Alberta's teachers have been ordered back to work, and their right to strike, collectively bargain, or even present a legal challenge have been stripped away by Danielle Smith's UCP. How is organized labour in Alberta responding to this existential threat?

Previous episodes on public education:

"Balance" in Climate Change, Cursive Writing: Alberta's Curriculum Review
When Public Isn't Public: Education in Alberta

Previous episodes on trade unions and collective bargaining:

• Canada's Hot Union Summer: what comes next?
• Canadian vs U.S. Unions

Watch the entirety of the AFL's October 29 response to Bill 2.

Read Gil McGowan's feedback on Roberta Lexier's presentation about the need to organize towards a general strike: https://x.com/gilmcgowan/status/1681761153826033666

Further reading:

• Back to School - Notwithstanding the Charter
• Amnesty International Canada condemns Alberta government's use of Notwithstanding clause in Bill 2
• From Consent to Coercion: The Continuing Assault on Labour
• No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age (book)
• Jane McAlevey: The Only Way to Win Is to Strike

Canada exists to put holes in the ground and extract surplus value for shareholders. In this episode, originally recorded in 2021, Team Advantage opens the Canadian trench-coat to find total corporate impunity. We discus how the Canadian state facilitates resource extraction within its borders and around the world at the expense of the common good, then imagine what mining might look like in a better society.

Works Cited:

• Canada In The World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination – Tyler Shipley

• Imperial Canada Inc.: Legal Haven of Choice for the World's Mining Industries – Alain Deneault & William Sacher

• Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction under Late Capitalism – Martín Arboleda

• Canadian Mining in Ecuador series - Brandi Morin

Every century or so the Canadian left gathers at the Royal Canadian Legion #1 in downtown Calgary to inagurate a new era of progress. In 1932 it was J.S. Woodworth and the gang in 1932 at the founding of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (which would become the NDP). On July 13, 2025 it was Team Advantage, Shama Rangwala, André Goulet, Roberta Lexier and Rob Rousseau.

This live recording begins with a discussion of what the Progressive Publics symposium is all about before saying goodbye to the NDP with a brief history. Then the team discusses the possibilities of a socialist project to come. With live heckling from the audience! (Mostly Jeremy Appel.)