Employment and labour

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Ottawa / Washington, D.C. / New York, NY / Mexico City, Mexico—With ratification of NAFTA 2.0 still up in the air in the U.S. and Canada, a new international report contrasts the deeply flawed agreement with proposals for a more progressive and truly fair trade regime.
With ratification of NAFTA 2.0 still up in the air, a new international report looks beyond that deeply flawed agreement to imagine a more progressive and truly fair trade regime. The report, which includes contributions by trade experts and activists from all three North American countries, critically analyzes the USMCA (known as CUSMA in Canada and T-MEC in Mexico) and sets out alternatives that would give priority to human rights and the rights of nature over corporate rights.
Canada’s Employment Insurance (EI) program is failing to support low-wage and precariously-employed workers, who have considerably less access to benefits than workers with higher wages.  Among the study’s findings: While 42 per cent of all unemployed workers qualified for EI in 2017, just 28 per cent of workers earning $15 or less per hour were eligible for benefits;
TORONTO—Le programme de l’assurance-emploi (A-E) du Canada échoue à soutenir les travailleurs à faible revenu et occupant un emploi précaire; ceux-ci ont considérablement moins accès aux prestations que les travailleurs à plus haut revenu, selon un nouveau rapport du Centre canadien de politiques alternatives (CCPA). 
TORONTO—Canada’s Employment Insurance (EI) program is failing to support low-wage and precariously-employed workers, who have considerably less access to benefits than workers with higher wages, according to a new Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) report.
REUTERS/Nick Didlick For the last decade, oil and gas industry supporters in media, civil society and government have honed a populist narrative revolving around two core arguments: 1) Fossil fuel development is vital to the national economic interest.
Photo from the U.S. Department of Agriculture
Illustration by Scott Shields
Canada is addicted to oil. Like all addictions, ours is debilitating. It has erased the line between state and private industry (thin as that line is in most countries), stifles our politics, and is holding back local, provincial and national preparations for a world without fossil fuels. Curing our addiction to oil and gas will take time and money, and historic levels of Indigenous–federal–provincial co-operation. But it absolutely has to happen—starting now.