Briarpatch articles from April 1999

Briarpatch archives from April 1999

Rich & poor (statistics).
April 1, 1999... The richest one-fifth of the world's people consumes 86 percent of all goods and services, while the poorest one-fifth consumes just 1.3 percent. The richest one-fifth consumes 45 percent of all meat and fish, 58 percent of all energy used, and...

Pay equity: groups call on the Saskatchewan government to pass pay equity legislation.
April 1, 1999... A coalition of groups representing labour, women and community-based agencies called on the Saskatchewan government to take action to improve the lives of working women by passing pay equity legislation. The request was made by the Pay Equity...

Slash & burn at the CBC: the real story behind the dismantling of Canada's public broadcaster.
April 1, 1999... Cuts, strikes, increased business programming content, more stock market reports, less investigative reporting, less regional programming, reduction in quality. These are just symptoms of what is really happening at the CBC. The story...

"Stop fighting over us & just organize us": that's the message young people are sending to unions.
April 1, 1999... Young Canadian workers want unions to start working together to unionize youth in crappy jobs and give them strong first contracts. With only one in ten young workers organized, they say it's time to "stop the body count" and give workers...

Virtual university: workers and the corporate reorganization of education.
April 1, 1999... Arbitrary university tuition fee increases by corporate-dominated Boards of Governors are widely cited as evidence that the direction of post-secondary education conforms to the corporate agenda. Nonetheless, there are other corporate-inspired...

Reform by any other name: inside the United Alternative convention.
April 1, 1999... The political right-wing, once known as the Reform Party of Canada, is undergoing a name change and makeover. But despite the new moniker and facelift, Reform by any other name will smell the same. That's the one thing the "United...

Saskatchewan election '99: what's left? A survey and analysis of Left opinions.
April 1, 1999... Briarpatch commissioned Joe Roberts to interview people from "the broad left" about what the progressive community should do in the upcoming provincial election. The sample included 40 people - young and old, in the NDP and out, workers and...

APEC: what's next?
April 1, 1999... Many Canadians were not even aware of APEC prior to the pepper spray incident. But APEC really represents other concerns. It is promoted to Canadians as a grouping of 18 economies whose aim is to impose a free trade zone in the...

River of resistance: why thousands of people want to shut down the School of the Americas.
April 1, 1999... THE RIVER OF RESISTANCE lining the avenue into Ft. Benning, Georgia last November was even mightier than the raging Chattahoochee River, swollen with winter rains. Over 7,000 people came to participate in the ninth annual vigil and civil...

Unsung lives: the rogues and heroes exhibition in Saskatoon.
April 1, 1999... Prairie people, it seems, are hungry for true stories of our own heroes of the past, and even our own villains. When the spotlight fell recently on some homegrown but relatively unheralded luminaries, it tweaked a nerve. Maybe it's only because...

Housing crisis in the downtown Eastside.
April 1, 1999... Old man alone in a basement room. You've outlived your time, you say. You hope that maybe sleep will come to end your loneliness. It wasn't always so. You travelled in our country coast to coast, and build...

Downtown Eastside poems.
April 1, 1999... The Downtown Eastside is Vancouver's oldest neighbourhood. It has a long history of struggle for human rights. This is the neighbourhood where men and women in B.C. first fought for the eight-hour day and the right to form trade unions. In...

Slumming it at the rodeo: the cultural roots of Canada's right-wing revolution.
April 1, 1999... by Gordon Laird Douglas & McIntyre, 1615 Venables Street, Vancouver BC V5L 2H1 1998, $19.95. reviewed by George Manz Here's your chance to meet Canada's cowboy junkies: Preston Manning, Ralph Klein and Mike Harris. No they're...

RRSP follies.
April 1, 1999... In a bygone era, our heroes were men and women of action: cowboys, space explorers, grim-faced homicide detectives, hockey stars. Today, we open the newspaper to check the mutual fund reports, not the hockey scores. We have a new breed of...