Ish Theilheimer is founder and president of Straight Goods News and has been Publisher of the leading, and oldest, independent Canadian online newsmagazine, StraightGoods.ca, since September 1999. He is also Managing Editor of PublicValues.ca. He lives wth his wife Kathy in Golden Lake, ON, in the Ottawa Valley.
eMail: ish@straightgoods.com
by Ish Theilheimer
Sunday, April 28, marked the International Day of Mourning for Injured Workers. In my rural community, a group of people meets every year at a historic shrine at a hilltop park to remember those killed or hurt on the job.
by Ish Theilheimer, with files and video from Samantha Bayard
Although recent revelations that the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program is being used to outsource Canadian bank and mining jobs have ignited public fury; in fact outsourcing is only the tip of the Conservative iceberg.
Officially, the program is intended to supplement labour supply where Canadian workers just can't, or won't, fill a need. In practice, it is being used to drive down wages and working conditions for all Canadian workers. At the same time, it breaks Canada's traditional promise to a hungry world, that even if we can't take everyone, we'll take in as many dedicated offshore workers as we can, to help them build better lives for themselves and the entire nation.
by Ish Theilheimer
Taking sides has never mattered more than it does today. In the 30 years since Margaret Thatcher — who died last week — and Ronald Reagan came to power, income inequality has been on the rise, and corporate giants have gained a stranglehold on the world's economy, its climate, its environment and its people.
What Thatcher and Reagan did — and Brian Mulroney in Canada — was to break not only the unions but a historic and hard-won compromise between labour and industry. For 30 years following World War II, the compromise gave working people unprecedented prosperity and rights. Then, around 1980, the Right began a relentless and remarkably effective assault to take it all back.
by Ish Theilheimer, transcription by Zachary Rankin, with video by Matthew Penstone and Zachary Rankin
An interview with James Clancy, president of the National Union of Public and General Employees.
A new report documents how income inequality in Canada has increased in the 30 years since Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power with their anti-union offensive. In March, the Canadian Foundation for Labour Rights released a report called Why Unions Matter, at a Toronto conference sponsored by the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE), the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW Canada), and the Canadian Teachers Federation (CTF). The report documents a divergence in those years between Canadian union coverage and income inequality, with inequality rising as the rate of unionization has fallen.
On April 9, NUPGE's national president James Clancy met with Ish Theilheimer of Straight Goods News to talk about the significance of the report. Ironically, they met on the day after Thatcher's death. In a wide-ranging interview, transcribed by SGNews intern Zachary Rankin, Clancy laid out the systematic attack that conservatives have waged against unions since 1980 and how these attacks have driven down the wages and well-being of working people.
by Ish Theilheimer
The Fraser Institute is at it again. For all practical purposes and extension of the Conservative Party war room, the Institute specializes in pumping out so-called studies and research proving the Earth is flat, black is white, and anything else that suits the neocons who run this country. Then they use their vast resources to pump out disinformation to every possible media outlet.
And yet, despite being the propaganda arm of Canada's conservative movement, the Institute, amazingly, has managed to maintain charitable status.
by Ish Theilheimer
The last week before the House of Commons rose for a break — Bob Rae's last as interim leader of the Liberals — was another embarrassing day at the office for Canada's governing party. With all the boondoggles, expense scandals and broken promises, you'd think they could just go away quietly, but that didn't appear to be the case.
by Ish Theilheimer
The release of former US President Lyndon Johnson's final tapes revealed shocking secrets, including a cynical political decision that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths.
An excellent report from the BBC's David Taylor analyzes information in the last batch of of LBJ's secret tapes. These archives reveal that forty-five years ago, LBJ, Richard Nixon, and even Hubert Humphrey made decisions that extended the Vietnam War five years – and increased the body count by hundreds of thousands.
by Ish Theilheimer
Last week NDP leader Tom Mulcair travelled to Washington where he spoke about his positions on tar sands, pipelines and avoiding climate change. Predictably, critics had a field day, accusing him of "trash-talking Canada" and undermining its interests in the debate over the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
by Ish Theilheimer
The American folk protest singer Phil Ochs, whose flame burnt out in 1976 after a short career, reminded listeners in one of his earliest recordings that oppression has always manifested itself through a knock on the door. The heavy thud of official knuckles has, across the millennia, brought terror and pain to families.
Now, in 2013, the Harper Conservatives have put their own stamp on this age-old means of intimidation. First, they put the fear of god into Service Canada staffers by firing thousands of their colleagues. The ones who were left understood that to keep their jobs, they will need to get tough. Now, random house calls to people claiming Employment Insurance (EI) benefits appear to have become routine.
by Ish Theilheimer
OTTAWA, February 27, 2013 (Straight Goods News)– News that Service Canada staff have received quotas for exposing EI fraud and making house-to-house investigations has fueled ouutrage over fraudulent expense and residency claims from some of Stephen Harper's most prominent Senate appointments.
