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Good morning Maple readers. We had another week of quite diverse coverage, which makes this Friday Roundup a handy way to bring everyone up to speed. We started the week with some optimistic news in Class Struggle, then took a closer look at the disturbing climate of hate out of which the recent attack at Waterloo University occurred. I then gave my perspective on some recent stories about Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow, before unpacking a report about minimum wages falling well short of what’s needed to afford rent across Canada.
As always, further down in this email you’ll find our Community Talk section, where we engage with comments and messages sent by our readers. A heads up that this week I’m going to strongly disagree with one reader submission, so it’s not to be missed!
Community Talk is exclusively available to our paying members, so be sure to sign up as a full member to join the conversation.
Let’s recap the week…
In this week’s edition of Class Struggle, Adam D.K. King shared some optimistic news. He wrote: “At the risk of speaking too soon, there’s growing evidence that the tide may be turning for organized labour in Canada. I say this cautiously and with considerable reservation. But if recent strike activity and union wage settlement data are any indication, Canadian union members seem to be on the march in a way they haven’t been since at least the onset of the pandemic.”
Read the full story.
In this important deep dive, contributor Cass Kislenko took a closer look at the climate of hate and far-right politics in and around Waterloo University, where a Gender Studies class was recently attacked in a hate-motivated incident. Fae Johnstone, executive director of LGBTQ+ advocacy group Wisdom2Action, told Cass: “It’s heartbreaking and devastating to see. I wish it was more of a surprise than it is.”
Read the full story.
Photo via Olivia Chow on Twitter. In this opinion piece, I gave my view on the recent news reports targeting Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow in the ongoing “Chinese interference” witch-hunt. I argue that these latest stories are some of the most ludicrous and thinly-evidenced contributions to that narrative to date, and that it’s high time for this McCarthyite garbage to stop.
Read the full article.
A report published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) this week showed there is a massive gap between the minimum wage and the wage needed to afford rent in almost every major province. In British Columbia, for example, the “rental wage” for a two-bedroom unit is more than double the minimum wage of $15.65 per hour, which is the highest in the country.
Read the full story.
From The Archives
- Regular Maple readers will know that we’ve been strongly critiquing the “Chinese interference” narrative for some time. As a follow-up to this week’s piece on Olivia Chow, I recommend reading this article from Davide, which explains why, despite claims to the contrary, the media’s reporting on this narrative is inherently racist.
- In her interview with Cass, Fae Johnstone explained: “It’s easy to imagine that there’s something unique about Canada that means hate can’t come here too, but hate has been here for centuries. There’s a willful naivete to pretend that we’re different.” Although it’s a couple of years old, this article from Rob Rousseau holds up well, arguing that Canadians are in denial about our right-wing extremism problem. The piece is also grimly prophetic, as it came just after the January 6 riots in the United States, and a year before the Freedom Convoy occupied Ottawa for almost a month.
Now, let’s turn to the members’ corner…
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