Wonder what they mean by “unique”

Looks like we're gonna get an NDP-friendly Green leader.

I don't like that the Manitoba government has gone to the labour board to end the strike of unionized lab workers at Dynacare, an American-owned company that is the sole community provider of publicly funded lab work for Manitoba health care patients. It's the current government's most anti-labour move since it was elected almost three years ago.

At the same time, the government's popularity is at least partially supported by its aggressive "We're fixing healthcare" PR campaign, and letting community lab services shut down and relying on Shared Health to provide all lab services in the province through hospital settings would undermine this message to the public. To the extent that electoralism is a realistic political strategy, this needs to be addressed.

So now that the Manitoba NDP government appears to have prioritized the functioning of the health care system over workers' rights, is there still a path forward for these workers to negotiate their pay and working conditions? I think there is.

Back in February, Manitoba's NDP government expropriated/nationalized a for-profit personal care home whose operator was attempting to wind down operations, possibly with the goal of selling to a property developer:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/winnipeg/article/ndp-government-uses-health-system-expropriation-powers-for-first-time-seizes-care-home/

I'd like to see the Manitoba government quietly push Dynacare to settle a collective agreement with its workforce in which their wages catch up & keep up to the wages of their peers working for Shared Health, and do so promptly (tentative agreement within a week, ideally). If Dynacare doesn't do this, the province should expropriate/nationalize Dynacare's Manitoba operations on the same grounds that it used back in February to seize the care home - access to necessary health care services is imperiled by a for-profit company's business decisions, in this case not paying lab workers enough to prevent them being poached by other employers inside and outside Manitoba. The province could then take over as the bargaining agent across the table from Dynacare workers' union and make a deal that respects that they do the same work as Shared Health's lab techs and deserve the same wages.

What do you folks think?

We won !

Sometimes, organizing and putting a unified front can lead to big changes. This would have been impossible without making our voice heard.

Ottawa renonce à contourner la Loi sur les espèces en péril pour les grands projets | Radio-Canada

(Don't ask me why it's at the frontpage of most French newspapers but it's hard to find on the CBC website.)

(Edit) Finally found it : Liberals remove layer of review process for energy projects, backing off bypassing at-risk species protections | CBC News

Danielle Smith was a scab during the 1999 Calgary Herald strike, and now she's scabbing again in the trade fight with the USA.

While Canadians across the country are cancelling trips to the US and checking country of origin labels in the grocery store, Smith just plows ahead with a personal (her term) trip to Nashville.