapid economic downturn in motion.<br />
<br />
Further, looser credit spurs over-consumption in that people buy
things that they otherwise could not afford and may in fact not be able
to afford. Cars, more expensive housing, appliances, etc. This is what
makes it such a dangerous form of economic "stimulus". The consumption
is not based on higher incomes (as we all know incomes are largely
stagnating versus inflation) or on direct government spending on
infrastructure or social programs that actually puts real money in the
pockets of citizens, but rather on making it easier to buy things
without having the actual money to do so. This can only, for obvious
reasons, go on for so long. It also leaves out entirely the poor and
the lower income working class, as they often cannot get credit in any
real sense and thus cannot "benefit" from it.<br />
<br />
The loosening and over-extension of credit is the worst possible and
most corporate friendly "solution" to the diminishing ability of the
consumerist society to sustain consumption. It places the "risk" and
obligation of the stimulus entirely on the back of the consumer and
citizen.<br />
<br />
The alarming reports in the food sector very much fit this broader
social pattern. We see the growth of "food insecurity" at a time of
rapidly rising food costs in a setting of a largely unregulated
corporate food industry that has engineered, facilitates and that
profits from tremendous social waste.<br />
<br />
In a society that makes a virtual cult out of the disposable, the
food sector has not been left behind. From club packs, to encouraging
citizens to buy more to "save" (an inherently absurd concept), to the
socially created expectation that a "good meal" out means being served
more food than we can eat, to retailers stocking shelves with more
product than they can sell, the system is designed to create waste on a
massive scale.<br />
<br />
And as with other sectors of our consumerist economy it is not
sustainable environmentally, economically or morally. It needs to be
radically reexamined as do its systems of ownership and distribution.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0