Reducing barriers to dental care and other medical services not covered by Canada’s meagre and underfunded health care system is an improvement over the status quo. But if the NDP or any other party wishes to take up the cause of the left in Canada, its demands must be shaped by a commitment to universality and the expansion of publicly controlled and administered social services.

One of the few references to the climate crisis in the supply and confidence agreement announced a few weeks ago was the commitment to introduce ‘just transition’ legislation. Yet any actual just transition strategy must entail demilitarization. It is therefore ironic that within weeks of this announcement, the federal government announced its intention to purchase eighty-eight F-35 fighter jets.