SPC Apr 2019 Report

Greetings Fellow Workers,

THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF CANADA
worldsocialism.org/canada | spc@worldsocialism.org | twitter.com/spc_news
PO Box 31024 Victoria B.C. Canada V8N 6J3
Secretary’s Report for April 2019

Email Report

– WSP (India) EC meeting minutes No. 197, Sunday, March 10, 2019, and Proceedings Report of the Spring School & Twenty Fifth Annual Conference, March 2 & 3, 2019, received with thanks.

– Robin Cox (SPGB) to Socialist Party of Canada April 2nd 2019.

Subject: Weekend residential school & etc.

Hi Comrades
Sometime this month I shall be drawing up my report to the EC of the SPGB on my investigations into the state of the WSPUS and making various recommendations. The prospects of a reinvigorated – and reorganised – WSPUS look good.

You will receive a copy of my report as well because part of what I will be proposing is closer practical collaboration between the two parties. There will be a fnancial aspect to this and I will be recommending that the SPGB provide  financial assistance to both parties to facilitate coordinated activity across North America.

One example of practical collaboration was the suggestion of a annual weekend residential school alternating between the US and Canada. At the moment I guess the SPC is in a better position to organise such an event with a branch in Toronto and I wondered how the discussion about this proposal was proceeding in the Party. Any information would be useful to include in my report.

The proposal may seem quite an ambitious and daunting one but I frmly believe it is do-able and needs to be combined with a raft of other proposals including a publicity campaign throughout North America via selected journals (I suggest
Canadian comrades start putting together a list appropriate to Canada; the American comrades will be doing the same) There will not only be fnancial assistance to support this endeavour – or at least that will be what I will be recommending – but practical detailed assistance that you could avail yourself of from the organiser of the annual SPGB summer school, Mike Foster. I am sure that Mike will be more than happy to advise you on how to go about making this project a great success and a real fillip to your activities in Canada

I look forward to hearing from you

All the best
Robin Cox

Good of the Movement
– The Toronto Branch of the Socialist Party of Canada presents a Meeting in Toronto on Wednesday, 24 April 2019 from  6:30pm to 8:30pm (18:30-20:30).

– Upcoming SPC Toronto Branch meetings – Visit https://web.facebook.com/Toronto-Branch-Socialist-Party-of-Canada-1120836671294008/ & https://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/.

– SPC enquiries independent web forum: https://www.reddit.com/r/Canadian_Socialism/

– SPC involvement re: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: 100th anniversary of Winnipeg’s 1919 General Strike will be marked with monument, movie, books – http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/1919-winnipeg-generalstrike-centenary-1.4669345
– Peer collaborators re: new pamphlet – Progressive Thought and the Materialist Conception of History, as well as generation of socialist articles and summaries. Write to assist: worldsocialismbc@outlook.com.

General Administrative Committee
– One GAC seat remains open. Nominations forward to spc@iname.com. Dues – $25 per year or $2 per month. Funds conduct Party post, photocopies, public meeting expenses and internet services. All other Party activity is voluntarily run. Dues waiver – please contact general secretary to arrange.
F ood for T hought – views & contributions to spc@worldsocialism.org

● The Canadian economy’s six month streak of job creation came to a halt in March. Employment dropped by 7,200 most of which were full time jobs, said Stats- Canada in its report on April 5. Avery Shenfeld, the chief economist at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, said, ”The party had to end at sometime”. Of course it did, we are talking about capitalism, not some society where prosperity and security can be taken for granted. Think of how many thought they had it made for life in 1929 and in 2008 only to have the rug pulled out from under them and that includes some capitalists.

● A recent report from Cornell University in New York  revealed that in 2013 millions of Starfish along the Pacific coast from Mexico to Alaska died from the effects of global warming. To quote, ”They succumbed to a wasting disease. It began with white lesions on their limbs, the dissolution of
surrounding flesh, the loss of limbs and finally death.” The researchers found that the die off of the starfish matched the pattern of heat spreading through the ocean and that the world’s oceans have absorbed more than 90 per cent of the atmospheric heat humans have caused by releasing greenhouse gases. The report did not mention that it isn’t marine life alone which is threatened with extinction
by the effects of global warming – the Human Race is too.

● In the past getting a mortgage in Canada required going to the lender and meeting their qualifying rate. Then if someone was approved by the lender at that rate they could get a mortgage, but not anymore chum. Now anyone applying will have to pass a stress test which requires that the applicants meet the Bank of Canada’s 5 year mortgage rate, or their contractual rate plus an extra 2 per cent, whichever is greater. For those renewing their mortgage who fail the stress test, will be forced to accept a higher interest rate with their current lender and will not have the freedom to shop around for a better rate. Those seeking to refinance to pay for home renovations will also face the stress test. This means prospective buyers will have less money available to them than in the past, but where is it written, As time goes by life under capitalism gets easier.

● Nearly a year after Darren McKim was critically burned in a tent fire in Rosedale Valley Toronto an Ontario coroner, not exactly the city morgues equivalent of Speedy Gonzales, has determined that his death should be listed as undetermined. Rosedale is one of the wealthiest ”hoods” in Canada; a place where you don’t expect the homeless to hang out, but capitalism being a system full of contradictions always has a nasty surprise up its proverbial sleeve, because some do. The Mount Pleasant Bridge runs through Rosedale and some homeless sleep under it only a minutes walk from billionaires’ mansions. McKim, it would seem was badly beaten and burned to death, at least that’s how the newspapers put it, but those two things were not the cause of his death – poverty was.

● The Ontario government is planning to cut 3,475 teaching jobs over the next for years which they claim will save $851 million. 1,558 teaching jobs will be gone by the fall, so they ain’t exactly dragging their feet on this. Reaction was fast and furious on the part of the students. On April 4 100,000 students from about 700 elementary and secondary schools in Toronto, London, Hamilton and Ottawa walked out of class and participated in the student led action dubbed #StudentsSayNo. Premier Doug Ford said the unions were behind it which is nonsense. He wants more students in classes which they claim won’t be so effective in learning and online courses. It’s just another fine mess capitalism has
caused. Students will suffer, teachers will be unemployed and a cash strapped government may save a few bucks, big deal. What has not been said is that, however one may sympathise with the students, they are not being educated regardless of what Ford and his cronies may or may not do because education does not exist under capitalism, but training for a job, which isn’t the same thing, does. Let’s have done with all the above nonsense and have a society where education will exist.

● There has been a positive reaction to global warming from the Indigenous people in British Columbia who have had enough of flash floods killing the fish which they need to survive. In 2018 floods wiped out the nets in rivers which were there to catch the spawning salmon and they lost about 10,000 fish. Art Antoine is a guardian watchman with Bonaparte First Nation and was quite vocal, ”Damn right the fish are our lives and after the Moose population we in the wildfires, we’re at  the front line of climate change”. One of the largest guardian teams is that of the Coastal First Nations of B.C. that has combined their training and resources with the aim of protecting the environment and improving community well being. It would be excellent if the rest of humanity were to be inspired by the B.C. tribes and do something about the environment and the best way to start would be by abolishing capitalism.

● The SNC-Lavalin scandal is world news and we do not at this time know how events will play out. What we do know is corruption and the bribery it engenders are part of the everyday functioning of capitalism all over the world — in fact capitalism cannot function without it. We also know the expulsion of both Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpot from the Liberal caucus are undemocratic and hypocritical. At the time of writing the company is doing all it can to avoid a criminal trial, though its efforts will probably be fruitless. Proprietary skytrains (that no where else uses . . .), monopoly P3 highways (guaranteed profits underwritten by the public . . .), and Bribes for Cheats: that’s the Lavalin life! It’s just another stupid sordid mess that capitalism by its very swindling nature is.

Socialists Readings in the Modern Rage
Socialist Party of Canada 2019 Calendar £19.25:
https://www.zazzle.co.uk/socialist_party_of_canada_2019_calendar-
158951425439478504

Greatest Impossibilists 2019 Calendar £19.25:
https://www.zazzle.co.uk/greatest_impossibilists_2019_calendar-158115142299860432

– Edgar Hardcastle Archive 1900-1995 https://www.marxists.org/archive/hardcastle/

– Archive of Socialist Studies
https://archive.org/details/socialiststudies
https://libcom.org/library/socialist-studies
– Producers and Parasites (1935). By John Keracher. https://www.marxists.org/archive/keracher/1935/producersparasites.htm

– History of the Socialist Party of Canada (1973). By J. M. Milne
http://www.socialisthistory.ca/Docs/SocialistParty/HistoryofSPC.pdf

– W.A. Pritchard address to the jury in the Crown vs. Armstrong, Heaps, Bray, Ivens, Johns, Pritchard, and Queen: Indicted for seditious conspiracy and common nuisance, Fall assizes, Winnipeg, 1919-1920. Winnipeg: Defense Committee, 1920.
http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/bibliography/4627.html

– Socialist Studies http://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/ | Marxian Economics YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXq0kw9sU6xvrr34yezA_Tw
Archive of Socialist Studies (except no. 36): https://1drv.ms/f/s!AvbgU4NFjvNHgV9xDR5_Om8AtJjF
Kenworthy, John Coleman (1900). The Anatomy of Misery: Plain Lectures on Economics.
https://archive.org/details/anatomyofmisery00kenw
– History of Economics: A Scientific Investigation into the Political Economy and Its Swindler ‘Economics’ published. 50.00 Rupees/CD$1-1.50. Contact http://www.worldsocialistpartyindia.org for more information to purchase.

– Red Lion Press:
 Revolutionary Socialist: Life of the Socialist Party of Canada and the OBU, 1910-1922.
 Thinking: An Introduction To Its History and Science.
 Method in Thinking: An Introduction to Dialectics.
Inquires to the publisher: https://web.facebook.com/search/more/? q=Larry+Gambone&init=public
– Rosa Luxemburg on Socialism (2019). The Socialist Party of Great Britain.
£4.00 https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/product/rosa-luxemburg-on-socialism/

For socialism, Steve, Mehmet, John & contributing members of the SPC . . .

Workers councils 1919 ran Winnipeg for 6 weeks striking Canadian crapitalism

• This topic was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by Socialist Party Head Office.