Sometimes employers  in Canada must feel like they are playing a game of Whack-a-Mole with workers. No sooner do they grudgingly settle one dispute than another one  pops up and out come the injunctions and back to work orders. 2026 is shaping up to be one of those times.

Across the country workers are walking picket lines or expecting to be, and employers are likely to use every tool in their strike-breaking toolbox to quell our rebellious impulses. All this class war drama will play out against the backdrop of American tariff mania and imperial  fantasies about turning Canada into the 51st state. Add to all  that background noise the plausible expectations of a crash in the AI-overloaded stock market and rumors of war from Venezuela to Nigeria, Iran to Greenland. The genocide in Gaza and humanitarian crises around the globe threaten more innocent civilian deaths every day.

Over 239 million people are in humanitarian need globally. All this suffering has implications for workers in Canada, and many voices are trying to confuse us about how we end up in this mess, and what we ought to do about it. Far too many of the “solutions” on offer ooze and stink with rancid racism and xenophobia .

Racist, divisive anti-immigrant movements are in power in too many countries and on the rise in others. These toxic ideologues urge us to blame other workers for the crises created by our economic masters. We are in for a rough ride this year, and workers need to be clear eyed about who our real allies are.

Here are some of the disputes and other class war events that are currently ongoing or impending this year. As this column was being written, General Motors announced layoffs effective the end of January that will cost over a thousand workers their jobs in Oshawa.

In BC the union that represents 6,000 ambulance paramedics, whose members  have been working without a contract for a year now, announced it will hold a strike vote in early February.

Across Canada, many observers are........

© rabble