Gene McGuckin, Member of the Vancouver Ecosocialists
After the Heat Dome Killings, What Is to Be Done?
Thursday, July 22, 2021
Greetings,
I am speaking to you this evening from the traditional territories of the Quay Quayt and Kwikwetlem First Nations in a place otherwise known as New Westminster, BC.
[Editor: Saguenay, where this terminal is/was planned to be located, is 460 km NNE of Montreal and about 100 km west of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The federal review may still take place because the approach for this project is actually federal jurisdiction but it is unlikely any federal government would go against the province of QC.]
Yesterday, Minister of Natural Resources Seamus O’Regan announced that the federal government will begin to engage energy workers through consultations for Just Transition legislation, to hear worker input on transitioning to a net-zero energy sector.
The state of the American labour movement has, since the mid-1970s, been dispiriting. There have, of course, been moments of creative and inspiring resistance, but the predominant story has been a chronicle of decline: private-sector unionization rates below where they were a century ago, the abject failure to make breakthroughs in key emerging sectors, defensive stagnation in bargaining achievements, and – election-year rhetoric aside – the political marginalization of working-class concerns.
