In recent decades, Canada has played an outsized role in a protracted process of underdevelopment in Burkina Faso—not through the direct overthrow of socialist governments and the propping-up of right-wing dictatorships, but through its exploitative investment in countries which have already had this economic agenda imposed on them by more overtly imperialist powers like the United States.

In this webinar, leading figures from the left in Canada and the United States reflect on the legacy of Leo Panitch, Professor Emeritus of Politics at York University and editor of the Socialist Register. Leo passed away in December 2020. Panitch is the author of more than 100 scholarly articles and nine books including The Making of Global Capitalism, written with his close friend and university colleague Sam Gindin.

While there are thankfully an increasing number of serious books proposing what can be done to actually meet the scale of the crisis we face (including Seth Klein’s A Good War and Max Ajl’s A People’s Green New Deal), it is still worth giving a nod to the essential works that expose the forces holding us back from climate action in Canada—especially because these works get little attention from mainstream media.

Is one’s ‘right’ to not be exposed to tents in parks as important as another’s right to safety, community, or shelter? Of course not. The only line of reasoning that could uphold such an argument is one that places profit over people. The clearing of encampments has nothing to do with community safety or park aesthetics—it has everything to do with maintaining control over land and ensuring capitalist access to it.

Protests began in Cuba on July 11, and a clear transformation in the institutional political discourse has occurred in recent days. Since the president’s J-11 “combat order,” the language has progressively transitioned to a vocabulary of conciliation and calls for solidarity, unity, and peace. That matters. Now, an extensive discussion and political transformation that allows the protests to be processed is essential.

The promise of some potential future payoff, some trickle-down longshot, is moot in the face of the fact that billionaires are a policy failure and ought not to exist in the first place. It turns out, then, that Mandeville was on to something when in his tale some unseen force was “with indignation mov’d” and committed to “he’d rid/The bawling hive of fraud.” We ought to do the same. Our hive depends upon it.

More than 500 organizations pressured political leaders in the United States and Canada to reject carbon capture as “a false solution” that has become “a dangerous distraction driven by the same big polluters who created the climate emergency.” The messages were not only shared as letters, but also published as full-page advertisements in the Washington Post and Ottawa’s Hill Times.

In this political moment, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for progressives to argue that resources should be devoted to fighter jets rather than pandemic recovery and mitigating the climate crisis. Perhaps a few hundred more phones calls, emails and tweets could move the NDP to just say no to spending tens of billions of dollars on unnecessary, dangerous, climate destroying fighter jets.

The real challenges for the left today are not about big names and bold ideas. They’re about identity and mobilization. We’ve been led to believe that elections are about individual voters examining parties and their policies like consumers looking for the best deal while parties are policy entrepreneurs just trying to meet consumer demands. But research on voters and party behaviour doesn’t support such a view.

At a time when concerted effort is required to address the overlapping crises of the climate, the COVID-19 pandemic, economic inequality, and racial injustice, perhaps more activists should, in fact, seek a seat in the House of Commons. And maybe, when the votes are counted in the next federal election, there will be another Lewis pounding on the desk, demanding justice and equality for all Canadians.