Canadian Dimension

Ontario’s cash bail playbook punishes the poor, and does not make us safer The American experience is a warning. Cash bail deepened poverty, entrenched racial injustice, and weakened community safety. Ontario does not need to repeat those mistakes. But unless we resist this ...

Doug Ford's plan to require bail cash up front risks cementing a two-tiered justice system: freedom for those who can pay, detention for those who cannot.

Human rights lawyer Sima Atri of Toronto's Community Justice Collective on why false, fear-based narratives will not make us safer.

No end in sight to Rwanda’s war in Congo, despite peace deal A US-brokered agreement is set to legalize Rwanda’s export of Congolese minerals and reward Paul Kagame and his oligarchs for decades of violent trafficking. Meanwhile, secretive negotiations grant Am...

NEW: Donald Trump didn’t broker a peace accord for Congo—he brokered a mining deal for Western elites.

As Judi Rever writes in her latest column, the pact greenlights Rwanda’s long-running mineral trafficking and deepens Congo’s exploitation.

No end in sight to Rwanda’s war in Congo, despite peace deal A US-brokered agreement is set to legalize Rwanda’s export of Congolese minerals and reward Paul Kagame and his oligarchs for decades of violent trafficking. Meanwhile, secretive negotiations grant Am...

For nearly three decades Rwanda has waged war in Congo, committing systematic atrocities against civilians and using its military and proxy rebel groups to traffic Congolese gold and tungsten. After Trump's latest 'peace plan,' US political, military and financial elites are queuing up to profit.

Ahmed al-Sharaa’s first year in power bodes ill for Syria’s future Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Islamist commander, toppled Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad on December 8, 2024. For a fleeting moment, Syrians flooded the streets in jubilation, believing decades of tyran...

Ahmed al-Sharaa promised a new Syria after Assad’s fall. Instead, a year later, the country faces renewed repression, rising sectarian violence, and growing foreign control. The revolution’s hopes have been extinguished.

Austerity, anxiety and the making of a securitized Winnipeg Amid Winnipeg’s widening divides, airport-style checkpoints and police-driven safety strategies are reshaping key public spaces. Unions, caught between member safety and broader justice commitments, a...

Amid Winnipeg’s widening divides, airport-style checkpoints and police-driven safety strategies are reshaping key public spaces. Unions, caught between member safety and broader justice commitments, are becoming unlikely champions of securitization.

The authoritarian edge of Alberta conservatism Danielle Smith’s unprecedented use of the notwithstanding clause is reshaping Alberta politics, targeting labour, trans youth, and minority rights. Ryan Kelpin traces the far-right project behind her ...

'To understand Smith’s ideology is to situate it within a long lineage of anti-central-planning and anti-welfare-state politics that have defined Alberta conservatism for more than 60 years.'
canadiandimension.com/articles/vie...

The authoritarian edge of Alberta conservatism Danielle Smith’s unprecedented use of the notwithstanding clause is reshaping Alberta politics, targeting labour, trans youth, and minority rights. Ryan Kelpin traces the far-right project behind her ...

The authoritarian nature of Smith's UCP government and its use of the Notwithstanding Clause.

canadiandimension.com/articles/vie...

The authoritarian edge of Alberta conservatism Danielle Smith’s unprecedented use of the notwithstanding clause is reshaping Alberta politics, targeting labour, trans youth, and minority rights. Ryan Kelpin traces the far-right project behind her ...

The authoritarian edge of Alberta conservatism

From union-busting to anti-trans moves, Danielle Smith is reviving the notwithstanding clause as a reactionary tool.

canadiandimension.com/articles/vie...

The authoritarian edge of Alberta conservatism Danielle Smith’s unprecedented use of the notwithstanding clause is reshaping Alberta politics, targeting labour, trans youth, and minority rights. Ryan Kelpin traces the far-right project behind her ...

The notwithstanding clause has been used almost exclusively to attack workers and LGBTQ+ people, enabling a form of state interventionism rooted in far-right politics. By invoking the clause, premiers including Danielle Smith masquerade as populists while serving only socially regressive interests.

The authoritarian edge of Alberta conservatism Danielle Smith’s unprecedented use of the notwithstanding clause is reshaping Alberta politics, targeting labour, trans youth, and minority rights. Ryan Kelpin traces the far-right project behind her ...

Danielle Smith’s habitual use of the notwithstanding clause is not an accident. It reflects a deeper ideological shift in Alberta and across Canada toward authoritarian governance and reactionary social conservatism.

Smith's UCP is introducing legislation meant to appease the activist core of the party because she's more afraid of them than the rest of Albertans.

It's our duty to make sure she's more afraid of Albertans than of them. Whatever happens with recall petitions, we can't let up. #AbLeg

The authoritarian edge of Alberta conservatism Danielle Smith’s unprecedented use of the notwithstanding clause is reshaping Alberta politics, targeting labour, trans youth, and minority rights. Ryan Kelpin traces the far-right project behind her ...

My newest article for
@canadiandimension.bsky.social
unpacks Danielle Smith's use of the notwithstanding clause for her anti-trans and anti-labour reactionary politics in relation to a lineage of right wing uses of the NWC.

canadiandimension.com/articles/vie...

TRL but going from living most of my life without that clause rarely being invoked to it being invoked *all the time* is wild and alarming AF.

"While many institutional and liberal analyses have been published in daily papers and major news outlets regarding Smith’s repeated use of the NWC, they largely fail to grapple with the regressive and reactionary politics at the heart of her ideological project."

The authoritarian edge of Alberta conservatism Danielle Smith’s unprecedented use of the notwithstanding clause is reshaping Alberta politics, targeting labour, trans youth, and minority rights. Ryan Kelpin traces the far-right project behind her ...

Danielle Smith has invoked the notwithstanding clause four times in five weeks. This authoritarian turn has targeted labour, trans youth, and basic human rights. As Ryan Kelpin writes, it should alarm everyone in Canada.

Corporate pressure mounts on Chileans opposing Canadian copper mine A Canadian mining company is escalating legal pressure against Chileans fighting to protect a fragile Andean ecosystem. As Vancouver-based Los Andes Copper pushes its Vizcachitas project, local offici...

The mineral-intensive energy transition in Latin America is advancing in ways that undermine human rights and nature, pushing into fragile ecosystems, overriding community consent, and placing environmental defenders at growing risk.

NEW from Viviana Herrera of @miningwatch.bsky.social:

Corporate pressure mounts on Chileans opposing Canadian copper mine A Canadian mining company is escalating legal pressure against Chileans fighting to protect a fragile Andean ecosystem. As Vancouver-based Los Andes Copper pushes its Vizcachitas project, local offici...

'The rush for critical minerals is pushing deep into fragile ecosystems, overriding community consent, and placing human rights and environmental defenders at even greater risk.' #MiningCompanies
canadiandimension.com/articles/vie...

I read Mark Carney’s book so you don’t have to Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on campaign literature to discern Mark Carney’s vision for the future. The decades he’s spent in both the private sector and the public service, as well as his 2021 ...

Mark Carney presents himself as the steady hand Canada needs, but his politics amount to neoliberalism with a friendlier face. Canada needs more than tinkering around the edges of capitalism—we need a government willing to confront capital itself.

I read Mark Carney’s book so you don’t have to Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on campaign literature to discern Mark Carney’s vision for the future. The decades he’s spent in both the private sector and the public service, as well as his 2021 ...

Mark Carney’s vision for the future of Canada is an oligarchy of better-behaved oligarchs—a corporate technocracy that resolves the twin crises of declining living standards and environmental catastrophe without slowing capital accumulation.

Reviving the gospel of liberation As the far-right turns faith into a weapon, Canada’s left needs to rediscover the moral vision it once carried. The social gospel called Christians to organize love into policy—to fight inequality, de...

Worth a repost:

« The only way to fight a counterfeit revival is with the real thing: scripture that flat-out refuses the logic of power and profit. The gospel, at its heart, was never on the side of conquest or capitalism but of liberation. »

canadiandimension.com/articles/vie...

The false hope of carbon capture and storage Do we need carbon removal? Almost certainly, but not because we need to offset “hard-to-decarbonize” industries: we need it because we’ve already disrupted the climate to dangerous levels. Just ask an...

Carbon capture and storage technology is, at its core, a calculated tactic by fossil fuel companies to perpetuate their environmentally destructive practices while giving the illusion that they’re addressing the very crisis they’ve been fueling for over a century.

Carney’s attacks will unleash major struggles As Mark Carney’s government prepares a sweeping austerity agenda—gutting public services, fuelling militarism, and expanding fossil fuel projects—John Clarke argues that a new wave of resistance is em...

We should never underestimate the potential of Indigenous resistance in Canada. The Carney government will find that its drive to unleash oil and gas projects—steamrolling over Indigenous rights in the process—is a risky proposition.

Carney is pushing Canadian liberalism to its breaking point Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Bill C-5 signals a dramatic shift in Canadian politics, allowing major industrial projects to bypass environmental and Indigenous consultation. This move threatens to rupt...

If Carney proceeds with pro‑industry policies that override Indigenous rights and weaken our regulatory safeguards, he will spark broad resistance. And if his government responds as expected, with heightened surveillance and violent repression, Canadian liberalism will reach its breaking point.

🇨🇦Los Andes Copper has launched an aggressive campaign targeting the municipality of Putaendo 🇨🇱 & a local biologist for leading scientific efforts to protect the area from its Vizcachitas copper project
✍️ @vivianaherrerav.bsky.social
🧵1
canadiandimension.com/articles/vie...

My latest for @canadiandimension.bsky.social

“All we are doing is conducting a scientific investigation...we are discovering new species for science, which could disappear if the Vizcachitas mining project were to go ahead," says Cádiz-Véliz, local biologist targeted for opposing the Canadian mine

Corporate pressure mounts on Chileans opposing Canadian copper mine A Canadian mining company is escalating legal pressure against Chileans fighting to protect a fragile Andean ecosystem. As Vancouver-based Los Andes Copper pushes its Vizcachitas project, local offici...

The mineral-intensive energy transition in Latin America is advancing in ways that undermine human rights and nature, pushing into fragile ecosystems, overriding community consent, and placing environmental defenders at growing risk.

NEW from Viviana Herrera of @miningwatch.bsky.social:

Ontario faces high cost and high-risk nuclear future Ontario is doubling down on costly, high-risk nuclear mega-projects while electricity prices climb and cheaper clean energy options are sidelined. Billions in public subsidies now hide the true costs....

Ontario is pouring billions into nuclear mega-projects while electricity costs climb and affordable, low-risk alternatives are ignored. Ford’s strategy isn’t just expensive, it undermines decarbonization, competitiveness and the province’s economic future.

Ontario faces high cost and high-risk nuclear future Ontario is doubling down on costly, high-risk nuclear mega-projects while electricity prices climb and cheaper clean energy options are sidelined. Billions in public subsidies now hide the true costs....

While renewables have become the cheapest power on earth, Ontario is pouring billions into massive nuclear projects that cost three to four times as much. That decision will lock ratepayers into decades of the most expensive electricity available.

Canada pursues Gulf markets as its weapons fuel war in Sudan Far from “building Canada strong,” the prime minister’s visit to Abu Dhabi marks the culmination of a decade-long push to secure access for Canadian capital in a lucrative Gulf market. If that require...

Mark Carney's recent visit to Abu Dhabi caps a decade-long push to secure Canadian access to a lucrative Gulf market. If that means overlooking the victims of Canadian weapons sales and the brutal consequences of UAE policy in Sudan, the government has shown it is more than willing to do so.

Canada pursues Gulf markets as its weapons fuel war in Sudan Far from “building Canada strong,” the prime minister’s visit to Abu Dhabi marks the culmination of a decade-long push to secure access for Canadian capital in a lucrative Gulf market. If that require...

Ottawa has long pursued an arms-export policy that prioritizes profit over principle, routinely enabling violence abroad while distancing itself from the consequences—a pattern now laid bare by the appearance of Canadian weapons in Sudan’s genocidal war.