In the lead up to the federal budget, the government signalled that it would include sharp cuts, referencing the steep austerity of the 1995 federal budget.

Team Advantage takes a look at what the budget actually contains, situates it in the current political moment and examines how it actually compares to 1995. We ask how the nation building rhetoric Carney campaigned on could actually have been implemented, and what can be done about a government at war with workers.

Further Reading

• Varieties of Austerity - Heather Whiteside, Stephen McBride, and Bryan Evans

• 30th Anniversary of the 1995 Budget: Lessons to Improve Canada's Federal Finances Today

• Budget fédéral 2025: un Canada assujetti au secteur privé et à l'industrie militaire

Related Episodes

• Killing the Welfare State: Liberals and the 1990s

• TORIES: Calgary Laundry Workers vs Ralph Klein

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