Tags – Economy
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Land rush
Speculators stake claim to Prairie farmland
Amid skyrocketing food prices, climate-related instability, and declining soil and water resources, wealthy investors have begun to size up the world’s farmland as both an investment opportunity and a hedge against food crises and political turbulence. Saskatchewan’s farmland has gained a particularly noteworthy reputation, making the province a global hot spot for farmland investment.
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Living the HyLife
How meat packers are fuelling migration to Manitoba towns
Over the past 40 years, increasing numbers of Prairie towns and villages are “dying” as people leave in droves to find work in the city. But aggressive recruitment campaigns by the hog industry are now re-populating and transforming the demographics of some of Manitoba’s smaller urban centres. What do these changes mean for these once-stereotypical Prairie towns and the growing populations of economic migrants who now call them home?
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The end of the strike?
What is the future of labour’s time-honoured tactic?
Less than two months into their majority mandate, the federal Conservatives passed legislation that left the labour movement reeling. The Harper government’s use of back-to-work legislation to force an end to labour disputes at Air Canada and Canada Post was just the latest blow, however, to the labour movement’s most time-honoured tactic: the strike.
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The confines of compromise
Does the labour movement encourage resistance, or contain it?
Has the labour movement become comfortable in a reactive, and even survivalist, mode of operating? What would a labour movement that strengthened and encouraged resistance and militancy, rather than managed it, look like?
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Crisis in care
Ontario pioneers the privatization of long-term care
As the pioneer of privatized care in Canada, Ontario has opened the doors for a corporate takeover of long-term care homes, resulting in chronic understaffing by profit-seeking multinational providers.
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Fair trade and empire
An anti-capitalist critique of the fair trade movement
Fair trade marketing and advocacy rely on the idea that fair trade increases connectedness between Global South producers and Global North consumers. But while fair trade does reduce the number of intermediaries in the supply chain as compared to the free trade system, it also serves to reinforce racist and colonial distinctions between the poor Global South farmer and the benevolent Global North consumer. While it may channel slightly more income into agricultural communities, it ultimately fails to address the colonial capitalist structures that produce the impoverishment of farmers on an ongoing basis.
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‘Play in the Hay’ and other agricultural ventures
Agri-tourism responds to urban ignorance
While there is a long history of some agri-tourist ventures like pick-your-own fruit farms, contemporary agri-tourist ventures are responding to specific contemporary realities: urban ignorance about food production and the economic need to instill a love and appreciation for local food in local customers.
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Turning the tide
A conservative majority and the coming wave of austerity
The Conservatives won a majority in the recent federal election with a very simple core message. On the basis of their economic agenda and tough-on-crime program, Stephen Harper presented his party as the safe choice in difficult times.
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Living behind the uranium curtain
The dubious legacy and dangerous future of Saskatchewan’s uranium industry
Saskatchewan is quickly joining Alberta in the continental corridor supplying oil and gas to the United States. This deepening integration with the resource-intensive U.S. economy, which leaves a toxic legacy on indigenous and Canadian lands, has its roots in a shift that began in the 1960s.
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Dirty deeds done dirt cheap
Saskatchewan’s multi-billion dollar resource giveaway
High resource prices have expanded Saskatchewan’s economy above the national average, but have left the incomes of Saskatchewan people below the national average. A major challenge for the province is to translate its economic prosperity into higher living standards for provincial residents.
