The Red Review | Issue #22 (July 2025)

Don’t Trample Indigenous Rights! Stop Aiding Canada’s Billionaires!

by Gary Porter

The NDP government of British Columbia, the Ontario Tory government, and the Liberal federal government of Mark Carney have all recently hurried through legislation designed to rush major economic development. The new laws speed up regulatory approvals and “consultations” to clear the way for massive fossil fuel, mining and infrastructure projects such as dams, highways and mega real estate schemes.

Major corporations, their bankers and powerful lobbyists have been increasingly impatient with evolving environmental and climate change regulation, as well as the recognized right of Indigenous people to be fully and fairly consulted before bulldozers change lives forever.

For the billionaires who own these companies, our health, safety and long-term viability are of little concern. For them, profit is king. High profits, as soon as possible, is their overriding goal. They cannot tolerate longer and more thorough approvals, and costly compliance with socially necessary regulation. Liberal, Tory and NDP governments are moving quickly to meet corporate demands, despite the protests and demonstrated interests of workers and Indigenous people.

Bill C-2 Would Align Canada’s Security and Immigration Laws with US

by Tom Baker

The Carney government’s first bill was the Strong Borders Act (Bill C-2). The title doesn’t do justice to the “dog’s breakfast” character of this omnibus bill. This bill, designed to deal with the border and border safety, contains numerous unrelated and dangerous elements. It attempts to appease Trump’s concerns on border security, thereby hoping to get some tariff relief. In addition, the Bill addresses long-standing requests by Canadian police agencies to increase surveillance powers.

Bill C-2 represents an escalation in Ottawa’s cooperation with Washington on security and immigration. President Obama deported 4.8 million people and built the machinery Trump used to deport 1.5 million in his first term. Now Trump is expanding deportations exponentially, leading to massive resistance in the U.S. Prime Minister Mark Carney is following the same playbook, building on Trudeau's legacy of annually increasing deportations, while establishing the machinery for future governments to use.

Revolutionary Solidarity with Pride Season 2025

by Socialist Action Canada

Warmest solidarity and greetings from Socialist Action/ Ligue pour l'Action Socialiste for Pride Month 2025. We are happy again to congratulate the organizers for their hard work across country which is keeping the spirit of Pride alive, in defiance of rainbow capitalism and corporate liberalization. Never forget that the relative equality and recognized status of LGBTQ+ people were won by militant mass action and radical resistance to state power. In 2025 the re-emboldened reactionary right, both at home and abroad, continues to make it necessary to organize in defense of our rights and safety.

Antagonism towards trans people has grown to a fever pitch. Crossing the U.S. border is no longer safe; three provinces have passed laws targeting trans youth/athletes/washroom use; and human rights watchdogs consider the majority of provinces and territories to be at "moderate risk or higher" likelihood of waging a legislative assault. Fortunately, the second iteration of the bigoted "Million March" floundered -- but its billionaire-funded provocateurs remain active.

Trump Scares Me But So Does Canadian Nationalism

by Riley Yesno

My wife and I went to a PWHL game in Toronto this season. We were lucky to get last-minute seats right on the glass. Our home team, the Toronto Sceptres, pulled out a nice win against the top-contending Minnesota Frost.

At the start, I was fascinated to see that a noticeable percentage of the place stayed seated when the arena was asked to stand for the teams’ respective national anthems. I assumed this was likely in protest to the festering U.S.-Canada dispute. We, too, sat for the U.S. anthem and stayed seated from the Canadian national anthem — something I’ve done since I was a teenager.

When the first line of “O Canada” was belted out, those who sat for the U.S. anthem shot to their feet and I looked to see only my wife and I still sat. The disconnect stuck.

As an Indigenous person, I have never had a fealty to the state. While I love where I live, I don’t think it’s because of the settler colonial state, but despite it. I am grateful to the Indigenous people who have fought to keep this place standing for millennia, no matter who the prime minister may be.

Moncada: Dawn of the Cuban Revolution

by Jose Ernesto Novarez Guerrero

July 26, 2023 marks 70 years since the attack on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks in eastern Cuba. The attack on Moncada is of fundamental importance in the history of Cuba. This is not only because of the military importance of the fortress — the second biggest after Columbia in Havana — but also because of the bloody repression carried out by the tyrannical regime, which took dozens of valuable lives from a generation that with its blood would change the destiny of the island.

As a small tribute, it would be fitting to recall why the attack on Moncada was a turning point for the country.

A generation arrived at Moncada that had matured physically and politically in the universe of the neocolonial pseudo-republic that prevailed in Cuba from 1902 to 1959. A political universe tainted by corruption, American interference, coups d’état and political caudillismo, intermingled, of course, with elements of the worst gangsterism, which ended not infrequently in violent shootouts in the streets of several cities of the country. This was a generation that had grown up in what Cuban revolutionary writer Rubén Martínez de Villena rightly called a “Yankee factory”.

New Brunswick Labour Declares Israel Weapons Shipments “HOT CARGO”

by David Gordon Koch

The NB Federation of Labour will call on unions to refuse handling any weapons shipments bound for Israel, following the adoption of an arms embargo resolution at the group’s recent convention in Saint John.

The resolution calls on the central labour body to declare any arms shipments bound for Israel to be “hot cargo,” a term referencing goods that unionized workers refuse to handle based on principles of solidarity.

“As workers, I think we really have the ability to hold the bosses and our governments to account in a way that other people can’t,” said Kevin Levangie, a letter carrier and regional union rep who is involved with the group Labour 4 Palestine.

He put forward the resolution on behalf of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

He noted that longshore workers shut down the Port of Saint John in 1979 to prevent the shipment of heavy water for a reactor in Argentina, which was ruled by a military dictatorship at the time.

The Actuality of Ernest Mandel

by Gilbert Achcar

This political and ideological context weighed heavily on the reception of Mandel’s death. There was a natural tendency to see in him mainly a representative of a generation overdetermined by living through the experience of the Soviet Union - people born in the early years of the Russian “communist” regime and passing away at the time of its final demise. Mandel could thus be easily perceived as a representative of a specifically 20th-century Marxism whose main trends were very much concerned with the Soviet Union, whether supportively or critically. Those wishing to carry on a Marxist-inspired fight against capitalism were advocating a return to Marx (who, of course, was alive and kicking, as everyone noticed fairly quickly). For some, this meant more or less leaping past the legacy of both “Soviet Marxism” and its critics, while others sought to combine a new-look Marx with brands of critical philosophical thought that were as remote from the issue of the USSR as they were from the actual class struggle - and therefore unaffected by the great historical shift.

In reality, any view confining Ernest Mandel’s legacy to a chapter in the history of Marxism that is related to the existence of the Soviet Union can only stem from sheer ignorance of his writings. For however one rates Mandel’s numerous contributions on the Soviet Union - which actually could be deemed the least original part of his work, as they were devoted in large part to an orthodox defence of Trotsky’s analysis - these were but a small fraction of his voluminous body of writings.

Tamil Genocide Monument Inaugurated in Brampton

by Kiri Vadivelu

Today, Eelam Tamil people are living in every corner of the world but all with one common goal of returning to Tamil Eelam one day. After 75 years of a state funded racist campaign to eradicate and subjugate minority Tamils in their native homeland, Sinhalese fascists of the former British colonial island achieved a disgraceful victory at the cost of humanity. Thereby, every diaspora of Eelam Tamil has a personal story of pain and suffering at the hands of the state funded violence.

Although the Tamil genocide is in the rearview mirror, the ongoing state denial of justice is aggravating the calls for justice through Tamil community gatherings of grief. The reason I join such events is to light the candle in memory of my brother Nivethan Vadivelu who was kidnapped at the age of 19 by the state in 2006 and is yet to return home. Sadly, the US foreign policy of war against terror in the aftermath of the 911 tragedy was the final blow to the voices of the Tamil community in the island and abroad. The global capitalist economy depended on the military industrial complex to control and oppress the minority. They have no interest in defending truth or justice but profit at all cost.