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This article reviews the book, "Tommy Douglas and the Quest for Medicare in Canada," by Gregory P. Marchildon.
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This article examines destiny politics in Anand Patwardhan and Jim Munro’s 1981 documentary A Time to Rise (Uthan da Vela), a film that captures the political struggles of Punjabi farm workers as they organized to establish the Canadian Farmworkers Union (cfu). It argues that the film highlights how Punjabi farm workers in British Columbia could not build a life beyond the exploitative and toxic labour conditions of BC farms without first confronting powerful cultural and religious ideas about predestined life. This article demonstrates that the three main figures involved in making the film – Anand Patwardhan (the filmmaker), Pritam Kaur Hayre (the protagonist), and Sant Ram Udasi (the singer) – each sought to dismantle the hold of destiny politics over the future. First, I explain that A Time to Rise marked a first experiment with what was to become Patwardhan’s signature style of documentary filmmaking: talking groups. Through this reconfiguration of the documentary as a tool for collective dialogue and movement building, Patwardhan sought to break the enduring power of destiny within South Asian communities. Second, I discuss the film’s protagonist Pritam Kaur Hayre, who contested the politics of destiny by seeking a better life through the union rather than the Punjabi family. Lastly, I show how upending destiny politics was a central preoccupation in the anti-caste thought of Sant Ram Udasi, the Mazhabi Punjabi farm-worker-turned-activist who visited British Columbia in 1979 and wrote and performed the film’s titular song, “Uthan da Vela.”
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This book investigates the growing impact of climate change on Canadian workers, particularly those in outdoor occupations, who face increasing exposure to extreme conditions such as heat domes and wildfires. The book highlights the urgent need for collaboration between labour and corporate law, governments, businesses, and trade unions to address the unique risks encountered by these workers.Focusing on the Canadian context while drawing on global perspectives, the book examines the role of corporations as employers responsible for protecting their workers. It explores how existing legal frameworks can be adapted to address climate-related risks, as well as the potential for creating new tailored legal solutions. The book also highlights the importance of extralegal mechanisms, particularly corporate social responsibility, in enhancing worker safety in the face of climate change. As the nature of all work is made more hazardous at the hands of climate catastrophe, lawyer and pioneering scholar Vanisha H. Sukdeo uncovers the urgency for legal labour reform. By critiquing current legal approaches and proposing innovative solutions, Weather and Work illustrates how labour and corporate law can work together to protect some of the most vulnerable workers from the growing threats posed by global warming. --Publisher's description
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The book describes the contemporary sex trade and its causes and consequences as it has manifested in the cities of Canada's prairie provinces. It concludes with recommendations for a realistic public policy and programming framework to guide the future development of a sexual services sector and to regulate its ongoing operations
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Recently the federal government has invoked section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to order the end of otherwise lawful strikes. The government’s claim that the section provides it with this power is in dispute. This research report, adapted from an expert witness report prepared for the law firm representing one of the unions subjected to these orders, investigates the historical understanding of the section and its precursors dating back to its earliest version, enacted in 1918. It finds that the historical understanding of the section was that its purpose was to strengthen statutory conciliation processes, not to empower the government to end otherwise lawful strikes by executive action. This government action not only continues a longer history of exceptionalism in collective bargaining but also marks a rupture by its attempt to enhance the power of the executive.
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To be published: July 2026. The Labour of Care is the first national, comparative history of health care work. In this book, historian Peter L. Twohig analyses the responses of governments, employers, professional groups, training programs , and unions to the challenge of staffing Canada’s health care system and the reorganization of care.Through careful archival analysis, Twohig demonstrates the conditions under which employees’ boundaries become more flexible, the paths to health care work expand, and tensions emerge among workers in response to labour shortages, decreased funding, and health care reform. This book is attentive to the various identities of health care workers, as women, professionals, union members, and more. It also situates these developments within broader social, economic, and policy changes that reshaped Canada’s health care landscape in the second half of the twentieth century. Examining health care workers in this way reveals a new history of health care that highlights the experiences and contributions of a wide range of workers whose voices have not yet been heard. --Publisher's description
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This article reviews the book, "We Always Had a Union: The New York Hotel Workers’ Union, 1912-1953," by Shaun Richman.
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This article reviews the book, "A Political Economy of Canadian Broadcasting: Public Good Versus Private Profit," by David Skinner.
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