by Dylan Hamada and Ysh Cabana

Since August 6 and 7, 2012, the Philippines has been battered by a series of flash floods and landslides caused by steady monsoon rainfall. At least 90 people have been confirmed dead, with the majority of casualties occurring in the capital region and nearby provinces. Floods have soaked more than 3 million people, and a state of calamity has been declared in Manila and nearby provinces.

The equivalent of one full month of regular rainfall was dumped on Metro Manila in just 48 hours. The torrential downpour left over 80% of the metropolis submerged in water, in some areas reaching depths of 6 and a half feet. Houses, businesses, and entire livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of people have been completely displaced. Though flood levels has subsided in much of the city, many people are still reluctant to leave their inundated properties and valuables.

The worst hit have been the most impoverished districts of Manila, where thousands of urban poor have settled in shanties along waterways and other flood-prone areas.

#ReliefPH

Relief efforts have been spearheaded by progressive people’s organizations. The patriotic alliance Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) and progressive party-list groups under the Makabayan Coalition have taken action to assist those severely affected by the rains. Relief goods and food are being distributed to flood victims.Anakbayan, a comprehensive, national democratic mass organization of Filipino youth, has reached communities currently not covered by ongoing relief and rescue operations.

Their efforts to provide immediate emergency help notwithstanding, people’s organizations decried the government’s inadequate response to such disasters. “The vulnerability of the said areas due to decades of environmental destruction have been compounded by the U.S-Aquino regime’s neglect of disaster preparedness and policies that smack of callousness against the people,” Vencer Crisostomo, national chairperson of Anakbayan-Philippines, said in an online statement.

Schools, gyms and other community centres are turned into evacuation centres. These buildings are filled to capacity, with crowds of evacuees huddling in groups outside. At least 400,000 people are currently availing of emergency shelter. Many in the centres do not have enough to eat. In many cases, these shelters are also swamped. Official government rescue operations, including boats, were insufficient to rescue the majority of affected citizens. Neighbourhood camaraderie and the utilization of nearby resources such as commercial tricycles served as many people’s sole method of aid.

Cold Weather of Austerity

President Benigno Aquino III and his retinue ventured out after the deluge, staying dry atop an army truck, smiling and waving to victims, who were standing knee-deep in the murky waters. The entourage visited several evacuation centres and distributed relief packages to flood victims.

With cold weather of austerity as his political agenda, Aquino cancelled a flood control masterplan after he was sworn into office. Dubbed “Post Ondoy and Pepeng Short-Term Infrastructure Rehabilitation Project after the two typhoons ravaged the country in 2010,” the program seems to be denied because it was brought out by the previous administration. Aquino even further refused to build a spillway that is intended to permanently prevent siltation of Laguna de Bay. The construction of a dam on the Marikina river and improvements to the Pasig and Marikina river embankments are considered top-priority projects on the list. Also on the list are improvements to Manila area storm drains. Now all of a sudden, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) revealed that there is a PhP352 billion budget for flood mitigation set to be completed by 2035.

In conjunction with these propositions is to evict some 125,000 families currently living in Metro Manila and at least 70,000 more in areas surrounding the nearby lake. Recent comments by the president as quoted by the public works minister suggest that when time comes for action, ‘blasting’ people in slums in what they perceive as danger zones would be their call.

Echoing the cruel sentiments of the President, the mainstream Philippine media has become a cacophony of tongue-wagging, attempting to pin the blame for the crisis squarely on the shoulders of the people affected, the vast majority of whom are urban poor and peasants. Accusing the people of being “hard-headed,” “foolish”, and other derogatories for squatting on waterways, these mouthpieces of the Philippine elite refuse to acknowledge the role that their masters have played in exacerbating the conditions leading to this tragedy. Also, it must be noted that the impact of the southwest monsoon reportedly exceeded the amount of precipitationfrom the notorious 2009 tropical storm Ondoy. The weather bureau recorded 687mm rainfall of the latest meteorological events.

But the current reactionary government cannot pull their acts together. For one thing, efforts to forcibly relocate the steadily increasing number of people occupying vulnerable areas have never succeeded in the past. Local authorities tend to limit their social welfare function and breed informal settlers as dependents to secure their vested interests, such as to get votes during election period.

Second, it has failed to deliver a national shelter program, a key framework which the government blindly dismantled in favour of a neo-liberal, market-driven approach since the 90s. As a result, housing sector has met a paltry 26% of the target and fall short at an acute backlog of over one million units.

The government has relentlessly pursued a policy of paving way for condominium and retail development instead. Of the 15 largest malls in the world, three are in the country’s capital region. A culture of consumerism prevails making malling a way of life, mall owners as multibillionaires and developers at the helm of environmental destruction. As how the book on informal settlements, Lunsod Iskwater, puts it: “(Metro Manila) is increasingly defined by a reality of social segregation, economic inequity and political inutility. All of these held precariously together by a crumbling physical framework and the disappearance of a sense of community”.

Finally, with the country’s lack of a true nationalistic industrial character–exporting its citizens to imperialist countries for remittances, failing to equitably distribute arable land which has remained in the hands of a few wealthy families, and allowing foreign multinational corporations to reap immense profits at the expense of regular Filipinos and the environment–the Aquino administration naturally bears the brunt and should be held fully responsible for the recent events that have transpired.

Comparative satellite images (taken 1989 and 2012) of Metropolitan Manila, the most densely populated city in the world, show how much urbanization expanded in almost 25 years, bringing significant problems to the environment.

Big Plans, Not ‘Blasting’

For a country visited by more than 20 storms every year, key measures must be undertaken to avoid tragedies that may arise. Flood control can only do so much. Long-term plans for disaster prevention must be the tenet in urban and regional planning. The practice of destroying forested areas on the outskirts of Manila, especially in the Sierra Madre regions, in order to entice foreign companies in carrying out their mining operations must be put to an end. Natural catchwater basins must instead be re-planted and protected.

Artificial drainage systems, essential to disaster risk reduction, must be routinely cleaned. Dams must lower their water levels in anticipation of monsoon rains, to avoid the spillover from local dams such as the La Mesa, the floodgates of which were only opened at the last minute when it was filled to its brim. The hugely profitable Philippine telecom companies must provide free early-warning text messages to their customers to better prepare for impending calamities.

Decent, proper and adequate housing must be provided for families squatting along waterways or wherever the state deems them to be staying illegally. Demolishing their houses simply feeds a cycle through which they, or new families, occupy other neglected portions of the city. Relocating these families to remote areas without a means of livelihood is cruel and belies the government’s devotion to the socioeconomic well-being of its citizenry.

Plans to evict tens of thousands of families in the city are just the latest in a long-running series of close collaborations between the Aquino administration and real-estate developers. The documentary “Puso ng Lungsod (Heart of the City)” released by Pinoy Media Centre recently captures the struggles of urban poor families living in the face of eviction in Quezon City.

In another pocket demolition in the neighbouring Paranaque city, Silverio Compound turned into a people’s protest in April. The residents refused to give up their homes to Henry Sy, the wealthiest man in the Philippines. Police were deployed against the people, and one youth was shot dead. The proposed development bore the name Benigno S. Aquino III as a sponsor.  All over the Philippines, some 852 communities were burned down according to urban poor group Kadamay.

Dredging the Silt

Mired as the urban poor are in the deadening situation of the country, actions of solidarity to mobilize are needed to rebuild the losses and to assure sustainable deepening of political education. The only way to ensure the safety and livelihoods of the Filipino toiling masses is to advance the struggle for the cause of national democracy. The Philippines must break away from the grip of U.S. imperialism, along with local landlords, big capitalists, and their lapdogs in the corrupt machine of the Philippine government. Only then will a people-oriented development and industrialization be placed above the whims of the wealthy and powerful.

Progressive multisectoral groups in the Philippines have largely advocated for reaching out local communities of workers and urban poor, majority of whom have the most need to be involved in long-term and genuine social change, aside from the commitment to immediately donate.

Anakbayan-Toronto implores all Filipino-Canadians and friends to please give generously to relief efforts during this time of need. The Toronto chapter is also working in coordination with Migrante Canada to collect funds. Donations can be made through the following:

Anakbayan-Philippines paypal account: www.anakbayan.org/donate (click “Donate Now” on the right side of the page).

Account Name: Migrante Ontario
Bank: TD Canada Trust Acc# 06175260423
Email Transfer to: [email protected]
Hotline number: 1-800-559-8092

REFERENCE:
Abon, Catherine. [2012] A Preliminary Analysis on the Impacts of Typhoon Gener and Habagat, Urban Housing and Disaster Response Alcazaren, Paulo, et al. [2011] Lungsod Iskwater: The Evolution of Informality as a Dominant Pattern in Philippine Cities. Manila: Anvil Publishing
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat Missions Gallery, “Manila, Philippines” http://climate.nasa.gov/sof/#Urbangrowth_Philippines.jpg (accessed Aug 18, 2012)

On our August 27, 2012 showRadio BASICS interviews Anishinabek activists Richard Peters and Jonny Hawke who established the Oshkimaadizing Unity Camp in “Awenda Provincial Park” and are rallying people of the Anishinabek nation against Coldwater-Narrows Land Surrender, and land surrenders in general.

For more information, see www.oshkimaadziig.org.

Click here to link to podcast or listen to the interview directly from the Mp3 player at the bottom of your BASICSnews.ca window.

For archive of all back shows click here or the RB icon above.

by Marlon Berg

“The place is hot like hell, especially in the summer time at night, bad ventilation, a lot of humidity and of course machines emitting heat doesn’t help.’ said Iain*, a temporary worker at an auto parts plant in the Toronto area.  “To top it off I work night shift so there’s the extra stress of not actually functioning like a normal human being. I work for what by most standards are fairly good starting wages but are drastically inferior to the wages of permanent workers. But I’m hardly the hardest done by of the employees that work there, a lot of them have families they never see because we’re given 6-7 days a week. Yes, overtime is paid, but it doesn’t give you much time to do anything else. Theoretically you could turn down the overtime but then you wouldn’t be working there for very long”

These are typical working conditions for auto parts plant workers in the inner suburbs of Toronto and nearby cities. For the first time since the 2008 economic crisis that nearly destroyed the automotive sector, the industry seems to be entering a period of sustained growth. Job opportunities are opening up again at the parts companies that supply GM, Ford, and Chrysler. The three major parts suppliers in Canada, Magna, Linamar, and Martinrea, have all seen slow yet steady growth.  Yet, jobs at GM, Ford and Chrysler (the big three) in Ontario continue to decline as these companies persist in closing plants and laying off large numbers of workers to take advantage of the cheaper labour in the United States, particularly in states that have passed anti-union or so-called ‘right-to-work’ laws that make workers’ unions difficult to organize and maintain.

All of the permanent workers at the big three plants in Ontario are unionized with the Canadian Automotive Workers (CAW).  However, the CAW has been unable to mount a successful fight against closures and layoffs at the big three and other employers, including some of the parts suppliers that they had unionized in the past.  The remaining work is in the parts suppliers and the new hires entering these companies are mostly without any kind of union representation and have often shockingly bad working conditions and the lowest wages in the automotive sector.  Some workers, like Ian, are forced to work too much overtime, others work unstable shifts and can’t get enough hours.

“The time I was at Linamar, there was two very serious safety incidents,” says Yelena*, a former employee in Guelph. “In the worst one, someone moved up the line to finish the work they had forgotten, and the component ended up falling 20 feet onto their shoulder.” She explains the reasons behind this kind of accident, “There is a lot of pressure with numbers and forced overtime on Saturdays if the numbers were not met, so people took the numbers very seriously, and it was also one of the hottest days of the summer.” Linamar also “stopped paying him after a week, so he had to go back to work…he also wasn’t getting the extra documentation he needed to see his specialist, and that they were taking a long time to get them to him.”  Workers “would have to check off machinery as safe even if it had a problem, and would just have to call in maintenance and wait till they came to fix it while continuing to run.”

“There were also two deaths at Linamar couple years back, one person was electrocuted and another was crushed, and there was another person electrocuted recently too, and he was in a coma last I heard.”  Her uncle also works for the company and “his pay has gone down to $16 an hour from $26 an hour a few years ago and he’s been there 17 years. He’s getting older and older, and the work is getting more and more difficult for him, and he’s making less and less money.”

In London, Ontario, at a Caterpillar plant that was unionized with the CAW, the management locked out the workers when they wouldn’t agree to a 50% cut in their wages and then closed the plant so they could move production to Indiana, which has anti-union laws in place.  While there was a massive movement against this closure by the workers themselves as well as workers from all over Ontario, who came to London on buses to support the struggle of the London workers against Caterpillar, the CAW was unable to save these workers’ jobs.  Herman Rosenfeld, a retired automotive worker and long-time member of CAW, is very critical of the CAW’s approach to the Caterpillar lockout. He believes that rather than just standing outside the plant and setting up a picket around it, they “needed to take it over, and the reason why they needed to take it over was that taking it over would have meant that they would have upped the anti, they would have raised the question of pressuring the government to take it over.”  While they did win good severance packages for their members, many good blue collar jobs were lost in London due to the inability of CAW to, in Rosenfeld’s words, “actually challenge capital”.

It seems that across the board, whether unionized or not, auto workers are under attack. CAW is currently in negotiations with the big three automakers and just voted at their recent convention to merge with another big union, Canadian Energy and Paperworkers, to form a new union that will attempt to initiate a massive organizing drive to recruit more racialized workers and work in immigrant neighbourhoods, which they have traditionally failed to do.  It seems that the union leadership has realized that auto workers in Ontario and industrial workers generally are at a historic make or break point.

Iain, the temp auto worker, believes “that it has to be an initiative that comes from the workers themselves, and that if there is actually the anger and the will to organize, nobody can stop them, but people can divert them and channel that energy into fruitless enterprises…and as far as unions having halls in immigrant neighborhoods, I don’t know of a single union that has a big presence there, but all of these temp agencies have a major presence in immigrant neighborhoods.”

[*Name changed to protect workers’ identities - Ed.]

By Diamond Wisdom

As various levels of government have moved forward with their austerity agenda, warning bells should be ringing in the ears of low-income people because they are most likely to shoulder the brunt of reforms designed to free up government money for redistribution to private business.

Social assistance “reform” can be defined as a movement that changes government responsibility for welfare policy and cuts benefits.

Previous attempts to “reform” the system failed miserably, since more money had to be spent on dealing with the health and social consequences of the “common sense” revolution.

According to the National Council on Welfare’s “The Dollars and Sense of Solving Poverty” Report:

• The total public cost in Canada per year at the lower end estimate was $24.4 billion and the total private cost that low-income Canadians bear was $48.1 billion.
• The total public cost in Ontario per year was $10.4 billion and the total private cost was $21.8 billion. In real terms, this means poverty costs every household in Ontario $2,299 per year

We should be rethinking where we make our investments and spend existing funds more wisely to get better results, since the methods used over the past 40 years ago haven’t worked. 1.7 million Ontarians live below the poverty line. More than 830,000 Ontarians currently receive social assistance benefits through either Ontario Works or the Ontario Disability Support Program.

Most Ontarians aren’t aware of the Social Assistance Review or its potential impact their lives, but the long-awaited Social Assistance Review recommendations are scheduled to be released in September, 2012.  So far reports about its process have marked it as being “disappointing”.

Poverty reduction became law in Ontario in 2009. The government’s pledge to poverty reduction was touted in a government of Ontario announcement of the review as being “key to our economic future and to harnessing the potential of people as our most important provincial resource.”  The announcement of the Ontario Social Assistance Review pledged to “remove barriers and increase opportunity – with a particular focus on people trying to move into employment from social assistance.”

People living with disabilities and low incomes should be paying special attention to the Social Assistance Review Commission recommendations; as the labour market conditions and reform in other areas such as employment insurance eligibility are likely to have the most impact on their ability to fully participate in the labour market and to escape the cycle of poverty.

People with disabilities already face significant challenges in finding and maintaining employment. The second social assistance review discussion paper seemed to target them the most for employment reforms without addressing the key areas in which the Ontarians with Disabilities Act falls short in ensuring the education, housing and employment needs of those with disabilities.  It is deeply concerning that the review process and terms of reference ignored the need to deal with the flaws in the Ontario Works legislation first.  The very flaws designed to keep people trapped in the poverty cycle!

Addressing poverty is not only a matter of economics; it’s a matter of social justice. Poverty is poverty whether your income comes from social assistance or low-waged work.  If you don’t have the income to meet the costs of living you are poor!  Government and the corporate media will make divisions between poor people in order to suit their reform agenda.

Anti-poverty advocates and low-income Ontarians who are aware of the review are understandably angry that the McGuinty government has undermined the work of the Social Assistance Review Commission by moving ahead with new reforms before the review recommendations are released. This demonstrates a lack of good faith and sincerity on the government’s part.  The Community Start-up and Maintenance Benefit and the Home Repairs Benefit were both eliminated in the 2012 budget. The cuts will come into force in January 2013.

Social assistance is the place of last resort that Ontarians turn to when employment insurance benefits have been exhausted and they have been unable to find work.  The terms “fairness” and “fiscal reality” have been used to create divisions between higher income tax payers and those who rely on social assistance.  This deflects discussion from political choices and structural issues of the current welfare system that undermines the economic, educational and labour market participation progress for recipients of social assistance.

The true “fiscal reality” is that repeating the mistakes of the past is both unacceptable and unaffordable. We can continue to live in denial or we can have an adult conversation about the economic and social justice impacts of growing levels of poverty, which seems to be the direction that the McGuinty crew are leading us in.  Is this the kind of society that you would choose to live in?

The personal has no choice but to become political in this context. I want encourage you to respond to the review recommendations.  They count on us to believe differently, but we are neither voiceless nor powerless. Don’t let others speak for you. Tell the media and your elected officials how these recommendations will impact your life.   Pressure on elected officials works.  Toronto saw that through the Core Service Review and 2012 budget process. If your elected officials are not representing you effectively, then collectively “we” have the power to help fire them on Election Day.  Tap into what’s going on around you and push back. It’s your right.

Social Assistance Review info: http://www.socialassistancereview.ca/home

There are other groups that you can get involved in who are speaking to the matters that impact the lives of the poor and the community including Poverty Free Ontario

Poverty Free Ontario                                                                     www.povertyfreeontario.ca

Income Security Advocacy Centre                                            http://www.incomesecurity.org/

Centre for Policy Alternatives                                                     http://www.policyalternatives.ca/

Alliance for a Poverty Free Toronto                                http://www.povertyfreetoronto.org/

Wellesley Institute                                                            http://www.wellesleyinstitute.com/

by Megan Kinch

Don’t even think about reading. That’s the message prisoners are getting after a bureaucratic maze of regulations effectively cuts off access to printed materials in some Toronto-area prisons. The lack of access to reading material is only one example of the conditions prisons generally, where the institution has almost complete impunity to mess with the daily lives of inmates, which also shows in other areas, such as the lack of respect for fasting prisoners during Ramadan.

In Toronto West Detention Centre, located in Rexdale, it used to be possible to mail books to prisoners directly from the publisher, and there was a small library cart in the prison. But when Alex Hundert (alexhundert.wordpress.com), a political prisoner incarcerated for his role in organizing G20 protests, was sent to Toronto West this year, this was no longer the case. The book cart had not been seen on his unit in 5 months. Alex was told by other prisoners that there had been a raid on his unit a month before and that every single book, including a bible and two Korans were thrown out by the guards.  Contrary to official policy, books mailed directly from the publishers were being withheld as well. Even “educational” TV channels such as History and Discovery channel have been canceled.  Alex writes: “the less intellectual stimulation there is… the more violence there is in this shockingly overcrowded jail… this place feels like a powder keg waiting to explode.”

When the Toronto Star picked up the story about the lack of books from Alex’s prison blog, the institution claimed that the library cart was not being run due to ‘lack of volunteers’. An executive from the John Howard society told The Star that actually they would be able to find volunteers and that they had never been asked to provide any. Alex points out that inmates do many other jobs in prison including laundry and food and that there is no reason they couldn’t also push the library cart around.

In women’s prison at Vanier, located just west of Toronto in Milton, the situation is slightly better.  According to Mandy Hiscocks (boredbutnotbroken.tao.ca/), also imprisoned for G20 protest organizing, the prison cart library has improved slightly since 2010 when only romance novels were available.  But the only books that can be mailed to Vanier are if they are officially on the syllabus of a course in which the prisoner is registered.

Alex writes that needlessly cutting essential services like books in jails, or asking volunteers to do it is part of the austerity agenda, “especially when those services are needed by vulnerable and targeted people like prisoners or migrants or the poor. Ironically, it was organizing protests against the austerity agenda that got me thrown in jail in the first place.” Alex has since been transferred to prison in Penetang, where he was punished after asking about his newspaper subscription, which was being maliciously withheld by the guards.

by Natasha Brien

On August 10, 1974, a prisoner by the name of Eddie Nalon died after bleeding to death in the segregation unit of Millhaven Maximum Security Prison in Kingston, Ontario. Systemic issues of unjust prison policy, and abuse of power, were deeply entangled in the cause of his death.

Mr. Nalon initially wanted a transfer to another unit. After officially requesting a transfer, he was instead placed in segregation, and eventually solitary confinement. Mr. Nalon made a written request to be placed back into general population, which the board approved; however, this decision was not conveyed to Mr. Nalon.

When August 9, 1974 arrived – the ninth of the month being the standard transfer date to be released into general population – and he wasn’t moved, Mr. Nalon must have assumed he would be left in segregation longer, and that his request was denied. The following day, Mr. Nalon committed suicide. It was later discovered that the emergency button in his cell was non-functional, thus any attempts to call for help, would have likely gone unheard by prison guards.

Every year since his death, August 10 is the day when Mr. Nalon’s life is commemorated; and has eventually this day coming to be recognized as Prisoner’s Justice Day (PJD). On this day, inmates and their allies in Canada and throughout some U.S. states, protest the mistreatment of men and women behind bars. Supporters of PJD express abhorrence for inhumane prison conditions, as well as mourn the deaths of countless people who have lost their lives while in custody or through conflict with the law. Prisoners remain in their cells for the day, fasting, and refusing to work, while non-incarcerated people hold gatherings in many cities across Canada and the U.S.

The theme of Toronto’s 2012 PJD, was ‘Women in Prison’, which took place at the Church of the Holy Trinity behind the Eaton Centre. Brampton also held a PJD that took place in St. James the Apostle Church with the theme being ‘We Will Be There for You’. At these two community gatherings, loved ones of inmates, ex-prisoners, activists, and concerned organizations partook in fasts, presentations, songs, poetry, viewing documentaries, and readings of stories from former inmates.

What really stood out, was the common theme that most imprisoned people come from various communities struggling to rise above oppression – poverty, systemic racism, childhood abuse, spirit injuries via colonialism, gender injustices etc. – only to enter into further institutional forms of violence via incarceration. Aside from extreme lateral violence amongst inmates, correctional institutions have also been guilty of violating the Correctional Service of Canada’s (CSC) code of conduct.

A well-documented example of prison violence is evident in the case of Ashley Smith – a woman who died in solitary confinement at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in October 2007. Some may say that Ms. Smith killed herself: the immediate cause of her death came through self-asphyxiation, as guards watched the incident take place. But Ms. Smith had been transferred between institutions seventeen times already within the year, having been pepper sprayed, tasered, subjected to full body restraints, involuntarily injected with anti-psychotic medications, and spending most of her last three years in “the hole” (solitary confinement). It’s hard to imagine how anyone could survive such conditions.

During the evening of the 2012 PJD in Toronto, a vigil was held outside of the Don Jail to protest the experiences people like Ms. Smith endure. People took to the microphone to share personal experiences and statistics surrounding these shameful conditions, and the dangers involved in expanding prisons, as well as creating harsher criminal laws. The crowd yelled in unison messages of support for inmates in hope that men currently in the Don Jail – and ghosts of men and women who have passed – would know they are not alone. The vigil concluded with a candle lighting ceremony, honouring our fallen brothers and sisters, and those still in the prison struggle, while putting out a call for the implementation of restorative justice everywhere.

11th annual Caribbean Studies New College conference on Racism and National Consciousness

Location: WILLIAM DOO AUDITORIUM, 45 WILLCOCKS @ SPADINA
Date:  October 27

Time: 10:00 am

By the May 1st Movement

When he arrived at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport 3 years ago, Santiago Escobar saw a large group of people who caught his attention.  From their clothing, resembling the traditional clothing of indigenous peoples of Central America, he assumed they were Latin Americans.  Having just arrived in Canada on a work permit himself, his curiosity got the better of him and he went to speak to people in the group.

“It was not easy to strike up a conversation because they were intimidated, one of them told me they are farm workers and they were forbidden to talk to strangers,” said Escobar.  “When I asked him who had been forbidden this, he chose to keep walking and our conversation ended there. I felt a lot of mistrust and fear from the worker.”

Escobar now works with the Agricultural Workers Alliance in Virgil, Ontario providing services and advocacy for migrant workers there.  Every year, tens of thousands of migrant workers from some 80 countries including Mexico, Guatemala, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and the Philippines arrive in Canada on a temporary, seasonal basis. Over the last decade, the number of these workers that enter into Canada has increased from 100,000 to 250,000.

Often working for minimum wage in agricultural fields, hotels, restaurants, slaughterhouses, factories, and households as caregivers, these workers also must pay for their flights, insurance, and housing while most receive no payment for overtime nor rest during the holidays.  Moreover, since their job security is primarily at the discretion of the employer, many workers endure further hardships so as to not run the risk of being sent back.

A worker who chose to identified only as Francisco said “fortunately the members of the Support Centre help by taking us to the medical clinics, because if you notify the Patron (master), you run with the risk of being returned to Mexico, as the Patron is not interested in having people sick or not produce what each worker must produce.  Here we come to work and if you cannot work then you are on the next flight back”.

In addition, these workers must pay the numerous income, retirement, social security and workplace safety taxes that a regular worker would pay despite the fact that they are often denied access to many of these benefits. Edward, a Jamaican migrant worker who has been participating in the program for almost 2 decades, was denied Parental Benefits because he did not apply during the time required by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.  ”I do not understand, why after working 19 years within this program, paying all my taxes, my application is denied, no one informed me about the time required, here in Canada nor in Jamaica”.  With this erratic weather, many of the crops have been devastated in southern Ontario.  As a result, hundreds of workers have been sent back without any access to the Employment Insurance that they pay into, or any of the compensation that Ontario farmers receive from the government.

Despite these exploitative conditions, these women and men take out personal loans  to apply and endure in order to earn money for the families they leave behind.  In many of the ‘sender’ countries, the governments have struck these ‘labour export’ agreements with countries like Canada as a way to address high unemployment domestically, as well as a way to bring money into the country in the form of remittances.  In the Philippines for example, remittances which come primarily from overseas Filipino workers account for over 9% of the Gross Domestic Product.

In addition, these governments have continued a reckless subservience to domestic economic policies which favour transnational firms over the people and local producers.

“Before the NAFTA treaty [the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico - ed.], I cultivated my corn fields and had more work in Mexico” said Magdalena Perez, an agricultural worker. “If you invested $1000 you would at least get back $1800. Currently, you can’t even recover $500 because it is cheaper to buy imported U.S. corn,” said Perez. Heavily subsidized US corn was allowed to enter the Mexican market as part of NAFTA.

Over the past year or so, the work done by the Agricultural Workers Alliance/ United Food and Commercial Workers and migrant advocacy organizations such as Justicia for Migrant Workers and MIGRANTE have raised the profile of the plight of these workers and the conditions of their super-exploitation. Tragically, this has not lead to greater protections as evidence by recent deaths of workers including the 11 killed in Hampstead while being driven in unsafe conditions, as well as the deaths of Paul Roach and Ralston White, two Jamaican workers who died while attempting to fix a pump for a vinegar vat at the apple orchard where they worked.

Currently in Ontario, there exists a legal framework that inherently places these workers at risk and makes them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation as well as injury or even death.  In 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled with the Ontario government denying migrant workers the rights to join or form union despite the International Labour Organizations ruling that this constituted a breach of labour and human rights.

While labour organizations are beginning a campaign to address the issues of workplace rights and dignity, the May 1st Movement and its affiliates reaffirm that the safety and rights of the most vulnerable set of workers including migrants must be on the top of the agenda. Following the cue from the Fraser Institute’s recommendations to shift immigration further towards this labour import model where citizenship and status are used as tools to divide and discipline workers, the Conservative government are openly floating schemes that would incentivize further exploitation by allowing employers to pay migrant workers 15% less than the minimum wage. Not only is this a brazen attack on what little rights migrants workers have, but it is also setting the stage for a pitting of workers – migrant vs. residents – against each other for the withering pool of jobs.  As we sink deeper into this global crisis in capitalism, this will surely feed xenophobic and racist scapegoating in the same way it has in Europe.

We must demand the end to the distinct categorization and regulation of migrant labour designed to keep them in precarious conditions, the guaranteeing of the social benefits that they are entitled and pay into, the right to organize and associate, and clear pathways to residency.  By fighting for the rights of these workers, we are also fighting to ensure that no government is able to lower the bar for all of us.

While fighting for these necessary reforms to alleviate the condition of these workers, must also be clear that this international phenomenon of labour import and export – the trading and use of women and men as cheap, disposable labour – is an inhumane practice that lines the pockets of the companies and governments involved, while keeping countries poor and workers subjugated.

13 October – 7pm – OISE, 252 Bloor St. West – Room 5-170

with the film

[ILPS-Canada statement on August 1 Continental Day of Action Against Canadian Mega Resource Extraction]

The Canadian Chapter of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS-Canada) stands with communities throughout the Americas and beyond in its opposition to the destructive anti-people practices of Canadian mining and extraction companies on this Continental Day of Action Against Canadian Mega Resource Extraction, August 1, 2012.

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) is an anti-imperialist and democratic formation made up of over 250 mass organizations from 43 countries that promotes, supports and develops the anti-imperialist and democratic struggles of the peoples of the world against imperialism and all reaction. ILPS-Canada presently has 25 grass root member organizations across the country.

The abuses suffered by people at the hands of the Canadian government and Canadian mining and extraction companies are long standing. Canada developed as an imperialist country through the dispossession of indigenous peoples’ lands and the exploitation of their natural resources. To this day, the process of dispossession continues as exemplified by the Quebec government’s Plan Nord, the logging of the Algonquins lands at Barriere Lake, the mining of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug land, the tar sands in Alberta and numerous other cases across the country. The Canadian legal system is used to uphold the theft of indigenous land, police and military are brought in to “restore peace”, and the prison system is used to house both community activists and indigenous people in order to protect and promote the Canadian resource extraction companies.

Canadian imperialism also extends far beyond its borders in its search for profit. There are currently over 3,000 Canadian mining projects operating in over 100 countries throughout the world. The communities abroad are treated no differently than our indigenous communities here. The Canadian government aggressively promotes Canadian mining companies abroad by: establishing free trade agreements opening up countries for Canadian mining interests; threatening to sue countries that go against Canadian companies’ interests; supporting the overthrow of a government in Honduras; and even sending the RCMP to help train local army forces on how to displace indigenous populations from their lands.

ILPS-Canada supports the need to struggle for reforms to the current large-scale resource extraction industry. These include: the rights of Indigenous Peoples to free, prior and informed consent, consistent with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and international jurisprudence, as well as the right to water and to live in a safe and healthy environment; to regulate the activities of Canadian extractive industry companies abroad; to cease providing Overseas Development Aid to mining companies and to promoting partnerships between civil society organizations and the mining industry; to cease providing political and economic support to companies facing serious allegations of human rights abuses and environmental damages; to ensure that non-citizens have recourse to Canadian courts for harms they may suffer as a result of the activities of Canadian corporations operating abroad; and to stop negotiating free trade and bilateral investment treaties that enshrine corporate rights over the rights of people, workers and the environment.

At the same time ILPS-Canada members have no illusions about these reforms, since under our imperialist system they will be won only by tough struggle, and experience shows they can and will be ignored or trampled at any time. Under the current imperialist system in Canada, maximizing profit will always take priority over people’s needs and the environment, both at home and abroad.That is why we see the struggle for a system change to be the priority, while pressuring the imperialist system for the short term reforms we need to improve our lives now.

We salute your initiative today and invite you to join us in developing an independent anti-imperialist mass movement that can challenge Canadian imperialism both at home and abroad while struggling to truly defend peoples’ rights and livelihood every day.

ILPS-Canada
August 1, 2012