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This chapter provides an extensive but not exhaustive overview of gender equality indices. Two key concerns emerge: frst, the conflation of measures of gender equality and assessments of women’s rights and status; and second, the focus on individual empowerment used in almost all international indices, the indicator for which is frequently political representation.The chapter proposes an alternative frame of collective agency as a measurable dimension that shifts attention from those institutions that reproduce gender inequality to those that promote gender equality. The second part of this chapter argues that trade unions are a key institutional vehicle for women’s collective agency and voice. Union membership increases women’s income and reduces the gender pay gap, a central dimension in all gender equality indices. It also improves the quality and conditions of working life. Union membership, then, helps progress women’s status, supports gender equality, and offers a valuable measure of women’s collective agency. --Introduction

The Canadian university system closely parallels the northern European and British systems which were inherited through the process of colonization in the 18th century. Universities are grappling with the legacy of colonialism and continue to make efforts toward reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples. Fiscal restraint dominates the discourse across publicly funded universities, which rely increasingly on contingent staff. Meanwhile, the increasing number of PhD graduates are finding it difficult to find permanent work in the academy. Labour unrest is on the rise across a fractured labour market. Canada faces a period of uncertainty and potential structural change in its higher education sector as it deals with these challenges.

Environmental racism is a structural, historical and ongoing fact of life for many Indigenous, Black and racially marginalized communities in Canada. Yet climate change discussions, lacking an anti-racism and intersectional lens, have largely ignored how Indigenous, Black and racially marginalized communities are inequitably impacted by the climate emergency. At the same time, policies to promote a just transition to a sustainable economy provide an opportunity for the creation of good green jobs. Such pathways into the green economy will only be inclusive if the voices of Indigenous, Black and racialized people and their communities are heard. Otherwise, the green economic transformation will only further reinforce the structural racial economic inequalities present in Canadian society and the genocidal impacts of the climate emergency will continue. In the end, we believe that worker power guided by a critical race, class, gender and intersectional analysis is an essential component in a strategy to win and secure a just transition to a green, sustainable and inclusive economy. The scale of the engagement must involve the entire movement working in genuine partnership with community coalition partners to ensure that the new green economy does not look like the old White economy.

New research on the workings of the ‘web of empire’ have revealed that the British Empire was not only sustained by raw materials from India but depended significantly on its manpower working as ‘coolies’, or indentured labourers, in distant plantations in Mauritius, Fiji, West Indies, East and South Africa, and the Straits Settlements. The white dominions of Canada, Australia and the United States (US) similarly depended on low-paid labourers from the East for much of their work of opening up and colonising the prairie wastes. Initially, the bulk of migrants from India in North America came from among the strong and hard-working Sikhs of the Punjab province of India, who found it lucrative to work in these places, lured by the comparatively higher wages than they could obtain at home. However, as the market for labour became saturated by the first decade of the twentieth century, these countries began to erect legal barriers to the free entry of these Indian migrants under pressure from domestic workers, unwilling to face competition from migrants. This came as a great shock to migrant Indians, who had until then been thinking of the empire as a vast field of ‘shared opportunities’. In 1908, Canada tried to exclude Indian migrant labour by legislation, which insisted on ‘continuous passage’ for entering into the ports of the country. This would automatically disable Sikh migrants, who had to change ships to reach Canada. Gurdit Singh’s attempt to charter a Japanese ship, Komagata Maru, in June 1914 to ensure continuous passage for the Sikh migrants to Canada was a challenge to this legal barrier against the migrants. The turning back of this ship from Vancouver shattered the belief of the migrants in an equal imperial citizenship, and it became incendiary material for the revolutionary nationalist propaganda of the Ghadr conspirators, based in San Francisco. Student radicals in Canada and America, such as Lala Har Dayal, Kartar Singh Sarabha, G. D. Kumar and Husain Rahim tried to contact radicals all over the world, in India House in the United Kingdom (UK), France, Egypt, Turkey and Switzerland, and tried to spread their message through journals, like the Ghadr and the Hindustanee from San Francisco and the Al Kasas from Egypt. They even linked their efforts with German imperialist conspirators to gain funding and guidance in their common mission against British imperialism. --Publisher's summary

Spaces of work and economic activity cause the most significant and widespread harm to animals so are particularly significant when thinking about how to both understand and promote solidarity with animals. This chapter begins by establishing what ‘animals at work’ means and then reestablishes the importance of the concept of interspecies solidarity as both a process and goal. It expands on earlier analyses and suggests that the principles of equity and care offer complementary and compelling guidance and impetus to deepen and enrich the application of the concept of solidarity. There are three levels within which these ethical priorities can be translated into meaningful, material changes: the interpersonal, the organizational, and the governmental/legislative (or, the micro, meso, and macro level). Some workplace contexts are ethically indefensible and should be replaced through just humane jobs transitions. Others have more positive potential, and, in these cases, interspecies solidarity could result in meaningful changes.

This collection presents critical and action-oriented approaches to addressing food systems inequities across places, spaces, and scales. With case studies from around the globe, Radical Food Geographies explores interconnections between power structures and the social and ecological dynamics that bring food from the land and water to our plates. Through themes of scale, spatial imaginaries, and human and more-than-human relationships, the authors explore ongoing efforts to co-construct more equitable and sustainable food systems for all. Advancing a radical food geographies praxis, the book reveals multiple forms of resistance and resurgence, and offers examples of co-creating food systems transformation through scholarship, action, and geography. --Publisher's description

...Some shocking statistics underpin Adrian Murray's examination of COVID-19 in Canada: underfunded and poorly regulated for-profit care homes for the aged experienced a death rate four times that of public care homes. Murray details the uneven impacts of the pandemic in Canada, with the burden falling hardest on those in precarious work, women, black, Indigenous and other racalised groups - as shaped by Canada's colonial history of dispossession and racism, now exacerbated by neoliberal economic policies. Murray highlights the contradictions of Canadian exceptionalism, suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic be read through the lens of a colonial present epitomised by internal inequalities and internationally by hoarding of vaccines. --From Editors' Introduction

This chapter traces the development of unionisation and collective bargaining beginning in the mid-1970s amongst university and college academics with a focus on Canada. It examines the early reluctance of faculty to pursue unionisation and explores how this hesitancy was overcome. It is argued that unionisation was driven not just by concerns about pay and benefits but also by a growing awareness of the weak legal protections in Canadian law for academic freedom and tenure. Today, largely in the absence of any statutory recognition, these rights are embedded in and enforced legally through collective agreements. The chapter concludes by considering emerging issues facing faculty unions in Canada and internationally and suggests how they can adapt to meet these challenges.

In this book, independent experts analyze the performance of Justin Trudeau's years in power in over 20 important areas of government policy. The record of what has been done-and what hasn't-will surprise even well-informed readers. The focus is on six policy areas: Indigenous rights, governance and housing; the environment and energy; taxes and spending; healthcare and social benefits; foreign policy, immigration, and trade; and social policy including drug reform, labour rights, and racism. Editors Katherine Scott, Laura Macdonald, and Stuart Trew of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives have recruited Canada's most knowledgeable experts in their areas to contribute to this volume. --Publisher's description