Comments Off on Arkéos, Drop the McGill Contract Now!
Oct162022
“Respect indigenous sovereignty”
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Important Update: Monday, October 17, 2022
It has come to our attention that certain phrasing of our previous communique requires immediate correction and clarification. We deeply respect and honour the hard work the kahnistensera have done, so in an effort to address certain concerns we would like to communicate the following.
Since the colonial institutions involved in supporting McGill’s New Vic project have apparently attempted to use this action against Arkéos to threaten the kahnistensera and their ongoing court case, the organizers of the action want to add the following update to our statement below: we planned and carried out this action completely independently of the kahnistensera and did not communicate with them about it in any way. Our use of the word “accomplices” in the original communique was influenced by broader anti-colonial anarchist discussions around the use of that word in other contexts, with our working definition being that ”the work of an accomplice in anti-colonial struggle is to attack colonial structures & ideas.” (See here.) We also wish to redirect you to this engaging text about similar issues, titled “On the question of allies”, which can be found here. Our point isn’t to squabble about term usage, but rather, to give context as to why we chose this term. In retrospect, we realize the use of this term was not appropriate given the ongoing, separate and independent legal battle the kahnistensera are involved in.
Again, let us reiterate, under no circumstances are we working for or on behalf of the kahnistensera. As settler anarchists, we decided to take our own initiative to attack Arkéos, without any involvement from the kahnistensera. This is an autonomous action, we alone claim it. We see Arkéos as another obstacle McGill has put in the way of the kahnistensera to prevent them from conducting a proper non-instrusive forensic investigation. Arkéos will be proceeeding with an intrusive dig, which is against the public demands of the kahnistensera.
In the realm of the legal fight that is set to reconvene in court on October 26th, McGill, and to some extent, Arkéos, are using this action to strategically try to undermine as well as cast doubt upon the goodwill and honourable way the kahnistensera have fought this legal battle. There is ample evidence throughout history that shows the state, the police and/or corporate entities working together with the media to create narratives of doubt, conspiracies, and mistrust between all parties acting in solidarity with an Indigenous-led campaign. This is often referred to as a tactic of counterinsurgency.
Let us once again redirect the attention to the real culprits: McGill and Arkéos who are collaborating in acts of colonial violence for profit. With such a short timeline to stop Arkéos, it is imperative for independent groups to use a diversity of tactics while respecting the Kaianereh’kowa (the Great Law of Peace). Such autonomous organizing is not new, this is how anarchists have worked in other anti-colonial struggles.
Friday October 14, 2022
Since the eviction of the camp from the Royal Vic site on Tuesday morning by police, McGill’s contractors have begun their excavation of the site, putting up fences and hiring a security guard who himself doesn’t seem to know who he is working for. They have already stripped the asphalt and broken ground, and reports say that the archeological firm Arkéos is planning to start the digging of sensitive material on Monday.
The Kanienkeha Kahnistensera (known in English as the Mohawk Mothers) have opposed the New Vic Project multiple times over the past several months. They initiated a court case against McGill and the SQI (Société québécoise des infrastructures), who are behind the renovation project in April of this year. The Kahnistensera are presently awaiting their next date in court against McGill, which will come on October 26, long after Arkéos has stripped the earth around their historical village.
We as settler anarchists and accomplices decided to attack Arkéos today, because we want them to know that they must be accountable for working on this colonial project for McGill. This university, founded with profits from selling the products of the slave trade and from stolen Haudenausaunee Trust Fund money, has yet again acted in total disregard of Indigenous sovereignty by ignoring the legitimate demands made by the Kahnistensera, the guardians of the land under the Great Law of Peace.
We demand that Arkéos takes responsibility for the work they are doing for McGill. After McGill cancelled consultations with the Mohawk Mothers, Arkéos has still not met with the Mothers to address their concerns over the excavation. Despite a flurry of calls and emails to Arkéos to cancel their involvement in the project, Arkéos has continued their participation in this excavation without any consultation with the Kahnistensera. Arkéos is not an apolitical actor in this struggle, as they prepare to work behind fences and guards while they desecrate a historical Indigenous cultural site.
Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering the past of that very company. Indeed, Arkéos has been founded by engineers who needed archeologists and anthropologists to legitimize construction projects. It’s definitely not the first time that Arkéos stands hand in hand with the Quebec Settler colonial state, as they have been involved in Hydro-Québec projects on Eeyou Istchee, mining projects on unceded Nitassinan, pipeline projects in the south of so called Québec as well as various gentrification projects in the so called cities of Montréal and Québec.
To Arkéos, we would like to say this: next time, if you don’t wanna cry over a couple of spilled boxes and some dirt on your luxurious couches, maybe dont get involved in fucking colonial contracts.
Update – 11 October: Next Steps for Anti-Colonial Direct Actions Against McGill’s New Vic Project
The camp that was setup on October 10th against upcoming excavation work by McGill was evicted by police this morning. There is currently excavation equipment on site, fences are being erected, and work is planned to begin October 12th by the McGill-hired archeological firm Arkéos. Even though they are supposedly investigating Indigenous archeological remains, Arkéos has had no discussions with the Mohawk Mothers, and is not equipped to a forensic investigation for unmarked graves. Please send them as many phone calls, emails, and faxes as you can in the next 48 hours to let them know that this work should not be going ahead without the direct involvement of the Mohawk Mothers and that Arkéos should withdraw from the project.
Respect Kanien’kehà:ka sovereignty, support the search for unmarked graves
Follow our Twitter @stopthenewvic to find out how you can provide on the ground support
We are settler anarchists who have initiated an anti-colonial solidarity action to block the renovations of the former Royal Victoria Hospital, which McGill University has said they plan to begin working on in early October as part of their campus expansion project. We are disturbed but not surprised that McGill would insist on pushing ahead with this work despite concerns that it may destroy forensic evidence of unmarked graves in the area. McGill has already invested immensely in this campus expansion project, and the possible discovery of unmarked graves would be a financial loss and tarnish their pro-reconciliation public image. We are taking direct action to stop their renovation work before it covers up the truth of their own violent history.
We have started this action on October 10th, so-called Thankgiving Day in Canada, and Columbus Day in the US. Such holidays represent the ongoing colonial violence of the settler-colonial state. We believe that there can be no peace on these lands until the colonial states of Canada and the US are abolished. We give thanks to the Kanien’kehà:ka people, who after centuries of resistance to colonization, continue to fight to defend these lands. We give thanks to the Kanien’kehà:ka women who have done extensive research, made this information public, and taken action to address the problems with this New Vic renovation project.
The Kanien’kehà:ka kahnistensera (Mohawk Mothers) are a group of women from the Mohawk communities of Kahnawake and Kanehsatake. Based on the kaia’nereh’ko:wa (the Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee confederacy), the kahnistensera are considered progenitors of the Kanienke’hà:ka nation, own and are the caretakers of the land and the soil, including Tiohtiá:ke (so called Montreal). They are declaring that McGill stop planned renovations of the former Royal Victoria Hospital, that there be an investigation of the area for unmarked graves, as well as further study of Indigenous archeological sites known to be in the area. The investigation would be to find bodies of victims of CIA and Canadian government funded MK-Ultra psychiatric torture experiments that took place in the 1950s and ’60s at the Allan Memorial Institute, which is directly adjacent to the Royal Victoria.
The kahnistensera refer to the testimony of survivors of the MK-Ultra experiments, who say there were also Indigenous children being brought to the Institute and experimented on at that time. In recent years, thousands of unmarked graves have been found using ground-penetrating radar on the grounds of former residential schools for Indigenous children. A forensic investigation of the grounds of the Allen Memorial and the Royal Victoria, supervised by the kahnistensera, could determine the truth about some of the terrible things that happened there. The planned renovations would risk destroying this evidence, and must be stopped before an investigation can happen.
In April 2022, the kahnistensera filed a legal claim to the Superior Court of Quebec to stop McGill and the Société Québécoise des Infrastructures (SQI) from proceeding with the renovations and the next date in this process is October 26th. As usual, it is very unlikely that the colonial courts will take the demands of the kahnistensera seriously and do anything to stop the colonial university and state from proceeding with their plans. That is why it is important for all of us who support Kanien’kehà:ka sovereignty on this land to organize ourselves in solidarity with the public calls of the kahnistensera against the renovations.
As settlers and anarchists, we attempt to act as accomplices in Indigenous-led fights to abolish the settler-colonial-imperial-capitalist state and insititutions, such as McGill. We also recognize that Kanien’kehà:ka sovereignty in this place goes beyond this current campaign. We support the kahnistensera’s broader vision of a university which has been renamed to not pay homage to a colonial slaveholder, has repaid its financial debts to the Haudenosaunee peoples, has stopped all military research, and is governed by the kahnistensera in accordance with the kaia’nereh’ko:wa.
Comments Off on map.negate.ca: An Interactive Map of Extractive Infrastructure in BC
Oct032022
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
There is a ever growing amount of pipelines and other extractive projects within so-called “british columbia”. It is challenging to understand the scope of this infrastructure and how each project relates to others.
We collected information about planned, in construction, and completed projects and combined them into one map. We also include all freight rail lines.
We publish this map to gain collective perspective on the state of extractive industry in bc. We will continue adding new data as it emerges. If there are any projects that you want added you can email map@negate.ca.
The map is entirely hosted on our server. Your browser won’t connect to google or open street map. If it is slow, this is probably why :-)
This is a call for an Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage Against Colonialism on Sunday, October 9, 2022, everywhere.
We heard that mass actions are a bit out of fashion this season & lone wolfs or affinity groups are all the rage.
Counter the spectacle of the “good, respectable Indian” and their mundane celebrations of assimilation. Your ancestors invite you to embrace the veracious criminality of anti-colonial struggle and be smart (don’t get caught).
A banner drop? An attack on colonial symbols, monuments, etc. Spray paint? A broken window here, a burning xxxxxxx there? Be fierce and fabulously unpredictable and strike in the darkest part of the night (points if you use glitter). Even the smallest Indigenous dreams of liberation are greater than the settler nightmares we live everyday.
We won’t be making any lists or asking for emails this year due to a heightened sense for the need of greater security culture. Though we will post any securely and anonymously sent reports and pics in the aftermath.
In the spirit of Jane’s Revenge, abort colonialism. Colonizer (c)laws off our bodies!
– The insurrectionary anti-colonial invisible council of IPDR. www.indigenouspeoplesdayofrage.org #indigenouspeoplesdayofrage #indigenouspeoplesday
https://bccounterinfo.org is now live! We at BC counter-info have gone to great lengths to create a secure and accessible platform for anarchist and anti-authoritarians of all stripes to upload their stories of inspirational revolutionary actions happening across so called ‘BC’ and eventually to help broadcast others from around the world. We encourage all ‘BC’ comrades to submit their handiwork using the portal provided in the submit section of the website, after reading the security tips provided. If you have any suggestions on ways to improve the site, especially around security, or to tell us how much we suck, don’t hesitate to email us at bccounterinfo@riseup.net or alternatively you can use the submission portal for one-way secure messages. If you have submissions that fall outside the area known as ‘BC’ please submit to existing sites, and we will share them automatically in a separate feed. Stay tuned for further updates to the site, we have big plans! BC counter-info is an onion service with a public facing URL. Our onion address is: bcinfosst3tgmyfar6sessdkpkaxrc5sdjagvxvkbu6z74yhin7e5gid.onion
Comments Off on Railway Blockade on Unceded Nitassinan (Saguenay)
Sep092022
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Wednesday evening, a collective of Indigenous and settler activists blocked the Roberval-Saguenay railroad belonging to the multinational corporation Rio Tinto in solidarity with the National Committee for First Peoples’ Rights which is paralyzing for a third consecutive day the railroad line located at the border of Labrador and Schefferville, which is used by the mining company Tata Steel. The solidarity blockade lasted one hour. These actions have the objective of reminding the governments that the members of the Indigenous communities in this country will no longer accept any compromises regarding criminal acts committed against them.
The band councils of Uashat mak Mani-utenam (ITUM) and Matimekush-Lac John are suspected of having obtained the majority of electoral votes through corruption, fraud, extortion, and breach of trust. The alleged acts took place between 2019 and 2022 and involved nearly $1.8 million in bribes and favors of various kinds. In the official complaint formulated to the Sûreté du Québec by the First Peoples’ Rights Committee, a list of evidence coming directly from ITUM’s accounting system shows that there were, without the knowledge of the members, approximately 325 billing payments from registrants for an approximate amount of $1,780,000. This amount would be the result of a contract signed with the mining company IOC Rio-Tinto in 2020, in which Chief Mike McKenzie’s team would have hidden the legal meaning of the numerous clauses of this agreement from the members, which would have had the effect of giving away, in an exclusive manner and without any time limit, all future rights to decision-making about exploitation of natural resources on the unceded Great Nitassinan, the territory of the Innuat people!
Today’s action by the collective in Saguenay is a reminder that the Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC) and the band councils, which are nothing more than organizations of colonial assimilation set up by the federal government, are not masters of unceded Nitassinan. Agreements signed illegally, by extortion, without the consent of the entire Innuat people, will never again be tolerated. The mining companies have been destroying and polluting the territory of the Innuat for several decades. Our action is a direct act of ancestral sovereignty of the First Peoples. We have been perpetuating this ancestral governance for thousands of years. We are also acting for future generations to leave them a healthy land and to perpetuate our ancestral rights, our sacred relationship with Assi (the Earth) and all living beings. Enough is enough! Today we are acting in the name of a movement by Indigenous people and their allies, to denounce these criminal acts sanctioned by the Canadian and Quebec courts. We call for the multiplication of solidarity actions in relation to this struggle.
Comments Off on Your Cancer, Courtesy of Capitalism
Sep092022
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Many cities in Quebec are home to one or more industries that destroy the environment and make the inhabitants sick.
In Rouyn-Noranda, Glencore benefits from a right to pollute that has allowed it to pocket billions for decades. The flora, the fauna, and all living things are affected. Vulnerable people, pregnant women, babies, and children, are particularly affected. All of this is indirectly with the permission of the Ministry of the Environment, who issues the remediation certificate that allows for exceeding the standards for emissions of a cocktail of heavy metals: arsenic, lead, nickel, chromium, cadmium, etc. These exceptions to compliance with provincial standards are an easy way for shareholders to profit.
We are an affinity group from Rouyn-Noranda. Today, we are starting a series of symbolic and direct actions against Glencore. We will no longer accept dying to enrich this kind of of ruthless multinational corporation! We have dropped this banner on the cancer research center that is delaying its operations because of hiring difficulties – and we understand! People who work in the health field do not want to come to Rouyn-Noranda to be poisoned.
Comments Off on Announcing Creeker Vol 2 and The Creeker Companion Vol 2
Sep062022
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Creeker is a grassroots, anti-authoritarian zine series that aims to bring depth, variety, critique and continuity to the ongoing process of reflecting on the Ada’itsx/Fairy Creek blockade and related efforts. It is intended for creekers themselves, land defenders elsewhere, and the land defenders yet to come.
Last summer on so-called Vancouver Island, thousands of people moved through a de-facto autonomous zone spanning multiple watersheds. A constellation of struggle burned bright, welcoming into its fold a new generation of land defenders. We cannot begin to fathom the amount of stories of collective and individual experience that have piled up, but we also recognize how sleep deprivation, trauma loops, burnout, and the shock of returning to society can preoccupy our minds.
In response to an open invitation to contribute to this zine project, many have shared some of what they have begun to process. Creeker Vol 1 and Vol 2 include art, analysis, photography, history, personal reflection and poetry that were anonymously sourced from participants at the blockade.
Creeker Vol 2 expands on some of the themes of Vol 1 with eloquent and hard-hitting writing exploring the dynamics of autonomous forest defense in conflict with recuperative tendencies at Fairy Creek, and the ever-present treachery of environmental NGOs and the non profit industrial complex. Vol 2 also begins to revive vital histories of radical, uncontrollable resistance in the nearby Kax:iks/Walbran and Elaho Valleys, helping to bridge emerging generation gaps caused in part by decades of pacifist liberal whitewashing.
The Creeker Companion zines are curated to complement the Creeker zines with material that’s relevant to Ada’itsx and similar movements, but much broader in scope. Companion Vol 1 and Vol 2 both explore topics such as movement history, state repression, and thoughtfully critical approaches to identity politics. Vol 1 features mostly longer form pieces, while Vol 2 samples briefly from various material including essays, poetry, communiques and more, joined together with a playfully insurrectionary vibe.
Comments Off on Schrobenhausen, Germany: Arson on the Yard of Bauer (complicit in building Coastal GasLink)
Aug162022
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
On August 3, a few weeks after the involvement of the German company Bauer in the building process of the Coastal GasLink Pipeline through manufacturing equipment for the drilling process became known, local media report a nighttime fire on the company’s main office yard in Schrobenhausen, Germany.
According to the media, three highly expensive vehicles were set on fire by unknown attackers. At least one of them is one of those phallus-shaped drilling machines, used to rape the earth during pipeline construction processes all over the world. While media photos show this machine completely torched, it is reported that the fires on two other machines could be extinguished, but caused nevertheless huge damages. For sure none of this machinery will be used for the construction of extractivist infrastructure sometime soon, be it at the drilling site near Wedzin Kwa or elsewhere in the world.
In 1973, Pierre Elliott Trudeau enacted a regularization program resulting in 39,000 undocumented migrants living in so-called canada being eventually recognized as citizen. While there have been other regularization programs over the years, this was, by far, the largest one implemented [1].
You might have noticed that this large regularization program took place almost 50 years ago, by the father of the current prime minister, Justin Trudeau. And if there’s something that Trudeau can be relied upon, is to do some grand commemorative gesture for the occasion.
Because we are really in a perfect storm situation for migrant regularization. First, we are facing a serious labor shortage. Many essential jobs cannot find any takers because of the difficult work conditions and bad salaries. Undocumented migrants are currently working, of course, since most people cannot survive in canada without a job. But without a valid Social Insurance Number, many jobs remain inaccessible, most especially in government positions.
Second, there are already a lot of undocumented migrants in essential healthcare and food production jobs, because they are the shittiest jobs anyone can do. And we need them to continue to function as a society, a lot more than we need grubby bankers, tax haven accountants and slimy corporate lawyers, anyway. But it’s getting kinda shameful how the government ends up paying undocumented migrants for these jobs. Downright embarassing, even, given how badly they are treated.
And third, Trudeau’s minority government is in dire need of stealing votes from the left. Therefore, the Liberal government introduced Motion M-44 in May 2021 to get the ball rolling [2]. But while it might sound like a wide sweeping regularization program, let’s not be fooled: they want to steal votes to the left, while not alienating their racist right. As it stands now, it might only be a liberal regularization program: by and for the industry, the bankers, the stock market. And not for, you know, the actual people being currently refused entry to citizenship.
The reality of undocumented migrant lives
Ok, so why would we care? We want to destroy the so-called canadian state anyway, why would we want to see more people accepted by it? Why does citizenship in a colonial state matters?
Well, for starters, we don’t have in so-called canada the same infrastructure of support for undocumented migrants that there is south of the border. There are not that many non-profit organizations in here, and those present are often overwhelmed with people still clinging to the official citizenship pipelines. On the legal end of things, our racist provincial governments have not enabled the kind of loopholes we can see in California. And municipalities have very little power, especially since the police is controlled at the provincial and federal levels. Not that Projet Montreal’s “let’s fund the pigs no matter what they ask for” would have changed anything anyway.
Healthcare for undocumented migrants is a macabre joke. If you don’y have your “sun card”, you’re pretty much doomed. You either have to pay through the nose to see a doctor and get a prescription, and you still have to pay full price for medication. And that is if the doctor doesn’t denounce you to the pigs. Them doctors sur take that Hypocrite Oat to heart…
Anarchists in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal) will recall one undocumented comrade who gradually went blind, as she could not afford the doctors’ appointments and medications which were available to all of us. And another comrade, whose leg almost burst open from blood circulation problems, and who could not affort to get treated either. Living undocumented has a cost, a cost measured in human lives.
School ain’t much better either. Undocumented migrants recently won the right for their children to attend middle and high school, but it remains very limited [3]. They are always at risk of being denounced. Some schools will break government guidelines and refuse undocument children nonetheless. Because why a racist government would sanction a racist administrator? For those who overcome these hurdles and manage to finish high school, few prospects await them. And what opportunities are open nowadays to someone with just a high school degree?
Because work is ever so much worse. Undocumented migrants cannot complain to the CNESST, and are therefore not protected by health and safety guidelines, nor by minimum wage laws. Recent articles showed how official temporary migrant workers are mistreated in fields and farms, what do you think happens to undocumented migrants?
And that’s not covering the worst of the worst, the fucking police. Undocumented migrants are constantly one police stop away from getting deported. And guess what happens when they actually need to be protected from a rapist or a violent spouse? The SPVM is well-known as a “Deportation Machine That Hunts Down Non-Status Immigrants”, to quote an article from the McGill Daily [4]. And they probably jerk off while doing it too.
So yeah, fuck the state, destroy it, burn it to the fucking ground. But still, that shitty piece of citizenship paper still means a world of difference between life and death for a lot of people. And with a theorized 500,000 undocument migrants here, that’s a lot of pain and suffering that could be alleviated.
The fascists and liberals have no problem sleeping on the blood and bones of undocumented migrants. Can we?
What are the obstacles to expect?
If you follow federal politics, then it is obvious that Trudeau is quite heavy on symbolism, and pretty light on substance. The Trudeau government makes a lot of grandiose gestures but is often lackluster when it comes to actual action. After all, their goal here is not to actually regularize migrants, but just to steal some vote to the left. And maybe provide some cheap labour to their financiers.
So there’s a real chance that the regularization proposed might only be window dressing. That it might only regularize people who would be regularized eventually anyway. So we must put pressure on the government to ensure this regularization proposal is as wide and inclusive as possible. the canadian-based “Migrants Rights Network” has compiled a list of demands, their main ones being [5]:
The goal of the program must be regularization of all undocumented people residing in Canada.
The program should be permanent and available on an ongoing basis because the factors leading to people becoming undocumented will continue for the foreseeable future.
Applications must be simple, such that undocumented people are able to apply themselves, online via mobile devices or on paper. There should be a large selection of acceptable documents for the purposes of establishing identity and residence in Canada, none should be mandatory.
People should not be excluded based on past failures to comply with immigration law.
There must be a prohibition on detentions and deportations throughout the course of the regularization program; without this, the regularization program will fail as undocumented people will not apply.
No one should be deported if their application is rejected.
///
The other major obstacle is, quite obviously, the racist and white supremacist provincial CAQ government. The CAQ made no secret that they want full control of immigration in Quebec. They have already made legally dubious moves against immigrants, whether through:
Bill 9, which threw 18,000 immigration dossiers in the trash,
Bill 21, which blocks many non-christians from teaching jobs,
Bill 96, which forces migrants to learn french in six months.
The CAQ would almost certainly try to block any regularization efforts, unless the undocumented migrants were both french and white.
///
And finally, the other obstacle would probably be your unfriendly neighborhood fascist. The far-right propaganda against migrant workers is widespread, the most popular being that more foreign workers means lower wages and fewer housing opportunities.
First, let’s be honest about wages. The pandemic convinced a lot of baby boomers to retire a bit earlier than expected, leaving a large number of jobs available. Simple free market economics would theorizes that a workers’ shortage would therefore mean salaray raises. Obviously, that hasn’t been the case so far, and nothing shows that it will improve in the future. Or even match the inflation.
Evidently, our capitalist masters will not increase wages, no matter what. They would rather let the job left undone, and pile the work on the remaining workers, than pay us a penny more. The only significant gains made in recent months were in unionized jobs, and only after difficult struggles, and often long strikes. As the IWW slogan goes: if we want better work conditions, we need to organize. The “free market” has always been stacked against workers: a few more migrants, who are already here and already working anyway won’t change a damn thing.
Second, housing. As housing committees in Tio’tia:ke and elsewhere keep hammering: we don’t have a housing shortage, we have an affordable housing shortage. There are a shittons of apartments held empty for speculation purposes. The financiarization of the housing market means that you are no longer dealing with your regular scummy landlord, but with a scummy stock market broker landlord. Our old landlords could pressure us as much as they wanted, but in the end they needed at least some money to pay their mortgage at the end of the month. Deals could be cooerced, and limited rent strikes could work. Our new landlords have 50,000 appartments and don’t give a shit if a few of them don’t pay them for a few months, while they fill the paperwork to throw your ass out in the street at 2AM in -40 weather. Again, more migrants who already live here won’t change a thing either.
Or in other words, don’t punch down on comrades down on their luck. Punch up to the bosses and the landlords: they’re the own making all our lives miserable. And maybe punch your local fascist while your there.
What should we do?
The Trudeau government should publish a first draft of their regularization law in late September 2022. This should gives us an idea on where Trudeau want to go with that program, and subsequent reactions from the CAQ and the far-right should give us an idea of what kind of obstacles we would be facing.
It was easier to pressure the government in 1973 because the undocumented migrants included a large portion of white people, mostly war resisters from the united states fleeing the vietnam draft. We don’t have this luxury today. Any gain we make will have to be made despite the white supremacists currently vying for power.
But thankfully, others have paved the way before us. The 39,000 persons regularized in 1973 might sound like a lot, but it was merely 0.1% of the population of canada at the time. These 39,000 are massively dwarfed compared to recent regularization programs in other countries. In 1981, france regularized 132,000 migrants, or 0.2% of their population at the time, twice as many as canada. In 2005, spain regularized 570,000 people, or 1.3% of their population at the time. It is therefore possible to do it much better than in 1973, and the mobilization behind the regularization campaigns in france and spain can provide us with a lot of good arguments.
After all, these undocumented migrants are already here. They work with us, eat with us, live with us. It’s time they enjoyed the same rights that we all do.
///
The canadian-based Migrant Rights Network calls for days of action on Agust 16th and September 18th: https://migrantrights.ca/
[1] See: https://www.kairoscanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/The-Regularization-of-NonStatus-Immigrants-in-Canada-1960-2004.pdf for the different programs.
[2] See: https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/89339/motions/11528727 This was followed by a mandate letter to the minister of immigration: https://pm.gc.ca/en/mandate-letters/2021/12/16/minister-immigration-refugees-and-citizenship-mandate-letter It laconically only mentions “Build on existing pilot programs to further explore ways of regularizing status for undocumented workers who are contributing to Canadian communities”.
[3] See: http://www.assnat.qc.ca/fr/travaux-parlementaires/projets-loi/projet-loi-144-41-1.html (in French only).
