Category: News and Analysis

Nothing (much) Changes: an analysis of changes in ownership of the Coastal Gas Link pipeline

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TC Energy recently sold 65% of their 100% stake in their Coastal Gas Link Project.

But does it mean anything?

Is the project struggling? Is TC Energy? Is there a chance this project will just fall by the wayside? After reading too many industry news sites and pompous press releases, interviews and share reports I have bad news.

It’s unlikely this indicates anything significant – and it doesn’t seem to be a sign of a flailing project or company.

In short; corporations buy and sell investments in projects all the time – and TC Energy has been doing a lot of this. TCE also announced back in 2018 that they intended to reduce its shares in the project, and hired RBC to help do it in January 2019, so it’s not a new or recent development. Project messaging has stayed consistent, and since the project is still in early stages new buyers must have a lot of faith it will proceed as planned. Read More …

Hamilton LRT cancellation: A Christmas Fucking Miracle!

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Working class Hamilton families breathed a collective sigh of relief Monday afternoon, when the Province announced they were killing the Light Rail Transit (LRT) project.  After 10+ years of living in the shadow of the Hamilton renaissance monster, with the housing walls closing in, this is the best holiday news many have heard in over a decade.

Hamilton has been wracking up some seriously shitty stats the last while.  In 2016, the CMHC named Hamilton one of 4 ‘red-flag’ cities with “dangerously overvalued” property, as ECDEV forced our way aboard Toronto’s SS Titanic housing bubble. This year we landed on the list of Top 10 most unaffordable cities for minimum wage workers (folks now working 55-60+ hours/week to afford a basic apartment).  And for the shit cherry on top of this hot shit sundae: we took the top prize this year for the highest one-year rent increase in all of Canada, at 24%. 

So when the announcement came that Metrolinx’s LRT project – the engine that’s been driving this community-wrecking shitmobile – was being shelved?  The joy was impossible to contain.  The joy overfloweth.  It was a Christmas fucking miracle.  Read More …

From Embers: Climate Mobilizations in Vancouver

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Submitted by From Embers From Embers is a regular show about anarchist and anti-authoritarian politics in so-called Canada based in Kingston, Ontario. We are part of the Channel Zero Anarchist Podcast Network. This episode features an interview with two anarchists from Vancouver about their efforts to intervene in the climate strike and extinction rebellion actions in that city. We talk about the context in Vancouver, their critique of Extinction Rebellion, Read More …

Honouring Dave Vasey on his birthday

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We are members of Rising Tide Toronto, a grassroots group dedicated to Indigenous solidarity work in Toronto. It has taken us a while to write something about one of our members, Dave Vasey, because in addition to being our co-organizer and co-conspirator, he was also our friend. We are still devastated by his sudden death in January 2019. Today Dave would have turned 41 years old. On this occasion we want to reflect upon his contributions to our collective movements and mourn his passing. Read More …

20 Years in the Matrix: Escaping the Prison of Surveillance Capitalism

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This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Wachowski’s pioneering film The Matrix, a 1999 sci-fi masterpiece that seems more prophetic than ever. Here in 2019, machine learning and surveillance capitalism are increasingly feeding off of the raw material of human lives, simultaneously enslaving and entertaining us – and mirroring the film’s premise.

‘Surveillance capitalism’ is a term coined by social psychologist Shoshana Zuboff, which she expounds upon at length – for nearly 666 pages – in her 2019 tome The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. For Zuboff, our economy is increasingly built around corporation’s relentless drive to digitize and monetize our personal lives. 

This should sound eerily familiar to anyone who’s a fan of The Matrix. The film presents a vision of a dystopian future, where the natural world has been scorched by human action into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. People cannot recognize this truth because their senses have been filled since birth by a placid artificial reality that enslaves them, enabling machines to feed off them. Read More …

Squeezing Profits: Landlord and Tenant Board Grants Timbercreek 7.2 Percent Rent Increase

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A couple dozen Ottawa residents braved the dipping temperatures and frigid downtown winds to rally at the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) on Albert Street on Nov. 13.

Tenants of Sunset Heights Apartments at 2880 Carling Avenue and their supporters with ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) were challenging an application filed by their landlord Timbercreek Asset Management. Timbercreek wanted an above guideline rent increase (commonly referred to as an AGI) of 5.4 percent above the provincially mandated 1.8 percent maximum. Read More …

Help It’s Going Down Grow and Continue Into 2020

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Next year IGD will turn 5 years old and at this point, the project has to expand or it will fail not only to reach more people, but also continue to provide for the communities, struggles, and movements that depend on it. To do this, we have to bring more people onto our team, and for that to happen, we need more of our readers and listeners to stand behind us.

We know that IGD supporters have always stood by us and we are grateful for each and every person that not only donates but also gives us feedback and constructive critique. As we have said many times, without you this project is nothing and we mean it. We hope that 2020 marks a turning point for IGD as we expand our collective and create new projects. Read More …

From Embers: New Episodes in October 2019

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From Embers is a regular anarchist podcast produced in Kingston, Ontario. We produce a few episodes each month about actions and projects going on in so-called Canada that inspire us, or about topics that we think will be relevant to anarchists living north of the border. We are a proud member of the Channel Zero Anarchist Podcast Network. Read More …

Like Hand in Glove: on the collaboration between media, police, and far-right in the recent arrests of antifascists in Toronto and Hamilton

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On Tuesday, October 22 and Wednesday, October 23, four antifascists were arrested by Hamilton police, watchdogs of white supremacy, in connection with the counter-protest against Maxime Bernier’s fundraising event last month. Two people living in Toronto came to Hamilton to turn themselves in, while the two living in Hamilton were arrested at their school and home respectively. Cynically, HPS chose to wait until right after the federal election before launching this wave of arrests to avoid further having their complicity in the rise of the far right in Hamilton become a national political issue. By doing so, they make obvious the political nature of these charges: they have more to do with the narrative being produced than with what happened on the ground. 

Two people are charged with intimidation and causing disturbance in connection to an old woman who was yelled at and delayed from entering the venue; another is charged with intervening in an attack by a fascist goon on other protestors; and then, perhaps most strangely, we have one person charged with theft under $5000 for allegedly removing a Canadian flag from an armed fascist’s baton.  Read More …

Maxime Bernier’s PPC and the Far Right

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Voting is not really our thing, but we do recognize that this is a time when more people are speaking about politics and policies, including many that will have a real impact on many people’s lives. This time around (not for the first time) the Conservatives are contending with a national party to their right, as Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada fields candidates across the country on a populist platform with climate denial and anti-immigrant sentiment as its key planks. Read More …