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The life and death struggle for public health care
As health care provision moves closer to collapse, the most destructive course of action is to offer privatized medical care to those with the means to pay for it, while forcing the rest of us to line up for the sub-standard remnants of the public system. Given the prevailing political agenda, it is hardly surprising that this threat is looming over us.
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Dispelling myths about for-profit health care
The crises in health care brought about by years of austerity have created the opportunity to build back better. However, this has also created the opportunity for those searching for profit in all corners of care, from dental offices to home care, telehealth, colonoscopies, and vaccinations. Now more than ever we have to make the distinction between private and profit clear.
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Lester Pearson at the World Bank
As the head of the World Bank’s committee to review and criticize the development goals of the Bretton Woods institutions, Lester Pearson had the opportunity to foreground an alternative form of Northern engagement with the South. Instead, he reaffirmed all the most harmful aspects of these institutions and argued for their greater involvement in the lives of people in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
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Italy: Lurching to the right
Italy goes to the polls on September 27. This is a snap election forced on Italy’s president because the ‘technocratic’ government under former ECB chief Mario Draghi fell after he lost majority support in parliament. That support was lost, partly because Draghi vigorously backed NATO support for Ukraine and partly because his government was determined to keep to the fiscal strictures of the EU Commission.
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Doug Ford ploughs ahead with attacks on education
According to Ontario’s Financial Accountability Office, the government’s current spending projections will likely lead to a $12.3 billion shortfall over the next decade. If those projections are followed it will mean “significant cuts” to staffing and education programming. Whatever Stephen Lecce may put forward “philosophically,” the situation is clear and it is grim.
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Doug Ford’s ‘strong mayor’ system is an anti-democratic power play
Ultimately, by handing expanded powers to Tory and the mayor of Ottawa, Ford is working to privilege the pan-suburban coalition and the conservative, privatist, and consumerist politics his base subscribes to. This is both a means and an end to achieving smaller government, normalizing the language of efficiency, and centralizing decision-making.
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Ten years on from the ‘Maple Spring,’ New Brunswick government cancels student benefit program
A drive for social good characterized by demand and solidarity is always hovering just below our collective class consciousness. Crises like that which New Brunswick students now face can act as stimulants—calls to action for activists to organize and re-ignite the demand for more affordable access to higher education. From crisis emerges opportunity. The question is whether it will be taken.
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The left, inflation and monetary policy
The return of high inflation poses a major political and analytical challenge for labour and the left. On top of cuts to real wages resulting from the wide gap between inflation and pay, inflation has led central banks to hike interest rates sharply. This is raising the debt servicing costs of households, businesses and governments and making new borrowing more expensive.
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Ford ramping up privatization of Ontario health care system
Knowing the strength of Ontario’s financial situation, one would hope Health Minister Christine Elliott was experiencing cognitive dissonance when she announced February 1 that the provincial government intends to bring in independent health facilities to operate private hospitals in Ontario. This is the first step to privatizing public health care services across Ontario.
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Alberta’s Continuing Care Act: Real problems, fake solutions
Instead of implementing much-needed improvements to address the crises in continuing care, the UCP government’s Continuing Care Act focuses on a series of bureaucratic and governance changes that will have little impact on the day-to-day lives of residents and workers. Rather than any type of minimum care standards, it creates a single system for licensing continuing care providers.