SPC Monthly Report July 2025
Secretary's Report for July 2025
Email Report & Good of the Movement
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Food for Thought
Mark Carney means well, but has taken on some formidable challenges as Canada's Prime Minister. He has promised to make Canada's economy the strongest in G7, which is very ambitious considering investment dropped from 14% to 11% of GDP between 2014 and 2024 and now lags behind the other G7 countries. Tariffs imposed by Trump, including the 50% on Canadian steel and aluminum, has shrunk markets, disrupted supply chains, increased unemployment, raised prices and slowed growth. If this isn't bad enough, 17% of Canada's working class are, as the press says, food insecure, or to call a spade a spade, can’t get enough to eat. Housing is a big problem, in fact 45% of Canadians are concerned about their ability to afford it. The gap between Canada's wealthiest and poorest has grown wider and wildfires across the country and evacuations are disrupting thousands of lives. For Carney it is, or soon will be, like holding back an avalanche. A few years down the line he will be kicked out and in will come another gas-lighter who will run capitalism just as incapably.
Seniors at Wyndham Gardens Retirement Home in Unionville, Ontario have been told there maintenance fees have been increased by $300 to $500 a month, depending on the size of the apartment, to pay for repairs to the roof, which has been estimated at $2.1 million. They have been given a choice of pay a lump sum now or have it spread over five years. Naturally the residents are not thrilled; when they moved in they were told they could sign life leases and live at below market rates until they die. The company’s lawyer said there is no provision to protect the residents because life-leases are not covered under the Condominium Act. Earlier this year the local Provincial MP, Matthew Rae, tried to get a law passed that would protect seniors from this, but it got forgotten when the legislature was dissolved for February's provincial election. Some residents are planning on not paying their maintenance fees, but they could get kicked out on the street for that. Now here is the shit-kicker folks, Wyndham Gardens is owned by a non-profit corporation. There is no need for me to say more.
Regular readers of this report know that the, so called, educational system in Ontario is in bad shape, but guess what? It’s getting worse. School boards are complaining they are facing a shortfall of $404 per student for the 2025-26 year. To put it bluntly funding doesn't keep up with inflation. The Ontario Public School Board's Association said that when the Ford government took power in 2018, per-pupil funding was $12,282 and in the upcoming school year will be $14,560, but when adjusted to 2018 dollars, funding has actually dropped, leaving a $693 million gap for the provinces 31 English public boards alone. Furthermore school boards have incurred extra costs in special education. The NDP opposition have accused the Ford government of underfunding the education system by billions of dollars over the years. The government’s response is to spend your money wisely. The worse case scenario is Ford and his buddies will cut various classes and special programs, making it more difficult for teachers and students alike. Under capitalism everything has a price tag.
Uncertainty would be the word to sum up the feelings of small business owners in Canada, thanks to tariffs. So many are little more than working class folks trying to get ahead. According to data supplied by digital financing company, Merchant Growth, nearly 40% of businesses in Canada have been forced to raise prices due to tariffs. Eighty per-cent of them have passed on a quarter of the added expenses to their customers. Another survey conducted by the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses questioned owners of 1,065 small firms and found they had raised prices to an average of 3.6%. Obviously they can only raise prices so much before they lose customers, so tariffs are causing them to lose profits, which means some workers will lose their jobs. As usual, capitalism operating in a disgustingly healthy way folks.
At the time of writing, June 9, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board workers are on strike. Their main issues are wage increases that keep up with inflation, dangerously high workloads leading to depression and anxiety and the dirty deals the crown corporation has pulled. According to the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the WSIB board signed a contract with Iron mountain, a Boston based information management company, that would offshore document management services, which would lead to lay-offs in Canada. The union also said the board spent $14.5 million to hire coaching services from the Texas based firm BetterUp. Union steward, Nicole Francis, said had they given their workers a 4% wage hike, they would've been less expensive. As long as capitalism lasts there will always be dirty deals going down and we should never be surprised.
Housing experts are disputing the federal housing minister, Gregor Robertson's, claim that housing prices don't need to go down to restore affordability. He said we need to build more and to make sure the market is stable, which is a perfect example of the up-holders of capitalism not knowing how it works. Mike Moffat, director of the Missing Middle Institute, said ''The short answer is no. It’s simply not possible to restore broad based affordability to the middle class without prices going down''. He added, it would take 18 years across Canada to return to more affordable home-price-to-income ratios, while in Ontario and B.C. it would take 25 years. Prime Minister Mark Carney, when asked about affordability, gave a typical politician’s answer, he said he wants home prices to be more affordable, but didn't say how that could be accomplished. What’s laughable is when these people talk about the middle class, they really mean the better paid sections of the working class. Back in the 1950's, what a worker cleared in one week would take care of their mortgage payment for the month, but then again capitalism screwed that up.
On June 6, Stats-Canada unleashed its gloomy findings for May. Job growth was virtually non-existent. The unemployment rate went up to 7%. It is the highest it’s been in ten years, except for the pandemic years. Public administration lost 32,000 jobs. The accommodation and food services sector and the transportation and warehousing industry shed jobs in May. The manufacturing sector shed 12,200 jobs. Overall there has been no employment growth since January. Les Preston, senior economist at the Toronto Dominion Bank, said, ''The Canadian labour market has been treading water''. His counterpart at the Bank of Montreal, Doug Porter, said, '' The persistent rise in the jobless rate is a loud warning bell''. Andrew Grantham, economic whizz-kid at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, predicted the Bank of Canada will make interest cuts in July....''amid slack building gradually in the labour market''. There was a time when folks like the three above geniuses, always put a brave spin on things during hard times, like, ''Relax everybody, good times are just around the corner''. Now they know better than indulge in that bullshit.
In October 2023, Peel County Police Constable Anand Gandhi, stopped and arrested a driver in Brampton Ontario, after an automated licence plate reader showed the owner of the vehicle was facing drug charges and was under licence suspension. To read the accounts in the press it doesn't seem the cop was out of line, but that's not how the black community see it, since the driver was black. Whether or not Con. Gandhi acted responsibly or not isn't the point, because this incident has opened a whole can of worms. Superior Court Justice, Renu Mandhane, accused Gandhi of ''...being influenced about black people being more prone to criminality.'' The strange thing is she neglected to mention a rifle in the vehicle, for which the driver did not have a permit. The upshot of all this is that her honour discovered seven cases of racial profiling in the Peel region in the last few years and declared, ''Clearly racial profiling is systematic and intractable within Peel police''. One might like to think one’s local law enforcement are above racial prejudice, but nevertheless, they live under capitalism and therefore, some are brainwashed. In this case it seems the judge was brainwashed as well.
On June 7, the Toronto Star, published a three page article on the effects of heat in the workplace. Over the last 13 years there have been 100 critical heat related injuries at work. Employers are required by law to take every reasonable precaution to protect workers from excessive heat and to notify the Ministry of Labour if any occur, though, surprise surprise, many do neither. They risk fines for non-compliance, but then one is in a gray area, because one has to prove the injury was work related, not something which would have happened under different circumstances. According to the World Health Organization, heat kills more people than floods, hurricanes and wildfires. Heat is stress which affects both cognition and perception; blood pressure can drop causing fainting, dehydration and damage to the kidneys. To repeat the final paragraph of the article, ''The number of critical injuries is going to increase in time, unless we do something about it. Each of these injuries is catastrophic to the worker, catastrophic for the workplace, for the family and the community around that worker''. The most significant part is, ''...unless we do something about it'', which won’t be very soon under the system the Star upholds so slavishly.
The trade war started by Trump and his tariffs have led to the biggest drop in Canadian manufacturing sales since January 2022. Stats-Canada's April survey shows about half of Canadian manufacturers reported tariff related impacts, with one third citing higher prices, one quarter facing increased costs for raw materials, shipping or labour and one fifth experiencing fluctuations in product demand. The transportation equipment, primary metal and fabricated metal sectors were hit hardest. The current 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports make it very difficult for Canadian companies to export to the U.S. without losing money. Already some auto-makers have shut down in Canada causing unemployment, which, unless things change soon, however unlikely, will get worse.
Both federal and provincial governments have brought in legislation to break down barriers to internal trade and fast track major projects. This was in response to the trade war with the U.S. This does not sit well with native Canadian's who think their rights would be trampled on. On June 12, Scott McLeod, regional chief of the Ashhinabek Nation, warned the Ontario Provincial Police that First Nations would take to the streets to protest these new laws. In an interview with the press, McLeod said, ''These territories are not just waiting idly for you to come and dig up the resources there. They are educational institutes. They are our grocery stores. They are pharmacies for our medicine''. Other First Nation leaders have said they are not against these bills, but their land has to be respected when they are implemented and, at present are not confident that will be the case. Time will tell, though, as we know, usually the upholders of capitalism don't give a crap about aboriginals.
As you know King Donald the Dumb, walked out of the G7 meeting because of the mid-east war. While this momentous event took place, five Canadian provincial Premiers met in Boston with five American State Governers to discuss the affects of tariffs. Doug Ford was ecstatic telling CNN's, Pamela Brown and Wolf Blitzer, ''We're all working together and there's a lovefest in the room''; Whoppe! Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy said, the trade war is affecting the states vital life sciences sector: ''Because of tariffs we're seeing disruptions to supply chains to things that actually make that industry go here''. Healy added that Canadian tourism has dropped 20 to 60 per-cent in northeastern states and ''It would be crazy for there not to be a resolution''. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, did at least spare a thought for the working class, ''...we stand to lose hundreds of thousands of jobs if these truly go into effect as envisioned''. Though nothing effective was established, it became obvious that the working class in both countries are going to be badly impacted and worse than they already are.
There's not a lot to tell you about the G7 in Kananaskis, Alberta on June 15-17 that hasn't been widely reported in the media. Trump, the main moron, left early and most of the talk was about the Russia-Ukraine conflict with Carney promising Zelensky $2 billion worth of aid. What was a downer was there was so little discussion about tariffs, the issue most Canadian's are concerned about. Carney said the idea of a 30 day push for a deal is to spur both sides to an agreement, with the Canadian side arguing for the Americans to lift all of Trump’s tariffs and stick to the U.S.-Canada-Mexico free trade deal of 2018. Trump’s most brilliant comment was that Canada should sign up to spend $61 billion as part of the Golden Dome project or become state number 51, which wouldn't cost anything! – no further comment needed . . .
DHL Express Canada, shut down operations in Canada on June 20. It is both a strike and a lockout, halting thousands of parcel deliveries across Canada. Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu met with both sides before the strike, but was unable to get an agreement. DHL has more than 50,000 customers which range from retailer Lululemon to e-commerce giants Shein and Temu. Unifor, which represents 55,000 truck drivers, couriers, warehouse and call center workers have demanded a 22% wage increase for hourly workers as well as a 42% salary increase for owner operators. Also the union and workers object to bad working conditions and surveillance in the workplace. The management claim to agree to all that would put them out of business. Another crazy situation capitalism throws up - no pun intended - and even in the unlikely event DHL workers got all they are asking for it would still be an improvement within capitalism, like BFD man !
Mark Carney wants to build a good working relationship with India and at the G7 sucked up to their guy Modi. It may well be in Canada's interests to do so, but since we live under capitalism, there has to be a complication. Operating in Canada is the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, a transnational criminal network, led from India, which has been linked to a growing wave of violence, extortion and intimidation targeting South Asian communities across Canada. Mr. Bishnoi is in the slammer in India which doesn't mean much since he runs his outfit from his jail cell. In June, Brampton, Ontario Mayor Patrick Brown and B.C. Premier David Eby called on the federal government to label the gang as a terrorist organization. They mean well, but naturally there is another complication, Canadian intelligence agencies have linked the gangs crimes, including the murder of Canadian Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in 2023, to have been carried out at the direction of the Indian government. Boy Oh Boy, what a crazy system we live under.
Driverless delivery vehicles have already hit the streets of downtown Toronto. They are manufactured by Auto-parts company Magna International based in Aurora, Ontario. Since this is in the experimental stage, the vehicles will operate on a road with a speed limit of 40km an hour and have will have a driver in a car following them. Deliveries could include any retail goods such as groceries, meals, pharmaceuticals or clothing. What this portends for the future is anyone's guess. It could lead to unemployment for delivery workers, but not unemployment overall since it needs workers to make the vehicles. However, automation could eventually take care of that. The worse case scenario is it will be another case of an invention which would be great in a Socialist Society. Causing redundancies through automation under capitalism is business as usual, however, the only thing that needs to be redundant is capitalism itself.
As expected the annual NATO leaders summit at the Hague on June 25 pledged to increase their shared defence, or if you will war spending from 2% of GDP to 5% by 2035, which is what Trump wanted. This they felt was necessary considering international tensions are high. Canada needs to increase its military in the Arctic, where the possibility of a future war with Russia, China, or both, seems likely. Mark Carney said meeting the new target would cost Canada roughly $150 billion a year, the equivalent of one-third of all federal spending in 2025-26. Carney put a brave spin on it saying it will spend on ports, roads, tele-communication systems and investments to spur production of critical minerals needed for military technology. This is a typical screwy capitalist situation: on the one hand it will increase employment, on the other some social services will suffer because the government will have to make cuts. The working class will suffer, because the capitalist class will protect their property ownership no matter what the cost and whom they hurt.
Just when one thought Trump could do nothing surprising anymore, he surprised many by cutting off trade talks with Canada on June 27 in retaliation for Canada's digital service tax. This was due to take effect on June 27 and would hit big tech companies including Amazon, Google, Meta, Uber and Airnbnb with a three per-cent tax on revenue from Canadian users. The tax officially became law last year and is retroactive to 2022, but the first payments aren't due till the end of June. This means U.S. tech companies have a US$2 billion bill at the end of June, which is not to Trump’s liking. Whatever he likes Canada is going ahead with it, in fact the Independent Parliamentary Budget Officer, reported in 2023, it would raise about $1.2 billion a year in government revenues. Trump called it, ''A direct and blatant attack on our country'', and has accused Canada of copying the European Union, which he said, has done the same thing. The resident genius in the White House also claimed it was, ''Unfair trade practices''. We will soon see how the cookie crumbles, though we know it won’t be good for the working class anywhere.
When you thought things couldn't get more complicated between Canada and the states, they did. In June’s report from the Canada Climate Institute they said the U.S. needs various rare earth elements from Canada, which is their largest supplier. Canada sends them steel, aluminum, nickel, potash and zinc. Also Canada is the second-largest U.S. supplier of imported copper. Canada has an abundance of indium, graphite, germanium and graphite. China used to supply America with seven kinds of rare earth elements, but quit in April, because of that genius in the White House. We don't know exactly what this capitalist cook-up will turn out, but we can be sure the working class ain’t gonna come out of it better off.
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