Can workers fight a university administration dead-set on busting the union? The Athabasca University Faculty Association did exactly that— and won. AUFA President Dave Powell and AUFA Chair of Membership Engagement Committee Rhiannon Rutherford join Team Advantage to explain how organizing and engaging union membership helped stave off an effort by university administration to cripple the union.
Read more at http://aufa.ca/archive and follow them on twitter @AUFacultyAssoc.
What can be learned from the Corbyn project in the U.K. and the opposition it encountered, from both Conservatives outside the Labour party as well as Labour’s own right wing? What do recent attacks on the left of the NDP mean for the state of bold policy in Canada? Niki Ashton, MP for Churchill-Keewatinook Aski, joins Team Advantage to discuss the Progressive International and her upcoming event, a conversation with Jeremy Corbyn.
Purchase event tickets here through Eventbrite, and learn more at progressive.international.
Are the NDP merely liberals in a bit of a rush? Team Advantage examines Gary Teeple’s 1972 essay, ‘Liberals in a hurry’: socialism and the CCF-NDP. What role does the Fabian Society have in shaping the thought of the CCF, and later, the NDP? Can real socialist change be made through technocratic changes or parliamentary methods? Is moralizing about capitalism’s ill effects a useful way of bringing about political change?
Sweater Weather is a video & audio podcast about Canadian culture, politics & economics from a socialist perspective, hosted & produced by Aaron Giovannone. Follow Aaron on Twitter @SincerityCity, and follow the Sweater Weather series @canadiansweater and sweaterweatherpod.com.
Further reading:
Teeple, Gary. “‘Liberals in a hurry’: socialism and the CCF-NDP.” Capitalism and the National Question in Canada. University of Toronto Press, 1972. 229-250.
What is to be done with the state? How does one’s assessment of the state relate to socialist strategy? Is the state merely a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie? Is it entirely captured by industry, or factions of capital, or does it operate independently? Team Advantage convenes to discuss theories of the state, and explains how state theory ultimately informs the approach one takes to social transformation.
Further reading:
Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society. 1969.
Ralph Miliband, The Coup in Chile. October 1973.
Miliband, Ralph. “Poulantzas and the capitalist state.” New Left Review 82.1 (1973): 83-93.
Rooksby, Ed. “‘Structural Reform’ and the Problem of Socialist Strategy Today.” Critique 46.1 (2018): 27-48.
Are small businesses really the backbone of our economy? Team Advantage examines the realities of small businesses in our society. How do big corporations benefit from small businesses being the front-facing, friendly face of modern capitalism? What do Marx and Engels have to say about “small capitalists?” How do working conditions fare in a small business environment? Will socially progressive small businesses usher in an era of social change?
Want to replace every mention of “small business” in your browser with “small capitalist?” Install the Tampermonkey extension, and add the small capitalists script.
How can we reduce agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by half by mid-century? And how can steps to do so help strengthen and safeguard family farms? Darrin Qualman, director of Climate Crisis Policy and Action for the National Farmers Union and author of Tackling the Farm Crisis and the Climate Crisis: A Transformative Strategy for Canadian Farms and Food Systems joins Team Advantage to discuss farms, food, and the climate crisis.
In 2001, a campaign to reconstitute the NDP into a new party emerged, calling itself the New Politics Initiative. It proposed a party with stronger links with social movements and the anti-globalization campaigns that had been growing over the previous years, and had some high-profile spokespeople. What happened with this initiative? What was the response from within the NDP? Can anything be learned from this effort to reshape the NDP towards a more explicitly left-wing vision?
Listeners may also be interested in this 2018 episode, The Waffle, the NDP, and Full Breakfast Socialism.
If you’re stumbling across our podcast after hearing about it on Arshy Mann’s excellent COMMONS, subscribe with Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or RSS.
We’ve put together a few episodes you might enjoy. First, check out Killing the Welfare State: Liberals and the 1990s. It’s an exploration of the manufactured debt crisis and deep budget cuts that the Chrétien Liberals brought to Canada in the 1990s, as Canada welcomed corporate globalization. Features Rank & File editor Doug Nesbitt.
You might also enjoy our episode Canada: Making People’s Lives Miserable, Around the World. It’s an interview with Tyler Shipley about his book Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination. Has Canada always been a front for dispossession and resource extraction?
Lastly, give our episode about Western Alienation a listen. (Heads up: we think it’s fake.) Do other provinces blame all their woes on Ottawa to protect local billionaires, or is that just us?
Our work is 100% listener-funded. If you like what you hear, support us on Patreon and get yourself some exclusive perks. Thanks for listening!
While Canada’s medicare system was launched in the 1960s, some notable exclusions remain. Vision, pharmaceuticals, mental health, and dental care are all aspects of health that remain largely uncovered by our public health system. Brandon Doucet, dentist and member of the Coalition for Dentalcare, and Thomas Lange, health economist and research coordinator at the University of Calgary, join Team Advantage to discuss the potential ways health coverage could be expanded to include dentalcare.
Follow the Coalition for Dentalcare on Twitter @for_dentalcare, and follow Tom Lange @TomLangeYYC.
Read Brandon’s piece in Passage on the topic here:
https://readpassage.com/as-a-dentist-i-know-canada-needs-universal-public-dental-care/
Read Tom’s research papers here:
https://www.policyschool.ca/authors/thomas-christopher-lange/
Did you know that the Ku Klux Klan operated in Alberta— with thousands of members, a newspaper published out of downtown Edmonton, and regular picnics, parades and marches? Anti-racist activist Jason Devine joins Team Advantage to explore the strange history of the KKK in Alberta, and discuss how these historical forms of white supremacy have contributed to implicit and explicit forms of white supremacy today.
Further reading:
The Ku Klux Klan in Canada A Century of Promoting Racism and Hate in the Peaceable Kingdom – Allan Bartley
Perry, Barbara, and Ryan Scrivens. “Uneasy alliances: A look at the right-wing extremist movement in Canada.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 39.9 (2016): 819-841.
Anti-Racist Canada blog.
Canadian Anti-Hate Network.