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Socialism is a populist economic and political system based on collective, common, or public ownership of the means of production.

The Municipal Socialist Alliance Toronto Mayor By-election campaign, featuring MSA candidate for mayor Kiri Vadivelu, will present its policies on housing and transportation today. Please join us on Saturday, May 20, 1:30 p.m. for a rally at Christie Pits Park, Christie subway station at Bloor Street West.

No doubt, it is good to see some Canadian political leaders address the suffering of the fast growing and resilient Tamil community in Toronto. As the socialist mayoral candidate, I am skeptical of the formal statements from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative Leader Pierre Poillivre, supposedly in support of Tamils. We need more than words professing sympathy.

Rising inequality has caused many people to demand a hefty tax on big wealth. According to a June 2020 report by the federal Parliamentary Budget Office, the top 1 per cent collectively own about a quarter of Canada’s total wealth, $2.6 trillion. In 2018, 87 families alone had a combined net worth of $259 billion, equal to 15% of the country’s entire GDP for that year. Meanwhile, over five million people in Canada then lived below the poverty line.

Every year, on May 18, thousands of Tamil-Canadians commemorate the Mullivaikkal Massacre, the mass killing of tens of thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils in 2009 during the closing days of the civil war.

The Union of National Defence Employees in Alberta and the North says its members will vote on a tentative collective agreement following the country’s largest strike involving federal workers.

The release of the Ontario Ombudsman’s new report on the province’s Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) warrants reflection on the primary role of the tribunal: evictions.

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the beginning of Al Nakba, the violent settler colonial project and catastrophic ethnic cleansing through which the Israeli state was created.

A People's History of the United States is a 1980 non-fiction book by American historian and political scientist Howard Zinn. In the book, Zinn presented what he considered to be a different side of history from the more traditional "fundamental nationalist glorification of country".

Bureaucracy is not very original but still entirely valid to point out that liberal democracy is the preferred political system for the class rule of the capitalists.

On May 7, CUPE 5089 announced its endorsement of former Toronto Police Service (TPS) chief Mark Saunders for mayor of Toronto. I consider this an act of working class betrayal, and I write this as a former longtime CUPE member—including CUPE 3903 in Toronto, CUPE 4600 in Ottawa, and delegate to the CUPE-Ontario convention.

It started when Frédérique Martineau had a bad day at work. Frédérique Martineau led the successful campaign to form the only union for Starbucks’ workers in Vancouver.

The leak of a trove of secret U.S. government documents posted on social media has revealed aspects of how the government and its military is striving to reestablish hegemony in the world by targeting its adversaries (especially Russia and China) and pressuring allies to toe the line or face economic and political retaliations.

Today in Britain King Charles III will be crowned in a ‘coronation’. All the other remaining monarchies in Europe (Scandinavia, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain) don’t bother with a coronation, but the British monarchy has had a much more prominent role in helping British state build its huge global empire in the 19th century.

Justice Must Be a Home! A poem by the Canadian parliamentary poet George Elliot Laureate.

As Charles III was crowned king in a sickening display of pomp and privilege, thousands of protesters gathered in Trafalgar Square and marched in central London to oppose the coronation and the monarchy. Not that you’d know this from the wall-to-wall coverage of the coronation in the mainstream media.

City of Toronto politicians, senior officials, big landlords, land developers and the construction industry have blood on their hands! The Municipal Socialist Alliance is pouring, onto City Hall Square, a representation of the blood of 187 victims of the worsening houselessness crisis.

Long before garnering international attention as a “pandemic-era folk hero,” carpenter Khaleel Seivwright built a tiny insulated shelter in a Toronto park with a painted sign boldly stating “Anyone is Welcome.” It would be the first of many.

On Monday, Jordan Neely, a 30-year-old Black man who performed as a Michael Jackson impersonator, was having a mental health crisis on the F train in New York City. According to bystanders, he declared he was hungry, thirsty, and tired, and that he didn’t care if he went to jail that night. He was loud but didn’t touch anyone on the train. Instead of being met with compassion, he was murdered.

Hidden in the valleys of Luxembourg is a bank Europeans own yet most have never heard of it. What the European Investment Bank (EIB) lacks in profile it however makes up for in financial clout. The lending arm of the European Union, it is the world’s biggest multilateral financial institution, dispensing over €65 billion last year alone and over a trillion euro since its foundation in 1958.

Hundreds braved persistent cool showers to celebrate International Workers' Day at the south-west corner of Toronto's City Hall Square on Sunday, April 30.

Back again, live and in-person at The Free Times Cafe after a three-year hiatus, the 37th annual Toronto Socialist Action May Day Celebration on April 29 was a resounding success. It was co-sponsored by the NDP Socialist Caucus, the Workers' Action Movement, OPSEU Region 5, and the Municipal Socialist Alliance.

Homelessness is not only about housing, but it is always about housing. And ‘housing first’ has been identified as best practice in dealing with it.

The Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) is the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland and the permanent dispossession of a majority of the Palestinians living in historic Palestine, beginning in the late 1940s. The term subsumes the events of the late 1940s, as well as the subsequent and ongoing persecution, displacement, and military occupation of the Palestinians.

After three years of living with, and responding to, a pandemic, Toronto Public Health is releasing Toronto’s Population Health Profile: Insight on the Health of Our City PDF at a critical time in the City’s history.

What is MSA position on moving the Ontario Science Centre to Ontario Place?

Recently, the Economic and Community Development Committee supported a motion to extend tourist exemptions for holiday shopping to three new locations: Yorkdale, Scarborough Town Centre, and the St Lawrence Market. The item (EC3.17) will come before City Council on May 10. What is your position on opening up shopping on public holidays in these and other commercial areas?

In November, Doug Ford’s Conservative government avoided a potentially fatal confrontation with Ontario’s unions by repealing its anti-union bill. Bill 28, a piece of legislation that stripped 55,000 education workers of their right to strike and would have forced them to accept a contract, was so odious that it moved the entire Ontario labour movement into action. Bill 28 provoked a call for a general strike, which was only called off after Ford backed down entirely on the proposed legislation.

Low-income homeowners pay five times more in property taxes relative to their income compared to high-income homeowners. "This is simply unjust and perpetuates economic inequality," says Kiri Vadivelu, the Municipal Socialist Alliance candidate for Toronto mayor.

The Gardiner Expressway has long been a feature of Toronto' s transportation horror-scape. It blocks Torontonians from enjoying easy access to Lake Ontario and has become a blight on the waterfront.

On April 13, Toronto Police marked the second anniversary of the release of the Report of the Independent Civilian Review into Missing Persons Investigations (Missing & Missed Report), which found that systemic discrimination against the LGBTQ, new immigrants and refugees, and other racialized and marginalized communities, led to significant failings of Toronto Police concerning its missing persons investigation.

The strategy focused heavily on long-term homelessness, with targets to halve levels by 2011 and to eliminate long-term homelessness by 2015.

As the WikiLeaks founder faces a life sentence in American prison, a new book sheds additional light on the official campaign to silence him.

A bevy of bourgeois councilors and wannabees flocked to Toronto City Hall early on April 3 to register as candidates for the municipality's top job in a hastily called by-election. An exception to the Dishonor Roll of 28 servants to the status quo was the Municipal Socialist Alliance candidate for Toronto mayor, Kiri Vadivelu.

What a state we’re in! The lowest point of the left since the 1950s. The Joe Biden visit proves it.

The NDP Socialist Caucus in Ontario congratulates you on your resounding electoral victory, winning with 54 per cent of the votes cast, on March 16 in Hamilton Centre.

The Municipal Socialist Alliance, at its monthly convention held on March 20, selected Kiri Vadivelu to be its candidate for mayor of Toronto in the current by-election.

Today, Toronto Public Health (TPH) released data related to the deaths of people experiencing homelessness in 2022. Overall, homelessness continues to negatively impact health outcomes of individuals, resulting in 187 reported deaths in 2022. This total is lower than the 223 deaths reported in 2021 but remains higher than the 128 deaths reported before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019.

While workers are in the midst of a cost of living crisis the political and media establishment in Canada have been busy stoking hysteria about Chinese interference in our elections. With little to no actual evidence, the panic emanating from Ottawa serves to whip up reactionary nationalism, while deflecting from the unaccountable and undemocratic corporate influence which is driving the cost of living crisis and undermining our public institutions.

Tyre Nichols, 29, was murdered by police in yet another modern-day lynching in Memphis, Tennessee on January 7. The city is nearly 70 percent African American, including a Black female police chief.

People across the political spectrum agree that Ontario’s healthcare system is in crisis, but what are the causes and what are the solutions? For the Ford government the cause is public healthcare, and the solution is private healthcare. This is based on a series of old myths that predated the current crisis, and that continue to be reused every time governments want to push further privatization. Here are 7 myths used to justify healthcare privatization, and how to bust them.

The country's government says it saves approximately $21K on each person housed. A successful Finnish plan to eradicate homelessness is one London may want to consider as it works to redesign housing and health services.

Regardless of the position on Russia Ukraine crisis, working class people should be in support of seizing the assets of billionaires. Those billionaires of all stripes massively contribute to inequality and injustice to people and planet everywhere.

The Municipal Socialist Alliance says 'NO' to the proposed increase to the Toronto police budget. The notion that the hike is a step towards enhanced public safety is completely ill-conceived.

On the first Monday of 2023, Jan. 9, the Toronto Police Services Board (TPSB) held a special meeting to discuss and vote upon a proposed $48.3 million CAD increase to the Toronto Police Services (TPS) operating budget in 2023, which represents a 4.3% increase over the bloated 2022 operating budget.

In response to recent public safety incidents Toronto Mayor John Tory used his authority to inject millions of tax-payer dollars into the police department, which has already seen major budget increases while medical and education budgets are slashed.

Until recently, for a motion to carry at Toronto city council, a majority vote is required. But with the Better Municipal Governance Act, mayors like Toronto’s John Tory now can pass bylaws with the support of just one third of council. It gives the mayor powers to veto budgets, committee decisions and By-Laws.

Supporters of the Municipal Socialist Alliance distributed hundreds of pieces of literature to transit riders outside a busy subway station on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. The message "Free Public Transit.

Protest to take place at Toronto Star, 1 Yonge Street, on Thursday, October 6, 12:15 p.m. Why did the Toronto Star fail to report on the campaign and candidates of the Municipal Socialist Alliance?

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) quietly adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) defintion of antisemitism in 2018. Since then, the state of Israel bombed Gaza multiple times, destroyed hundred of Palestinian settlements, and murdered both children and journalists.

The financial reports includes the City’s consolidated financial statements and statistical information. It also includes the financial condition and performance, credit ratings and the performance and benchmarking reports.

Socialist Action is a nationwide party made up of activists committed to the emancipa- tion of workers and the oppressed. We work to revitalize the anti-war, labor, anti-racist, feminist, student and other social movements, and build a revolutionary workers’ party deeply integrated into all the struggles of working people, that can successfully chal- lenge the wealthy elite.

In most of the liberal discussions of the recent police killings of unarmed black men, there is an underlying assumption that the police are supposed to protect and serve the population. That is, after all, what they were created to do.

Socialists are very concerned about the injustice and social ills in the world today— hunger, poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, disease, war, the exploitation of workers, the oppression of nations, races, women, and gays, the destruction of the environment, and the threat of nuclear annihilation.

I am proud to join Canadian Network for Cuba (CNC) to fight against the United States blockade against Cuba preventing access to basic necessities during the global humanity crisis.