Pretty much everything that we might find redeemable about Canadian society has come as a result of community-based struggles and social movements. Yet, most people have little awareness of the historical significance of collective action because public memory practices rarely recollect, never mind detail, histories of activism.

If NGOs are truly committed to ending poverty and inequality, as they profess to be, they should be devoting more of their resources to educating people about the causes of inequality, suffering, and war, and campaigns aimed at changing the structures that produce poverty and deprivation in the first place. Instead, they continue to focus almost exclusively on providing aid.

Lost in the palace intrigue of the WE scandal is the pernicious racial politics of the WE Charity and aspects of the wider charitable industry. Although the controversy comes at a pivotal moment in public discourse, accusations of racism within WE have been marginalized, as have discussion of the way WE gained such influence within Canadian schools, media, and politics.