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Since January, Canada’s unemployment rate has nearly doubled. . But even before the pandemic, over a million people were unable to find work — and that’s without counting those who had stopped looking. The amount of suffering that this number represents is difficult to imagine.

Everyone who wants work, should have dignified, accessible living wage employment.

And let’s be clear, there is a lot of work to do: transitioning to a zero-carbon economy will require a top-to-bottom overhaul of housing, transportation, production, and care.

That’s why a federal jobs guarantee needs to be the cornerstone of an economic recovery, from the effects of the pandemic and for the climate.

What is a jobs guarantee?

A jobs guarantee is what it sounds like: everyone who wants a job can get one. A new federal agency (the Comprehensive Rapid Employment Agency for Treaties and the Environment – CREATE) would be created and charged with administering jobs and training programs across a variety of public sector agencies. Anyone could show up and sign up for a living-wage job, or paid full-time training program leading to long-term work.

Some of the jobs that could be filled to address the effects of COVID:

• Checking on isolated elderly people and providing updates to family members – as proposed by postal workers.
• Staffing public long term care facilities that meet standards that keep elderly people living in dignity and safety – as proposed by health care workers.
• Reducing class sizes and adding safety measures in schools – as proposed by nurses.
• Nationalize closed auto plants and use them to produce personal protective equipment and low-emission delivery vehicles – as proposed by auto workers.

Beyond the pandemic, we need to put people to work caring for our future generations and preserving the planet for them:

• Massively expand public transit and make it free – as proposed by transit workers. 
• Powering a zero-carbon logistics system and a public bank maintained by Canada Post – as proposed by postal workers.
• Retraining workers in the fossil fuel industry to provide green energy and clean up the mess left behind by oil and gas – as proposed by workers in the oil patch.
• Create thousands of new non-profit childcare spaces every year – as proposed by a broad-based coalition of labour and community groups.

There are many other pressing needs: building green infrastructure, planting trees, building green social and cooperative housing, and growing food and enhancing food sovereignty – to name just a few.

Isn’t that expensive?

The cost of such a program would be significant: in the multiple tens of billions per year, depending on the level of participation. However, it would have many important effects beyond creating a model for rapid decarbonization that is necessary for planetary survival:

• Massive private sector growth as the money is spent
• Growth in tax revenues at all levels of government
• Growth in wages as a living wage “floor” is built under the labour market
• Elimination of the hidden misery and indignity of millions of unemployed humans

By comparison, Canada’s military budget is over $21 billion per year. Corporate tax cuts passed by the Liberals have deprived the government of over $10 billion in revenues. Plus, corporations dodge the remaining taxes by at least $11 billion per year by using tax havens. Meanwhile, the fortunes of Canada’s billionaires are ballooning.

There is an estimated $700 billion in “dead money” that Canada’s corporations are not investing to expand operations or create jobs, instead pouring it into speculation and driving privatization. Taxing the super-wealthy and corporations to fund a jobs guarantee would put that money to work for people and the planet.

How does this help Indigenous communities?

The economic deprivation in First Nation, Metis and Inuit communities generally stems from lack of access to land – land that is frequently stolen in violation of treaties and inherent rights. However, Indigenous communities have also missed out on a wave of economic development driven by expansion of public services in the post-war period.

A jobs guarantee that respected Indigenous sovereignty could be a seismic shift away from poverty and social and environmental crises, and create a new economic footing for communities that have seen some of the worst effects of land theft, funding cuts, and pollution.

What about people who can’t work?

One effect of the CERB was to expose how absurdly low so-called disability and social support benefits are. In Ontario, for example, people living on disability must make do with $1,100 per month, a little over half of the CERB payments.

A jobs guarantee – with its massive influx of economic stimulus, improved quality of life and increased tax revenues – should be used as leverage to set the minimum provincial disability benefits at $2000, with cost of living adjustments in remote or urban areas with higher costs, and an additional amount to account for the increased costs of life while disabled.

Employment Insurance has also been deeply eroded by both Liberals and Conservatives. It’s a service that people pay for, but payments have been reduced, quotas for disqualifying people have been set, and billions have been stolen from the fund – effectively to pay for corporate tax cuts and oil industry subsidies. Comprehensive reform of EI is also necessary.

What about migrant workers and undocumented workers?`

The government has denied human rights and labour rights to temporary foreign workers and undocumented workers, many of whom were and are essential workers during the pandemic. And employers in Canada have taken advantage, exploiting vulnerable populations and paying those workers substandard wages.

For a jobs guarantee to be effective, it must be implemented in tandem with a Status for All policies – as proposed by migrant workers and civil society and movement organizations.

What about inflation?

When a jobs guarantee gains traction, watch out for corporate economists to appear in the media, warning of inflation. While paying people a living wage will lead some goods to cost a bit more, a well-implemented jobs guarantee would lower the cost of the central items in household budgets, like food, transportation, education, childcare and housing.

How will we get a jobs guarantee?

The idea of full employment hasn’t been seriously discussed in Canada in decades. Currently, no political parties are proposing a jobs guarantee. The idea has much more traction in the United States, where progressive voices like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have put forward proposals. As the climate crisis deepens and the economic “recovery” claims more victims, we need to collectively demand a jobs guarantee, and put forward federal candidates who are in office as representatives of the people, not corporations. 

Has anyone done this before? Where can I find out more?

Most of the serious discussion has been in the US. Policy researchers like The Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), the Levy Economics Institute,  and the Centre for American Progress have all published in-depth discussions of how a jobs guarantee could work.

Non aux pipelines coloniaux, oui à une économie et une société basées sur la souveraineté autochtone

9 septembre 2020, Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.

Aujourd’hui, en tant qu’artistes montréalais, nous déclarons collectivement notre soutien aux mouvements de souveraineté autochtone, en particulier la campagne en cours du peuple Wet’suwet’en pour les droits et titres territoriaux ancestraux.

Nous partageons cette lettre pour exprimer notre admiration et notre soutien collectifs à la résistance active du peuple Wet’suwet’en et du clan Unist’ot’en contre l’industrie coloniale du pétrole et du gaz.

À l’heure où une catastrophe climatique et une crise sanitaire pandémique frappent l’humanité tout entière, nous soutenons les voix autochtones qui luttent pour l’autodétermination, la souveraineté et la justice environnementale.

Il existe un consensus scientifique mondial clair sur la mesure dangereuse dans laquelle un changement climatique irréversible est déjà en train de se produire dû à l’activité humaine. Selon un récent rapport publié dans The Guardian, il y a maintenant “une quasi unanimité parmi les climatologues sur le fait que les facteurs humains – gaz d’échappements de voitures, fumées d’usines, déforestations et autres sources de gaz à effet de serre – sont responsables du niveau exceptionnel du réchauffement climatique”.

De nombreuses voix et communautés autochtones sonnent l’alarme. Cependant, le gouvernement canadien ne prend que très peu de mesures politiques spécifiques pour faire face concrètement à cette réalité.

Plutôt que de donner la priorité aux énergies renouvelables et à un changement systémique plus profond, le gouvernement libéral construit un nouveau pipeline, le projet d’expansion de Trans Mountain (TMX). Il facilite également la croissance du secteur pétrolier et gazier de manière plus générale, notamment l’expansion des sables bitumineux et le gazoduc Coastal GasLink.

En tant qu’artistes qui soutiennent la souveraineté autochtone et la justice climatique, nous demandons la mise en œuvre d’un new deal vert en Amérique du Nord, une transformation sociale et économique qui vise à éliminer l’utilisation des combustibles fossiles et à redistribuer les richesses. Une action immédiate est nécessaire pour créer des moyens de subsistance dignes dans le cadre de la souveraineté autochtone.

La division entre les emplois, d’une part, et l’autodétermination des autochtones et l’environnement, d’autre part, est un faux choix. Des millions d’emplois verts peuvent être créés en taxant les riches et les bénéfices des entreprises. Ce qui manque, c’est un soutien massif à ce que les autochtones réclament depuis 400 ans. Il est temps pour une participation massive aux efforts en cours pour construire une société et une économie qui soient en accord avec la souveraineté des nations autochtone – et la survie de la planète.

Les artistes de Montréal ont souvent évoqué des moments historiques, et c’est pourquoi, en cette période critique, nous sommes solidaires de Wet’suwet’en et de la justice climatique.

No to colonial pipelines, yes to an economy and society based on Indigenous sovereignty.

September 9, 2020, Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.

Today, as artists in this city, we collectively declare our support for Indigenous sovereignty movements, specifically the ongoing campaign by the Wet’suwet’en people for ancestral land rights and title. 

We are sharing this letter to express collective admiration and support for the active resistance of Wet’suwet’en people and the Unist’ot’en Clan against the colonial corporate oil and gas industry. 

Amidst an unfolding climate disaster facing all life, we support Indigenous voices fighting for self-determination, sovereignty and environmental justice. 

Global scientific consensus is clear and overwhelming. The Guardian recently reported that there is “near unanimity among climate scientists that human factors – car exhausts, factory chimneys, forest clearance and other sources of greenhouse gases – are responsible for the exceptional level of global warming.”

Indigenous voices and communities are sounding the alarm and yet the Canadian government is undertaking a tiny fraction of what is needed to concretely address this reality. 

Rather than prioritize renewable energy and deeper systemic change, the Liberal government is building the new Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX) pipeline. They are also facilitating the growth of the oil and gas sector more broadly, including Tar Sands expansion and the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

As artists who support Indigenous sovereignty and climate justice, we are calling for the implementation of a Green New Deal of the North: a social and economic transformation that moves to eliminate fossil fuel use and redistribute wealth, while creating dignified livelihoods within a framework of Indigenous sovereignty. 

The choice between jobs on the one hand, and Indigenous self-determination and the environment on the other, is a false one. Millions of green jobs can be created by taxing corporations and the wealthy. It’s time for mass participation in efforts to build a society and an economy that are aligned with the sovereignty of Indigenous nations and planetary survival, an Indigenous project now ongoing for well over 400 years.

Artists in this city have often spoken to historical moments, and so at this critical time, we stand together to stand with Wet’suwet’en and for climate justice.