New This Week:
Statements of Communist and Workers Parties
PAME: Workers Militant Front Call to Strike
KKE Protests NATO Conference in Greece
Harper Minority Government Supports NATO Plan to Supplant UN
Attack on Workers Unprecedented, Silence is Not an Option

Research

Labour

Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL):Labour Market Monitor - Recession Edition

1/19/2010

Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL): Labour Market Monitor - Recession Edition

It’s springtime in Alberta, and signs of the new season are everywhere. Birds are flocking back, the ice is out of the river, and down at the Legislature, the government has unveiled Budget 2009, Building on Our Strength. Like most Alberta budgets, this one is as much about show business as it is about provincial finances.

The 2009 Federal Budget: Preliminary Canadian Labour Congress Analysis

1/21/2010

The 2009 Federal Budget: Preliminary Canadian Labour Congress Analysis
Impact on Jobs and the Economy
The Canadian Labour Congress released its preliminary report on the Flaherty federal budget. The Conservative budget is an attack on workers. Read what the CLC has to say…

Energy

Alberta Federation of Labour - Lost Down the Pipeline

1/17/2010

Lost Down the Pipeline

The Alberta Federation of Labour completed an evaluation and report outlining the resource sell-out of Canadian olisands. This is a significant report that all serious labour and political activists need to read. It is essential reading…FOS recommended.

As a result of the global economic downturn, Alberta’s oil-sands boom is clearly over. Investment in the oil sands has collapsed and employment in oil-sands-related construction is in the process of doing the same.

The short- and medium-term costs of the bust to working Albertans and their families are serious enough but the cancellation or indefinite postponement of virtually all upgrader projects has other, even more ominous, implications for the province.

Canadian Centre for Energy Information: Evolution of Canada's oil and gas industry - a historical companion to Our Petroleum Challenge 7th edition

1/17/2010

Canadian Centre for Energy Information: Evolution of Canada's oil and gas industry - a historical companion to Our Petroleum Challenge 7th edition

The seventh edition of Our Petroleum Challenge includes a brief historical overview of the Canadian oil and gas industry, along with coverage of today’s conventional, oilsands, offshore, Arctic, midstream and downstream operations. EVOLUTION is intended for readers seeking a more complete and detailed historical perspective. The oil and gas industry has been an important part of Canada’s economy since the mid-19th century, but almost every aspect has changed in ways the founders could not have imagined. This booklet describes the industry’s evolution from hit-or-miss, trial-and-error pioneering in the 1850s to the advanced science and technology of the 21st century. www.centreforenergy.com.

Peace

Government of Canada - Canada First Defence Strategy

1/17/2010

Government of Canada – Canada First Defence Strategy

The Harper government announced in June 2008 that they will Canadian workers to one half of a trillion dollar ($490B) 25 year, military budget. On top of the war in Afghanistan the Harper conservatives are ensuring that military profiteer will be well financed by the Canadian people for decades. This is an essential document for all Canadian peace activists. FOS recommended!

Economics

Where Has the Money Gone: The State of Canadian Household Debt in a Stumbling Economy

1/22/2010

Where Has the Money Gone: The State of Canadian Household Debt in a Stumbling Economy

In the winter of 2008, the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada (CGA-Canada) embarked on a second consumer survey on the topic of household debt and consumption in Canada. A similar survey was commissioned by CGA-Canada in the spring of 2007. The purpose of this particular survey seeks to understand the extent to which the economic and financial crisis worsened financial positions of Canadians having already experienced some financial strains. As we have seen, the topic of household debt and consumption is timely, relevant and critical for Canadians to consider. We anticipate that this new report entitled Where Has the Money Gone: The State of Canadian Household Debt in a Stumbling Economy, will be of significant value to the Canadian public.

· Household debt is at an all-time high reaching $1.3 trillion in 2008 and the escalation of debt is primarily caused by consumption motives rather than asset accumulation.

· The three main indicators of household indebtedness (debt-to-income, debt-to-assets and debt-to-net worth ratios) deteriorated significantly in the past two years and particularly during 2008.

· Canadian households are financing consumption activity and fuelling gross domestic product growth with unearned money as families increasingly reach for credit to finance day-to-day living expenses.

· The majority (58%) of survey respondents with rising debt said that day-to-day living expenses are the main cause for the increasing debt. This was higher than the 52% reported in 2007.

Military

CCPA - Canadian Military Spending 2009

2/27/2010
New Page 1

Canadian military spending 2009

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA)

Bill Robinson, December 2009

Canadians could be forgiven for thinking that they spend a mere pittance on their military: politicians and pundits constantly bombard us with the claim that Canada is a military miser. Most Canadians would probably be stunned to learn that Canada is actually among the top 15 military spenders in the world, and the 6th largest spender among the 28 members of NATO. They might also be surprised to learn that Canadian military spending is now higher than it has been in more than 60 years — higher than it was during the Cold War, or indeed at any time since the end of the Second World War.

Monthly Bulletin No. 9

AKEL Bulletin No 29

Strike Called by PAME on March 5th in Greece

Obama Hosts Dalai Lama Paid CIA Agent

The Latest From FOS:

International
The Way I See It - Afghanistan Revisited

Those of us who support CPA, including the members of CPS assert that anti-Sovietism was and continues to be pro-war and anti-peace. During the darkest days of the cold-war when the threat of nuclear war loomed over the planet, the Soviet Union was the main force of restraint over the worst of the US imperialist reactionary forces thirsting for war.
Read more...
Federal Politics
Prime Minister Harper (Assisted by Jim Flaherty and Peter Van Loan) Leads the Whole World Forward To the New “Enlightened Sovereignty” of the 21st Century

Prime Minister Harper’s address to the World Economic Forum (WEF)[1] in Davos Switzerland January 28, 2010 can’t be dismissed as just unctuous and vapid; it was worse than that. Harper adopting his familiar and grating patronizing manner underwhelmed the elite audience of capitalist intellectual luminaries, by suggesting that minority Conservative Government economic policies under Harper’s leadership is the example the nations of the world must follow to emerge triumphant from the worst capitalist depression since the market crash of October 1929.
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Federal Politics
Organized Labour and the Politics of the Class Struggle Today

A Convention of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) is always a significant event in the struggle of the working class to defeat capitalism and replace it with socialism. Only the Communists strive to take responsibility for the whole revolutionary process underway in our own country and globally. Every revolutionary class conscious worker is concerned that the Communist Party becomes strengthened and more effective in fulfilling its historic responsibilities to the working class of Canada and all of its peoples and for the victorious outcome of the cause of the International Communist Movement.
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Federal Politics
The Way I See It! - Some Critical Comments

The main link that can move the entire political process forward is a clearly articulated and unambiguous revolutionary working class program to confront US-Canadian corporate power and its stranglehold on Parliament, the State, the military and the economy. That task must be the main theme of the upcoming 36th Convention of the Communist Party of Canada (CPC). From the convention an appeal that reaches out to all of organized labour and the democratic forces of our country with a plan to unite electorally to defeat Harper, and decisively, will be influential within labour and garner widespread appeal with Canadian workers. That is a concentration task and if it is solved, the organizational tactics to achieve it can be worked out.
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Energy
Canadian Workers Labour 5 Years for Free

Striking CUPE public sector workers in Ontario are revealing the rapacious nature of capitalism better than any number of "exposures", op-eds and news articles by the academic "left" press.
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What Was Said

Tim Buck – Steps To Power
Published 1925 by the Trade Union Educational League

Under capitalism there can be no equilibrium and no peace. The varying intensity of the class struggle in not a result of the machinations of bad capitalists modified at times by the “justness” of good capitalists, any more than it is due to the efforts of “professional agitators”. It flows from the ceaseless struggle on the part of capitalists to increase their profits, and on the part of workers to maintain their standard of living. Fluctuations and working class defeats must occur – and will continue – so long as the aim of those controlling the labour movement is social peace. Because that in turn demands a measure of social equilibrium which the very nature of the capitalism renders impossible.

Our problem and the aim of this booklet is to direct our activities and the activities of our organizations so that, instead of merely functioning as a kind of bargain counter across which officials continually haggle with the boss in a futile effort to maintain a balance between wages and the cost of living, our organizations will also engage in struggles for more fundamental things; which struggles n turn, while strengthening the unions, will bring them into direct conflict with capitalism as a system.

WWS Archives...

36^th Convention of the Communist Party of Canada

The Communist Party of Canada will meet in Toronto Ontario February 5-7, 2010. The Draft Main Political Resolution has been issued. In it the CPC provides a political analysis of the current capitalist crisis and the main political tasks of the Canadian working class to mount a “counter-offensive”. The CPC calls for establishing a “Peoples’ Coalition” to combat the most brazen attacks on Canadian democracy. From the Main Draft Political Resolution:

“Since our Party’s 35th Central Convention in early 2007, the Canadian domestic situation has been characterized by a deepening of capitalism’s interconnected economic, political, social and environmental crises. This has gone beyond the occasional cyclical recession or political upheaval; it has become a profound crisis threatening the future of Canada. But for the revolutionary forces, such a crisis also offers the opportunity to win working class support for fundamental change in society. The Communist Party of Canada calls for a truly dramatic shift away from the failed policies of neoliberal capitalism, and for the creation of a People’s Coalition which can begin to take the country in such a new direction.”

1. CPC 36^th Central Convention Discussion Bulletin #1 – Draft Main Political Resolution
2. CPC 36^th Central Convention Discussion Bulletin #2
3. CPC 36^th Central Convention Discussion Bulletin #3
4. CPC 36^th Central Convention Discussion Bulletin #4

5. CPC 36^th Central Convention Discussion Bulletin #5

6. CPC 36^th Central Convention Discussion Bulletin #6

Young Communist League of Canada Contribution to the CPC 36th Central Convention

DISCUSS, DISCOVER & INVENT

On behalf of the Young Communist League’s Central Executive Committee and all our members, we extend warm, militant greetings to the Communist Party of Canada as your 36th Central Convention discussions unfold. The economic crisis is of cardinal importance today in the militant kinetics of people’s politics. It menaces the future of the youth. We would like to respectfully elaborate on the meaning for youth and students’ of your five “general features and conclusions” on the crisis.
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