In 2024 university campuses across Canada saw encampments and other protest actions. In a new book and podcast series Dr. Roberta Lexier places these actions within the broader history of student activism in Canada since the 1960s. In this discussion we ask her how student activism differes between Québec and the rest of Canada, how radical praxis can be maintained in a rapidly turning over student population, how student activism intersects with off-campus politics and when and why the state responds with violent force.

Follow Dr. Lexier at @robertalexier.bsky.social and check out her work here:

• Book - Student Power: Canadian Student Movements From the Sixties to Today
• Podcast - Student Power: A Canadian Student Movement History Podcast

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